Henry VIII Part 30

The grounds of the sentence are not stated, but there may have been two--the alleged precontract with the Earl of Northumberland, which the Earl denied on oath and on the sacrament, and the previous affinity between Anne and Henry arising from the King's relations with Mary Boleyn. The latter seems the more probable. Henry had obtained of Clement VII. a dispensation from this disability; but the Pope's power to dispense had since been repudiated, while the canonical (p. 345) objection remained and was given statutory authority in this very year.[965] The effects of this piece of wanton injustice were among the troubles which Henry bequeathed to Queen Elizabeth; the sole advantage to Henry was that his infidelities to Anne ceased to be breaches of the seventh commandment. The justice of her sentence to death is also open to doubt. Anne herself went to the block boldly proclaiming her innocence.[966] Death she regarded as a relief from an intolerable situation, and she "laughed heartily," writes the Lieutenant of the Tower as she put her hands round her "little neck," and thought how easy the executioner's task would be.[967] She complained when the day of her release from this world was deferred, and regretted that so many innocent persons should suffer through her. Of her accomplices, none confessed but Smeaton, though Henry is said, before Anne's arrest, to have offered Norris a pardon if he would admit his crime.

On the other hand, her conduct must have made the charges plausible.

Even in those days, when justice to individuals was regarded as dust if weighed in the balance against the real or supposed interests of the State, it is not credible that the juries should have found her accomplices guilty, that twenty-six peers, including her uncle, (p. 346) should have condemned Anne herself, without some colourable justification.

If the charges were merely invented to ruin the Queen, one culprit besides herself would have been enough. To a.s.sume that Henry sent four needless victims to the block is to accuse him of a l.u.s.t for superfluous butchery, of which even he, in his most bloodthirsty moments, was not capable.[968]

[Footnote 965: This Act indirectly made Elizabeth a b.a.s.t.a.r.d and Henry's marriage with Anne invalid, (_cf._ Chapuys to Granvelle _L. and P._, x., 909).

The Antinomian theory of marital relations, which Chapuys ascribes to Anne, was an Anabaptist doctrine of the time. Chapuys calls Anne a Messalina, but he of course was not an impartial witness.]

[Footnote 966: According to some accounts, but a Spaniard who writes as an eye-witness says she cried "mercy to G.o.d and the King for the offence she had done" (_L. and P._, x., 911).]

[Footnote 967: _Ibid._, x., 910.]

[Footnote 968: The execution of Anne was welcomed by the Imperialists and Catholics, and it is possible that it was hastened on by rumours of disquiet in the North. A few days later the n.o.bles and gentry who were in London were ordered to return home to put the country in a state of defence (_L. and P._, x., 1016).]

On the day that his second queen was beheaded, Henry obtained from Cranmer a special licence to marry a third.[969] He was betrothed on the morrow and privately married "in the Queen's closet at York Place"

on the 30th of May. The lady of his choice was Jane, daughter of Sir John Seymour of Wolf Hall in Wiltshire.[970] She was descended on her mother's side from Edward III., and Cranmer had to dispense with a canonical bar to the marriage arising from her consanguinity to the King in the third and fourth degrees. She had been lady-in-waiting to the two previous queens, and her brother, Sir Edward Seymour, the future Protector, had for years been steadily rising in Henry's favour. In October, 1535, the King had paid a visit to Wolf Hall, and from that time his attentions to Jane became marked. She seems to have received them with real reluctance; she refused a purse of gold and returned the King's letters unopened.[971] She even obtained a (p. 347) promise from Henry that he would not speak with her except in the presence of others, and the King ejected Cromwell from his rooms in the Palace in order to bestow them on Sir Edward Seymour, and thus to provide a place where he and Jane could converse without scandal. All this modesty has, of course, been attributed to prudential and ambitious motives, which were as wise as they were successful. But Jane seems to have had no enemies, except Alexander Aless, who denounced her to Luther as an enemy to the Gospel, probably because she extinguished the shining light of Anne Boleyn.[972] Cardinal Pole described her as "full of goodness,"[973] and she certainly did her best to reconcile Henry with his daughter the Princess Mary, whose treatment began to improve from the fall of Anne Boleyn. "She is,"

writes Chapuys, "of middle stature, and no great beauty; so fair that one would call her rather pale than otherwise."[974] But all agreed in praising her intelligence. She had neither Catherine's force of character nor the temper of Anne Boleyn; she was a woman of gentle spirit, striving always to mitigate the rigour of others; her brief married life was probably happier than that of any other of Henry's Queens; and her importance is mainly due to the fact that she bore to Henry his only legitimate son.

