The Divorce of Catherine of Aragon Part 18

CHAPTER XXIII.

Compet.i.tion for Henry's hand--Solicitations from France and from the Emperor--Overtures from the Pope--Jane Seymour--General eagerness for the King's marriage--Conduct of Henry in the interval before Anne's execution--Marriage with Jane Seymour--Universal satisfaction--The Princess Mary--Proposal for a General Council--Neutrality of England in the war between France and the Empire.

Human nature is said to be the same in all ages and countries. Manners, if it be so, signally vary. Among us, when a wife dies, some decent interval is allowed before her successor is spoken of. The execution for adultery of a Queen about whom all Europe had been so long and so keenly agitated might have been expected to be followed by a pause. No pause, however, ensued after the fall of Anne Boleyn. If Henry had been the most interesting and popular of contemporary princes, there could not have been greater anxiety to secure his vacant hand. Had he been the most pious of Churchmen, the Pope could not have made greater haste to approach him with offers of friendship. There was no waiting even for the result of the trial. No sooner was it known that Anne had been committed to the Tower for adultery than the result was antic.i.p.ated as a certainty. It was a.s.sumed as a matter of course that the King would instantly look for another wife, and Francis and the Emperor lost not a moment in trying each to be beforehand with the other. M. d'Inteville had come over to intercede for Sir Francis Weston, but he brought a commission to treat for a marriage between Henry and a French princess. To this overture the King replied at once that it could not be, and, according to Chapuys, added ungraciously, and perhaps with disgust, that he had experienced already the effects of French education.[429] The words, perhaps, were used to Cromwell, and not to the French Amba.s.sador; but Chapuys was hardly less surprised when Cromwell, in reporting them, coolly added that the King could not marry out of the realm, because, if a French princess misconducted herself, they could not punish her as they had punished the last.[430] The Amba.s.sador did not understand irony, and was naturally startled, for he had received instructions to make a similar application on behalf of his own master. Charles was eager to secure the prize, and, antic.i.p.ating Anne's fate, he despatched a courier to Chapuys on hearing of her arrest, with orders to seize the opportunity. "If Hannaert's news be true," he wrote on the 15th of May, the day of the trial at Westminster, "the King, now that G.o.d has permitted this woman's d.a.m.nable life to be discovered, may be more inclined to treat with us, and there may be a better foundation for an arrangement in favour of the Princess. But you must use all your skill to prevent a marriage with France. The King should rather choose one of his own subjects, either the lady for whom he has already shown a preference or some other."

So far Charles had written when Chapuys's messenger arrived with later news. "George has just come," the Emperor then continued, "and I have heard from him what has pa.s.sed about the Concubine. It is supposed that she and the partners of her guilt will be executed, and that the King, being of amorous complexion and anxious, as he has always pretended, for a male heir, will now marry immediately. Overtures will certainly be made to him from France. You will endeavour, either as of yourself or through Cromwell, to arrange a match for him with the Infanta of Portugal, my niece, who has a settlement by will of 400,000 ducats. Simultaneously you will propose another marriage between the Princess Mary and the Infant of Portugal, Don Louis, my brother-in-law. You will point out that these alliances will remove past unpleasantness, and will unite myself, the King, and our respective countries. You will show the advantage that will accrue to the realm of England should a Prince be the result, and we may reasonably hope that it will be so, the Infanta being young and well nurtured. If you find the King disinclined to this marriage, you may propose my niece, the d.u.c.h.ess Dowager of Milan, a beautiful young lady with a good dowry."[431]

On the same 15th of May Granvelle, no less eager, wrote to Chapuys also.

"M. l'Amba.s.sadeur, my good brother and friend, I have received your letters and have heard what your messenger had to tell me. You have done well to keep us informed about the Concubine. It is indeed fine music and food for laughter.[432] G.o.d is revealing the iniquity of those from whom so much mischief has risen. We must make our profit of it, and manage matters as the Emperor directs. Use all your diligence and dexterity.

