Henry VIII Part 32

[Footnote 1026: Is this another trace of "Byzantinism"? It was a regular custom at the Byzantine and other Oriental Courts to have a "concourse of beauty" for the Emperor's benefit when he wished to choose a wife (_Histoire Generale_, i., 381 n., v., 728); and the story of Theophilus and Theodora is familiar (Finlay, ii., 146-47).]

[Footnote 1027: _L. and P._, XIII., ii., 77; Kaulek, p. 80.]

[Footnote 1028: _Ibid._, XII., ii., 1125; XIII., ii., p. x.x.xi.]

[Footnote 1029: _Ibid._, XIII., ii., 77.]

While these negotiations for obtaining the hand of a French princess were in progress, Henry set on foot a similar quest in the Netherlands.

Before the end of 1537 he had instructed Hutton, his agent, to report on the ladies of the Regent Mary's Court;[1030] and Hutton replied that Christina of Milan was said to be "a goodly personage and of excellent beauty". She was daughter of the deposed King of Denmark and of his wife, Isabella, sister of Charles V.; at the age of thirteen she had been married to the Duke of Milan, but she was now a (p. 371) virgin widow of sixteen, "very tall and competent of beauty, of favour excellent and very gentle in countenance".[1031] On 10th March, 1538, Holbein arrived at Brussels for the purpose of painting the lady's portrait, which he finished in a three hours' sitting.[1032]

Christina's fascinations do not seem to have made much impression on Henry; indeed, his taste in feminine beauty cannot be commended. There is no good authority for the alleged reply of the young d.u.c.h.ess herself, that, if she had two heads, she would willingly place one of them at His Majesty's disposal.[1033] Henry had, as yet, beheaded only one of his wives, and even if the precedent had been more firmly established, Christina was too wary and too polite to refer to it in such uncourtly terms. She knew that the disposal of her hand did not rest with herself, and though the Emperor sent powers for the conclusion of the match, neither he nor Henry had any desire to see it concluded. The cementing of his friendship with Francis freed Charles from the need of Henry's goodwill, and impelled the English King to seek elsewhere for means to counter-balance the hostile alliance.

[Footnote 1030: _Ibid._, XII., ii., 1172.]

[Footnote 1031: _L. and P._, XII., ii., Pref. p.

xxviii., No. 1187.]

[Footnote 1032: _Ibid._, XIII., i., 380, 507. The magnificent portrait of Christina belonging to the Duke of Norfolk, and now on loan at the National Gallery, must have been painted by Holbein afterwards.]

[Footnote 1033: It may have crystallised from some such rumour as is reported in _L. and P._, XIV., ii., 141. "Marry," says George Constantyne, "she sayeth that the King's Majesty was in so little s.p.a.ce rid of the Queens that she dare not trust his Council, though she durst trust his Majesty; for her council suspecteth that her great-aunt was poisoned, that the second was innocently put to death, and the third lost for lack of keeping in her childbed." Constantyne added that he was not sure whether this was Christina's answer or Anne of Cleves'.]

The Emperor and the French King had not been deluded by English (p. 372) intrigues, nor prevented from coming together by Henry's desire to keep them apart. Charles, Francis, and Paul III. met at Nice in June, 1538, and there the Pope negotiated a ten years' truce. Henceforth they were to consider their interests identical, and their amba.s.sadors in England compared notes in order to defeat more effectively Henry's skilful diplomacy.[1034] The moment seemed ripe for the execution of the long-cherished project for a descent upon England. Its King had just added to his long list of offences against the Church by despoiling the shrine of St. Thomas at Canterbury and burning the bones of the saint. The saint was even said to have been put on his trial in mockery, declared contumacious, and condemned as a traitor.[1035] If the canonised bones of martyrs could be treated thus, who would, for the future, pay respect to the Church or tribute at its shrines? At Rome a party, of which Pole was the most zealous, proclaimed that the real Turk was Henry, and that all Christian princes should unite to sweep him from the face of G.o.d's earth, which his presence had too long defiled. Considering the effect of Christian leagues against the Ottoman, the English Turk was probably not dismayed. But Paul III. and Pole were determined to do their worst. The Pope resolved to publish the bull of deprivation, which had been drawn up in August, 1535, though its execution had hitherto been suspended owing to papal (p. 373) hopes of Henry's amendment and to the request of various princes. Now the bull was to be published in France, in Flanders, in Scotland and in Ireland. Beton was made a cardinal and sent home to exhort James V.

to invade his uncle's kingdom,[1036] while Pole again set out on his travels to promote the conquest of his native land.[1037]

[Footnote 1034: _L. and P._, XIII., ii., 232, 277, 914, 915.]

