Henry VIII Part 34

[Footnote 1088: _L. and P._, xv., 486.]

[Footnote 1089: _Ibid._, xv., 735.]

Cromwell's fall was not, however, effected without some violent oscillations, strikingly like the quick changes which preceded the ruin of Robespierre during the Reign of Terror in France. The Vicegerent had filled the Court and the Government with his own nominees; at least half a dozen bishops, with Cranmer at their head, inclined to his theological and political views; Lord Chancellor Audley and the Earl of Southamton were of the same persuasion; and a small but (p. 394) zealous band of reformers did their best, by ballads and sermons, to prove that the people were thirsting for further religious change. The Council, said Marillac, was divided, each party seeking to destroy the other. Henry let the factions fight till he thought the time was come for him to intervene. In February, 1540, there was a theological encounter between Gardiner and Barnes, the princ.i.p.al agent in Henry's dealings with the Lutherans, and Barnes was forced to recant;[1090] in April Gardiner and one or two conservatives, who had long been excluded from the Council, were believed to have been readmitted;[1091] and it was reported that Tunstall would succeed Cromwell as the King's Vicegerent.[1092] But a few days later two of Cromwell's satellites, Wriothesley and Sadleir, were made Secretaries of State; Cromwell himself was created Earl of Ess.e.x; and, in May, the Bishop of Chichester and two other opponents of reform were sent to the Tower.[1093] At last Henry struck. On the 10th of June Cromwell was arrested; he had, wrote the Council, "not only been counterworking the King's aims for the settlement of religion, but had said that, if the King and the realm varied from his opinions, he would withstand them, and that he hoped in another year or two to bring things to that frame that the King could not resist it".[1094] His cries for mercy evoked no response in that hardened age.[1095] Parliament condemned him unheard, and, on the 28th of July, he was beheaded.

[Footnote 1090: _L. and P._, xv., 306, 312, 334.]

[Footnote 1091: _Ibid._, xv., 486, 804.]

[Footnote 1092: _Ibid._, XIV., ii., 141.]

[Footnote 1093: _Ibid._, xv., 737.]

[Footnote 1094: Burnet, iv., 415-23; _L. and P._, xv., 765-67.]

[Footnote 1095: Merriman, _Cromwell_, ii., 268, 273.]

Henry had in reality come to the conclusion that it was safe to (p. 395) dispense with Anne of Cleves and her relatives; and with his will there was easily found a way. His case, as stated by himself, was, as usual, a most ingenious mixture of fact and fiction, reason and sophistry. His "intention" had been defective, and therefore his administration of the sacrament of marriage had been invalid. He was not a free agent because fear of being left defenceless against Francis and Charles had driven him under the yoke. His marriage had only been a conditional form. Anne had never received a release from her contract with the son of the Duke of Lorraine; Henry had only gone through the ceremony on the a.s.sumption that that release would be forthcoming; and actuated by this conscientious scruple, he had refrained from consummating the match. To give verisimilitude to this last statement, he added the further detail that he found his bride personally repugnant. He therefore sought from "our" Church a declaration of nullity. Anne was prudently ready to submit to its decision; and, through Convocation, Henry's Church, which in his view existed mainly to transact his ecclesiastical business, declared, on the 7th of July, that the marriage was null and void.[1096] Anne received a handsome endowment of four thousand pounds a year in lands, was given two country residences, and lived on amicable terms with Henry[1097] and his successors till 1558, when she died and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

[Footnote 1096: For the canonical reasons on which this decision was based, see the present writer's _Cranmer_, pp. 140, 141.]

[Footnote 1097: "She is," writes Marillac in August, "as joyous as ever, and wears new dresses every day" (xv., 976; _cf._ Wriothesley _Chronicle_, i., 120).]

Henry's neck was freed from the matrimonial yoke and the German (p. 396) entanglement. The news was promptly sent to Charles, who remarked that Henry would always find him his loving brother and most cordial friend.[1098] At Antwerp it was said that the King had alienated the Germans, but gained the Emperor and France in their stead.[1099]

Luther declared that "Junker Harry meant to be G.o.d and to do as pleased himself";[1100] and Melancthon, previously so ready to find excuses, now denounced the English King as a Nero, and expressed a wish that G.o.d would put it into the mind of some bold man to a.s.sa.s.sinate him.[1101] Francis sighed when he heard the news, foreseeing a future alliance against him,[1102] but the Emperor's secretary believed that G.o.d was bringing good out of all these things.[1103]

[Footnote 1098: _L. and P._, xv., 863.]

