Henry VIII Part 33

[Footnote 1057: See these _injunctions_ in Burnet, iv., 341-46; Wilkins, _Concilia,_ iii., 815.]

Meanwhile, a vigorous a.s.sault was made on the strongholds of superst.i.tion; pilgrimages were suppressed, and many wonder-working images were pulled down and destroyed. The famous Rood of Boxley, a figure whose contortions had once imposed on the people, was taken to the market-place at Maidstone,[1058] and the ingenious mechanism, whereby the eyes and lips miraculously opened and shut, was exhibited to the vulgar gaze.[1059] Probably these little devices had already sunk in popular esteem, for the Blood of St. Januarius could not be treated at Naples to-day in the same cavalier fashion as the Blood of Hailes was in England in 1538,[1060] without a riot. But the exposure was a useful method of exciting popular indignation against the monks, and it filled reformers with a holy joy. "Dagon," wrote one to Bullinger, "is everywhere falling in England. Bel of Babylon has been broken to pieces."[1061] The destruction of the images was a preliminary skirmish in the final campaign against the monks. The Act of 1536 (p. 381) had only granted to the King religious houses which possessed an endowment of less than two hundred pounds a year; the dissolution of the greater monasteries was now gradually effected by a process of more or less voluntary surrender. In some cases the monks may have been willing enough to go; they were loaded with debt, and hara.s.sed by rules imposed by Cromwell, which would have been difficult to keep in the palmiest days of monastic enthusiasm; and they may well have thought that freedom from monastic restraint, coupled with a pension, was a welcome relief, especially when resistance involved the anger of the prince and liability to the penalties of elastic treasons and of a _praemunire_ which no one could understand. So, one after another, the great abbeys yielded to the persuasions and threats of the royal commissioners. The dissolution of the Mendicant Orders and of the Knights of St. John dispersed the last remnants of the papal army as an organised force in England, though warfare of a kind continued for many years.

[Footnote 1058: _L. and P._, XIII., i., 231, 348.]

[Footnote 1059: Father Bridgett in his _Blunders and Forgeries_ repudiates the idea that these "innocent toys" had been put to any superst.i.tious uses.]

[Footnote 1060: _L. and P._, XIII., i., 347, 564, 580; ii., 186, 409, 488, 709, 710, 856.]

[Footnote 1061: John Hoker of Maidstone to Bullinger in Burnet (ed. Poc.o.c.k, vi., 194, 195).]

These proceedings created as much satisfaction among the Lutherans of Germany as they did disgust at Rome, and an alliance between Henry and the Protestant princes seemed to be dictated by a community of religious, as well as of political, interests. The friendship between Francis and Charles threatened both English and German liberties, and it behoved the two countries to combine against their common foe. Henry's manifesto against the authority of the Pope to summon a General Council had been received with rapture in Germany; at least three German editions were printed, and the Elector of Saxony and the Landgrave of Hesse urged on him the adoption of a common policy.[1062] English envoys were (p. 382) sent to Germany with this purpose in the spring of 1538, and German divines journeyed to England to lay the foundation of a theological union.[1063] They remained five months, but failed to effect an agreement.[1064] To the three points on which they desired further reform in England, the Communion in both kinds, the abolition of private ma.s.ses and of the enforced celibacy of the clergy, Henry himself wrote a long reply,[1065] maintaining in each case the Catholic faith. But the conference showed that Henry was for the time anxious to be conciliatory in religious matters, while from a political point of view the need for an alliance grew more urgent than ever. All Henry's efforts to break the amity between Francis and Charles had failed; his proposals of marriage to imperial and French princesses had come to nothing; and, in the spring of 1539, it was rumoured that the Emperor would further demonstrate the indissolubility of his intimacy with the French King by pa.s.sing through France from Spain to Germany, instead of going, as he had always. .h.i.therto done, by sea, or through Italy and Austria. Cromwell seized the opportunity and persuaded Henry to strengthen his union with the Protestant princes by seeking a wife from a German house.

[Footnote 1062: Gairdner, _Church History_, p. 195; _L. and P._, XII., i., 1310; ii. 1088-89.]

[Footnote 1063: _L. and P._, XIII., i., 352, 353, 367, 645, 648-50, 1102, 1166, 1295, 1305, 1437.]

[Footnote 1064: _Ibid._, XIII., ii., 741; Cranmer, _Works_, ii., 397; Burnet, i., 408; Strype, _Eccl.

Mem._, i., App. Nos. 94-102.]

[Footnote 1065: Burnet, iv., 373.]

