The Divorce of Catherine of Aragon Part 12

The controversy had lasted five years, and there had been no indication of any such purpose. The King said that it was Catherine who had made the Princess so obstinate. Daughters owed some obedience to their mothers, but their first duty was to the father. This Chapuys did not dispute, but proposed as an alternative that she should reside with her old governess, Lady Salisbury. The King said the Countess was a foolish woman, and of no experience.[305]

The difficulty was very great. To refuse so natural a request was to appear hard and unfeeling; yet to allow Catherine and Mary to be together was to furnish a head to the disaffection, of the extent of which the King was perfectly aware. He knew Catherine, and his words about her are a key to much of their relations to one another. "She was of such high courage," he said, "that, with her daughter at her side, she might raise an army and take the field against him with as much spirit as her mother Isabella."[306]

Catherine of Aragon had qualities with which history has not credited her.

She was no patient, suffering saint, but a bold and daring woman, capable, if the opportunity was offered her, of making Henry repent of what he had done. But would the opportunity ever come? Charles was still silent.

Chapuys continued to feed the fire with promises. Granvelle, Charles's Minister, might be more persuasive than himself. To Granvelle the Amba.s.sador wrote "that the Concubine had bribed some one to pretend a revelation from G.o.d that she was not to conceive children while the Queen and the Princess were alive. The Concubine had sent the man with the message to the King, and never ceased [Wolsey had called Anne 'the night crow'] to exclaim that the ladies were rebels and traitresses, and deserved to die."[307]

Norfolk, irritated at Anne's insolence to him, withdrew from court in ill-humour. He complained to Reginald Pole's brother, Lord Montague, that his advice was not attended to, and that his niece was intolerable. The Marquis of Exeter regretted to Chapuys that the chance had not been allowed him so far to shed his blood for the Queen and Princess. "Let the movement begin, and he would not be the last to join." Mary, notwithstanding the precautions taken to keep her safe, had not parted with her hope of escape. If she could not be with her mother she thought the Emperor might, perhaps, intercede with the King to remove her from under Mrs. Shelton's charge. The King might be brought to consent; and then, Chapuys said, with a pinnace and two s.h.i.+ps in the river, she might still be carried off when again at Greenwich, as he could find means to get her out of the house at any hour of the night.[308]

At length the suspense was at an end, and the long-waited-for decision of the Emperor arrived. He had considered, he said, the communications of Lord Darcy and Lord Sandys; he admitted that the disorders of England required a remedy; but an armed interference was at the present time impossible.[309] It was a poor consolation to the English Peers and clergy; and there was worse behind. Not only the Emperor did not mean to declare war against Henry, but, spite of Catherine, spite of excommunication, spite of heresy, he intended, if possible, to renew the old alliance between England and the House of Burgundy. Politics are the religion of princes, and if they are wise the peace of the world weighs more with them than orthodoxy and family contentions. Honour, pride, Catholic obligations recommended a desperate stroke. Prudence and a higher duty commanded Charles to abstain. Sir John Wallop, the English representative at Paris, was a sincere friend of Queen Catherine, but was unwilling, for her sake, to see her plunge into an insurrectionary whirlpool. Viscount Hannart, a Flemish n.o.bleman with English connections, was Charles's Minister at the same Court. Together they discussed the situation of their respective countries. Both agreed that a war between Henry and the Emperor would be a calamity to mankind; while in alliance they might hold in check the impatient ambition of France. Wallop suggested that they might agree by mutual consent to suspend their differences on the divorce; might let the divorce pa.s.s in silence for future settlement, and be again friends.