Immense advantage will follow, public and private. You will yourself not fail of your reward for your true and faithful services."[433]

So anxious was Charles for fresh matrimonial arrangements with Henry, that he wrote again to the same purpose three days later--a strange wish if he believed Catherine to have been murdered, or her successor to be on the eve of execution because the King was tired of her. To Charles and Granvelle, as to Chapuys himself, the unfortunate Anne was the English Messalina. The Emperor and all the contemporary world saw in her nothing but a wicked woman at last detected and brought to justice.[434]

What came of these advances will be presently seen; but, before proceeding, a glance must be given at the receipt of the intelligence of Anne's fall at the Holy See. This also was _chose de rire_. Chapuys had sent to Rome in the past winter a story that Henry had said Anne Boleyn had bewitched him. The Pope had taken it literally, and had supposed that when the witch was removed the enchantment would end. He sent for Sir Gregory Casalis on the 17th of May, and informed him of what he had heard from England. He said that he had always recognised the many and great qualities of the King; and those qualities he did not doubt would now show themselves, as he had been relieved from his unfortunate marriage.

Let the King reattach himself to Holy Church and take the Pope for an ally; they could then give the law both to the Emperor and to the King of France, and the entire glory of restoring peace to Christendom would attach to Henry himself. The King, he said, had no cause to regard him as an enemy; for he had always endeavored to be his friend. In the matrimonial cause he had remonstrated in private with his predecessor. At Bologna he had argued for four hours with the Emperor, trying to persuade him that the King ought not to be interfered with.[435] Never had he desired to offend the King, although so many violent acts had been done in England against the Holy See. He had made the Bishop of Rochester a cardinal solely with a view to the General Council, and because the Bishop had written a learned book against Luther. On the Bishop's execution, he had been compelled to say and do certain things, but he had never intended to give effect to them.

If the Pope had thought the King to have been right in his divorce suit, it was not easy to understand why he had excommunicated him and tried to deprive him of his crown because he had disobeyed a judgment thus confessed to have been unjust. Casalis asked him if he was to communicate what he had said to the King. The Pope, after reflecting a little, said that Casalis might communicate it as of himself; that he might tell the King that the Pope was well-disposed towards him, and that he might expect every favour from the Pope. Casalis wrote in consequence that on the least hint that the King desired a reconciliation, a Nuncio would be sent to England to do everything that could be found possible; after the many injuries which he had received, opinion at Rome would not permit the Pope to make advances until he was a.s.sured that they would be well received; but some one would be sent in Casalis's name bringing credentials from his Holiness.

Never since the world began was a dastardly a.s.sa.s.sination, if Anne Boleyn was an innocent woman, rewarded with so universal a solicitation for the friendship of the a.s.sa.s.sin. In England the effect was the same. Except by the Lutherans, Anne had been universally hated, and the king was regarded with the respectful compa.s.sion due to a man who had been cruelly injured.

The late marriage had been tolerated out of hope for the birth of the Prince who was so pa.s.sionately longed for. Even before the discovery of Anne's conduct, a considerable party, with the Princess Mary among them, had desired to see the King separated from her and married to some other respectable woman. Jane Seymour had been talked about as a steady friend of Catherine, and, when Catherine was gone, of the Princess. The King had paid her attentions which, if Chapuys's stories were literally true--as probably they were not--had been of a marked kind. In all respects she was the opposite of Anne. She had plain features, pale complexion, a low figure--in short, had no personal beauty, or any pretensions to it, with nothing in her appearance to recommend her, except her youth. She was about twenty-five years of age. She was not witty either, or brilliant; but she was modest, quiet, with a strong understanding and rect.i.tude of principle, and, so far as her age and her opportunities allowed, she had taken Mary's part at the court. Perhaps this had recommended her to Henry.

Whether he had himself ever seriously thought of dismissing Anne and inviting Jane Seymour to take her place is very dubious; nor has anyone a right to suppose that under such conditions Jane Seymour would have regarded such a proposal as anything but an insult. How soon after the detection of Anne's crime the intention was formed is equally uncertain.[436] Every person at home and abroad regarded it as obvious that he must marry some one, and marry at once. He himself professed to be unwilling, "unless he was constrained by his subjects."

In Chapuys's letters, truth and lies are so intermixed that all his personal stories must be received with distrust. Invariably, however, he believed and reported the most scandalous rumours which he could hear.

Everybody, he said, rejoiced at the execution of the _putaine_; but there were some who spoke variously of the King. He had heard, from good authority, that in a conversation which pa.s.sed between Mistress Seymour and the King before the arrest of the Concubine, the lady urged him to restore the Princess to the court. The King told her she was a fool; she ought to be thinking more of the children which they might expect of their own, than of the elevation of the other. The lady replied that in soliciting for the Princess, she was consulting for the good of the King, of herself, of her children should she have any, and of all the realm, as, without it, the English nation would never be satisfied. Such a conversation is not in itself likely to have been carried on _before_ Anne's arrest, and certainly not where it could be overheard by others; especially as Chapuys admitted that the King said publicly he would not marry anyone unless the Parliament invited him. One would like to know what the trustworthy authority might have been. Unfortunately for the veracity of his informant, he went on with an account of the King's personal behaviour, the accuracy of which can be tested.

