The Leading Facts of English History Part 33

The magnificent monastic buildings throughout England were now stripped of everything of value, and left as ruins. (See map opposite.) The beautiful windowes of stained gla.s.s were wantonly broken; the images of the saints were cast down from their niches; the chimes of bells were melted and cast into cannon; while the valuable libraries were torn up and sold to grocers and soap boilers for wrapping paper.

At Canterbury, Becket's tomb (S170) was broken open, and after he had been nearly four centuries in his grave, the saint was summoned to answer a charge of rebellion and treason. The case was tried at Westminster Abbey, the martyr's bones were sentenceeed to be burned, and the jewels and rich offerings of his shrine were seized by the King.

Among the few monastic buildings which escaped was the beautiful abbey church, now the cathedral of Peterborough, where Catharine of Aragon (S345), who died soon after the King's marriage with her rival, was buried. Henry had the grace to give orders that on her account it should be spared, saying that he would leave to her memory "one of the goodliest monuments in Christendom."

The great estates thus suddenly acquired by the Crown were granted to favorites or thrown away at the gambling table. "It is from this date," says Hallam, "that the leading families of England, both within and without the peerage, became conspicuous through having obtained possession of the monastery lands." These were estimated to comprise about one fourth of the whole area of the kingdom.

353. Effects of the Destruction of Monasteries.

The sweeping character of this act had a twofold effect. First, it made the King more absolute than before, for, since it removed the abbots, who had held seats in the House of Lords, that body was made just so much smaller and less able to resist the royal will.

Next, the abolition of so many religious inst.i.tutions necessarily caused much misery, for the greater part of the monks and all of the nuns were turned out upon the world dest.i.tute of means. In the end, however, no permanent injury was done, since the monasteries, by their profuse and indiscriminate charity, had undoubtably encouraged much of the very pauperism which they had relieved.

354. Distress among the Laboring Cla.s.ses.

An industrial revolution was also in progress at this time, which was productive of widespread suffering. It had begun early in Henry's reign through the great numbers of discharged soldiers, who could not readily find work.

Sir Thomas More had given a striking picture of their miserable condition in his "Utopia," a book in which he urged the government to consider measures for their relief; but the evil had since become much worse. Farmers, having discovered that wool growing was more profitable than the raising of grain, had turned their fields into sheep pastures; so that a shepherd with his dog now took the place of several families of laborers.

This change brought mult.i.tudes of poor people to the verge of starvation; and as the monasteries no longer existed to hold out a helping hand, the whole realm was overrun with beggars and thieves.

Bishop Latimer, a noted preacher of that day, declared that if every farmer should raise two acres of hemp, it would not make rope enough to hang them all. Henry, however, set to work with characteristic vigor and made away, it is said, with great numbers, but without materially abating the evil (S403).

355. Execution of Anne Boleyn; Marriage with Jane Seymour (1536).

Less than three years after her coronation, the new Queen, Anne Boleyn (SS343, 349), for whom Henry had "turned England and Europe upside down," was accused of unfaithfulness. She was sent a prisoner to the Tower. A short time after, her head rolled in the dust, the light of its beauty gone out forever.

The next morning Henry married Jane Seymour, Anne's maid of honor.

Parliament pa.s.sed an act of approval, declaring that it was all done "of the King's most excellent goodness." It also declared Henry's two previous marriages, with Catharine and with Anne Boleyn, void, and affirmed that their children, the Princesses Mary and Elizabeth, were not lawfully the King's daughters. A later act of Parliament gave Henry the extraordinary power of naming his successor to the crown.[1]

A year afterwards Henry's new Queen died, leaving an infant son, Edward. She was no sooner gone than the King began looking about for some one to take her place.

[1] By his last will he made Mary and Elizabeth heirs to the crown in case all male and female issue by himself or his son Edward failed (S361). Henry's eldest sister, Margaret (see No. 3 in Genealogical Table on page 207), was pa.s.sed by entirely. But long after Henry's death, Parliament set his will aside (1603) and made James I (a descendent of Margaret) King of England.

356. More Marriages (1540).

Thomas Cromwell, the King's trusted adviser (S351), succeeded in persuading his master to agree to marry Anne of Cleves, a German Protestant Princess. Henry had never seen her, but her portrait represented her as a woman of surpa.s.sing beauty.

When Anne reached England, Henry hurried to meet her with all a lover's ardor. To his dismay, he found that not only was she ridiculously ugly, but that she could speak--so he said--"nothing but Dutch," of which he did not understand a word. Matters, however, had gone too far to retract, and the marriage was duly solemnized (1540).

The King obtained a divorce within six months, and then took his revenge by cutting off Cromwell's head. What is more, he cut it off by virtue of that very Act of Attainder which Cromwell had used so unscrupulously in Henry's behalf (S351).

The same year (1540) Henry married Catharine Howard, a fascinating girl still in her teens, whose charms so moved the King that it is said he was tempted to have a special thanksgiving service prepared to commemorate the day he found her.

Unfortunately, Catharine was accused of having been guilty of misconduct before her marriage. She confessed her fault, but for such cases Henry had no mercy. The Queen was tried for high treason, and soon walked that fatal road in which Anne Boleyn had preceded her (S355).

Not to be baffled in his matrimonial experiments, the King took Catherine Parr for his sixth and last wife (1543). She was inclined to be a zealous Protestant, and she too might have gone to the block, on a charge of heresy, but her quick wit came to her rescue. She flattered the King's self-conceit as a profound theologian and the compliment saved her life.