The proposal was submitted to the Spanish Council of State. The objections to it were the wrongs done, and still being done, to the Queen and Princess in the face of the Pope's sentence, and the obligations of the Emperor to see that sentence enforced. An arrangement between the Emperor and the King of England on the terms suggested would be ill received in Christendom, would dispirit the two ladies, and their friends in England who had hitherto supported the claims of the Princess Mary to the succession; while it might, further, encourage other princes to divorce their wives on similar grounds. In favour of a treaty, on the other hand, were the notorious designs of the French King. France was relying on the support of England. If nothing was done to compose the existing differences the King of England might be driven to desperate courses. The Faith of the Church would suffer. The General Council, so anxiously looked for, would be unable to meet. The French King would be encouraged to go to war. Both he and the King of England would support the German schism, and the lives of the Princess and her mother would probably be sacrificed. A provisional agreement might modify the King of England's action, the Church might be saved, the ladies' lives be secured, and doubt and distrust be introduced between England and France. The Emperor could then deal with the Turks, and other difficulties could be tided over till a Council could meet and settle everything.[310]

Chapuys had written so confidently on the strength of the insurrectionary party that it was doubted whether choice between the alternative courses might not better be left for him to decide. Charles, who could better estimate the value of the promises of disaffected subjects, determined otherwise. The Amba.s.sador, therefore, was informed that war would be inconvenient. Lord Darcy's sword must remain in the scabbard, and an attempt be made for reconciliation on the lines suggested by Sir John Wallop. Meanwhile, directions were given to the Inquisitors at Seville to be less precipitate in their dealings with English seamen.

From the first it had been Cromwell's hope and conviction that an open quarrel would be escaped. The French party in the English Council--Anne Boleyn, her family, and friends--had been urging the alliance with France, and a general attack on Charles's scattered dominions. Cromwell, though a Protestant in religion, distrusted an a.s.sociate who, when England was once committed, might make his own terms and leave Henry to his fate. In politics Cromwell had been consistently Imperialist. He had already persuaded the King to allow the Princess to move nearer to Kimbolton, where her mother's physician could have charge of her. He sent thanks to Charles in the King's name for his interference with the Holy Office. He left nothing undone to soften the friction and prepare for a reconciliation. Catherine and Mary he perceived to be the only obstacle to a return to active friends.h.i.+p. If the broken health of one, and the acute illness of the other, should have a fatal termination, as a politician he could not but feel that it would be an obstacle happily removed.

Chapuys's intrigue with the confederate Peers had been continued to the latest moment. All arrangements had been made for their security when the rising should break out. Darcy himself was daily looking for the signal, and begged only for timely notice of the issue of the Emperor's manifesto to escape to his castle in the north.[311] The Amba.s.sador had now to trim his sails on the other tack. The Emperor was ready to allow the execution of Clement's sentence to stand over till the General Council, without prejudice to the rights of parties, provided an engagement was made for the respectful treatment of the Queen and Princess, and a promise given that their friends should be unmolested. To Catherine the disappointment was hard to bear. The talk of a treaty was the death-knell of the hopes on which she had been feeding. A close and confidential intercourse was established between Chapuys and Cromwell to discuss the preliminary conditions, Chapuys, ill liking his work, desiring to fail, and on the watch for any point on which to raise a suspicion.

The Princess was the first difficulty. Cromwell had promised that she should be moved to her mother's neighbourhood. She had been sent no nearer than Ampthill. Cromwell said that he would do what he could, but the subject was disagreeable to the King, and he could say no more. He entered at once, however, on the King's desire to be again on good terms with the Emperor. The King had instructed him to discuss the whole situation with Chapuys, and it would be unfortunate, he said, if the interests of two women were allowed to interfere with weighty matters of State. The Queen had been more than once seriously ill, and her life was not likely to be prolonged. The Princess was not likely to live either; and it did not appear that either in Spain or France there was much anxiety for material alteration in their present position. Meanwhile, the French were pa.s.sionately importuning the King to join in a war against the Emperor.

Cromwell said that he had been himself opposed to it, and the present moment, when the Emperor was engaged with the Turks, was the last which the King would choose for such a purpose. The object to be arrived at was the pacification of Christendom and the general union of all the leading Powers. The King desired it as much as he, and had, so far, prevented war from being declared by France.