[Footnote 1099: _Ibid._, xv., 932.]

[Footnote 1100: _Ibid._, xvi., 106.]

[Footnote 1101: _Ibid._, xvi., Introd., p. ii. n.]

[Footnote 1102: _Ibid._, xv., 870.]

[Footnote 1103: _Ibid._, xv., 951.]

CHAPTER XV. (p. 397)

THE FINAL STRUGGLE.

The first of the "good things" brought out of the divorce of Anne of Cleves was a fifth wife for the much-married monarch. Parliament, which had pet.i.tioned Henry to solve the doubts troubling his subjects as to the validity (that is to say, political advantages) of his union with Anne, now besought him, "for the good of his people," to enter once more the holy state of matrimony, in the hope of more numerous issue. The lady had been already selected by the predominant party, and used as an instrument in procuring the divorce of her predecessor and the fall of Cromwell; for, if her morals were something lax, Catherine Howard's orthodoxy was beyond dispute. She was niece of Cromwell's great enemy, the Duke of Norfolk; and it was at the house of Bishop Gardiner that she was first given the opportunity of subduing the King to her charms.[1104] She was to play the part in the Catholic reaction that Anne Boleyn had done in the Protestant revolution. Both religious parties were unfortunate in the choice of their lady protagonists. Catherine Howard's father, in spite of his rank, was very penurious, and his daughter's education had been neglected, while her character had been left at the mercy of any (p. 398) chance tempter. She had already formed compromising relations with three successive suitors. Her music master, Mannock, boasted that she had promised to be his mistress; a kinsman, named Dereham, called her his wife; and she was reported to be engaged to her cousin, Culpepper.[1105] Marillac thought her beauty was commonplace;[1106]

but that, to judge by her portraits, seems a disparaging verdict. Her eyes were hazel, her hair was auburn, and Nature had been at least as kind to her as to any of Henry's wives. Even Marillac admitted that she had a very winning countenance. Her age is uncertain, but she had almost certainly seen more than the twenty-one years politely put down to her account. Her marriage, like that of Anne Boleyn, was private.

Marillac thought she was already wedded to Henry by the 21st of July, and the Venetian amba.s.sador at the Court of Charles V. said that the ceremony took place two days after the sentence of Convocation (7th July).[1107] That may be the date of the betrothal, but the marriage itself was privately celebrated at Oatlands on the 28th of July,[1108]

and Catherine was publicly recognised as Queen at Hampton Court (p. 399) on the 8th of August, and prayed for as such in the churches on the following Sunday.

[Footnote 1104: _Original Letters_, Parker Society, i., 202. _cf. L. and P._, xv., 613 [12].

Winchester, says Marillac, "was one of the princ.i.p.al authors of this last marriage, which led to the ruin of Cromwell" (_ibid._, xvi., 269).]

[Footnote 1105: _L. and P._, xvi., 1334.]

[Footnote 1106: So says the _D.N.B._, ix., 308; but in _L. and P._, xv., 901, Marillac describes her as "a lady of great beauty," and in xvi., 1366, he speaks of her "beauty and sweetness".]

[Footnote 1107: _Venetian Cal._, v., 222.]

[Footnote 1108: This is the date given by Dr.

Gairdner in _D.N.B._, ix., 304, and is probably correct, though Dr. Gairdner himself gives 8th August in his _Church History_, 1902, p. 218.

Wriothesley (_Chron._, i., 121) also says 8th August, but Hall (_Chron._, p. 840) is nearer the truth when he says: "The eight day of August was the Lady Katharine Howard... _shewed openly as Queen_ at Hampton court". The original authority for the 28th July is the 3rd Rep. of the Deputy Keeper of Records, App. ii., 264, _viz._, the official record of her trial.]

The King was thoroughly satisfied with his new marriage from every point of view. The reversal of the policy of the last few years, which he had always disliked and for which he avoided responsibility as well as he could, relieved him at once from the necessity of playing a part and from the pressing anxiety of foreign dangers. These troubles had preyed upon his mind and impaired his health; but now, for a time, his spirits revived and his health returned. He began to rise every morning, even in the winter, between five and six, and rode for four or five hours. He was enamoured of his bride; her views and those of her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, and of her patron, Bishop Gardiner, were in much closer accord with his own than Anne Boleyn's or Cromwell's had been. Until almost the close of his reign Norfolk was the chief instrument of his secular policy, while Gardiner represented his ecclesiastical views;[1109] but neither succeeded to the place which Wolsey had held and Cromwell had tried to secure. Henceforth the King had no Prime Minister; there was no second Vicegerent, and the praise or the blame for his policy can be given to no one but Henry.