357. Henry's Action respecting Religion.

Though occupied with these rather numerous domestic infelicities, Henry was not idle in other directions. By an act known as the Six Articles, or, as the Protestants called it, the "b.l.o.o.d.y Act," or the "Whip with Six Lashes" (1539), the King established a new and peculiar form of religion. In words, at least, it seemed to be practically the same as that upheld by the Pope, but with the Pope left out.[1]

[1] The Six Articles: The chief article ordered that all persons who denied the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation should be burned at the stake as heretics and that all their possessions should be forfeited to the Crown. The remaining five articles affirmed the obligation of all persons to accept and obey certain other Catholic doctrines under pain of punishment for felony, if they refused.

Geographically, the country was about equally divided between Catholicism and Protestantism. The northwestern half clung to the ancient faith; the southeastern half, including most of the large cities where Wycliffe's doctrines had formerly prevailed was favorable to the Reformation.

On the one hand, Henry prohibited the Lutheran or Protestant doctrine (S340); on the other, he caused the Bible to be translated (SS254, 339), and ordered a copy to be chained to a desk in every parish church in England (1538); but though all persons might now freely read the Scriptures, no one but the clergy was allowed to interpret them.

Later in his reign, the King became alarmed at the spread of discussion about religious subjects, and prohibited the reading of the Bible by the "lower sort of people."

358. Henry versus Treason.

Men now found themselves in a strange and cruel delimma. If it was dangerous to believe too much, it was equally dangerous to believe too little. Traitor and heretic were dragged to execution on the same hurdle; for Henry burned as heretics those who declared their belief in Protestantism, and hanged or beheaded, as traitors, those who acknowledged the authority of the Pope and denied the supremacy of the King (S349).

Thus Anne Askew, a young and beautiful woman, was nearly wrenched asunder on the rack, in the hope of making her implicate the Queen in her heresy. She was afterward burned because she insisted that the bread and wine used in the communion service seemed to her to be simply bread and wine, and not in any sense the actual body and blood of Christ, as the King's statute of the Six Articles (S357) solemnly declared.

On the other hand, the aged Countess of Salisbury suffered for treason; but with a spirit matching the King's, she refused to kneel at the block, and told the executioner he must get her gray head off as best he could.

359. Henry's Death.

But the time was at hand when Henry was to cease his hangings, beheadings, and marriages. Worn out with debauchery, he died at the age of fifty-six, a loathsome, unwieldy, and helpless ma.s.s of corruption. In his will he left a large sum of money to pay for perpetual prayers for the repose of his soul. Sir Walter Raleigh said of him, "If all the pictures and patterns of a merciless prince were lost in the world, they might all again be painted to the life out of the story of this king."

It may be well to remember this, and along with it this other saying of one of the ablest writers on English const.i.tutional history, that "the world owes some of tis greatest debts to men from whose memory it recoils."[1] The obligation it is under to Henry VIII is that through his influence--no matter what the motive--England was lifted up out of the old medieval ruts, and placed squarely and securely on the new highway of national progress.

[1] W. Stubbs's "Const.i.tutional History of England."

360. Summary.

In this reign we find that though England lost much of her former political freedom, yet she gained that order and peace which came from the iron hand of absolute power. Next, from the destruction of the monasteries, and the sale or gift of their lands to favorites of the King, three results ensued:

1. A new n.o.bility was in great measure created, dependent on the Crown.

2. The House of Lords was made less powerful by the removal of the abbots who had had seats in it.

3. Pauperism and distress were temporarily increased.

4. Finally, England completely severed her connection with the Pope, and established for the first time an independent National Church, having the King as its head.

Edward VI--1547-1553

361. Bad Government; Seizure of Unenclosed Lands; High Rents; Latimer's Sermon.

Edward, son of Henry VIII by Jane Seymour (S355), died at sixteen. In the first part of his reign of six years the goverment was managed by his uncle, the Duke of Somerset, an extreme Protestant, whose intentions were good, but who lacked practical judgement. During the latter part of his life Edward fell under the control of the Duke of Northumberland, who was the head of a band of scheming and profligate men.

They, with other n.o.bles, seized the unenclosed lands of the country and fenced them in for sheep pastures, thus driving into beggary many who had formerly got a good part of their living from these commons.

At the same time farm rents rose in somee cases ten and even twenty fold,[1] depriving thousands of the means of subsistence, and reducing to poverty many who had been in comfortable circ.u.mstances.

[1] This was oweing to the greed for land on the part of the mercantile cla.s.ses, who had now acquired wealth, and wished to become landed proprietors. See Froude's "England."

The bitter complaints of the sufferers found expression in Bishop Latimer's outspoken sermon, preached before King Edward, in which he said: "My father was a yeoman [small farmer], and had no lands of his own, only he had a farm of three or four pounds [rent] by year, and hereupon tilled so much as kept half a dozen men; he had walk [pasture] for a hundred sheep, and my mother milked thirty kine.

"He was able and did find the King a harness [suit of armor] with himself and his horse, until he came to the place where he should receive the King's wages. I can remember that I buckled his harness when he went into Blackheath Field. He kept me to school, or else I had not been able to have preached before the King's majesty now. He married my sisters with five pounds [dower] ... apiece. He kept hospitality for his poor neighbors, and some alms he gave to the poor.

"And all this he did off the said farm, where he that now hath it payeth sixteen pounds a year or more, and is not able to do anything for his prince, for himself, nor for his children, or give a cup of drink to the poor." But as Latimer patheticall said, "Let the preacher preach till his tongue be worn to the stumps, nothing is amended."[1]

[1] Latimer's first sermon before King Edward VI, 8th of March, 1549.