Henry VIII Part 31

[Footnote 997: _Ibid._, XII., i., 46, 64, 102, 104, 141, 142.]

[Footnote 998: Henry, says Dr. Gairdner, examined "the evidence sent up to him in the spirit of a detective policeman" (XII., i., p. xxix.).]

[Footnote 999: _L. and P._, XII., i., 227, 228, 401, 402, 416, 457, 458, 468, 478, 498.]

[Footnote 1000: _L. and P._, XII., i., 594, 595, 636, 667. Norfolk thought Henry's plan was to govern the North by the aid of thieves and murderers.]

[Footnote 1001: Much of the correspondence of this Council found its way to Hamilton Palace in Scotland, and thence to Germany; it was purchased for the British Museum in 1889 and now comprises _Addit. MSS._, 32091, 32647-48, 32654 and 32657 (printed as _Hamilton Papers_, 2 vols., 1890-92).]

With one aftermath of the Pilgrimage of Grace he had yet to deal. The opportunity had been too good for Paul III. to neglect; and early in 1537 he had sent a legate _a latere_ to Flanders to do what he could to abet the rebellion.[1002] His choice fell on Reginald Pole, the son of the Countess of Salisbury and grandson of George, Duke of Clarence.

Pole had been one of Henry's great favourites; the King had paid for his education, given him, while yet a layman, rich church preferments, and contributed the equivalent of about twelve hundred pounds a year to enable him to complete his studies in Italy.[1003] In 1530 Pole was employed to obtain opinions at Paris favourable to Henry's divorce,[1004]

and was offered the Archbishopric of York. He refused from conscientious scruples,[1005] sought in vain to turn the King from his evil ways, and, in 1532, left England; they parted friends, and Henry continued Pole's pensions. While Pole was regarding with increasing disgust the King's actions, Henry still hoped that Pole was on his (p. 359) side, and, in 1536, in answer to Henry's request for his views, Pole sent his famous treatise _De Unitate Ecclesiae_. His heart was better than his head; he thought Henry had been treated too gently, and that the fulmination of a bull of excommunication earlier in his course would have stopped his headlong career. To repair the Pope's omissions, Pole now proceeded to administer the necessary castigation; "flattery,"

he said, "had been the cause of all the evil". Even his friend, Cardinal Contarini, thought the book too bitter, and among his family in England it produced consternation.[1006] Some of them were hand in glove with Chapuys, who had suggested Pole to Charles as a candidate for the throne; and his book might well have broken the thin ice on which they stood. Henry, however, suppressed his anger and invited Pole to England; he, perhaps wisely, refused, but immediately afterwards he accepted the Pope's call to Rome, where he was made cardinal,[1007] and sent to Flanders as legate to foment the northern rebellion.

[Footnote 1002: _L. and P._, XII., i., 367, 368, 779.]

[Footnote 1003: _Ibid._, ii., 3943 (reference misprinted in _D.N.B._, xlvi., 35, as 3493); iii., 1544.]

[Footnote 1004: _Ibid._, iv., 6003, 6252, 6383, 6394, 6505.]

[Footnote 1005: _Ibid._, v., 737.]

[Footnote 1006: _L. and P._, x., 420, 426; xi., 72, 93, 156.]

[Footnote 1007: On 22nd December, 1536 (_Ibid._, xi., 1353).]

He came too late to do anything except exhibit his own and the papal impotence. The rebellion was crushed before his commission was signed.

As Pole journeyed through France, Henry sent to demand his extradition as a traitor.[1008] With that request Francis could hardly comply, but he ordered the legate to quit his dominions. Pole sought refuge in Flanders, but was stopped on the frontier. Charles could no more than Francis afford to offend the English King, and the cardinal-legate was informed that he might visit the Bishop of Liege, but only if he (p. 360) went in disguise.[1009] Never, wrote Pole to the Regent, had a papal legate been so treated before. Truly Henry had fulfilled his boast that he would show the princes of Europe how small was the power of a Pope. He had obliterated every vestige of papal authority in England and defied the Pope to do his worst; and now, when the Pope attempted to do it, his legate was chased out of the dominions of the faithful sons of the Church at the demand of the excommunicate King. Henry had come triumphant out of perils which every one else believed would destroy him. He had carried England through the greatest revolution in her history. He had crushed the only revolt which that revolution evoked at home; and abroad the greatest princes of Europe had shown that they valued as nothing the goodwill of the Pope against that of Henry VIII.