[Footnote 969: _Ibid._ x., 915, 926, 993, 1000.

There is a persistent fable that they were married on the day or the day after Anne's execution; Dr.

Gairdner says it is repeated "in all histories".]

[Footnote 970: See _Wilts Archaeol. Mag._, vols xv., xvi., doc.u.ments printed from the _Longleat MSS._]

[Footnote 971: _L. and P._, x., 245.]

[Footnote 972: Luther, _Briefe_, v., 22; _L. and P._, xi., 475.]

[Footnote 973: Strype, _Eccl. Memorials_, I., ii., 304.]

[Footnote 974: _L. and P._, x., 901.]

The disgrace of Anne Boleyn necessitated the summons of a fresh Parliament to put the succession to the crown on yet another basis.

The Long Parliament had been dissolved on 14th April; another was called to meet on the 8th of June. The eighteen acts pa.s.sed during its six weeks' session ill.u.s.trate the parallel development of the (p. 348) Reformation and of the royal autocracy. The Act of Succession made Anne's daughter, Elizabeth, a b.a.s.t.a.r.d, without declaring Catherine's daughter, Mary, legitimate, and settled the crown on Henry's prospective issue by Jane. A unique clause empowered the King to dispose of the crown at will, should he have no issue by his present Queen.[975] Probably he intended it, in that case, for the Duke of Richmond; but the Duke's days were numbered, and four days after the dissolution of Parliament he breathed his last. The royal prerogative was extended by a statute enabling a king, when he reached the age of twenty-four, to repeal by proclamation any act pa.s.sed during his minority; and the royal caste was further exalted by a statute making it high treason for any one to marry a king's daughter, legitimate or not, his sister, his niece, or his aunt on the father's side, without royal licence. The reform of clerical abuses was advanced by an act to prevent non-residence, and by another to obviate the delay in inst.i.tuting to benefices practised by bishops with a view to (p. 349) keeping the t.i.thes of the vacant benefice in their own hands. The breach with Rome was widened still further by a statute, declaring all who extolled the Pope's authority to be guilty of _praemunire_, imposing an oath of renunciation on all lay and clerical officers, and making the refusal of that oath high treason. Thus the hopes of a reaction built on the fall of those "apostles of the new sect," Anne Boleyn and her relatives, were promptly and roughly destroyed.

[Footnote 975: Parliament prefered to risk the results of Henry's nomination to the risk of civil war, which would inevitably have broken out had Henry died in 1536. Hobbes, it may be noted, made this power of nomination an indispensable attribute of the sovereign, and if the sovereign be interpreted as the "King in Parliament" the theory is sound const.i.tutionalism and was put in practice in 1701 as well as in 1536. But the limitations on Henry's power of bequeathing the crown have generally been forgotten; he never had power to leave the crown away from Edward VI., that is, away from the only heir whose legitimacy was undisputed.

The later acts went further, and entailed the succession upon Mary and Elizabeth unless Henry wished otherwise--which he did not. The preference of the Suffolk to the Stuart line may have been due to (1) the common law forbidding aliens to inherit English land (_cf. L. and P._, vii., 337); (2) the national dislike of the Scots; (3) a desire to intimate to the Scots that if they would not unite the two realms by the marriage of Edward and Mary, they should not obtain the English crown by inheritance.]

Henry's position had been immensely strengthened alike by the death of Catherine of Aragon and by the fall of Anne Boleyn; and on both occasions he had expressed his appreciation of the fact in the most indecent and heartless manner. He was now free to marry whom he liked, and no objection based on canon or on any other law could be raised to the legitimacy of his future issue; whether the Pope could dispense or not, it made no difference to Edward VI.'s claim to the throne. The fall of Anne Boleyn, in spite of some few rumours that she might have been condemned on insufficient evidence, was generally popular; for her arrogance and that of her family made them hated, and they were regarded as the cause of the King's persecution of Catherine, of Mary, and of those who maintained their cause. Abroad the effect was still more striking. The moment Henry heard of Catherine's death, he added a postscript to Cromwell's despatch to the English amba.s.sadors in France, bidding them to take a higher tone with Francis, for all cause of difference had been removed between him and Charles V.[976] The Emperor secretly believed that his aunt had been poisoned,[977] but that private grief was not to affect his public policy; and Charles, Francis, and even the Pope, became more or less eager compet.i.tors (p. 350) for Henry's favour. The bull of deprivation, which had been drawn up and signed, became a dead letter, and every one was anxious to disavow his share in its promotion. Charles obtained the suspension of its publication, made a merit of that service to Henry, and tried to represent that it was Francis who, with his eyes on the English crown, had extorted the bull from the Pope.[978] Paul III. himself used words to the English envoy at Rome, which might be interpreted as an apology for having made Fisher a cardinal and having denounced his and More's execution.[979]

