History of England from the fall of Wolsey to the death of Elizabeth Volume III Part 2

"What is a king?" he asked. "A king exists for the sake of his people; he is an outcome from Nature in labour;[49] an inst.i.tution for the defence of material and temporal interests. But inasmuch there are interests beyond the temporal, so there is a jurisdiction beyond the king's. The glory of a king is the welfare of his people; and if he knew himself, and knew his office, he would lay his crown and kingdom at the feet of the priesthood, as in a haven and quiet resting place. To priests it was said, 'Ye are G.o.ds, and ye are the children of the Most High.' Who, then, can doubt that priests are higher in dignity than kings. In human society are three grades--the people--the priesthood, the head and husband of the people--the king, who is the child, the creature, and minister of the other two."[50]

From these premises it followed that Henry was a traitor, a rebel against his true superior; and the first section closed with a fine rhetorical peroration.

[Sidenote: The king is the man of sin and the prince of pride.]

"Oh, Henry!" he exclaimed, "more wicked than Ozias, who was smitten with leprosy when he despised the warnings of Azariah--more wicked than Saul, who slew the priests of the Lord--more wicked than Dathan and Abiram, who rose in rebellion against Aaron--what hast thou done? What! but that which is written in the Scripture of the prince of pride--'I will climb up into heaven; I will set my throne above the stars; I will sit me down on the mount of the covenant; I will make myself even with the Most High.' ... He shall send his vengeance upon thee--vengeance sudden, swift, and terrible. It shall come; nor can I pray that it may longer tarry. Rather may it come and come quickly, to the glory of his name. I will say, like Elijah, 'Oh, Lord! they have slain thy prophets with the edge of the sword; they have thrown down thine altars; and I only am left, and they seek my life to take it away. Up, Lord, and avenge the blood of thy holy ones.'"

[Sidenote: The English bishops are the robber Cacus; the Pope is the sleeping Hercules.]

He now paused for a moment in his denunciation of Henry, and took up his parable against the English bishops, who had betrayed the flock of Christ, and driven them into the den of the villain king. "You thought,"

he said to these learned prelates, "that the Roman pontiff slept--that you might spoil him with impunity, as the robber Cacus spoiled the sleeping Hercules. Ah! but the Lord of the sheep sees you. He sees you from his throne in heaven. Not we only who are left yet alive tell, with our bleating voices, whither you have driven us; but, in louder tones than ours, the blood of those whom ye have slain, because they would not hear your hireling voices, cries out of the dust to Christ. Oh, horrible!--most horrible! No penalty which human justice could devise can reach your crimes. Men look to see when some unwonted vengeance shall light upon you, like that which fell on Korah and his company, in whose footsteps ye now are following. If the earth open her mouth and swallow you up quick, every Christian man will applaud the righteous judgment of the Almighty."

[Sidenote: Responsibility of sovereigns to their subjects.]

Again he pa.s.sed back to the king, a.s.sailing him in pages of alternate argument and reprobation. In most modern language he a.s.serted the responsibility of sovereigns, calling English history to witness for him in the just rebellions provoked by tyranny; and Henry, he said, had broken his coronation oath and forfeited his crown. This and similar matter occupied the second part. It had been tolerably immoderate even so far, but the main torrent had yet to flow.

The third and most important section divides itself into an address, first to the king and then to England; finally to the foreign powers--the Emperor particularly, and the Spanish army.

[Sidenote: He will be the king's physician, and unfold his wicked heart to him.]

[Sidenote: The king a thief and a robber.]

"I have spoken," he commenced, "but, after all, I have spoken in vain.