This policy once adopted, the task of selecting a bride was easy. As early as 1530[1066] the old Duke of Cleves had suggested some (p. 383) marriage alliance between his own and the royal family of England. He was closely allied to the Elector of Saxony, who had married Sibylla, the Duke of Cleves' daughter; and the young Duke, who was soon to succeed his father, had also claims to the Duchy of Guelders. Guelders was a thorn in the side of the Emperor; it stood to the Netherlands in much the same relation as Scotland stood to England, and when there was war between Charles and Francis Guelders had always been one of the most useful p.a.w.ns in the French King's hands. Hence an alliance between the German princes, the King of Denmark, who had joined their political and religious union, Guelders and England would have seriously threatened the Emperor's hold on his Dutch dominions.[1067]

This was the step which Henry was induced to take, when he realised that Charles's friendship with France remained unbroken, and that the Emperor had made up his mind to visit Paris. Hints of a marriage between Henry and Anne of Cleves[1068] were thrown out early in 1539; the only difficulty, which subsequently proved very convenient, was that the lady had been promised to the son of the Duke of (p. 384) Lorraine. The objection was waived on the ground that Anne herself had not given her consent; in view of the advantages of the match and of the Duke's financial straits, Henry agreed to forgo a dowry; and, on the 6th of October, the treaty of marriage was signed.[1069]

[Footnote 1066: _L. and P._, iv., 6364.]

[Footnote 1067: See the present writer in _Cambridge Modern History_, ii., 236, 237. The Duke of Cleves was not a Lutheran or a Protestant, as is generally a.s.sumed. He had established a curious Erasmian compromise between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism, which bears some resemblance to the ecclesiastical policy pursued by Henry VIII., and by the Elector Joachim II. of Brandenburg; and the marriage of Anne with Henry did not imply so great a change in ecclesiastical policy as has usually been supposed. The objections to it were really more political than religious; the Schmalkaldic League was a feeble reed to lean upon, although its feebleness was not exposed until 1546-47.]

[Footnote 1068: _L. and P._, XIV., i., 103; _cf._ Bouterwek, _Anna von Cleve_; Merriman, _Cromwell_, chap. xiii.; and articles on the members of the Cleves family in the _Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie_.]

[Footnote 1069: _L. and P._, XIV., ii., 285, 286.]

Anne of Cleves had already been described to Henry by his amba.s.sador, Dr. Wotton, and Holbein had been sent to paint her portrait (now in the Louvre), which Wotton p.r.o.nounced "a very lively image".[1070] She had an oval face, long nose, chestnut eyes, a light complexion, and very pale lips. She was thirty-four years old, and in France was reported to be ugly; but Cromwell told the King that "every one praised her beauty, both of face and body, and one said she excelled the d.u.c.h.ess of Milan as the golden sun did the silver moon".[1071]

Wotton's account of her accomplishments was pitched in a minor key.

Her gentleness was universally commended, but she spent her time chiefly in needlework. She knew no language but her own; she could neither sing nor play upon any instrument, accomplishments which were then considered by Germans to be unbecoming in a lady.[1072] On the 12th of December, 1539, she arrived at Calais; but boisterous weather and bad tides delayed her there till the 27th. She landed at Deal (p. 385) and rode to Canterbury. On the 30th she proceeded to Sittingbourne, and thence, on the 31st, to Rochester, where the King met her in disguise.[1073] If he was disappointed with her appearance, he concealed the fact from the public eye. Nothing marred her public reception at Greenwich on the 3rd, or was suffered to hinder the wedding, which was solemnised three days later.[1074] Henry "lovingly embraced and kissed" his bride in public, and allowed no hint to reach the ears of any one but his most intimate counsellors of the fact that he had been led willingly or unwillingly into the most humiliating situation of his reign.

[Footnote 1070: _Ibid._, XIV., ii., 33. Holbein did not paint a flattering portrait any more than Wotton told a flattering tale; if Henry was deceived in the matter it was by Cromwell's unfortunate a.s.surances. As a matter of fact Anne was at least as good looking as Jane Seymour, and Henry's taste in the matter of feminine beauty was not of a very high order. Bishop Stubbs even suggests that their appearance was "if not a justification, at least a colourable reason for understanding the readiness with which he put them away" (_Lectures_, 1887, p. 284).]

[Footnote 1071: _L. and P._, XIV., i., 552.]

[Footnote 1072: _Ibid._, XIV., ii., 33.]

[Footnote 1073: _L. and P._, XIV., ii., 664, 674, 677, 726, 732, 753, 754, 769.]