[Footnote 1109: It was popularly thought that Henry called Gardiner "his own bishop" (_L. and P._, XIV., i., 662).]

That policy was, in foreign affairs, a close adherence to the Emperor, partly because it was almost universally held to be the safest course for England to pursue, and partly because it gave Henry a free hand for the development of his imperialist designs on Scotland. In domestic affairs the predominant note was the extreme rigour with which the King's secular autocracy, his supremacy over the Church, and the (p. 400) Church's orthodox doctrine were imposed on his subjects. Although the Act of Six Articles had been pa.s.sed in 1539, Cromwell appears to have prevented the issue of commissions for its execution. This culpable negligence did not please Parliament, and, just before his fall, another Act was pa.s.sed for the more effective enforcement of the Six Articles. One relaxation was found necessary; it was impossible to inflict the death penalty on "incontinent"[1110] priests, because there were so many. But that was the only indulgence granted. Two days after Cromwell's death, a vivid ill.u.s.tration was given of the spirit which was henceforth to dominate the Government. Six men were executed at the same time; three were priests, condemned to be hanged as traitors for denying the royal supremacy; three were heretics, condemned to be burnt for impugning the Catholic faith.[1111]

[Footnote 1110: 32 Henry VIII., c. 10. Married priests of course would come under this opprobrious t.i.tle.]

[Footnote 1111: Wriothesley, _Chron._, i., 120, 121.]

And yet there was no peace. Henry, who had succeeded in so much, had, with the full concurrence of the majority of his people, entered upon a task in which he was foredoomed to failure. Not all the whips with six strings, not all the fires at Smithfield, could compel that unity and concord in opinion which Henry so much desired, but which he had unwittingly done so much to destroy. He might denounce the diversities of belief to which his opening of the Bible in English churches had given rise; but men, who had caught a glimpse of hidden verities, could not all be forced to deny the things which they had seen. The most lasting result of Henry's repressive tyranny was the stimulus it gave to reform in the reign of his son, even as the persecutions (p. 401) of Mary finally ruined in England the cause of the Roman Church.

Henry's bishops themselves could scarcely be brought to agreement.

Latimer and Shaxton lost their sees; but the submission of the rest did not extend to complete recantation, and the endeavour to stretch all his subjects on the Procrustean bed of Six Articles was one of Henry's least successful enterprises.[1112] It was easier to sacrifice a portion of his monastic spoils to found new bishoprics. This had been a project of Wolsey's, interrupted by the Cardinal's fall.

Parliament subsequently authorised Henry to erect twenty-six sees; he actually established six, the Bishoprics of Peterborough, Oxford, Chester, Gloucester, Bristol and Westminster. Funds were also provided for the endowment, in both universities, of Regius professorships of Divinity, Hebrew, Greek, Civil Law and Medicine; and the royal interest in the advancement of science was further evinced by the grant of a charter to the College of Surgeons, similar to that accorded early in the reign to the Physicians.[1113]

[Footnote 1112: Henry soon recognised this himself, and a year after the Act was pa.s.sed he ordered that "no further persecution should take place for religion, and that those in prison should be set at liberty on finding security for their appearance when called for" (_L. and P._, xvi., 271). Cranmer himself wrote that "within a year or a little more"

Henry "was fain to temper his said laws, and moderate them in divers points; so that the Statute of Six Articles continued in force little above the s.p.a.ce of one year" (_Works_, ii., 168). The idea that from 1539 to 1547 there was a continuous and rigorous persecution is a legend derived from Foxe; there were outbursts of rigour in 1540, 1543, and 1546, but except for these the Six Articles remained almost a dead letter (see _L. and P._, XVIII., i., Introd., p. xlix.; pt. ii., Introd., p.

x.x.xiv.; _Original Letters_, Parker Society, ii., 614, 627; Dixon, _Church Hist._, vol. ii., chaps, x., xi.).]

[Footnote 1113: In 1518 (_L. and P._, ii., 4450).]