It was true that the peace of the world was of more importance than the complaints of Catherine and Mary. Catherine had rejected a compromise when the Emperor himself recommended it, and Mary had defied her father and had defied Parliament at her mother's bidding. There were limits to the sacrifices which they were ent.i.tled to demand. Chapuys protested against Cromwell's impression that the European Powers were indifferent. The strongest interest was felt in their fate, he said, and many inconveniences would follow should harm befall them. The world would certainly believe that they had met with foul play. The Emperor would be charged with having caused it by neglecting to execute the Pope's sentence, and it would be said also that, but for the expectations which the Emperor had held out to them of defending their cause, they would themselves have conformed to the King's wishes; they would then have been treated with due regard and have escaped their present miseries. Cromwell undertook that the utmost care and vigilance should be observed that hurt should not befall them. The Princess, he said, he loved as much as Chapuys himself could love her, and nothing that he could do for them should be neglected; but the Amba.s.sador and the Emperor's other agents were like hawks who soared high to stoop more swiftly on their prey. Their object was to have the Princess declared next in succession to the crown, and that was impossible owing to the late statutes.

Chapuys reported what had pa.s.sed to his master, but scarcely concealed his contempt for the business in which he was engaged. "I cannot tell," he wrote, "what sort of a treaty could be made with this King as long as he refuses to restore the Queen and Princess, or repair the hurts of the Church and the Faith, which grow worse every day. No later than Sunday last a preacher raised a question whether the body of Christ was contained, or not, in the consecrated wafer. Your Majesty may consider whither such propositions are tending."[312]

A still more important conversation followed a few days later. It can hardly be doubted, in the face of Chapuys's repeated declaration that both Catherine and her daughter were in personal danger, that Anne Boleyn felt her position always precarious as long as they were alive, and refused to acknowledge her marriage. She perhaps felt that it would go hard with herself in the event of a successful insurrection. She had urged, as far as she dared, that they should be tried under the statute; but Henry would not allow such a proposal to be so much as named to him. Other means, however, might be found to make away with them, and Sir Arthur Darcy, Lord Darcy's son, thought they would be safer in the King's hands in the Tower than in their present residence. "The devil of a Concubine would never rest till she had gained her object."

The air was thick with these rumours when Chapuys and Cromwell again met.

The overtures had been commenced by the Emperor. Cromwell said the King had given him a statement in writing that he was willing to renew his old friends.h.i.+p with the Emperor and make a new treaty with him, if proper safeguards could be provided for his honour and reputation; but it was to be understood distinctly that he would not permit the divorce question to be reopened; he would rather forfeit his crown and his life than consent to it, or place himself in subjection to any foreign authority; this was his firm resolution, which he desired Chapuys to make known to the Emperor.

The Spanish Ministry had been willing that the Pope's sentence should be revised by a General Council. Why, Chapuys asked, might not the King consent also to refer the case to the Council? The King knew that he was right. He had once been willing--why should he now refuse? A Council, it had been said, would be called by the Pope, and would be composed of clergy who were not his friends; but Chapuys would undertake that there should be no unfair dealing. Were the Pope and clergy to intend harm, all the Princes of Christendom would interfere. The Emperor would recommend nothing to which the King would not be willing to subscribe. The favourable verdict of a Council would restore peace in England, and would acquit the Emperor's conscience. The Emperor, as matters stood, was bound to execute the sentence which had been delivered, and could not hold back longer without a hope of the King's submission.

Cromwell admitted the reasonableness of Chapuys's suggestion. The Emperor was showing by the advances which he had commenced that he desired a reconciliation. A Council controlled by the princes of Europe might perhaps be a useful instrument. Cromwell promised an answer in two days.