Wine turns to vinegar in a foul vessel; and to little purpose have I poured my truth into a mind defiled with falsehood and impurity. How shall I purify you? How, indeed! when you imagine that yourself, and not I, are in possession of the truth; when you undertake to be a teacher of others; when, forsooth, you are head of a church. But, come, listen to me. I will be your physician. I will thrust a probe into those envenomed wounds. If I cause you pain, believe that it is for your good. You do not know that you have a wound to probe. You pretend that you have only sought to do the will of G.o.d. You will say so. I know it. But, I beseech you, listen to me. Was it indeed your conscience which moved you? Not so. You l.u.s.ted after a woman who was not your wife. You would make the Word of G.o.d bear false witness for you; and G.o.d's providence has permitted you to overwhelm yourself in infamy. I say, you desired to fulfil your l.u.s.ts. And how, you ask, do I know this? How can I see your heart? Who but G.o.d can read those secrets? Yes, oh prince; he also knows--to whom G.o.d will reveal the heart. And I tell you that I am he to whom G.o.d has revealed yours. You will cry out against my arrogance. How should G.o.d open your heart to me? But contain yourself a little. I do not say that G.o.d has shewn more to me than he has shewn to any man who will use his understanding.[51] You think that the offspring of your harlot will be allowed to sit on the throne, that the pure blood of England will endure to be her subjects. No, truly. If you dream thus, you have little of your father's wisdom. There is not a peer in all the land who will not hold his t.i.tle better than the t.i.tle of a harlot's b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Like Cadmus, you have flung a spear among your people, and armed them for mutual slaughter. And you--you, the vilest of plunderers--a thief--a robber--you call yourself supreme head of the Church! I acquit the nation of the infamy of their consent. They have not consented. The few suffrages which you can claim have been extorted by terrour. Again, how do I know this? I, who was absent from my country? Yes, I was absent. Nor have I heard one word of it from any creature. And yet so it is. I have a more sure testimony than the testimony of eyes and ears, which forbids me to be mistaken."

The witness was the death of Sir Thomas More, Bishop Fisher, and the Charterhouse monks; and the story of their martyrdom was told with some power and pa.s.sion.

[Sidenote: He calls on England to rise in rebellion.]

The remedy for all its evils rested with England. England must rebel. He called on it, with solemn earnestness, to consider its position: its church infected with heresy, its saints slaughtered, its laws uprooted, its succession shattered; sedition within, and foreign war imminent from without; and the single cause of these acc.u.mulated miseries a licentious tyrant. "And oh! my country," he exclaimed, "if any memory remains to you of your antient liberties, remember--remember the time when kings who ruled over you unjustly were called to account by the authority of your laws. They tell you that all is the king's. I tell you that all is the commonwealth's. You, oh! my country, are all. The king is but your servant and minister. Wipe away your tears, and turn to the Lord your G.o.d."

[Sidenote: He will invite the King of France to depose Henry.]

Of his own conduct he would give Henry fair warning. "I myself," he said, once more addressing him, "I myself shall approach the throne of your last ally, the King of France. I shall demand that he a.s.sist you no longer; that, remembering the honour of his father, with his own past fidelity to the Church of Christ, he will turn against you and strike you down. And think you that he will refuse my pet.i.tion? How long dream you that G.o.d will bear with you? Your company shall be broken up. The scourge shall come down upon you like a wave. The pirates who waste the sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean are less the servants of Satan than you. The pirates murder but the bodies of men. You murder their souls. Satan alone, of all created beings, may fitly be compared with you."

So far I have endeavoured to condense the voluminous language into a paraphrase, which but languidly approaches the blaze and fury of the original. Vituperation, notwithstanding, would have been of trifling consequence; and the safe exhortations of refugees, inciting domestic rebellions the dangers of which they have no intention of sharing, are a form of treason which may usually be despised. But it is otherwise when the refugee becomes a foreign agent of his faction, and not only threatens to invite invasion, but converts his menace into act. When the pages which follow were printed, they seemed of such grave moment that they were extracted and circulated as a pamphlet in the German States.

The translation, therefore, will now adhere closely to the text.

[Sidenote: The invocation of the Emperor.]

[Sidenote: Who are the true enemies of Christendom?]

[Sidenote: Not Turks, but heretics.]

[Sidenote: Heresy in Germany.]

[Sidenote: Deeper heresy in England,]

[Sidenote: Which will grow inveterate if it be not nipped in the bud.]

"I call to witness," he went on, "that love of my country which is engrafted in me by nature--that love of the Church which is given to me by the Son of G.o.d--did I hear that the Emperor was on the seas, on his way against Constantinople, I would know no rest till I was at his feet--I would call to him were he in the very narrows of the Bosphorus--I would force myself into his presence--I would address him thus: 'Caesar,' I would say, 'what is this which you are doing? Whither are you leading this mighty army? Would you subdue the enemies of Christendom? Oh! then, turn, turn your sails. Go where a worse peril is threatening--where the wound is fresh, and where a foe presses more fearful far than the Turk. You count it a n.o.ble thing to break the chains of Christian captives: and n.o.ble, indeed, it is. But more glorious is it to rescue from eternal d.a.m.nation the many thousand souls who are torn from the Church's bosom, and to bring them back to the faith of Christ. What will you have gained when you have driven back the Turks, if other Turks be sprung up meanwhile amidst ourselves? What are Turks save a sect of Christians revolted from the Church? The beginning of the Turks is the beginning of all heretics. They rejected the Head which was set over them by Christ, and thus by degrees they fell away from the doctrine of Christ. What then? See you not the seed of these self-same Turks scattered at home before your doors? Would, indeed, it were so scanty that there was any difficulty in discerning its presence!