[Footnote 976: _L. and P._, x., 54.]

[Footnote 977: _Ibid._, x., 230.]

[Footnote 978: _L. and P._, x., 887.]

[Footnote 979: _Ibid._, x., 977.]

Henry had been driven by fear of Charles in the previous year to make further advances than he relished towards union with the German princes; but the Lutherans could not be persuaded to adopt Henry's views of the ma.s.s and of his marriage with Catherine; and now he was glad to subst.i.tute an understanding with the Emperor for intrigues with the Emperor's subjects.[980] Cromwell and the council were, indeed, a little too eager to welcome Chapuys' professions of friendship and to entertain his demands for help against Francis. Henry allowed them to go on for a time; but Cromwell was never in Wolsey's position, and the King was not inclined to repeat his own and the Cardinal's errors of 1521. He had suffered enough from the prostration of France and the predominance of Charles; and he was anxious now that neither should be supreme. So, when the imperial amba.s.sador came expecting Henry's a.s.sent, he, Cromwell and the rest of the council were (p. 351) amazed to hear the King break out into an uncompromising defence of the French King's conduct in invading Savoy and Piedmont.[981] That invasion was the third stroke of good fortune which befel Henry in 1536. As Henry and Ferdinand had, in 1512, diverted their arms from the Moors in order to make war on the Most Christian King, so, in 1536, the Most Christian King and the sovereign, who was at once King Catholic and the temporal head of Christendom, instead of turning their arms against the monarch who had outraged and defied the Church, turned them against one another. Francis had never lost sight of Milan; he had now recovered from the effects of Pavia; and in the spring of 1536 he overran Savoy and Piedmont. In April the Emperor once more visited Rome, and on the 17th he delivered a famous oration in the papal Consistory.[982] In that speech he denounced neither Luther nor Henry VIII.; he reserved his invectives for Francis I.

Unconsciously he demonstrated once and for all that unity of faith was impotent against diversity of national interests, and that, whatever deference princes might profess to the counsels of the Vicar of Christ, the counsels they would follow would be those of secular impulse.

[Footnote 980: _Cf._ Stern, _Heinrich VIII. und der Schmalkaldische Bund_, and P. Singer, _Beziehung des Schmalkald. Bundes zu England_. Greifswald, 1901.]

[Footnote 981: _L. and P._, x., 699.]

[Footnote 982: _Ibid._, x., 678, 684, 968.]

Henry was thus left to deal with the great domestic crisis of his reign without intervention from abroad. The dissolution of the monasteries inevitably inflicted considerable hardship on a numerous body of men. It had been arranged that the inmates of the dissolved religious houses should either be pensioned or transferred to other monasteries; but, although the pensions were adequate and (p. 352) sometimes even generous in scale,[983] and although the commissioners themselves showed a desire to prevent unnecessary trouble by obtaining licences for many houses to continue for a time,[984] the monks found some difficulty in obtaining their pensions, and Chapuys draws a moving picture of their sufferings as they wandered about the country, seeking employment in a market that was already overstocked with labour, and endeavouring to earn a livelihood by means to which they had never been accustomed.[985] They met with no little sympathy from the commons, who were oppressed with a like scarcity of work, and who had looked to the monasteries for such relief as charity could afford.