Then, after a pause, he returned to the subject of which he had spoken before:--In a matter of so much consequence to the world as the good intelligence of himself and the King of England, he said that the Emperor ought not to hesitate on account of the Queen and the Princess. They were but mortal. If the Princess was to die, her death would be no great misfortune, when the result of it would be the union and friends.h.i.+p of the two Princes.[313] He begged Chapuys to think it over when alone and at leisure. He then went on to inquire (for Chapuys had not informed him that the Emperor had already made up his mind to an arrangement) whether the ladies' business might not be pa.s.sed over silently in the new treaty, and be left in suspense for the King's life. A General Council might meet to consider the other disorders of Christendom, or a congress might be held, previously appointed jointly by the King and the Emperor, when the ladies'

rights might be arranged without mystery. Then once more, and, as Chapuys thought, with marked emphasis, he asked again what harm need be feared if the Princess were to die. The world might mutter, but why should it be resented by the Emperor?[314]

Chapuys says that he replied that he would not dwell on the trouble which might arise if the Princess suddenly died in a manner so suspicious. G.o.d forbid that such a thing should be! How could the Emperor submit to the reproach of having consented to the death of his cousin, and sold her for the sake of a peace?

Chapuys professed to believe, and evidently wished the Emperor to believe, that Cromwell was seriously proposing that the Princess Mary should be made away with. A single version of a secret conversation is an insufficient evidence of an intended monstrous crime. We do not know in what language it was carried on. Cromwell spoke no language but English with exactness, and Chapuys understood English imperfectly. The recent and alarming illness of the Princess, occasioned by restraint, fear, and irritation, had made her condition a constant subject of Chapuys's complaints, and Cromwell may have been thinking and speaking only of her dying under the natural consequences of prolonged confinement. Chapuys's unvarying object was to impress on the Emperor that her life was in danger. But Cromwell he admitted had been uniformly friendly to Mary, and, had foul play been really contemplated, the Emperor's Amba.s.sador was the last person to whom the intention would have been communicated.

The conversation did not end with Chapuys's answer. Cromwell went on, he said (still dwelling on points most likely to wound Charles), to rage against popes and cardinals, saying that he hoped the race would soon be extinct, and that the world would be rid of their abomination and tyranny.

Then he spoke again of France, and of the pressure laid on Henry to join with the French in a war. Always, he said, he had dissuaded his master from expeditions on the Continent. He had himself refused a large pension which the French Government had offered him, and he intended at the next Parliament to introduce a Bill prohibiting English Ministers from taking pensions from foreign princes on pain of death.

Men who have been proposing to commit murders do not lightly turn to topics of less perilous interest.

Some days pa.s.sed before Chapuys saw Cromwell again; but he continued to learn from him the various intrigues which were going on. Until the King was sure of his ground with Charles, the French faction at the court continued their correspondence with Francis. The price of an Anglo-French alliance was to be a promise from the French King to support Henry in his quarrel with Rome at the expected Council, and Chapuys advised his master not to show too much eagerness for the treaty, as he would make the King more intractable.

The Emperor's way of remedying the affairs of England could not be better conceived, he said, provided the English Government met him with an honest response, provided they would forward the meeting of the Council, and treat the Queen and Princess better, who were in great personal danger.

This, however, he believed they would never do. The Queen had instructed him to complain to the Emperor that her daughter was still left in the hands of her enemies, and that if she was to die it would be attributed to the manner in which she had been dealt with; the Queen, however, was satisfied that the danger would disappear if the King and the Emperor came to an understanding; and, if she could be a.s.sured that matters would be conducted as the Emperor proposed, he would be able to persuade her to approve of the whole plan.

Chapuys never repeated his suspicion that danger threatened Mary from Cromwell, and, if he had really believed it, he would hardly have failed to make further mention of so dark a suggestion. He was not scrupulous about truth: diplomatists with strong personal convictions seldom are. He had a.s.sured the King that a thought had never been entertained of an armed interference in England, while his letters for many months had been full of schemes for insurrection and invasion. He was eager for the work to begin. He was incredulous of any other remedy, and, if he dared, would have forced the Emperor's hand. He depended for his information of what pa.s.sed at the court upon Anne Boleyn's bitterest enemies, and he put the worst interpretation upon every story which was brought to him. Cromwell, he said, had spoken like Caiaphas. It is hardly credible that Cromwell would have ventured to insult the Emperor with a supposition that he would make himself an accomplice in a crime. But though I think it more likely that Chapuys misunderstood or misrepresented Cromwell than that he accurately recorded his words, yet it is certain that there were members of Henry's Council who did seriously desire to try and to execute both Mary and her mother. Both of them were actively dangerous. Their friends were engaged in a conspiracy for open rebellion in their names, and, under the Tudor princes, nearness of blood or station to the Crown was rather a danger than a protection. Royal pretenders were not gently dealt with, even when no immediate peril was feared from them. Henry VII. had nothing to fear from the Earl of Warwick, yet Warwick lay in a b.l.o.o.d.y grave. Mary herself executed her cousin Jane Grey, and was hardly prevented from executing her sister Elizabeth. Elizabeth, in turn, imprisoned Catherine Grey, and let her die as Chapuys feared that Mary was now about to die. The dread of another war of succession lay like a nightmare on the generations which carried with them an ever-present memory of the Wars of the Roses.