[Footnote 1008: _Ibid._ XII., i., 760, 939, 987, 988, 996.]

[Footnote 1009: _L. and P._, XII., i., 997, 1061, 1135, 1167, 1174.]

The culminating point in his good fortune was reached in the following autumn. On the 12th of October, 1537, Queen Jane gave birth to a son.

Henry had determined that, had he a son by Anne Boleyn, the child should be named Henry after himself, or Edward after his grandfather, Edward IV. Queen Jane's son was born on the eve of the feast of St.

Edward, and that fact decided the choice of his name. Twelve days later the mother, who had never been crowned, pa.s.sed away.[1010] She, alone of Henry's wives, was buried with royal pomp in St. George's Chapel at Windsor; and to her alone the King paid the compliment (p. 361) of mourning. His grief was sincere, and for the unusual s.p.a.ce of more than two years he remained without a wife. But Queen Jane's death was not to be compared in importance with the birth of Edward VI. The legitimate male heir, the object of so many desires and the cause of so many tragedies, had come at last to fill to the brim the cup of Henry's triumph. The greatest storm and stress of his reign was pa.s.sed. There were crises to come, which might have been deemed serious in a less troubled reign, and they still needed all Henry's wary cunning to meet; Francis and Charles were even now preparing to end a struggle from which only Henry drew profit; and Paul was hoping to join them in war upon England. Yet Henry had weathered the worst of the gale, and he now felt free to devote his energies to the extension abroad of the authority which he had established so firmly at home.

[Footnote 1010: The fable that the Caesarean operation was performed on her, invented or propagated by Nicholas Sanders, rests upon the further error repeated by most historians that Queen Jane died on the 14th of October, instead of the 24th (see Nichols, _Literary Remains of Edward VI._, pp. xxiv., xxv.).]

CHAPTER XIV. (p. 362)

REX ET IMPERATOR.

Notwithstanding the absence of "Empire" and "Emperor" from the various t.i.tles which Henry VIII. possessed or a.s.sumed, he has more than one claim to be reputed the father of modern imperialism. It is not till a year after his death that we have any doc.u.mentary evidence of an intention on the part of the English Government to unite England and Scotland into one Empire, and to proclaim their sovereign the Emperor of Great Britain.[1011] But a marriage between Edward VI. and Mary, Queen of Scots, by which it was sought to effect that union, had been the main object of Henry's efforts during the closing years of his reign, and the imperial idea was a dominant note in Henry's mind. No king was more fond of protesting that he wore an imperial crown and ruled an imperial realm. When, in 1536, Convocation declared England to be "an imperial See of itself," it only clothed in decent and formal language Henry's own boast that he was not merely King, but Pope and Emperor, in his own domains. The rest of Western Europe was under the temporal sway of Caesar, as it was under the spiritual sway of the Pope; but neither to one nor to the other did Henry owe any allegiance.[1012]

[Footnote 1011: Odet de Selve, _Corresp. Pol._, p.

268.]

[Footnote 1012: This was part of the revived influence of the Roman Civil Law in England which Professor Maitland has sketched in his _English Law and the Renaissance_, 1901. But the influence of these ideas extended into every sphere, and not least of all into the ecclesiastical. Englishmen, said Chapuys, were fond of tracing the King's imperial authority back to a grant from the Emperor Constantine--giving it thus an antiquity as great and an origin as authoritative as that claimed for the Pope by the false _Donation of Constantine_ (_L. and P._, v., 45; vii., 232). This is the meaning of Henry's a.s.sertion that the Pope's authority in England was "usurped," not that it was usurped at the expense of the English national Church, but at the expense of his prerogative. So, too, we find instructive complaints from a different sort of reformers that the reformation as effected by Henry VIII. was merely a _translatio imperii_ (_ibid._, XIV., ii., 141). Henry VIII.'s encouragement of the civil law was the natural counterpart of the prohibition of its study by Pope Honorius in 1219 and Innocent IV. in 1254 (Pollock and Maitland, i., 102, 103).]