Nowhere were these feelings so strong as in the north of England, and there the commissioners for dissolving the monasteries were often met with open resistance. Religious discontent was one of the motives for revolt, but probably the rebels were drawn mainly[986] from evicted tenants, deprived of their holdings by enclosures or by the conversion of land from tillage to pasture, men who had nothing to lose and everything to gain by a general turmoil. In these men the wandering monks found ready listeners to their complaints, and there were (p. 353) others, besides the monks, who eagerly turned to account the prevailing dissatisfaction. The northern lords, Darcy and Hussey, had for years been representing to Chapuys the certainty of success if the Emperor invaded England, and promising to do their part when he came. Darcy had, at Christmas 1534, sent the imperial amba.s.sador a sword as an intimation that the time had come for an appeal to its arbitrament; and he was seeking Henry's licence to return to his house in Yorkshire in order to raise "the crucifix" as the standard of revolt.[987] The King, however, was doubtful of Darcy's loyalty, and kept him in London till early in 1536. It would have been well had he kept him longer.

[Footnote 983: _E.g._, the Prioress of Tarent received 100 a year, the Abbot of Evesham, 240 (Gasquet, ii., 230, 310); these sums must be multiplied by ten to bring them to their present value. Most of these lavish pensions were doubtless given as bribes or rewards for the surrender of monasteries.]

[Footnote 984: _L. and P._, xi., 385, 519.]

[Footnote 985: _Ibid._, xi., 42.]

[Footnote 986: The exact proportion is of course difficult to determine; Mr. E.F. Gay in an admirable paper (_Trans. Royal Hist. Soc._, N.S., xviii., 208, 209) thinks that I have exaggerated the part played by the propertyless cla.s.s in the rebellion. They were undoubtedly present in large numbers; but my remark is intended to guard against the theory that the grievances were entirely religious, not to exclude those grievances; and the northern lords were of course notable examples of the discontent of the propertied cla.s.s.]

[Footnote 987: _L. and P._, vii., 1206; viii., 48.]

Towards the end of the summer rumours[988] were spread among the commons of the North that heavy taxes would be levied on every burial, wedding and christening, that all cattle would be marked and pay a fine to the King, and that all unmarked beasts would be forfeit; churches within five miles of each other were to be taken down as superfluous, jewels and church plate confiscated; taxes were to be paid for eating white bread, goose, or capon; there was to be a rigid inquisition into every man's property; and a score of other absurdities gained currency, obviously invented by malicious and lying tongues.

The outbreak began at Caistor, in Lincolnshire, on the 3rd of October, with resistance, not to the commissioners for dissolving the monasteries, but to those appointed to collect the subsidy granted by Parliament. The rebels entered Lincoln on the 6th; they could, they said, pay no more money; they demanded the repeal of religious changes, the restoration of the monasteries, the banishment of (p. 354) heretics like Cranmer and Latimer, and the removal of low-born advisers such as Cromwell and Rich from the council.[989] The mustering of an army under Suffolk and the denial by heralds and others that the King had any such intentions as were imputed to him, induced the commons to go home; the reserves which Henry was collecting at Ampthill were disbanded; and the commotion was over in less than a fortnight.

[Footnote 988: _Ibid._, xi., 768, 826[2].]

[Footnote 989: _L. and P._, xi., 786, 1182, 1244, 1246.]

The Lincolnshire rebels, however, had not dispersed when news arrived of a much more serious rising which affected nearly the whole of Yorkshire. It was here that Darcy and his friends were most powerful; but, though there is little doubt that they were the movers, the ostensible leader was Robert Aske, a lawyer. Even here the rebellion was little more than a magnified riot, which a few regiments of soldiers could soon have suppressed. The rebels professed complete loyalty to Henry's person; they suggested no rival candidate for the throne; they merely demanded a change of policy, which they could not enforce without a change of government. They had no means of effecting that change without deposing Henry, which they never proposed to do, and which, had they done it, could only have resulted in anarchy. The rebellion was formidable mainly because Henry had no standing army; he had to rely almost entirely on the goodwill or at least acquiescence of his people. Outside Yorkshire the gentry were willing enough; possibly they had their eyes on monastic rewards; and they sent to Cambridge double[990] or treble the forces Henry demanded, which (p. 355) they could hardly have done had their tenants shown any great sympathy with the rebellion. But transport in those days was more difficult even than now; and before the musters could reach the Trent, Darcy, after a show of reluctance, yielded Pomfret Castle to the rebels and swore to maintain their cause. Henry was forced, much against his will, to temporise. To pardon or parley with rebels he thought would distain his honour.[991] If Norfolk was driven to offer a pardon, he must on no account involve the King in his promise.