CHAPTER XVIII.

Negotiations for a treaty--Appeal of Catherine to the Emperor--Fresh plans for the escape of Mary--Forbidden by the Emperor--The King and his daughter--Suggestion of Dr. b.u.t.ts--The clergy and the Reformation--The Charterhouse monks--More and Fisher in the Tower--The Emperor in Africa-- The treaty--Rebellion in Ireland--Absolution of Lord Thomas Fitzgerald for the murder of the Archbishop of Dublin--Treason of Lord Hussey--Fresh debates in the Spanish Council--Fisher created cardinal--Trial and execution of Fisher and More--Effect in Europe.

More than a year had now pa.s.sed since Clement had delivered judgment on the divorce case. So far the discharge had been ineffective, and the Brief of Execution, the direct command to the Catholic Powers to dethrone Henry and to his subjects to renounce their allegiance, was still withheld. The advances which the new Pope had made to England having met with no response, Paul III. was ready to strike the final blow, but his hand had been held by Charles, who was now hoping by a treaty to recover the English alliance. Catherine had consented, but consented reluctantly, to an experiment from which she expected nothing. Chapuys himself did not wish it to succeed, and was unwilling to part with the expectations which he had built on Darcy's promises. The Spanish Council, in recommending the course which the Emperor had taken, had foreseen the dispiritment which it might produce among the Queen's friends, and the injury to the Holy See by the disregard of a sentence which Charles had himself insisted on. The treaty made no progress. The sacrifice appeared to be fruitless, and Catherine appealed to Charles once more in her old tone. She would be wanting in her duty to herself, she said, and she would offend G.o.d, if she did not seek the help of those who alone could give her effectual a.s.sistance. She must again press upon his Majesty the increasing perils to the Catholic Faith and the injury to the English realm which his neglect to act was producing. The sentence of Clement had been powerless. She entreated him with all her energy as a Christian woman to hesitate no longer. Her daughter had been ill, and had not yet recovered. Had her health been strong, the treatment which she received would destroy it, and, if she died, there would be a double sin. The Emperor need not care for herself. She was accustomed to suffering and could bear anything. But she must let him know that she was as poor as Job, and was expecting a time when she would have to beg alms for the love of G.o.d.[315]

Mary was scarcely in so bad a case as her mother represented. Her spirit had got the better of her illness, and she was again alert and active. The King had supplied her with money and had sent her various kind messages, but she was still eager to escape out of the realm, and Charles had again given a qualified consent to the attempt being made if it was sure of success. With Mary in his hands, he could deal with Henry to better advantage. A favourable opportunity presented itself. Three Spanish s.h.i.+ps were lying in the Lower Pool; Mary was still at Greenwich, and their crews were at her disposition. Chapuys asked if she was ready. She was not only ready but eager. She could leave the palace at night with the help of confederates, be carried on board, and disappear down the river.