Yes; you see it, sad to say, in your own Germany. The disease is there, though not as yet in its worst form. It is not yet set forth by authority. The German church may even now cast forth the seed of the adulterers, and bear again the true fruit of Catholic truth. But for England! Alas! in England that seed is sown thick and broad; and by the sovereign's hand. It is sown, and it is quickening, and the growing blade is defended by the sword. The sword is the answer to all opponents. Nay, even silence is an equal crime. Thomas More, the wisest, the most virtuous of living men, was slain for silence. Among the monks, the more holy, the more devout they be, the greater is the peril. All lips are closed by fear of death. If these fine beginnings do not prove to you what it is to forsake the head of the Church, what other evidence do you desire? The Turks might teach you: they, too, forsook him--they, too, brought in the power of the sword; by the sword these many ages they have maintained themselves, and now the memory of their mother has perished, and too late the Church cries to her lost children to return to her.[52] Or, again, Germany may teach you. How calm, how tranquil, how full of piety was Germany! How did Germany flourish while it held steadfast by the faith! How has it been torn with wars, distracted with mutinies, since it has revolted from its allegiance! There is no hope for Germany, unless, which G.o.d grant, it return to the Church--our Supreme Head. This is the Church's surest bulwark; this is the first mark for the a.s.saults of heretics; this is the first rallying point of true Catholics; this, Caesar, those heroic children of the Church in England have lately died to defend, choosing rather to give their naked bodies to the swords of their enemies than desert a post which was the key to the sanctuary.

[Sidenote: The venom of heresy has reached a king.]

[Sidenote: The servants of Christ cry to Charles to help them.]

[Sidenote: Legions of the faithful in England will rally to his banners.]

"'That post was stormed--those valiant soldiers were slain. What wonder, when the champion of the foemen's host was a king! Oh, misery! worse than the worst which ever yet has befallen the spouse of Christ! The poison of heresy has reached a king, and, like the Turk, he shakes his drawn sword in the face of all who resist him. If he affect now some show of moderation, it is but to gain time and strength, that he may strike the deadlier blows; and strike he will, doubt it not, if he obtain his desire. Will you then, Caesar--you who profess that you love the faith--will you grant him that time? When the servants of Christ cry to you, in their agony, for help,--when you must aid them now, or your aid will be for ever useless,--will you turn your arms on other foes?

will you be found wanting to the pa.s.sionate hope of your friends, when that hope alone, that simple hope, has held them back from using their own strength and striking for themselves? Dream not, Caesar, that all generous hearts are quenched in England--that faith and piety are dead.

Judge rather those who are alive by the deaths of those who have gone to the scaffold for religion's sake. If G.o.d reserved for Himself seven thousand in Israel who had not bowed the knee to Baal, when Ahab and his cursed Jezebel slew his prophets, think not that, in these days of greater light, our Jezebel, with all her scent for blood, has destroyed the whole defenders of the truth. There are legions in England yet unbroken who have never yet bent their knees. Go thither, and G.o.d, who has been their Saviour, will bid them rally to your banners. They are the same English, Caesar, who, unaided, and in slighter causes, have brought their princes to their judgment bar--have bidden them give account for moneys wasted to the prejudice of the commonwealth, and when they could not pa.s.s their audit, have stripped them of crown and sceptre. They are the same; and long ago, in like manner, would they have punished this king also, but that they looked to you. In you is their trust--in your n.o.ble nature, and in your zeal for G.o.d. Their cause is yours, peculiarly yours; by you they think the evil can be remedied with less hurt to England than by themselves. Wisely, therefore, they hold their hand till you shall come.

[Sidenote: Catherine of Arragon appeals to her Spaniards.]