[Footnote 990: Surrey to Norfolk, 15th Oct., xi., 727, 738.]

[Footnote 991: _L. and P._, xi., 864.]

Norfolk apparently had no option. An armistice was accordingly arranged on the 27th of October, and a deputation came up to lay the rebels' grievances before the King. It was received graciously, and Henry's reply was a masterly piece of statecraft.[992] He drew it up "with his own hand, and made no creature privy thereto until it was finished". Their complaints about the Faith were, he said, "so general that hard they be to be answered," but he intended always to live and to die in the faith of Christ. They must specify what they meant by the liberties of the Church, whether they were lawful or unlawful liberties; but he had done nothing inconsistent with the laws of G.o.d and man. With regard to the Commonwealth, what King had kept his subjects so long in wealth and peace, ministering indifferent justice, and defending them from outward enemies? There were more low-born councillors when he came to the throne than now; then there were "but two worth calling n.o.ble.[993] Others, as the Lords Marny and Darcy, were scant well-born gentlemen, and yet of no great lands till (p. 356) they were promoted by us. The rest were lawyers and priests.... How came you to think that there were more n.o.ble men in our Privy Council then than now?" It did not become them to dictate to their sovereign whom he should call to his Council; yet, if they could prove, as they alleged, that certain of the Council were subverters of G.o.d's law and the laws of the realm, he would proceed against them. Then, after denouncing their rebellion and referring to their request for pardon, he says: "To show our pity, we are content, if we find you penitent, to grant you all letters of pardon on your delivering to us ten such ringleaders of this rebellion as we shall a.s.sign to you. Now note the benignity of your Prince, and how easily bloodshed may be eschewed.

Thus I, as your head, pray for you, my members, that G.o.d may enlighten you for your benefit."

[Footnote 992: _Ibid._, xi., 957.]

[Footnote 993: The records of the Privy Council for the greater part of Henry's reign have disappeared, and only a rough list of his privy Councillors can be gathered from the _Letters and Papers_. Surrey, of course, was one of the two n.o.bles, and probably Shrewsbury was the other, though Oxford, whose peerage was older than theirs, seems also to have been a member of the Privy Council (_L. and P._, i., 51). The complaint of the rebels applied to the whole Tudor period; at Henry's death no member of his Privy Council held a peerage twelve years old.]

A conference was held at Doncaster in December,[994] and towards the end of the year Aske came at Henry's invitation to discuss the complaints with him.[995] No one could be more gracious than the King, when he chose; no one could mask his resentment more completely, when he had an object to gain. It was important to win over Aske, and convince him that Henry had the interests of the rebels at heart. So on Aske were lavished all the royal arts. They were amply (p. 357) rewarded. In January, 1537, the rebel leader went down to Yorkshire fully convinced of the King's goodwill, and anxious only that the commons should observe his conditions.[996] But there were wilder spirits at work over which he had little control. They declared that they were betrayed. Plots were formed to seize Hull and Scarborough; both were discovered.[997] Aske, Constable, and other leaders of the original Pilgrimage of Grace exerted themselves to stay this outbreak of their more violent followers; and between moderates and extremists the whole movement quickly collapsed. The second revolt gave Henry an excuse for recalling his pardon, and for exacting revenge from all who had been implicated in either movement. Darcy deserved little pity; the earliest in his treason, he continued the game to the end; but Aske was an honest man, and his execution, condemned though he was by a jury, was a violent act of injustice.[998] Norfolk was sent to the North on a b.l.o.o.d.y a.s.size,[999] and if neither he nor the King was a Jeffreys, the rebellion was stamped out with a good deal of superfluous cruelty. Henry was resolved to do the work once and for all, and he based his system on terror. His measures for the future government of the North, now threatened by James V., were, however, wise on the whole. He would put no more n.o.bles in places of trust; the office of Warden of the Marches he took into his own hands, appointing three deputies of somewhat humble rank for the east, middle and west marches.[1000] A strong Council of the North was appointed to (p. 358) sit at York, under the presidency of Tunstall, Bishop of Durham, and with powers almost as extensive as those of the Privy Council at London; and henceforth Henry had little trouble from disaffection in England.[1001]

[Footnote 994: _L. and P._, xi., 1244-46.]

[Footnote 995: _Ibid._, xi., 1306.]

[Footnote 996: _L. and P._, XII., i., 20, 23, 43, 44, 46.]