Accident, or perhaps a whispered warning, deranged her plans. By a sudden order she was removed from Greenwich to Eltham. The alteration of residence was not accompanied with signs of suspicion. She was treated with marked respect. A State litter of some splendour was provided for her. The governess, Mrs. Shelton, however, was continued at her side, and the odious presence redoubled her wish to fly. Before she left Greenwich she sent a message to Chapuys imploring his advice and his a.s.sistance. She begged him for the love of G.o.d to contrive fresh means for removing her from the country. The enterprise, he thought, would be now dangerous, but not impossible, and success would be a glorious triumph. The Princess had told him that in her present lodging she could not be taken away at night, but she might walk in the day in fine weather, and might be surprised and carried off as if against her consent. The river would not be many miles distant, and, if she could be fallen in with when alone, there might be less difficulty than even at Greenwich, because she could be put on board below Gravesend.[316]

As a s.h.i.+p would be required from Flanders, Chapuys communicated directly with Granvelle. He was conscious that, if he was himself in England when the enterprise was attempted, his own share in it would be suspected and it might go hard with him. He proposed, therefore, under some excuse of business in the Low Countries, to cross over previously.

It would be a splendid _coup_, he said, and, considering how much the Princess wished it and her remarkable prudence and courage, the thing could, no doubt, be managed. Could she be once seized and on horseback, and if there was a galley at hand and a large s.h.i.+p or two, there would be no real difficulty. The country-people would help her, and the parties sent in pursuit would be in no hurry.[317]

Either the difficulties proved greater than were expected, or Charles was still hoping for the treaty, and would not risk an experiment which would spoil the chances of an accommodation. Once more he altered his mind and forbade the venture, and Chapuys had to take up again a negotiation from which he had no expectation of good. He met Cromwell from time to time, his master's pleasure being to preserve peace on tolerable terms; and the Amba.s.sador continued to propose the reference of the divorce case to the General Council, on which Cromwell had seemed not unwilling to listen to him. If Henry could be tempted by vague promises to submit his conduct to a Council called by the Pope, he would be again in the meshes out of which he had cut his way. The cunning Amba.s.sador urged on Cromwell the honour which the King would gain if a Council confirmed what he had done; and when Cromwell answered that a Council under the Emperor's influence might rather give an adverse sentence, he said that, if it was so, the King would have shown by a voluntary submission that his motives had been pure, and might have perfect confidence in the Emperor's fairness. Cromwell said he would consult the King; but the real difficulty lay in the pretensions of the Princess. Cromwell was well served; he probably knew, as well as Chapuys, of the intended rape at Eltham, and all that it would involve.

"Would to G.o.d"--he broke out impatiently, and did not finish the sentence; but Chapuys thought he saw what the finish would have been.[318] Henry may be credited with some forbearance towards his troublesome daughter. She defied his laws. Her supporters were trying to take his crown from him, and she herself was attempting to escape abroad and levy war upon him. Few of his predecessors would have hesitated to take ruder methods with so unmalleable a piece of metal. She herself believed that escape was her only chance of life. She was in the power of persons who, she had been told, meant to poison her, while no means were neglected to exasperate the King's mind against her. He, on his side, was told that she was incurably obstinate, while everything was concealed that might make him more favourably disposed towards her. In the midst of public business with which he was overwhelmed, he could not know what was pa.s.sing inside the walls at Eltham. He discovered occasionally that he had been deceived. He complained to Cromwell "that he had found much good in his daughter of which he had not been properly informed." But if there was a conspiracy against Mary, there was also a conspiracy against himself, in a quarter where it could have been least expected.

Dr. b.u.t.ts, the King's physician, whose portrait by Holbein is so familiar to us, was one of the most devoted friends of Queen Catherine. During Mary's illness, Dr. b.u.t.ts had affected to be afraid of the responsibility of attending upon her. He had consented afterwards, though with apparent reluctance, and had met in consultation Catherine's doctor, who had also allowed himself to be persuaded. Henry sent b.u.t.ts down to Eltham with his own horses. The Royal physician found his patient better than he expected, and, instead of talking over her disorders, he talked of the condition of the realm with his brother pract.i.tioner. "The Doctor is a very clever man," wrote Chapuys, reporting the account of the conversation which he received from the Queen's physician, "and is intimate with the n.o.bles and the Council. He says that there are but two ways of a.s.sisting the Queen and Princess and of setting right the affairs of the realm: one would be if it pleased G.o.d to visit the King with some little malady."[319] "The second method was force, of which, he said, the King and his Ministers were in marvellous fear. If it came to a war, he thought the King would be specially careful of the Queen and Princess, meaning to use them, should things turn to the worst, as mediators for peace. But if neither of these means were made use of, he really believed they were in danger of their lives. He considered it was lucky for the King that the Emperor did not know how easy the enterprise of England would be; and the present, he said, was the right time for it."