"People," he said, "had found it strange that the King, after having received such ignominy, should have gone about at such a time banqueting with ladies, sometimes remaining after midnight, and returning by the river, accompanied by music and the singers of his chamber. He supped lately," the Amba.s.sador continued, "with several ladies at the house of the Bishop of Carlisle, and showed extravagant joy." The Bishop came the next morning to tell Chapuys of the visit, and added a story of the King having said that he had written a tragedy on Anne's conduct which he offered the Bishop to read.[437] Of John Kite, the Bishop of Carlisle, little is known, save that Sir William Kingston said he used to play "penny gleek" with him. But it happens that a letter exists, written on the same day as Chapuys's, which describes Henry's conduct at precisely the same period.

John Husee, the friend and agent of Lord Lisle, was in London on some errand from his employer. His business required him to speak to the King, and he said that he had been unable to obtain admittance, the King having remained in strict seclusion from the day of Anne's arrest to her execution. "His Grace," Husee wrote, "came not abroad this fortnight, except it was in the garden or in his boat, when it may become no man to interrupt him. Now that this matter is past I hope to see him."[438]

Chapuys was very clever; he may be believed, with limitations, when writing on business or describing conversations of his own with particular persons; but so malicious was he, and so careless in his matters of fact or probability, that he cannot be believed at all when reporting scandalous anecdotes which reached him from his "trustworthy authorities."

It is, however, true that, before the fortnight had expired, the King had resolved to do what the Council recommended--marry Jane Seymour, and marry her promptly, to close further solicitation from foreign Powers. There is no sign that she had herself sought so questionable an elevation. A powerful party in the State wished her to accept a position which could have few attractions, and she seems to have acquiesced without difficulty.

Francis and Charles were offering their respective Princesses; the readiest way to answer them without offence was to place the so much coveted hand out of the reach of either. On the 20th of May, the morning after Anne was beheaded, Jane Seymour was brought secretly by water to the palace at Westminster, and was then and there formally betrothed to the King. The marriage followed a few days later. On Ascension Day, the 25th of May, the King, in rejecting the offered match from Francis, said that he was not then actually married. On the 29th or 30th, Jane was formally introduced as Queen.

Chapuys was disappointed in his expectation of popular displeasure. Not a murmur was heard to break the expression of universal satisfaction. The new Queen was a general favourite; everyone knew that she was a friend of the Princess Mary, and everyone desired to see Mary replaced in her rights. Fortunately for the Princess, the attempt at escape had never been carried out. She had remained quietly watching the overthrow of her enemy, and trusting the care of her fortunes to Cromwell, who, she knew, had always been her advocate. She had avoided writing to him to intercede for her, because, as she said, "I perceived that n.o.body dared speak for me as long as that woman lived who is now gone, whom G.o.d in his mercy forgive!"[439] The time had now come for her to be received back into favour. Submission of some kind it would be necessary for her to make; and the form in which it was to be done was the difficulty. The King could not replace in the line of the succession a daughter who was openly defying the law. Cromwell drew for Mary a sketch of a letter which he thought would be sufficient. It was to acknowledge that she had offended her father, to beg his blessing and his forgiveness, and to promise obedience for the future, to congratulate him on his marriage, and to ask permission to wait on the new Queen. He showed the draft to Chapuys, for the Princess to transcribe and send. Chapuys objected that the surrender was too absolute. Cromwell said that he might alter it if he pleased, and a saving clause was introduced, not too conspicuous. She was to promise to submit in all things "under G.o.d." In this form, apparently, the letter was despatched, and was said to have given great satisfaction both to Henry and the new Queen. Now it was thought that Mary would be restored to her rank as Princess. She would be excluded from the succession only if a son or daughter should be born of the new marriage; but this did not alarm Chapuys, for "according to the opinion of many," he said, "there was no fear of any issue of either s.e.x."

On Ascension Day, the Amba.s.sador had been admitted to an audience, the first since the unprosperous discussion at Greenwich. The subject of the treaty with the Emperor had been renewed under more promising auspices.