[Footnote 1074: Hall, _Chronicle_, p. 836.]

Such was, in reality, the result of his failure to act on the principle laid down by himself to the French amba.s.sador two years before. He had then declared that the choice of a wife was too delicate a matter to be left to a deputy, and that he must see and know a lady some time before he made up his mind to marry her. Anne of Cleves had been selected by Cromwell, and the lady, whose beauty was, according to Cromwell, in every one's mouth, seemed to Henry no better than "a Flanders mare".[1075] The day after the interview at Rochester he told Cromwell that Anne was "nothing so well as she was spoken of,"

and that, "if he had known before as much as he knew then, she should not have come within his realm". He demanded of his Vicegerent what remedy he had to suggest, and Cromwell had none. Next day Cranmer, Norfolk, Suffolk, Southampton and Tunstall were called in with (p. 386) no better result. "Is there none other remedy," repeated Henry, "but that I must needs, against my will, put my neck in the yoke?"[1076]

Apparently there was none. The Emperor was being feted in Paris; to repudiate the marriage would throw the Duke of Cleves into the arms of the allied sovereigns, alienate the German princes, and leave Henry without a friend among the powers of Christendom. So he made up his mind to put his neck in the yoke and to marry "the Flanders mare".

[Footnote 1075: Burnet, i., 434. The phrase appears to have no extant contemporary authority, but Burnet is not, as a rule, imaginative, and many records have been destroyed since he wrote.]

[Footnote 1076: Cromwell to Henry VIII., in Merriman, ii., 268-72.]

Henry, however, was never patient of matrimonial or other yokes, and it was quite certain that, as soon as he could do so without serious risk, he would repudiate his unattractive wife, and probably other things besides. For Anne's defects were only the last straw added to the burden which Henry bore. He had not only been forced by circ.u.mstances into marriage with a wife who was repugnant to him, but into a religious and secular policy which he and the ma.s.s of his subjects disliked. The alliance with the Protestant princes might be a useful weapon if things came to the worst, and if there were a joint attack on England by Francis and Charles; but, on its merits, it was not to be compared to a good understanding with the Emperor; and Henry would have no hesitation in throwing over the German princes when once he saw his way to a renewal of friendship with Charles. He would welcome, even more, a relief from the necessity of paying attention to German divines. He had never wavered in his adhesion to the cardinal points of the Catholic faith. He had no enmity to Catholicism, provided it did not stand in his way. The spiritual jurisdiction of Rome (p. 387) had been abolished in England because it imposed limits on Henry's own authority. Some of the powers of the English clergy had been destroyed, partly for a similar reason, and partly as a concession to the laity.

But the purely spiritual claims of the Church remained unimpaired; the clergy were still a caste, separate from other men, and divinely endowed with the power of performing a daily miracle in the conversion of the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. Even when the Protestant alliance seemed most indispensable, Henry endeavoured to convince Lutherans of the truth of the Catholic doctrine of the ma.s.s, and could not refrain from persecuting heretics with a zeal that shook the confidence of his reforming allies. His honour, he thought, was involved in his success in proving that he, with his royal supremacy, could defend the faith more effectively than the Pope, with all his pretended powers; and he took a personal interest in the conversion and burning of heretics. Several instances are recorded of his arguing a whole day with Sacramentaries,[1077]

exercises which exhibited to advantage at once the royal authority and the royal learning in spiritual matters. His beliefs were not due to caprice or to ignorance; probably no bishop in his realm was more deeply read in heterodox theology.[1078] He was constantly on the (p. 388) look-out for books by Luther and other heresiarchs, and he kept quite a respectable theological library at hand for private use. The tenacity with which he clung to orthodox creeds and Catholic forms was not only strengthened by study but rooted in the depths of his character. To devout but fundamentally irreligious men, like Henry VIII. and Louis XIV., rites and ceremonies are a great consolation; and Henry seldom neglected to creep to the Cross on Good Friday, to serve the priest at ma.s.s, to receive holy bread and holy water every Sunday, and daily to use "all other laudable ceremonies".[1079]

[Footnote 1077: _E.g._, _L. and P._, v., 285; XIII., ii., 849, Introd., p. xxviii. Sir John Wallop admired the "charitable dexterity" with which Henry treated them (_ibid._, xv., 429).]

[Footnote 1078: When a book was presented to him which he had not the patience to read he handed it over to one of his lords-in-waiting to read; he then took it back and gave it to be examined to some one of an entirely different way of thinking, and made the two discuss its merits, and upon that discussion formed his own opinion (Cranmer to Wolfgang Capito, _Works_, ii., 341; the King, says Cranmer, "is a most acute and vigilant observer").