[Footnote 1035: The burning of the bones is stated as a fact in the Papal Bull of December, 1538 (_L.

and P._, XIII., ii., 1087; see Pref., p. xvi., n.); but the doc.u.ments printed in Wilkins's _Concilia_, iii., 835, giving an account of an alleged trial of the body of St. Thomas are forgeries (_L. and P._, XIII., ii., pp. xli., xlii., 49). A precedent might have been found in Pope Stephen VI.'s treatment of his predecessor, Formosus (_Hist. Generale_, i., 536).]

[Footnote 1036: _L. and P._, XIII., ii., 1108-9, 1114-16, 1130, 1135-36.]

[Footnote 1037: _Ibid._, XIII., ii., 950, 1110.]

It was on Pole's unfortunate relatives that the effects of the threatened bull were to fall. Besides the Cardinal's treason, there was another motive for proscribing his family. He and his brothers were grandchildren of George, Duke of Clarence; years before, Chapuys had urged Charles V. to put forward Pole as a candidate for the throne; and Henry was as convinced as his father had been that the real way to render his Government secure was to put away all the possible alternatives. Now that he was threatened with deprivation by papal sentence, the need became more urgent than ever. But, while the proscription of the Poles was undoubtedly dictated by political reasons, their conduct enabled Henry to effect it by legal means. There was no doubt of the Cardinal's treason; his brother, Sir Geoffrey, had often taken counsel with Charles's amba.s.sador, and discussed plans for the invasion of England;[1038] and even their mother, the aged Countess of Salisbury, although she had denounced the Cardinal as a traitor and had lamented the fact that she had given him birth, had brought herself within the toils by receiving papal bulls and corresponding with traitors.[1039]

The least guilty of the family appears to have been the Countess's eldest son, Lord Montague;[1040] but he, too, was involved in (p. 374) the common ruin. Plots were hatched for kidnapping the Cardinal and bringing him home to stand his trial for treason. Sir Geoffrey was arrested in August, 1538, was induced, or forced, to turn King's evidence, and as a reward was granted his miserable, conscience-struck life.[1041] The Countess was spared for a while, but Montague mounted the scaffold in December.

[Footnote 1038: _Ibid._, vii., 1368; viii., 750.]

[Footnote 1039: _Ibid._, XIII., ii., 835, 838, 855.]

[Footnote 1040: He had, however, been sending information to Chapuys as early as 1534 (_L. and P._, vii., 957), when Charles V. was urged to make use of him and of Reginald Pole (_ibid._, vii., 1040; _cf. ibid._, XIII., ii., 702, 830, 954).]

[Footnote 1041: _Ibid._, XIII., pt. ii., _pa.s.sim_.

He attempted to commit suicide (_ibid._, 703).]

With Montague perished his cousin, the Marquis of Exeter, whose descent from Edward IV. was as fatal to him as their descent from Clarence was to the Poles. The Marquis was the White Rose, the next heir to the throne if the line of the Tudors failed. His father, the Earl of Devonshire, had been attainted in the reign of Henry VII.; but Henry VIII. had reversed the attainder, had treated the young Earl with kindness, had made him Knight of the Garter and Marquis of Exeter, and had sought in various ways to win his support. But his dynastic position and dislike of Henry's policy drove the Marquis into the ranks of the discontented. He had been put in the Tower, in 1531, on suspicion of treason; after his release he listened to the hysterics of Elizabeth Barton, intrigued with Chapuys, and corresponded with Reginald Pole;[1042] and in Cornwall, in 1538, men conspired to make him King.[1043] Less evidence than this would have (p. 375) convinced a jury of peers in Tudor times of the expediency of Exeter's death; and, on the 9th of December, his head paid the price of his royal descent.

[Footnote 1042: _Ibid._, v., 416; vi., 1419, 1464.]

