Henry VIII Part 8

[Footnote 237: _Ibid._, ii., 2930.]

[Footnote 238: _Ibid._, ii., 2632, 3008; _Monumenta Habsburgica_, ii., 37.]

[Footnote 239: _L. and P._, ii., 3076, 3077, 3081.]

[Footnote 240: _L. and P._, ii., 3402, 3439-41.]

[Footnote 241: _Ven. Cal._, ii., 918; _L. and P._, ii., 3455, 3462.]

All this riot of wealth would no doubt impress the impecunious Charles. In September he landed in Spain, so dest.i.tute that he was glad to accept the offer of a hobby from the English amba.s.sador.[242]

At the first meeting of his Cortes, they demanded that he should marry at once, and not wait for Francis's daughter; the bride his subjects desired was the daughter of the King of Portugal.[243] They were no more willing to part with Navarre; and Charles was forced to make to Francis the feeble excuse that he was not aware, when he was in the Netherlands, of his true t.i.tle to Navarre, but had learnt it since his arrival in Spain; he also declined the personal interview to which Francis invited him.[244] A rupture between Francis and Charles was only a question of time; and, to prepare for it, both were anxious (p. 097) for England's alliance. Throughout the autumn of 1517 and spring of 1518, France and England were feeling their way towards friendship.

Albany had left Scotland, so that source of irritation was gone. Henry had now a daughter, Mary, and Francis a son. "I will unite them," said Wolsey;[245] and in October, 1518, not only was a treaty of marriage and alliance signed between England and France, but a general peace for Europe. Leo X. sent Campeggio with blessings of peace from the Vicar of Christ, though he was kept chafing at Calais for three months, till he could bring with him Leo's appointment of Wolsey as legate and the deposition of Wolsey's enemy, Hadrian, from the Bishopric of Bath and Wells.[246] The ceremonies exceeded in splendour even those of the year before. They included, says Giustinian, a "most sumptuous supper" at Wolsey's house, "the like of which, I fancy, was never given by Cleopatra or Caligula; the whole banqueting hall being so decorated with huge vases of gold and silver, that I fancied myself in the tower of Chosroes,[247] when that monarch caused Divine honours to be paid him. After supper... twelve male and twelve female dancers made their appearance in the richest and most sumptuous array possible, being all dressed alike.... They were disguised in one suit of fine green satin, all over covered with cloth of gold, undertied together with laces of gold, and had masking hoods on their heads; the ladies had tires made of braids of damask gold, with long hairs of white gold. All these maskers danced at one time, and after they had danced they put off their visors, and then they were all known.... The (p. 098) two leaders were the King and the Queen Dowager of France, and all the others were lords and ladies."[248] These festivities were followed by the formal ratification of peace.[249] Approval of it was general, and the old councillors who had been alienated by Wolsey's Milan expedition, hastened to applaud. "It was the best deed," wrote Fox to Wolsey, "that ever was done for England, and, next to the King, the praise of it is due to you."[250] Once more the wheel had come round, and the stone of Sisyphus was lodged more secure than before some way up the side of the hill.

[Footnote 242: _L. and P._, ii., 3705.]

[Footnote 243: _Ibid._, ii., 4022.]

[Footnote 244: _Ibid._, ii., 4164, 4188.]

[Footnote 245: _L. and P._, ii., 4047.]

[Footnote 246: _Ibid._, ii., 4348.]

[Footnote 247: Chosroes I. (Nushirvan) of Persia.]

[Footnote 248: _Ven. Cal._, ii., 1085, 1088; _cf._ Shakespeare, _Henry VIII_.]

[Footnote 249: _L. and P._, ii., 4468, 4483, 4564, 4669.]

[Footnote 250: _Ibid._, ii., 4540.]

This general peace, which closed the wars begun ten years before by the League of Cambrai, was not entirely due to a universal desire to beat swords into ploughshares or to even turn them against the Turk.

That was the everlasting pretence, but eighteen months before, Maximilian had suffered a stroke of apoplexy; men, said Giustinian, commenting on the fact, did not usually survive such strokes a year, and rivals were preparing to enter the lists for the Empire.