The King had been gracious. Chapuys had told him that the Emperor desired to explain and justify the actions of which the King had complained; but before entering on a topic which might renew unpleasant feelings, he said that the Emperor had instructed him to consult the King's wishes; and he undertook to conform to them. The King listened with evident satisfaction; and a long talk followed, in the course of which the Amba.s.sador introduced the various proposals which the Emperor had made for fresh matrimonial connections. The King said that Chapuys was a bringer of good news; his own desire was to see a union of all Christian princes; if the Emperor was in earnest, he hoped that he would furnish the Amba.s.sador with the necessary powers to negotiate, or would send a plenipotentiary for that particular purpose.

The offer of the Infanta of Portugal for the King himself was, of course, declined, the choice being already made; but Cromwell said afterwards that Don Luis might perhaps be accepted for the Princess, the position of the Princess being the chief point on which the stability of all other arrangements must depend. As to the "General Council," it was not to be supposed that the King wanted to set up "a G.o.d of his own," or to separate himself from the rest of Christendom. He was as anxious as any one for a Council, but it must be a Council called by the Emperor as chief of Christian Europe. It is to be observed that Henry, as Head of the Church of England, took upon himself the entire ordering of what was or was not to be. Even the form of consulting the clergy was not so much as thought of. Chapuys could not answer for as much indifference on the Emperor's part. The Council, he thought, must be left in the Pope's hand at the outset. The Council itself, when it a.s.sembled, could do as it pleased. He suggested, however, that Cromwell should put in writing his conception of the manner in which a Council could be called by the Emperor, which Cromwell promised to do.

All things were thus appearing to run smooth. Four days later, when the marriage with Jane Seymour had been completed, Chapuys saw Henry again.

The King asked him if he had heard further from the Emperor. Chapuys was able to a.s.sent. Charles's eager letters had come in by successive posts, and one had just arrived in which he had expressed his grief and astonishment at the conduct of Anne Boleyn, had described how he had spoken to his own Council about the woman's horrible ingrat.i.tude, and had himself offered thanks to G.o.d for having discovered the conspiracy, and saved the King from so great a danger. Henry made graceful acknowledgments, replied most politely on the offer of the Infanta, for which he said he was infinitely obliged to the Emperor, and conducted the Amba.s.sador into another room to introduce him to the Queen.

Chapuys was all courtesy. At Henry's desire he kissed and congratulated Jane. The Emperor, he said, would be delighted that the King had found so good and virtuous a wife. He a.s.sured her that the whole nation was united in rejoicing at her marriage. He recommended the Princess to her care, and hoped that she would have the honourable name of peacemaker.

The King answered for her that this was her nature. She would not for the world that he went to war.

Chapuys was aware that Henry was not going to war on the side of Francis--that danger had pa.s.sed; but that he would not go to war at all was not precisely what Chapuys wished to hear. What Charles wanted was Henry's active help against the French. The fourth condition of the proposed treaty was an alliance offensive and defensive. Henry merely said he would mediate, and, if France would not agree to reasonable terms, he would then declare for the Emperor.[440]

The Emperor, like many other persons, had attributed the whole of Henry's conduct to the attractions of Anne Boleyn. He had supposed that after his eyes had been opened he would abandon all that he had done, make his peace with the Pope, and return to his old friends with renewed heartiness. He was surprised and disappointed. Mediation would do no good at all, he said. If the King would join him against France, the Emperor would undertake to make no peace without including him, and would take security for the honour and welfare of the realm. But he declined to quarrel with the Pope to please the King; and if the King would not return to the obedience of the Holy See or submit his differences with the Pope to the Emperor and the Council, he said that he could make no treaty at all with him. He directed Chapuys, however, to continue to discuss the matter in a friendly way, to gain time till it could be seen how events would turn.[441]

How events did turn is sufficiently well known. The war broke out--the French invaded Italy; the Emperor, unable to expel them, turned upon Provence, where he failed miserably with the loss of the greater part of his army.

Henry took no part. The state of Europe was considered at length before the English Council. Chapuys was heard, and the French Amba.s.sador was heard; and the result was a declaration of neutrality--the only honourable and prudent course where the choice lay between two faithless friends who, if the King had committed himself to either, would have made up their own quarrels at England's expense.

CHAPTER XXIV.