For the word "imperial" itself he had shown a marked (p. 363) predilection from his earliest days. _Henry Imperial_ was the name of the ship in which his admiral hoisted his flag in 1513, and "Imperial"

was the name given to one of his favourite games. But, as his reign wore on, the word was translated into action, and received a more definite meaning. To mark his claim to supreme dignity, he a.s.sumed the style of "His Majesty" instead of that of "His Grace," which he had hitherto shared with mere dukes and archbishops; and possibly "His Majesty" banished "His Grace" from Henry's mind no less than it did from his t.i.tle. The story of his life is one of consistent, and more or less orderly, evolution. For many years he had been kept in leading-strings by Wolsey's and other clerical influences. The first step in his self-a.s.sertion was to emanc.i.p.ate himself from this control, and to vindicate his authority within the precincts of his Court. His next was to establish his personal supremacy over Church and State in England; this was the work of the Reformation Parliament between 1529 and 1536. The final stage in the evolution was to (p. 364) make his rule more effective in the outlying parts of England, on the borders of Scotland, in Wales and its Marches, and then to extend it over the rest of the British Isles.

The initial steps in the process of expanding the sphere of royal authority had already been taken. The condition of Wales exercised the mind of King and Parliament, even in the throes of the struggle with Rome.[1013] The "manifold robberies, murders, thefts, trespa.s.ses, riots, routs, embraceries, maintenances, oppressions, ruptures of the peace, and many other malefacts, which be there daily practised, perpetrated, committed and done," obviously demanded prompt and swift redress, unless the redundant eloquence of parliamentary statutes protested too much; and, in 1534, several acts were pa.s.sed restraining local jurisdictions, and extending the authority of the President and Council of the Marches.[1014] Chapuys declared that the effect of these acts was to rob the Welsh of their freedom, and he thought that the probable discontent might be turned to account by stirring an insurrection in favour of Catherine of Aragon and of the Catholic faith.[1015] If, however, there was discontent, it did not make (p. 365) itself effectively felt, and, in 1536, Henry proceeded to complete the union of England and Wales. First, he adapted to Wales the inst.i.tution of justices of the peace, which had proved the most efficient instrument for the maintenance of his authority in England. A more important statute followed. Recalling the facts that "the rights, usages, laws and customs" in Wales "be far discrepant from the laws and customs of this realm," that its people "do daily use a speech nothing like, nor consonant to, the natural mother-tongue used within this realm," and that "some rude and ignorant people have made distinction and diversity between the King's subjects of this realm"

and those of Wales, "His Highness, of a singular zeal, love and favour" which he bore to the Welsh, minded to reduce them "to the perfect order, notice and knowledge of his laws of this realm, and utterly to extirp, all and singular, the sinister usages and customs differing from the same". The Princ.i.p.ality was divided into shires, and the shires into hundreds; justice in every court, from the highest to the lowest, was to be administered in English, and in no other tongue; and no one who spoke Welsh was to "have or enjoy any manner of Office or Fees" whatsoever. On the other hand, a royal commission was appointed to inquire into Welsh laws, and such as the King thought necessary might still be observed; while the Welsh shires and boroughs were to send members to the English Parliament. This statute was, to all effects and purposes, the first Act of Union in English history.

Six years later a further act reorganised and developed the jurisdiction of the Council of Wales and the Marches. Its functions were to be similar to those of the Privy Council in London, of (p. 366) which the Council of Wales, like that of the already established Council of the North, was an offshoot. Its object was to maintain peace with a firm hand in a specially disorderly district; and the powers, with which it was furnished, often conflicted with the common law of England,[1016] and rendered the Council's jurisdiction, like that of other Tudor courts, a grievance to Stuart Parliaments.