Henry was also, according to modern standards, extraordinarily patient of theological discourses; when Cranmer obtained for Latimer an appointment to preach at Court, he advised him not to preach more than an hour or an hour and a half lest the King and Queen should grow weary! (_L. and P._, vii., 29).]

[Footnote 1079: _L. and P._, XIV., i., 967, an interesting letter which also records how the King rowed up and down the Thames in his barge for an hour after evensong on Holy Thursday "with his drums and fifes playing".]

With such feelings at heart, a union with Protestants could never for Henry be more than a _mariage de convenance_; and in this, as in other things, he carried with him the bulk of popular sympathy. In 1539 it was said that no man in London durst speak against Catholic usages, and, in Lent of that year, a man was hanged, apparently at the instance of the Recorder of London, for eating flesh on a Friday.[1080]

The attack on the Church had been limited to its privileges and to its property; its doctrine had scarcely been touched. The upper cla.s.ses among the laity had been gorged with monastic spoils; they were disposed to rest and be thankful. The middle cla.s.ses had been (p. 389) satisfied to some extent by the restriction of clerical fees, and by the prohibition of the clergy from competing with laymen in profitable trades, such as brewing, tanning, and speculating in land and houses.

There was also the general reaction which always follows a period of change. How far that reaction had gone, Henry first learnt from the Parliament which met on the 28th of April, 1539.

[Footnote 1080: _Ibid._, i., 967. This had been made a capital offence as early as the days of Charlemagne (Gibbon, ed. 1890, iii., 450 n.).]

The elections were characterised by more court interference than is traceable at any other period during the reign, though even on this occasion the evidence is fragmentary and affects comparatively few const.i.tuencies.[1081] It was, moreover, Cromwell and not the King who sought to pack the House of Commons in favour of his own particular policy; and the attempt produced discontent in various const.i.tuencies and a riot in one at least.[1082] The Earl of Southampton was (p. 390) required to use his influence on behalf of Cromwell's nominees at Farnham, although that borough was within the Bishop of Winchester's preserves.[1083] So, too, Cromwell's henchman, Wriothesley, was returned for the county of Southampton in spite of Gardiner's opposition. Never, till the days of the Stuarts, was there a more striking instance of the futility of these tactics; for the House of Commons, which Cromwell took so much pains to secure, pa.s.sed, without a dissentient, the Bill of Attainder against him; and before it was dissolved, the bishop, against whose influence Cromwell had especially exerted himself, had taken Cromwell's place in the royal favour. There was, indeed, no possibility of stemming the tide which was flowing against the Vicegerent and in favour of the King; and Cromwell was forced to swim with the stream in the vain hope of saving himself from disaster.

[Footnote 1081: In 1536 Henry had sent round a circular to the sheriffs; but its main object was to show that another Parliament was indispensable, to persuade the people that "their charge and time, which will be very little and short, would be well spent," and to secure "that persons are elected who will serve, and for their worship and qualities be most meet for this purpose" (_L. and P._, x., 815).

The sheriffs in fact were simply to see that the burden was placed on those able and willing to bear it. The best ill.u.s.tration of the methods adopted and of the amount of liberty of election exercised by the const.i.tuents may be found in Southampton's letter to Cromwell (_ibid._, XIV., i., 520). At Guildford he told the burgesses they must return two members, which would be a great charge to the town, "but that if they followed my advice it would cost little or nothing, for I would provide able men to supply the room". They said that one Daniel Modge wanted one of the seats, but Southampton might arrange for the other. About the Suss.e.x election he was doubtful, but various friends had promised to do their parts. Farnham, he said, returned burgesses (though it does not appear in the _Official Return_), but that was the bishop's town, "and my Lord Chamberlain is his steward there; so I forbear to meddle".]

[Footnote 1082: _L. and P._, XIV., i., 662, 800, 808. By a singular fatality the returns for this Parliament have been lost, so there is no means of ascertaining how many of these nominees were actually elected.]

[Footnote 1083: _Ibid._, XIV., i., 573, and "although he fears my lord of Winchester has already moved men after his own desires". He also spoke with Lord St. John about knights of the shire for Hampshire, and St. John "promised to do his best". Finally he enclosed a "schedule of the best men of the country picked out _by them_, that Cromwell may pick whom he would have chosen".]