Expectation that Henry would return to the Roman Communion--Henry persists in carrying out the Reformation--The Crown and the clergy--Meeting of a new Parliament--Fresh repudiation of the Pope's authority--Complications of the succession--Att.i.tude of the Princess Mary--Her reluctant submission--The King empowered to name his successor by will--Indication of his policy--The Pilgrimage of Grace--Cost of the Reformation--The martyrs, Catholic and Protestant.

Whether Henry, on the exposure of the character of the woman for whom, in the world's union, he had quarrelled with Rome and broken the union of Christendom, would now reverse his course and return to the communion of the Apostolic See, was the question on which all minds were exercising themselves. The Pope and the European Powers were confident, believing the reports which had reached them of the discontent in England. Cranmer feared it, as he almost confessed in the letter which he wrote to the King when he first heard of the arrest of Anne. She had been conspicuously Lutheran; her family and her party were Lutheran, and the disgrace might naturally extend to the cause which they represented. The King was to show that he had not, as he said himself, "proceeded on such light grounds."

The divorce had been the spark which kindled the mine; but the explosive force was in the temper of the English nation. The English nation was weary of a tribunal which sold its decrees for money, or allowed itself to be used as a tool by the Continental Sovereigns. It was weary of the iniquities of its own Church Courts, which had plundered rich and poor at their arbitrary pleasure--of a clergy which, protected by the immunities which Becket had won for them, and restrained by no laws save those which they themselves allowed, had made their lives a scandal and their profession an offence. The property which had been granted them in pious confidence for holy uses was squandered in luxurious self-indulgence; and they had replied to the reforms which were forced upon them by disloyalty and treason. They had been coerced into obedience; they had been brought under the control of the law, punished for their crimes in spite of their sacred calling under which they had claimed exemption, and been driven into the position of ordinary citizens. Their prelates were no longer able to seize and burn _ex officio_ obnoxious preachers, or imprison or ruin under the name of heretics rash persons who dared to speak the truth of them.

In exasperation at the invasion of these time-honoured privileges, they denounced as sacrilege the statutes which had been required to restrain them. They had conspired to provoke the Pope to excommunicate their Sovereign, and solicited the Catholic Powers to invade their country and put the Reformers down with fire and sword. The King, who had been the instrument of their beneficent humiliation, did not intend either to submit the internal interests of the country to the authority of a foreign bishop, or to allow the black regiments at home to recover the power which they had so long abused.

Cromwell's commissioners were still busy on the visitation of the religious houses. Each day brought in fresh reports of their condition.

These communities, supposed to be special servants of G.o.d, had become special servants of the Devil. The eagerness with which the Pope solicited Henry's return, the a.s.surance that he had always been his friend--had always maintained that Henry was right in the divorce case, when he had a Bull ready in his desk taking his crown from him--was in itself sufficient evidence of the fitness of such a ruler to be the Supreme Judge in Christendom. Just as little could the Emperor be trusted, whose affectations of friendship were qualified by secret reservations. The King had undertaken a great and beneficent work in his own realm and meant to go through with it. The Pope might do as he pleased. The Continental Princes might quarrel or make peace, hold their Councils, settle as they liked their own affairs, in their own way; England was sufficient for herself. He had called his people under arms; he had fortified the coasts; he had regenerated the navy. The nation, or the n.o.bler part of it, he believed to be loyal to himself--to approve what he had done and to be ready to stand by him. He was not afraid of attack from abroad. If there was a rebellious spirit at home, if the clergy were mutinous because the bit was in their mouths, if the Peers of the old blood were alarmed at the growth of religious liberty and were discontented because they could no longer deal with it in the old way, the King was convinced that he was acting for the true interests of the country, that Parliament would uphold him, and that he could control both the ecclesiastics and the n.o.bles. The world should see that the reforms which he had introduced into England were not the paltry accidents of a domestic scandal, but the first steps of a revolution deliberately resolved on and sternly carried out which was to free the island for ever from the usurped authority of an Italian Prelate, and from the poisonous influences within the realm of a corrupt and demoralising superst.i.tion.

The call of Parliament after Anne's execution was the strongest evidence of confidence in his people which Henry had yet given. He had much to acknowledge and much to ask. He had to confess that, although he had been right in demanding a separation from his brother's wife, he had fatally mistaken the character of the woman whom he had chosen to take her place.

The succession which he had hoped to establish he had made more intricate than before. He had now three children, all technically illegitimate. The Duke of Richmond was the son of the only mistress with whom he was ever known to have been really connected. The Duke was now eighteen years old.