[Footnote 1013: Cromwell has a note in 1533, "for the establishing of a Council in the Marches of Wales" (_L. and P._, vi., 386), and there had been numerous complaints in Parliament about their condition (_ibid._, vii., 781). Henry was a great Unionist, though Separatist as regards his wives and the Pope.]

[Footnote 1014: See an admirable study by Miss C.A.J. Skeel, _The Council in the Marches of Wales_, 1904. Cromwell's great const.i.tutional idea was government by council rather than by Parliament; in 1534 he had a scheme for including in the King's Ordinary Council (not of course the Privy Council) "the most a.s.sured and substantial gentlemen in every shire" (_L. and P._, vii., 420; _cf._ his draft bill for a new court of conservators of the commonwealth and the more rigid execution of statutes, vii., 1611).]

[Footnote 1015: _L. and P._, vii., 1554.]

[Footnote 1016: _Cf._ Maitland, _English Law and the Renaissance_, p. 70; Lee to Cromwell: "if we should do nothing but as the common law will, these things so far out of order will never be redressed"

(_D.N.B._, x.x.xii., 375; the letter is dated 18th July, 1538, by the _D.N.B._ and Maitland, but there is no letter of that date from Roland Lee in _L. and P._; probably the sentence occurs in Lee's letter of 18th July, 1534, or that of 18th July, 1535 (_L. and P._, vii., 988, viii., 1058), though the phrase is not given in _L. and P._).]

But Ireland demanded even more than Wales the application of Henry's doctrines of union and empire; for if Wales was thought by Chapuys to be receptive soil for the seeds of rebellion, sedition across St.

George's Channel was ripe unto the harvest. Irish affairs, among other domestic problems, had been sacrificed to Wolsey's pa.s.sion for playing a part in Europe, and on the eve of his fall English rule in Ireland was reported to be weaker than it had been since the Conquest. The outbreak of war with Charles V., in 1528, was followed by the first appearance of Spanish emissaries at the courts of Irish chiefs, and from Spanish intrigue in Ireland Tudor monarchs were never again to be free. In the autumn of 1534 the whole of Ireland outside the pale blazed up in revolt. Sir William Skeffington succeeded in crushing the rebellion; but Skeffington died in the following year, and his successor, Lord Leonard Grey, failed to overcome the difficulties caused by Irish disaffection and by jealousies in his council. His sister was wife of Fitzgerald, the Earl of Kildare, and the (p. 367) revolt of the Geraldines brought Grey himself under suspicion. He was accused by his council of treason; he returned to England in 1540, declaring the country at peace. But, before he had audience with Henry, a fresh insurrection broke out, and Grey was sent to the Tower; thence, having pleaded guilty to charges of treason, he trod the usual path to the block.

Henry now adopted fresh methods; he determined to treat Ireland in much the same way as Wales. A commission, appointed in 1537, had made a thorough survey of the land, and supplied him with the outlines of his policy. As in Wales, the English system of land tenure, of justice and the English language were to supersede indigenous growths; the King's supremacy in temporal and ecclesiastical affairs was to be enforced, and the whole of the land was to be gradually won by a judicious admixture of force and conciliation.[1017] The new deputy, Sir Anthony St. Leger, was an able man, who had presided over the commission of 1537. He landed at Dublin in 1541, and his work was thoroughly done. Henry, no longer so lavish with his money as in Wolsey's days, did not stint for this purpose.[1018] The Irish Parliament pa.s.sed an act that Henry should be henceforth styled King, instead of Lord, of Ireland; and many of the chiefs were induced to relinquish their tribal independence in return for glittering coronets. By 1542 Ireland had not merely peace within her own borders, but was able to send two thousand kernes to a.s.sist the English on the borders of Scotland; and English rule in Ireland was more widely and more firmly established than it had ever been before.

[Footnote 1017: See R. Dunlop in _Owens College Studies_, 1901, and the _Calendar of Carew MSS._ and _Calendar of Irish State Papers_, vol. i.]

[Footnote 1018: _L. and P._, xvi., 43, 77.]

