Historical Miniatures Part 46

"No, you cannot answer, but you can preach and talk rubbish. Are you a Lutheran?"

"Yes."

"But Luther is against the Anabaptists; therefore he is against you, and he has asked the princes to kill the Anabaptists like wild dogs. Are you still a Lutheran?"

"Yes, according to his early teaching."

"You mean justification by faith. What do you believe?"

"I believe in G.o.d the Father...."

"Who is the Father? In Luther's catechism it is written, 'Thou shalt have none other G.o.ds but me.' But that is the Law of Moses, and it is Jehovah who is intended there. If you believe in Jehovah, then you are a Jew, are you not?"

"I believe also on Christ the Son of G.o.d."

"Then you are a Jew-Christian! So you have admitted that you are a Lutheran, Anabaptist, Jew, and Christian--all this together. You are a fool, and you don't know what you are. But that may be pa.s.sed over, if you do not seduce others."

"Give him a flogging," said the Cardinal, who did not like the turn the conversation had taken, especially the challenging of the Bible, which just now he wished to use for his own purposes.

"He has already had that," answered More, "but besides his doctrine, this conceited man, who wants to make himself popular, belongs to a society which circulates a bad translation of the Bible." "You see yourself," he continued, turning to Bainham, "what Bible reading leads to, and I demand that you give up the names of your fellow-criminals."

"That I will never do! The just shall live by his faith."

"Will you call yourself just, when there is no one just? Read the Book of Job, and you will see. And your belief is really too eccentric to be counted to you for righteousness."

"Send him down in the cellar to Master Mats! Must one listen to such nonsense! Away with him!"

More pointed to the door, and Bainham went out.

"Yes," said Wolsey, "what is there in front of us? Schisms, sectarianism, struggles. If we only had an heir to the throne."

"We cannot get the King divorced."

"You yourself have spoken the word. There is no need for divorce, because his marriage is null."

"Is it? How do you prove that?"

"From the third book of Moses, the twentieth and twenty-first chapters: 'If any one taketh his brother's wife, it is evil.'"

"Yes, but in the fifth book of Moses, five and twentieth chapter, fifth verse, it is commanded."

"What, in Christ's name, are you saying?"

"Certainly it is: 'If brothers dwell together, and one die without children, his brother shall take his wife and raise up seed to his brother."

"d.a.m.nation! This cursed book."

"Moreover: Abraham married his half-sister; Jacob married two sisters: Moses' father married his aunt."

"That is the Bible, is it? Thank you! Then I prefer the Decretals and the Councils. The Pope must dissolve the marriage."

"Is it then to be dissolved?"

"Didn't you know? Yes, it is. If Julius II could grant a dispensation, Clement VII can grant an absolution."

"It is not just towards the Queen."

"The country demands it--the kingdom--the nation! The King's conscience...."

"Oh! is it the fair Anne?"

"No, not she!"

"Is it...."

"Don't ask any more."

"Then I answer, Margaret of Valois."

"I give no answer at all, but I am not responsible for your life, if you talk out of season! The Bible won't help you there."

"It would be a useful reform, if we could cancel the Old Testament as a Jewish book."

"But we cannot cancel the Psalms of David, which are our only Church canticles. Luther himself has taken his hymns from the Psalter, and 'Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott' from the Proverbs of Solomon; he has borrowed the melody from the Graduale Romanum."

"But we must relegate the law of Moses to the Apocrypha, otherwise we are Pharisees and Jewish Christians. What have we to do with circ.u.mcision, the paschal lamb, and levitical marriage? Wait till I am Pope."

"Must we really wait so long?"

"Hush! The noon-bell is ringing. Do not let us neglect our duties.

The flesh must have its due, in order not to burn. Come with me to Westminster; then you can go on to Chelsea afterwards."

Henry VIII was twelve years old when he was engaged to the widow of his brother Arthur. At fourteen he protested against the marriage, which was distasteful to him, but at eighteen he married Katherine, the aunt of the Emperor Charles V. Cardinal Wolsey would have gladly brought about a divorce, for he wished for a successor to the throne in order to keep the power in his own hands. This power he had misused to such an extent that the fact that there was such a thing as Parliament had almost been forgotten. Wolsey wished to have the King married to a powerful princess, and thought for a time of Margaret of Valois, but under no circ.u.mstances did he wish to take a wife for him from the English n.o.bility. But when he aroused the King's conscience with regard to his marriage with Katherine, he had let loose a storm which he could not control, much less guide in the desired direction, for the King's pa.s.sion for Anne Boleyn was now irresistible.

Then the Cardinal had recourse to plotting, and this brought about his downfall. For six years negotiations went on, and the King was true to Anne. He wrote letters which can still be read and which display a great and honourable love. Most of them were signed "Henry Tudor, Rex, your true and constant servant," and began "My mistress and friend." Anne answered coldly, but her love to Percy was nipt in the bud by a marriage being arranged for him. After all the learned authorities had been consulted, and much controversy had taken place regarding the third and the fifth books of Moses, the Pope sent a Nuncio with secret instructions to get rid of the whole matter by postponing it. But Henry did not yield, though his feelings for Katherine, whom he respected, cost him a terrible struggle. The trial began in the chapter-house of Blackfriars in the presence of the King and Queen. But Katherine stood up, threw herself at the King's feet, and found words which touched the tyrant. She challenged the right of the court to try her, appealed to the Pope, and returned to Bridewell. It is there that we find her in Shakespeare's _Henry VIII_, singing sorrowfully a beautiful song:

"Orpheus with his lute made trees And the mountain tops that freeze Bow themselves when he did sing."

The divorce proceedings had gone on for some years; people had sided alternately with the King and with the Queen, and often sympathised with both, when suddenly rumour announced the outbreak of a pestilence.

It was not the Black Death or the boil-pest, but the English "sweating-sickness." This. .h.i.therto unknown disease had first broken out in the same year when the wars of the Roses ended on the field of Bosworth; but it was entirely confined to England, pa.s.sing neither to Scotland nor Ireland. It was so mysteriously connected with English blood, that in Calais only Englishmen and no Frenchmen were attacked by it. Since then the sickness had twice appeared among the English. Now it returned and broke out in London.

The King, who had said that "no one but G.o.d could separate him from Anne," was alarmed, and did not know what to think--whether it was a warning or a trial. The symptoms of the sickness were perspiration and a desire to sleep; but if one yielded to the desire, one might be dead in three hours. In London the citizens died like flies: Sir Thomas More lost a daughter; the Cardinal, who had come to preside at Hampton Court, had his horses put to the carriage again, and hurried away. Finally one of Anne's ladies-in-waiting was attacked. Then the King lost all presence of mind, sent Anne home to her father, and fled himself from place to place, from Waltham to Hunsdon. He reconciled himself to Katherine, lived in a tower without a servant, prepared his will, and was ready for death.

Then there came the news that Anne herself had been seized by the sickness. The King had lost his chamberlain, and now wrote letter after letter. Then he fled again to Hatfield and t.i.ttenhanger.