[Footnote 1043: _Ibid._, XIII., ii., 802, 961.]

These executions do not seem to have produced the faintest symptoms of disgust in the popular mind. The threat of invasion evoked a national enthusiasm for defence. In August, 1538, Henry went down to inspect the fortifications he had been for years erecting at Dover; masonry from the demolished monasteries was employed in dotting the coast with castles, such as Calshot and Hurst, which were built with materials from the neighbouring abbey of Beaulieu. Commissioners were sent to repair the defences at Calais and Guisnes, on the Scottish Borders, along the coasts from Berwick to the mouth of the Thames, and from the Thames to Lizard Point.[1044] Beacons were repaired, ordnance was supplied wherever it was needed, lists of ships and of mariners were drawn up in every port, and musters were taken throughout the kingdom.

Everywhere the people pressed forward to help; in the Isle of Wight they were lining the sh.o.r.es with palisades, and taking every precaution to render a landing of the enemy a perilous enterprise.[1045]

In Ess.e.x they antic.i.p.ated the coming of the commissioners by digging d.y.k.es and throwing up ramparts; at Harwich the Lord Chancellor saw "women and children working with shovels at the trenches and bulwarks".

Whatever we may think of the roughness and rigour of Henry's rule, his methods were not resented by the ma.s.s of his people. He had not lost his hold on the nation; whenever he appealed to his subjects in a time of national danger, he met with an eager response; and, had the (p. 376) schemers abroad, who idly dreamt of his expulsion from the throne, succeeded in composing their mutual quarrels and launching their bolt against England, there is no reason to suppose that its fate would have differed from that of the Spanish Armada.

[Footnote 1044: _L. and P._, XIV., i., 478, 533, 630, 671, 762, 899.]

[Footnote 1045: _Ibid._, XIV., i., 540, 564, 573, 615, 655, 682, 711, 712.]

In spite of the fears of invasion which prevailed in the spring of 1539, Pole's second mission had no more success than the first;[1046]

and the hostile fleet, for the sight of which the Warden of the Cinque Ports was straining his eyes from Dover Castle, never came from the mouths of the Scheldt and the Rhine; or rather, the supposed Armada proved to be a harmless convoy of traders.[1047] The Pope himself, on second thoughts, withheld his promised bull. He distrusted its reception at the hands of his secular allies, and dreaded the contempt and ridicule which would follow an open failure.[1048] Moreover, at the height of his fervour against Henry, he could not refrain from attempts to extend his temporal power, and his seizure of Urbino alienated Francis and afforded Henry some prospect of creating an anti-papal party in Italy.[1049] Francis would gladly join in a prohibition of English commerce, if Charles would only begin; but without Charles he could do nothing, and, even when his amity with the Emperor was closest, he was compelled, at Henry's demand, to punish the French priests who inveighed against English enormities.[1050] To Charles, however, English trade was worth more than to Francis, (p. 377) and the Emperor's subjects would tolerate no interruption of their lucrative intercourse with England. With the consummate skill which he almost invariably displayed in political matters, Henry had, in 1539, when the danger seemed greatest, provided the Flemings with an additional motive for peace. He issued a proclamation that, for seven years, their goods should pay no more duty than those of the English themselves;[1051] and the thrifty Dutch were little inclined to stop, by a war, the fresh stream of gold. The Emperor, too, had more urgent matters in hand. Henry might be more of a Turk than the Sultan himself, and the Pope might regard the sack of St. Thomas's shrine with more horror than the Turkish defeat of a Christian fleet; but Henry was not harrying the Emperor's coasts, nor threatening to deprive the Emperor's brother of his Hungarian kingdom; and Turkish victories on land and on sea gave the imperial family much more concern than all Henry's onslaughts on the saints and their relics.

And, besides the Ottoman peril, Charles had reason to fear the political effects of the union between England and the Protestant princes of Germany, for which the religious development in England was paving the way, and which an attack on Henry would at once have cemented.

[Footnote 1046: _L. and P._, XIV., i., Introd., pp.

xi.-xiii.]

[Footnote 1047: _Ibid._, XIV., i., 714, 728, 741, 767.]

[Footnote 1048: _Cf. ibid._, XIV., i., 1011, 1013; ii., 99.]