Maximilian himself, faithful to the end to his guiding principle, found a last inspiration in the idea of disposing of his succession for ready money. He was writing to Charles that it was useless to expect the Empire unless he would spend at least as much as the French.[251] "It would be lamentable," he said, "if we should now lose all through some pitiful omission or penurious neglect;" and Francis was "going about covertly and laying many baits,"[252] to attain (p. 099) the imperial crown. To Henry himself Maximilian had more than once offered the prize, and Pace had declared that the offer was only another design for extracting Henry's gold "for the electors would never allow the crown to go out of their nation".[253] The Emperor had first proposed it while serving under Henry's banners in France.[254]

He renewed the suggestion in 1516, inviting Henry to meet him at Coire. The brothers in arms were thence to cross the Alps to Milan, where the Emperor would invest the English King with the duchy; he would then take him on to Rome, resign the Empire himself, and have Henry crowned. Not that Maximilian desired to forsake all earthly authority; he sought to combine a spiritual with a temporal glory; he was to lay down the imperial crown and place on his brows the papal tiara.[255] Nothing was too fantastic for the Emperor Maximilian; the man who could not wrest a few towns from Venice was always deluding himself with the hope of leading victorious hosts to the seat of the Turkish Empire and the Holy City of Christendom; the sovereign whose main incentive in life was gold, informed his daughter that he intended to get himself canonised, and that after his death she would have to adore him. He died at Welz on 12th January, 1519, neither Pope nor saint, with Jerusalem still in the hands of the Turk, and the succession to the Empire still undecided.

[Footnote 251: _Ibid._, ii., 4172.]

[Footnote 252: _L. and P._, ii., 4159.]

[Footnote 253: _Ibid._, ii., 1923.]

[Footnote 254: _Ibid._, ii., 1398, 1878, 1902, 2218, 2911, 4257.]

[Footnote 255: _Cf._ W. Boehm, _Hat Kaiser Maximilian I. im Jahre 1511 Papst werden wollen?_ 1873.]

The contest now broke out in earnest, and the electors prepared (p. 100) to garner their harvest of gold. The price of a vote was a hundredfold more than the most corrupt parliamentary elector could conceive in his wildest dreams of avarice. There were only seven electors and the prize was the greatest on earth. Francis I. said he was ready to spend 3,000,000 crowns, and Charles could not afford to lag far behind.[256]

The Margrave of Brandenburg, "the father of all greediness," as the Austrians called him, was particularly influential because his brother, the Archbishop of Mainz, was also an elector and he required an especially exorbitant bribe. He was ambitious as well as covetous, and the rivals endeavoured to satisfy his ambitions with matrimonial prizes. He was promised Ferdinand's widow, Germaine de Foix; Francis sought to parry this blow by offering to the Margrave's son the French Princess Renee; Charles bid higher by offering his sister Catherine.[257]

Francis relied much on his personal graces, the military renown he had won by the conquest of Northern Italy, and the a.s.sistance of Leo. With the Pope he concluded a fresh treaty that year for the conquest of Ferrara, the extension of the papal States, and the settlement of Naples on Francis's second son, on condition that it was meanwhile to be administered by papal legates,[258] and that its king was to abstain from all interference in spiritual matters. Charles, on the other hand, owed his advantages to his position and not to his person.

Cold, reserved and formal, he possessed none of the physical or intellectual graces of Francis I. and Henry VIII. He excelled in (p. 101) no sport, was unpleasant in features and repellent in manners. No gleam of magnanimity or chivalry lightened his character, no deeds in war or statecraft yet sounded his fame. He was none the less heir of the Austrian House, which for generations had worn the imperial crown; as such, too, he was a German prince, and the Germanic const.i.tution forbade any other the sovereignty of the Holy Roman Empire. Against this was the fact that his enormous dominions, including Naples and Spain, would preclude his continued residence in Germany and might threaten the liberties of the German people.