He had been educated as a Prince, but had no position recognised by the law. Elizabeth's mother had acknowledged to having committed herself before her marriage with the King, and many persons doubted whether Elizabeth was the King's true daughter. Mary's claim was justly considered as the best, for, though her mother's marriage had been declared illegal, she had been born _bona fide parentum_. What Parliament would do in such extraordinary circ.u.mstances could not be foreseen with any certainty, and the elections had to be made with precipitancy and without time for preparation. The writs were issued on the 7th of May. The meeting was to be on the 8th of June. The Crown could influence or control the elections at some particular places. At Canterbury Cromwell named the representatives who were to be chosen,[442] as, till the Reform Bill of 1832, they continued to be named by the patrons of boroughs. Yet it would be absurd to argue from single instances that the Crown could do what it pleased. Even with leisure to take precautions and with the utmost exercise of its powers, it could only affect the returns, in the great majority of the const.i.tuencies, through the Peers and landowners, and the leading citizens in the corporations. With only four weeks to act in, a Queen to try and execute, and a King to marry in the interval, no ingenuity and no industry could have sufficed to secure a House of Commons whose subserviency could be counted on, if subserviency was what the King required. It is clear only that, so far as concerned the general opinion of the country, the condemnation of Anne Boleyn had rather strengthened than impaired his popularity. As Queen she had been feared and disliked.

Her punishment was regarded as a creditable act of justice, and the King was compa.s.sionated as a sufferer from abominable ingrat.i.tude.

Little is known in detail of the proceedings of this Parliament. The Acts remain: the debates are lost. The princ.i.p.al difficulties with which it had to deal concerned Anne's trial and the disposition of the inheritance of the Crown. On the matter of real importance, on the resolution of King and Legislature to go forward with the Reformation, all doubts were promptly dispelled. An Act was pa.s.sed without opposition rea.s.serting the extinction of the Pope's authority, and another taking away the protection of sanctuary from felonious priests. The succession was a harder problem. Day after day it had been debated in the Council. Lord Suss.e.x had proposed that, as all the children of the King were illegitimate, the male should be preferred to the female and the crown be settled on the Duke of Richmond.[443] Richmond was personally liked. He resembled his father in appearance and character, and the King himself was supposed to favour this solution. With the outer world the favourite was the Princess Mary. Both she and her mother were respected for a misfortune which was not due to faults of theirs, and the Princess was the more endeared by the danger to which she was believed to have been exposed through the machinations of Anne. The new Queen was her strongest advocate, and the King's affection for her had not been diminished even when she had tried him the most. He could not have been ignorant of her correspondence with Chapuys: he probably knew that she had wished to escape out of the realm, and that the Pope, who was now suing to him, had meant to bestow his own crown upon her. But her qualities were like his own, tough and unmalleable, and in the midst of his anger he had admired her resolution. Every one expected that she would be restored to her rank after Anne's death. The King had apparently been satisfied with her letter to him. Cromwell was her friend, and Chapuys, who had qualified her submission, was triumphant and confident. He was led to expect that an Act would be introduced declaring her the next heir--nay, he had thought that such an Act had been pa.s.sed.

Unfortunately for him the question of her acknowledgment of the Act of Supremacy was necessarily revived. Had she or had she not accepted it? The Act had been imposed, with the Statute of Treasons attached, as a test of loyalty to the Reformation. It was impossible to place her nearest to the throne as long as she refused obedience to a law essential to the national independence. To refuse was to confess of a purpose of undoing her father's work, should he die and the crown descend to her. She had supposed that "she was out of her trouble" while she had saved her conscience by the reservation in her submission. Chapuys found her again "in extreme perplexity and anger." The reservation had been observed. The Duke of Norfolk, Lord Suss.e.x, a Bishop, and other Privy Councillors, had come with a message to her, like those which had been so often carried ineffectually to her mother, to represent the necessity of obedience.

Chapuys said that she had confounded them with her wise answers, and that, when they could not meet her arguments, they "told her that, if she was their daughter, they would knock her head against the wall till it was as soft as a baked apple." In pa.s.sing through Mary and through Chapuys the words, perhaps, received some metaphorical additions. It is likely enough, however, that Norfolk, who was supporting her claims with all his power, was irritated at the revival of the old difficulties which he had hoped were removed. The Princess "in her extreme necessity" wrote for advice to the Amba.s.sador. The Emperor was no longer in a condition to threaten, and to secure Mary's place as next in the succession was of too vital importance to the Imperialists to permit them to encourage her in scruples of conscience. Chapuys answered frankly that, if the King persisted, she must do what he required. The Emperor had distinctly said so. Her life was precious, she must hide her real feelings till a time came for the redress of the disorders of the realm. Nothing was demanded of her expressly against G.o.d or the Articles of Faith, and G.o.d looked to intentions rather than acts.