Besides Ireland and Wales, there were other spheres in which Henry (p. 368) sought to consolidate and extend the Tudor methods of government. The erection, in 1542, of the Courts of Wards and Liveries, of First-fruits and Tenths, and the development of the jurisdiction of the Star Chamber and of the Court of Requests,[1019] were all designed to further two objects dear to Henry's heart, the efficiency of his administration and the exaltation of his prerogative. It was thoroughly in keeping with his policy that the parliamentary system expanded concurrently with the sphere of the King's activity. Berwick had first been represented in the Parliament of 1529,[1020] and a step, which would have led to momentous consequences, had the idea, on which it was based, been carried out, was taken in 1536, when two members were summoned from Calais. There was now only one district under English rule which was not represented in Parliament, and that was the county of Durham, known as _the_ bishopric, which still remained detached from the national system. It was left for Oliver Cromwell to complete England's parliamentary representation by summoning members to sit for that palatine county.[1021] This was not the only respect in which the Commonwealth followed in the footsteps of Henry VIII., for the Parliament of 1542, in which members from Wales and from Calais are first recorded as sitting,[1022] pa.s.sed an "Act for the Navy," which provided that goods could only be (p. 369) imported in English ships. It was, however, in his dealings with Scotland that Henry's schemes for the expansion of England became most marked; but, before he could develop his plans in that direction, he had to ward off a recrudescence of the danger from a coalition of Catholic Europe.

[Footnote 1019: _L. and P._, xvi., 28; _cf._ Leadam, _Court of Requests_, Selden Soc., Introd.]

[Footnote 1020: _Official Return of Members of Parliament_, i., 369.]

[Footnote 1021: See G.T. Lapsley, _The County Palatine of Durham_, in _Harvard Historical Series_.]

[Footnote 1022: There are no records in the _Official Return_ for 1536 and 1539, but Calais had been granted Parliamentary representation by an Act of the previous Parliament (27 Hen. VIII., Private Acts, No. 9; _cf. L. and P._, x., 1086).]

In spite of Henry's efforts to fan the flames of strife[1023] between the Emperor and the King of France, the war, which had prevented either monarch from countenancing the mission of Cardinal Pole or from profiting by the Pilgrimage of Grace, was gradually dying down in the autumn of 1537; and, in order to check the growing and dangerous intimacy between the two rivals, Henry was secretly hinting to both that the death of his Queen had left him free to contract a marriage which might bind him for ever to one or the other.[1024] To Francis he sent a request for the hand of Mary of Guise, who had already been promised to James V. of Scotland. He refused to believe that the Scots negotiations had proceeded so far that they could not be set aside for so great a king as himself, and he succeeded in convincing the lady's relatives that the position of a Queen of England provided greater attractions than any James could hold out.[1025] Francis, however, took matters into his own hands, and compelled the Guises to fulfil their compact with the Scottish King. Nothing daunted, Henry asked for a list of other French ladies eligible for the matrimonial prize. (p. 370) He even suggested that the handsomest of them might be sent, in the train of Margaret of Navarre, to Calais, where he could inspect them in person.[1026] "I trust to no one," he told Castillon, the French amba.s.sador, "but myself. The thing touches me too near. I wish to see them and know them some time before deciding."[1027] This idea of "trotting out the young ladies like hackneys"[1028] was not much relished at the French Court; and Castillon, to shame Henry out of the indelicacy of his proposal, made an ironical suggestion for testing the ladies' charms, the grossness of which brought the only recorded blush to Henry's cheeks.[1029] No more was said of the beauty-show; and Henry declared that he did not intend to marry in France or in Spain at all, unless his marriage brought him a closer alliance with Francis or Charles than the rivals had formed with each other.

[Footnote 1023: Vols. xii. and xiii. of the _L. and P._ are full of these attempts.]

[Footnote 1024: For the negotiations with France from 1537 onwards see Kaulek, _Corresp. de MM.

Castillon et Marillac_, Paris, 1885.]

[Footnote 1025: _L. and P._, XIII., i., 165, 273.]