[Footnote 256: For details of the sums promised to the various German princes see _L. and P._, iii., 36, etc.; it has been said that there was really little or no bribery at this election.]

[Footnote 257: _Ven. Cal._, ii., 1165, 1187; _L.

and P._, ii., 4159; iii., 130.]

[Footnote 258: _Sp. Cal._, ii., 267.]

But was there no third candidate? Leo at heart regarded the election of either as an absolute evil.[259] He had always dreaded Maximilian's claims to the temporal power of the Church, though Maximilian held not a foot of Italian soil. How much more would he dread those claims in the hands of Francis or Charles! One threatened the papal States from Milan, and the other from Naples. Of the two, he feared Francis the less;[260] for the union of Naples with the Empire had been such a terror to the Popes, that before granting the invest.i.ture of that kingdom, they bound its king by oath not to compete for the Empire.[261]

But a third candidate would offer an escape from between the upper and the nether mill-stone; and Leo suggested at one time Charles's brother Ferdinand,[262] at another a German elector. Precisely the same recommendations had been secretly made by Henry VIII. In public he followed the course he commended to Leo; he advocated the claims (p. 102) of both Charles and Francis, when asked so to do, but sent trusty envoys with his testimonials to explain that no credence was to be given them.[263] He told the French King that he favoured the election of Francis, and the Spanish King the election of Charles, but like Leo he desired in truth the election of neither. Why should he not come forward himself? His dominions were not so extensive that, when combined with the imperial dignity, they would threaten to dominate Europe; and his election might seem to provide a useful check in the balance of power. In March he had already told Francis that his claims were favoured by some of the electors, though he professed a wish to promote the French King's pretensions. In May, Pace was sent to Germany with secret instructions to endeavour to balance the parties and force the electors into a deadlock, from which the only escape would be the election of a third candidate, either Henry himself or some German prince. It is difficult to believe that Henry really thought his election possible or was seriously pushing his claim. He had repeatedly declined Maximilian's offers; he had been as often warned by trusty advisers that no non-German prince stood a chance of election; he had expressed his content with his own islands, which, Tunstall told him with truth, were an Empire worth more than the barren imperial crown.[264] Pace went far too late to secure a party for Henry, and, what was even more fatal, he went without the persuasive of money. Norfolk told Giustinian, after Pace's departure, that the election would fall on a German prince, and such, said the Venetian, was the universal belief and desire in England.[265] (p. 103) After the election, Leo expressed his "regret that Henry gave no attention to a project which would have made him a near, instead of a distant, neighbour of the papal States". Under the circ.u.mstances, it seems more probable that the first alternative in Pace's instructions no more represented a settled design in Henry's mind than his often-professed intention of conquering France, and that the real purport of his mission was to promote the election of the Duke of Saxony or another German prince.[266]

[Footnote 259: _L. and P._, iii., 149.]

[Footnote 260: _Ven. Cal._, ii., 1227.]

[Footnote 261: _Ibid._, ii., 1246.]

[Footnote 262: _Ibid._, ii., 1163.]

[Footnote 263: _L. and P._, iii., 137.]

[Footnote 264: _Ibid._, ii., 2911.]

[Footnote 265: _Ven. Cal._, ii., 1220.]

[Footnote 266: _L. and P._, ii., 241.]

Whether that was its object or not the mission was foredoomed to failure. The conclusion was never really in doubt. Electors might trouble the waters in order to fish with more success. They might pretend to Francis that if he was free with his money he might be elected, and to Charles that unless he was free with his money he would not, but no sufficient reason had been shown why they should violate national prejudices, the laws of the Empire, and prescriptive hereditary right, in order to place Henry or Francis instead of a German upon the imperial throne. Neither people nor princes nor barons, wrote Leo's envoys, would permit the election of the Most Christian King;[267] and even if the electors wished to elect him, it was not in their power to do so. The whole of the nation, said Pace, was in arms and furious for Charles; and had Henry been elected, they would in their indignation have killed Pace and all his servants.[268]

The voice of the German people spoke in no uncertain tones; they would have Charles and no other to be their ruler. Leo himself saw the (p. 104) futility of resistance, and making a virtue of necessity, he sent Charles an absolution from his oath as King of Naples. As soon as it arrived, the electors unanimously declared Charles their Emperor on 28th June.[269]

[Footnote 267: _Ven. Cal._, ii., 1227.]