Mary still hesitated. She had the Tudor obstinacy, and she tried her will against her father's. The King was extremely angry. He had believed that she had given way and that the troubles which had distracted his family were at last over. He had been exceptionally well-disposed towards her. He had probably decided to be governed by the wishes of the people and to appoint her by statute presumptive heir, and she seemed determined to make it impossible for him. He suspected that she was being secretly encouraged. To defend her conduct, as Cromwell ventured to do, provoked him the more, for he felt, truly, that to give way was to abandon the field. Lady Hussey was sent to the Tower; Lord Exeter and Sir William Fitzwilliam were suspended from attendance on the Council; and even Cromwell, for four or five days, counted himself a lost man. Jane Seymour interceded in vain. To refuse to acknowledge the supremacy was treason, and had been made treason for ample reason. Mary, as the first subject in the realm, could not be allowed to deny it. Henry sent for the Judges, to consider what was to be done, and the Court was once more in terror. The Judges advised that a strict form of submission should be drawn, and that the Princess should be required to sign it. If she persisted in her refusal, she would then be liable to the law. The difficulty was overcome, or evaded, in a manner characteristic of the system to which Mary so pa.s.sionately adhered. Chapuys drew a secret protest that, in submitting, she was yielding only to force. Thus guarded, he a.s.sured her that her consent would not be binding, that the Pope would not only refrain from blaming her, but would highly approve. She was still unsatisfied, till she made him promise to write to the Imperial Amba.s.sador at Rome to procure a secret absolution from the Pope for the full satisfaction of her conscience. Thus protected, she disdainfully set her name to the paper prepared by the Judges, without condescending to read it, and the marked contempt, in Chapuys's opinion, would serve as an excuse for her in the future.[444]

While the crisis lasted the Council were in permanent session. Timid Peers were alarmed at the King's peremptoriness, and said that it might cost him his throne. The secret process by which Mary had been brought to yield may have been conjectured, and her resistance was not forgotten, but she had signed what was demanded, and it was enough. In the Court there was universal delight. Chapuys congratulated Cromwell, and Cromwell led him to believe that the crown would be settled as he wished. The King and Queen drove down to Richmond to pay the Princess a visit. Henry gave her a handsome present of money and said that now she might have anything that she pleased. The Queen gave her a diamond. She was to return to the court and resume her old station. One cloud only remained. If it was generally understood that the heir presumptive in her heart detested the measures in which she had formally acquiesced, the country could no longer be expected to support a policy which would be reversed on the King's death. Mary's conduct left little doubt of her real feelings, and therefore it was not held to be safe to give her by statute the position which her friends desired for her. The facility with which the Pope could dispense with inconvenient obligations rendered a verbal acquiescence an imperfect safeguard. Parliament, therefore, did not, after all, entail the crown upon her, in the event of the King's present marriage being unfruitful, but left her to deserve it and empowered the King to name his own successor.

Chapuys, however, was able to console himself with the reflection that the b.a.s.t.a.r.d, as he called Elizabeth, was now out of the question. The Duke of Richmond was ill--sinking under the same weakness of const.i.tution which had been so fatal in the Tudor family and of which he, in fact, died a few weeks later. The prevailing opinion was that the King could never have another child. Mary's prospects, therefore, were tolerably "secure. I must admit," Chapuys wrote on the 8th of July, "that her treatment improves every day. She never had so much liberty as now, or was served with so much state even by the little b.a.s.t.a.r.d's waiting-women. She will want nothing in future but the name of Princess of Wales,[445] and that is of no consequence, for all the rest she will have more abundantly than before."