[Footnote 1049: _Ibid._, XIV., i., 27, 37, 92, 98, 104, 114, 144, 188, 235, 884; ii., 357.]

[Footnote 1050: _L. and P._, XIV., i., 37, 92, 371.]

[Footnote 1051: _L. and P._, XIV., i., 373.]

The powers conferred upon Henry as Supreme Head of the Church were not long suffered to remain in abeyance. Whatever the theory may have been, in practice Henry's supremacy over the Church was very different from that which Kings of England had hitherto wielded; and from the moment he entered upon his new ecclesiastical kingdom, he set (p. 378) himself not merely to reform practical abuses, such as the excessive wealth of the clergy, but to define the standard of orthodox faith, and to force his subjects to embrace the royal theology. The Catholic faith was to hold good only so far as the Supreme Head willed; the "King's doctrine" became the rule to which "_our_ Church of England,"

as Henry styled it, was henceforth to conform; and "unity and concord in opinion" were to be established by royal decree.

The first royal definition of the faith was embodied in ten articles submitted to Convocation in 1536. The King was, he said, constrained by diversity of opinions "to put his own pen to the book and conceive certain articles... thinking that no person, having authority from him, would presume to say a word against their meaning, or be remiss in setting them forth".[1052] His people, he maintained, whether peer or prelate, had no right to resist his temporal or spiritual commands, whatever they might be. Episcopal authority had indeed sunk low. When Convocation was opened, in 1536, a layman, Dr. William Petre, appeared, and demanded the place of honour above all bishops and archbishops in their a.s.sembly. Pre-eminence belonged, he said, to the King as Supreme Head of the Church; the King had appointed Cromwell his Vicar-general; and Cromwell had named him, Petre, his proctor.[1053] The claim was allowed, and the submissive clergy found little fault with the royal articles of faith, though they mentioned only three sacraments, baptism, penance and the sacrament of the altar, denounced the abuse of images, warned men against excessive (p. 379) devotion to the saints, and against believing that "ceremonies have power to remit sin," or that ma.s.ses can deliver souls from purgatory.

Finally, Convocation transferred from the Pope to the Christian princes the right to summon a General Council.[1054]

[Footnote 1052: _L. and P._, xi., 1110; _cf.

ibid._, 59, 123, 377, 954.]

[Footnote 1053: Wilkins, _Concilia_, iii., 803.]

[Footnote 1054: Fuller, _Church History_, ed. 1845, iii., 145-59; Burnet, _Reformation_, ed. Poc.o.c.k, iv., 272-90; Strype, _Cranmer_, i., 58-62.]

With the _Inst.i.tution of a Christian Man_, issued in the following year, and commonly called _The Bishops' Book_, Henry had little to do.

The bishops debated the doctrinal questions from February to July, 1537, but the King wrote, in August, that he had had no time to examine their conclusions.[1055] He trusted, however, to their wisdom, and agreed that the book should be published and read to the people on Sundays and holy-days for three years to come. In the same year he permitted a change, which inevitably gave fresh impulse to the reforming movement in England and destroyed every prospect of that "union and concord in opinions," on which he set so much store. Miles Coverdale was licensed to print an edition of his Bible in England, with a dedication to Queen Jane Seymour; and, in 1538, a second English version was prepared by John Rogers, under Cranmer's authority, and published as Matthew's Bible.[1056] This was the Bible "of the largest volume" which Cromwell, as Henry's Vicegerent, ordered to be set up in all churches. Every inc.u.mbent was to encourage his parishioners to read it; he was to recite the Paternoster, the Creed and the Ten Commandments in English, that his flock might learn (p. 380) them by degrees; he was to require some acquaintance with the rudiments of the faith, as a necessary condition from all before they could receive the Sacrament of the Altar; he was to preach at least once a quarter; and to inst.i.tute a register of births, marriages and deaths.[1057]

[Footnote 1055: _L. and P._, XII., ii., 618; Cranmer, _Works_, ii., 469; _cf._ Jenkyns, _Cranmer_, ii., 21; and Cranmer, _Works_, ii., 83, 359, 360.]

[Footnote 1056: See the present writer's _Cranmer_, pp. 110-13; Dixon, _Church History_, ii., 77-79.]