His private physician, it is to be remembered, was necessarily, of all Henry's servants, the most trusted by him; and the doctor was not contented with indirect suggestions, for he himself sent a secret message to Chapuys that twenty great peers and a hundred knights were ready, they and their va.s.sals, to venture fortune and life, with the smallest a.s.sistance from the Emperor, to rise and make a revolution.[320]

Dr. b.u.t.ts with his _pet.i.te maladie_ was a "giant traitor," though, happily for himself, he was left undiscovered. Human sympathies run so inevitably on the side of the sufferers in history, that we forget that something also is due to those whom they forced into dealing hardly with them.

Catherine and the faithful Catholics who conspired and lost their lives for her cause and the Pope's, are in no danger of losing the favourable judgment of the world; the tyranny and cruelty of Henry VIII. will probably remain for ever a subject of eloquent denunciation; but there is an _altera pars_--another view of the story, which we may be permitted without offence to recognise. Henry was, on the whole, right; the general cause for which he was contending was a good cause. His victory opened the fountains of English national life, won for England spiritual freedom, and behind spiritual freedom her political liberties. His defeat would have kindled the martyr-fires in every English town, and would have burnt out of the country thousands of poor men and women as n.o.ble as Catherine herself. He had stained the purity of his action by intermingling with it a weak pa.s.sion for a foolish and bad woman, and bitterly he had to suffer for his mistake; but the revolt against, and the overthrow of, ecclesiastical despotism were precious services, which ought to be remembered to his honour; and, when the good doctor to whom he trusted his life, out of compa.s.sion for an unfortunate lady was, perhaps, willing to administer a doubtful potion to him, or to aid in inviting a Catholic army into England to extinguish the light that was dawning there, only those who are Catholics first and Englishmen afterwards will say that it was well done on the doctor's part.

The temper of the nation was growing dangerous, and the forces on both sides were ranging themselves for the battle. Bishop Fisher has been seen sounding on the same string. He, with More, had now been for many months in the Tower, and his communications with Chapuys having been cut off, he had been unable to continue his solicitations; but the Amba.s.sador had undertaken for the whole of the clergy on the instant that the Emperor should declare himself. The growth of Lutheranism had touched their hearts with pious indignation; their hatred of heresy was almost the sole distinction which they had preserved belonging to their sacred calling.

The regular orders were the most worthless; the smaller monasteries were nests of depravity; the purpose of their existence was to sing souls out of purgatory, and the efficacy of their musical pet.i.tionings being no longer believed in, the King had concluded that monks and nuns could be better employed, and that the wealth which maintained them could be turned to better purpose--to the purpose especially of the defence of the realm against them and their machinations. The monks everywhere were the active missionaries of treason. They writhed under the Act of Supremacy. Their hope of continuance depended on the restoration of the Papal authority.

When they were discovered to be at once useless and treacherous, it was not unjust to take their lands from them and apply the money for which those lands could be sold, to the fleet and the fortresses on the coast.

In this, the greatest of his reforms, Cromwell had been the King's chief adviser. He had been employed under Wolsey in the first suppression of the most corrupt of the smaller houses. In the course of his work he had gained an insight into the scandalous habits of their occupants, which convinced him of the impolicy and uselessness of attempting to prolong their existence. Inst.i.tutions however ancient, organizations however profoundly sacred, cannot outlive the recognition that the evil which they produce is constant and the advantage visionary.