Mary, in fact, now wanted nothing save the Pope's pardon for having abjured his authority. Chapuys had undertaken that it would be easily granted. The Emperor had himself asked for it, yet not only could not Cifuentes obtain the absolution, but he did not so much as dare to speak to Paul on the subject. The absolution for the murder of an Archbishop of Dublin had been bestowed cheerfully and instantly on Fitzgerald. Mary was left with perjury on her conscience, and no relief could be had. There appeared to be some technical difficulty. "Unless she retracted and abjured in the presence of the persons before whom she took the oath, it was said that the Pope's absolution would be of no use to her." There was, perhaps, another objection. Cifuentes imperfectly trusted Paul. He feared that if he pressed the request the secret would be betrayed and that Mary's life would be in danger.[446]

Time, perhaps, and reflection alleviated Mary's remorse and enabled her to dispense with the Papal anodyne, while Cromwell further comforted the Amba.s.sador in August by telling him that the King felt he was growing old, that he was hopeless of further offspring, and was thinking seriously of making Mary his heir after all.[447]

Age the King could not contend with, but for the rest he had carried his policy through. The first act of the Reformation was closing, and he was left in command of the situation. The curtain was to rise again with the Lincolnshire and Yorkshire rebellion, to be followed by the treason of the Poles. But there is no occasion to tell a story over again which I can tell no better than I have done already, nor does it belong to the subject of the present volume. The Pilgrimage of Grace was the outbreak of the conspiracy encouraged by Chapuys to punish Henry, and to stop the progress of the Reformation; Chapuys's successors in the time of Elizabeth followed his example; and with them all the result was the same--the ruin of the cause which with such weapons they were trying to maintain, and the deaths on the scaffold of the victims of visionary hopes and promises which were never to be made good.

All the great persons whom Chapuys names as willing to engage in the enterprise--the Peers, the Knights, who, with the least help from the Emperor, would hurl the King from his throne, Lord Darcy and Lord Hussey, the Bishop of Rochester, as later on, the Marquis of Exeter, Lord Montague, and his mother--sank one after another into b.l.o.o.d.y graves. They mistook their imaginations for facts, their pa.s.sions for arguments, and the vain talk of an unscrupulous Amba.s.sador for solid ground on which to venture into treason. In their dreams they saw the phantom of the Emperor coming over with an army to help them. Excited as they had been, they could not part with their hopes. They knew that they were powerful in numbers. Their preparations had been made, and many thousands of clergy and gentlemen and yeomen had been kindled into crusading enthusiasm. The flame burst out sporadically and at intervals, without certain plan or purpose, at a time when the Emperor could not help them, even if he had ever seriously intended it, and thus the conflagration, which at first blazed through all the northern counties, was extinguished before it turned to civil war. The common people who had been concerned in it suffered but lightly. But the roots had penetrated deep; the conspiracy was of long standing; the intention of the leaders was to carry out the Papal censures, and put down what was called heresy. The rising was really formidable, for the loyalty of many of the great n.o.bles was not above suspicion, and, if not promptly dealt with, it might have enveloped the whole island. Those who rise in arms against Governments must take the consequences of failure, and the leaders who had been the active spirits in the sedition were inexorably punished. In my History of the time I have understated the number of those who were executed. Care was taken to select only those who had been definitely prominent. Nearly three hundred were hanged in all--in batches of twenty-five or thirty, in each of the great northern cities; and, to emphasize the example and to show that the sacerdotal habit would no longer protect treason, the orders were to select particularly the priests and friars who had been engaged. The rising was undertaken in the name of religion. The clergy had been the most eager of the instigators. Chapuys had told the Emperor that of all Henry's subjects the clergy were the most disaffected, and the most willing to supply money for an invasion. They were therefore legitimately picked out for retribution, and in Lincoln, York, Hull, Doncaster, Newcastle, and Carlisle, the didactic spectacle was witnessed of some scores of reverend persons swinging for the crows to eat in the sacred dress of their order. A severe lesson was required to teach a superst.i.tious world that the clerical immunities existed no longer and that priests who broke the law would suffer like common mortals; but it must be clearly understood that, if these men could have had their way, the hundreds who suffered would have been thousands, and the victims would have been the poor men who were looking for a purer faith in the pages of the New Testament.

When we consider the rivers of blood which were shed elsewhere before the Protestant cause could establish itself, the real wonder is the small cost in human life of the mighty revolution successfully accomplished by Henry.

With him, indeed, Chapuys must share the honour. The Catholics, if they had pleased, might have pressed their objections and their remonstrances in Parliament; and a nation as disposed for compromise as the English might have mutilated the inevitable changes. Chapuys's counsels tempted them into more dangerous and less pardonable roads. By encouraging them in secret conspiracies he made them a menace to the peace of the realm. He brought Fisher to the block. He forced the Government to pa.s.s the Act of Supremacy as a defence against treason, and was thus the cause also of the execution of Sir Thomas More and the Charterhouse Monks.