The princ.i.p.al measure pa.s.sed in this Parliament was the Act of Six Articles, and it was designed to secure that unity and concord in opinions which had not been effected by the King's injunctions. The Act affirmed the doctrine of Transubstantiation, declared that the administration of the Sacrament in both kinds was not necessary, that priests might not marry, that vows of chast.i.ty were perpetual, that private ma.s.ses were meet and necessary, and auricular confession (p. 391) was expedient and necessary. Burning was the penalty for once denying the first article, and a felon's death for twice denying any of the others. This was practically the first Act of Uniformity, the earliest definition by Parliament of the faith of the Church. It showed that the ma.s.s of the laity were still orthodox to the core, that they could persecute as ruthlessly as the Church itself, and that their only desire was to do the persecution themselves. The bill was carried through Parliament by means of a coalition of King and laity[1084]

against Cromwell and a minority of reforming bishops, who are said only to have relinquished their opposition at Henry's personal intervention;[1085] and the royal wishes were communicated, when the King was not present in person, through Norfolk and not through the royal Vicegerent.

[Footnote 1084: "We of the temporality," writes a peer, "have been all of one mind" (_L. and P._, XIV., i., 1040; Burnet, vi., 233; _Narratives of the Reformation_, p. 248).]

[Footnote 1085: See the present writer's _Cranmer_, p. 129 n. Cranmer afterwards a.s.serted (_Works_, ii., 168) that the Act would never have pa.s.sed unless the King had come personally into the Parliament house, but that is highly improbable.]

It was clear that Cromwell was trembling to his fall. The enmity shown in Parliament to his doctrinal tendencies was not the result of royal dictation; for even this Parliament, which gave royal proclamations the force of law, could be independent when it chose. The draft of the Act of Proclamations, as originally submitted to the House of Commons, provoked a hot debate, was thrown out, and another was subst.i.tuted more in accord with the sense of the House.[1086] Parliament could have rejected the second as easily as it did the first, had it (p. 392) wished. Willingly and wittingly it placed this weapon in the royal hands,[1087] and the chief motive for its action was that overwhelming desire for "union and concord in opinion" which lay at the root of the Six Articles. Only one cla.s.s of offences against royal proclamations could be punished with death, and those were offences "against any proclamation to be made by the King's Highness, his heirs or successors, for or concerning any kind of heresies against Christian doctrine".

The King might define the faith by proclamations, and the standard of orthodoxy thus set up was to be enforced by the heaviest legal penalties. England, thought Parliament, could only be kept united against her foreign foes by a rigid uniformity of opinion; and that uniformity could only be enforced by the royal authority based on lay support, for the Church was now deeply divided in doctrine against itself.

[Footnote 1086: Husee (_L. and P._, XIV., i., 1158) says the House had been fifteen days over this bill; _cf. Lords' Journals_, 1539.]

[Footnote 1087: Parliament is sometimes represented as having almost committed const.i.tutional suicide by this Act; but _cf._ Dicey, _Law and Custom of the Const.i.tution_, p. 357, "Powers, however extraordinary, which are conferred or sanctioned by statute, are never really unlimited, for they are confined by the words of the Act itself, and what is more by the interpretation put upon the statute by the judges". There was a world of difference between this and the prerogative independent of Parliament claimed by the Stuarts. Parliament was the foundation, not the rival, of Henry's authority.]

Such was the temper of England at the end of 1539. Cromwell and his policy, the union with the German princes and the marriage with Anne of Cleves were merely makeshifts. They stood on no surer foundation than the pa.s.sing political need of some counterpoise to the alliance of Francis and Charles. So long as that need remained, the marriage would hold good, and Henry would strive to dissemble; but not a moment longer. The revolution came with startling rapidity; in April, (p. 393) 1540, Marillac, the French amba.s.sador, reported that Cromwell was tottering.[1088] The reason was not far to seek. No sooner had the Emperor pa.s.sed out of France, than he began to excuse himself from fulfilling his engagements to Francis. He was resolute never to yield Milan, for which Francis never ceased to yearn. Charles would have found Francis a useful ally for the conquest of England, but his own possessions were now threatened in more than one quarter, and especially by the English and German alliance. Henry skilfully widened the breach between the two friends, and, while professing the utmost regard for Francis, gave Charles to understand that he vastly preferred the Emperor's alliance to that of the Protestant princes. Before April he had convinced himself that Charles was more bent on reducing Germany and the Netherlands to order than on any attempt against England, and that the abandonment of the Lutheran princes would not lead to their combination with the Emperor and Francis. Accordingly he returned a very cold answer when the Duke of Cleves's amba.s.sadors came, in May, to demand his a.s.sistance in securing for the Duke the Duchy of Guelders.[1089]