That the monastic system was doomed had become generally felt; that the victims of the intended overthrow should be impatient of their fate was no more than natural. The magnitude of the design, the interests which were threatened, the imagined sanct.i.ty attaching to property devoted to the Church, gave an opportunity for outcry against sacrilege. The entire body of monks became in their various orders an army of insurrectionary preachers, well supplied with money, terrifying the weak, encouraging the strong, and appealing to the superst.i.tions so powerful with a people like the English, who were tenacious of their habits and a.s.sociations.

The Abbots and Priors had sworn to the supremacy, but had sworn reluctantly, with secret reservations to save their consciences. With the prospect of an Imperial deliverer to appear among them, they were recovering courage to defy their excommunicated enemy. Those who retained the most of the original spirit of their religion were the first to recover heart for resistance. The monks of the London Charterhouse, who were exceptions to the general corruption, and were men of piety and character, came forward to repudiate their oaths and to dare the law to punish them. Their tragical story is familiar to all readers of English history. Chapuys adds a few particulars. Their Prior, Haughton, had consented to the Act of Supremacy; but his conscience told him that in doing so he had committed perjury. He went voluntarily, with three of the brotherhood, to Cromwell, and retracted his oath, declaring that the King in calling himself Head of the Church was usurping the Pope's authority.

They had not been sent for; their house was in no immediate danger; and there was no intention of meddling with them. Their act was a gratuitous defiance; and under the circ.u.mstances of the country was an act of war.

The effect, if not the purpose, was, and must have been, to encourage a spirit which would explode in rebellion. Cromwell warned them of their danger, and advised them to keep their scruples to themselves. They said they would rather encounter a hundred thousand deaths. They were called before a Council of Peers. The Knights of the Garter were holding their annual Chapter, and the attendance was large. The Duke of Norfolk presided, having returned to the Court, and the proceedings were unusually solemn. The monks were required to withdraw their declaration; they were told that the statute was not to be disputed. They persisted. They were allowed a night to reflect, and they spent it on their knees in prayer. In the morning they were recalled; their courage held, and they were sentenced to die, with another friar who had spoken and written to similar purpose.

They had thrown down a challenge to the Government; the challenge was accepted, and the execution marked the importance of the occasion. They were not a handful of insignificant priests, they were the advanced guard of insurrection; and to allow them to triumph was to admit defeat. They were conducted through the streets by an armed force. The Duke of Norfolk, the Duke of Richmond, Henry's illegitimate son, Lord Wilts.h.i.+re, and Lord Rochford attended at the scaffold. Sir Henry Norris was also there, masked, with forty of the Royal Guard on horseback. At the scaffold they were again offered a chance of life; again they refused, and died gallantly. The struggle had begun for the Crown of England. In claiming the supremacy for the Pope, these men had abjured their allegiance to the King whom the Pope had excommunicated. Conscience was nothing--motive was nothing. Conscience was not allowed as a plea when a Lutheran was threatened with the stake. In all civil conflicts high motives are to be found on both sides, and in earnest times words are not used without meaning. The Statute of Supremacy was Henry's defence against an attempt to deprive him of his crown and deprive the kingdom of its independence.

To disobey the law was treason; and the penalty of treason was death.[321]

Chapuys in telling the story urged it as a proof to Charles that there was no hope of the King's repentance. It was now expected that More and Fisher, and perhaps the Queen and Princess, would be called on also to acknowledge the supremacy, and, if they refused, would suffer the same fate. The King's Ministers, Chapuys said, were known to have often reproached the King, and to have told him it was a shame for him and the kingdom not to punish them as traitors. Anne Boleyn was fiercer and haughtier than ever she was.[322] Sir Thomas More was under the same impression that Anne had been instigator of the severities. She would take his head from him, he said, and then added, prophetically, that her own would follow. The presence of her father and brother and her favourite Norris at the execution of the Carthusians confirmed the impression. The action of the Government had grounds more sufficient than a woman's urgency. More and Fisher received notice that they would be examined on the statute, and were allowed six weeks to prepare their answer. Chapuys did not believe that any danger threatened Catherine, or threatened her household. She herself, however, antic.i.p.ated the worst, and only hoped that her own fate might rouse the Emperor at last.