Disloyalty, meanwhile, was no more extinct than diversity in (p. 402) religious opinion. Early in 1541 there was a conspiracy under Sir John Neville, in Lincolnshire, and about the same time there were signs that the Council itself could not be immediately steadied after the violent disturbances of the previous year. Pate, the amba.s.sador at the Emperor's Court, absconded to Rome in fear of arrest, and his uncle, Longland, Bishop of Lincoln, was for a time in confinement; Sir John Wallop, Sir Thomas Wyatt, diplomatist and poet, and his secretary, the witty and cautious Sir John Mason, were sent to the Tower; both Cromwell's henchmen, Wriothesley and Sadleir, seem to have incurred suspicion.[1114] Wyatt, Wallop and Mason were soon released, while Wriothesley and Sadleir regained favour by abjuring their former opinions; but it was evident that the realisation of arbitrary power was gradually destroying Henry's better nature. His suspicion was aroused on the slightest pretext, and his temper was getting worse.

Ill-health contributed not a little to this frame of mind. The ulcer on his leg caused him such agony that he sometimes went almost black in the face and speechless from pain.[1115] He was beginning to look grey and old, and was growing daily more corpulent and unwieldy. He had, he said, on hearing of Neville's rebellion, an evil people to rule; he would, he vowed, make them so poor that it would be out of their power to rebel; and, before he set out for the North to extinguish the discontent and to arrange a meeting with James V., he cleared the Tower by sending all its prisoners, including the aged (p. 403) Countess of Salisbury, to the block.

[Footnote 1114: _L. and P._, xvi., 449, 461, 466, 467, 469, 470, 474, 482, 488, 506, 523, 534, 611, 640, 641; _cf._ the present writer in _D.N.B._, on Mason and Wriothesley.]

[Footnote 1115: _Ibid._, XIV., ii., 142; xvi., 121, 311, 558, 589, 590; _D.N.B._, xxvi., 89.]

A greater trial than the failure of James to accept his invitation to York awaited Henry on his return from the North. Rumours of Catherine Howard's past indiscretions had at length reached the ears of the Privy Council. On All Saints' Day, 1541, Henry directed his confessor, the Bishop of Lincoln, to give thanks to G.o.d with him for the good life he was leading and hoped to lead with his present Queen,[1116]

"after sundry troubles of mind which had happened to him by marriages".[1117] At last he thought he had reached the haven of domestic peace, whence no roving fancy should tempt him to stray.

Twenty-four hours later Cranmer put in his hand proofs of the Queen's misconduct. Henry refused to believe in this rude awakening from his dreams; he ordered a strict investigation into the charges. Its results left no room for doubt. Dereham confessed his intercourse; Mannock admitted that he had taken liberties; and, presently, the Queen herself acknowledged her guilt. The King was overwhelmed with shame and vexation; he shed bitter tears, a thing, said the Council, "strange in his courage". He "has wonderfully felt the case of the Queen," wrote Chapuys;[1118] "he took such grief," added Marillac, "that of late it was thought he had gone mad".[1119] He seems to have promised his wife a pardon, and she might have escaped with nothing worse than a divorce, had not proofs come to light of her misconduct with Culpepper after her marriage with Henry, and even during their recent progress in the North. This offence was high treason, and (p. 404) could not be covered by the King's pardon for Catherine's pre-nuptial immorality. Henry, however, was not at ease until Parliament, in January, 1542, considerately relieved him of all responsibility. The faithful Lords and Commons begged him not to take the matter too heavily, but to permit them freely to proceed with an Act of Attainder, and to give his a.s.sent thereto by commission under the great seal without any words or ceremony, which might cause him pain. Thus originated the practice of giving the royal a.s.sent to Acts of Parliament by commission.[1120] Another innovation was introduced into the Act of Attainder, whereby it was declared treason for any woman to marry the King if her previous life had been unchaste; "few, if any, ladies now at Court," commented the cynical Chapuys, "would henceforth aspire to such an honour".[1121] The bill received the royal a.s.sent on the 11th of February, Catherine having declined Henry's permission to go down to Parliament and defend herself in person. On the 10th she was removed to the Tower, being dressed in black velvet and treated with "as much honour as when she was reigning".[1122] Three days later she was beheaded on the same spot where the sword had severed the fair neck of Anne Boleyn.

[Footnote 1116: _L. and P._, xvi., 1334.]

[Footnote 1117: Herbert, _Life and Reign_, ed.