[Footnote 268: _L. and P._, iii., 326.]

[Footnote 269: _L. and P._, iii., 339.]

Thus was completed the shuffling of the cards for the struggle which lasted till Henry's death. Francis had now succeeded to Louis, Charles to both his grandfathers, and Henry at twenty-eight was the _doyen_ of the princes of Europe. He was two years older than Francis and eight years older than Charles. Europe had pa.s.sed under the rule of youthful triumvirs whose rivalry troubled its peace and guided its destinies for nearly thirty years. The youngest of all was the greatest in power. His dominions, it is true, were disjointed, and funds were often to seek, but these defects have been overrated. It was neither of these which proved his greatest embarra.s.sment. It was a cloud in Germany, as yet no bigger than a man's hand, but soon to darken the face of Europe. Ferdinand and Maximilian had at times been dangerous; Charles wielded the power of both. He ruled over Castile and Aragon, the Netherlands and Naples, Burgundy and Austria; he could command the finest military forces in Europe; the infantry of Spain, the science of Italy, the lance-knights of Germany, for which Ferdinand sighed, were at his disposal; and the wealth of the Indies was poured out at his feet. He bestrode the narrow world like a Colossus, and the only hope of lesser men lay in the maintenance of Francis's power. Were that to fail, Charles would become arbiter of Christendom, Italy a Spanish kingdom, and the Pope little more than the Emperor's (p. 105) chaplain. "Great masters," said Tunstall, with reference to a papal brief urged by Charles in excuse for his action in 1517, "could get great clerks to say what they liked."[270] The mastery of Charles in 1517 was but the shadow of what it became ten years later; and if under its dominance "the great clerk" were called upon to decide between "the great master" and Henry, it was obvious already that all Henry's services to the Papacy would count for nothing.

[Footnote 270: _L. and P._, ii., 3054.]

For the present, those services were to be remembered. They were not, indeed, inconsiderable. It would be absurd to maintain that, since his accession, Henry had been actuated by respect for the Papacy more than by another motive; but it is indisputable that that motive had entered more largely into his conduct than into that of any other monarch.

James IV. and Louis had been excommunicated, Maximilian had obstinately countenanced a schismatic council and wished to arrogate to himself the Pope's temporal power. Ferdinand's zeal for his house had eaten him up and left little room for less selfish impulses; his anxiety for war with the Moor or the Turk was but a cloak; and the value of his frequent demands for a Reformation may be gauged by his opinion that never was there more need for the Inquisition, and by his anger with Leo for refusing the Inquisitors the preferments he asked.[271] From hypocrisy like Ferdinand's Henry was, in his early years, singularly free, and the devotion to the Holy See, which he inherited, was of a more than conventional type. "He is very religious," wrote (p. 106) Giustinian, "and hears three ma.s.ses daily when he hunts, and sometimes five on other days. He hears the office every day in the Queen's chamber, that is to say, vesper and compline."[272] The best theologians and doctors in his kingdom were regularly required to preach at his Court, when their fee for each sermon was equivalent to ten or twelve pounds.

He was generous in his almsgiving, and his usual offering on Sundays and saints' days was six shillings and eightpence or, in modern currency, nearly four pounds; often it was double that amount, and there were special offerings besides, such as the twenty shillings he sent every year to the shrine of St. Thomas at Canterbury. In January, 1511, the gentlemen of the King's chapel were paid what would now be seventy-five pounds for praying for the Queen's safe delivery, and similar sums were no doubt paid on other occasions.[273] In 1513, Catherine thought Henry's success was all due to his zeal for religion,[274] and a year or two later Erasmus wrote that Henry's Court was an example to all Christendom for learning and piety.[275]

[Footnote 271: _Sp. Cal._, ii., 80, 89, 167, 175.]