"'And you--you will leave them desolate; you turn your back upon this glorious cause; you waste yourself in a distant enterprise. Is it that your soldiers demand this unhappy preference? are your soldiers so eager to face their old eastern enemies? But what soldiers, Caesar! Your Spaniards?--your own Spaniards? Ah! if they could hear the n.o.ble daughter of Isabella, wasted with misery, appealing in her most righteous cause to their faithful hearts! The memory of that ill.u.s.trious lady, well I know, is not yet so blotted from their recollection that a daughter worthy of so great a mother could pray to them in vain. Were they told that a princess of Spain, child of the proudest sovereign of that proud empire, after twenty years of marriage, had been driven out as if she had been the b.a.s.t.a.r.d of some clown or huckster that had crept from her filth into the royal bed, and to make room for a vile harlot--think you they would tamely bear an injury which the basest of mankind would wash out in blood? Think you that, when there scarce breathes a man so poor of soul who would not risk his life to requite so deep an indignity, the gentlemen of Spain will hesitate to revenge the daughter of their sovereign? Shall it go out among the nations to your shame and everlasting ignominy, that Spain sits down under the insult because she is faint-hearted--because she is feeble, and dares not move?

It cannot be. Gather them together, Caesar. Call your musters; I will speak to them--I will tell them that the child and grandchild of Isabella of Castile are dishonoured and robbed of their inheritance, and at the mention of that name you shall see them reverse their sails, and turn back of themselves their vessels' prows.

[Sidenote: Not for herself, but for the Church, for the faith, for England.]

"'But not for Catherine's sake do I now stand a suitor either to you or them. For herself she desires nothing; she utters no complaint over her most unrighteous fate. You are now in the meridian of your glory, and some portion of its l.u.s.tre should be hers; yet she is miserable, and she endures her misery. Each fresh triumph of your arms entails on her some fresh oppression; but hers is no selfish sorrow for herself or for her cause. She implores you, Caesar, for the sake of England, of that England into which from her own n.o.ble stem she was once engrafted, which she loves and must love as her second country. Her private interests are nothing to her; but if it so happen that the cause of this ill.u.s.trious and most dear land is so bound up in hers--that if she be neglected, England must forfeit her place among the nations--must be torn with civil distractions, and be plunged in ruin and disaster irretrievable--if the cause of religion be so joined to her cause that her desertion is the desertion of the Holy Church, that the ancient faith will be destroyed, new sects will spring up, not in that island only, which at her coming she found so true to its creed, but spreading like contagion, and bringing to confusion the entire communion of the faithful (and this is no conjectural danger: it is even now come--it is among us; already, in England, to be a friend to the old customs of the Church is fraught with deadly peril)--finally, if in this matter there be every motive which ought to affect a prince who loves the name of Christ--then--then she does entreat you not to delay longer in hastening to deliverance of the Christian commonwealth, because it happens that the common cause is her cause--because Ferdinand of Spain was her father--because Isabella was her mother--because she is your own aunt--because her most ruthless enemies have never dared to hint that in word or deed she has been unworthy of her ancestors, or of the n.o.ble realm from which she sprang.

[Sidenote: By all which Charles holds dear she implores him to come to her a.s.sistance.]

"'She implores you, if G.o.d has given you strength to defy so powerful an enemy as the Turk, in that case, not to shrink from marching against a foe more malignant than the Turk, where the peril is nothing, and victory is sure. By the ties of blood, which are so close between you and her--by the honour of Spain which is compromised--by the welfare of Christendom, which ought to be so dear to us all--she beseeches you, on her knees, that you will permit no mean object to divert you from so holy, so grand, so brilliant an enterprise, when you can vindicate at once the honour of your family and the glory of that realm which has made you famous by so many victories, and simultaneously you can s.h.i.+eld the Christian commonwealth from the worst disasters which have menaced it for centuries.'"

Here terminated this grand apostrophe, too exquisite a composition to be lost--too useful when hereafter it was to be thrown out as a firebrand into Europe, although Catherine, happily for herself, had pa.s.sed away before her chivalrous knight flung down his cartel for her. A few more words were, however, in reserve for Henry.

[Sidenote: Concluding anathemas against Henry.]

"I have spoken of Caesar," he turned and said to him; "I might have spoken of all Christian princes. Do you seriously think that the King of France will refuse obedience when the Pope bids him make peace with the Emperor, and undertake your chastis.e.m.e.nt? He will obey, doubt it not; and when you are trampled down under their feet there will be more joy in Christendom than if the Turks were driven from Constantinople. What will you do? What will become of your subjects when the ports of the Continent are closed, as closed they will be, against them and their commerce? How will they loathe you then? How will you be cast out among the curses of mankind?[53] When you die you shall have no lawful burial, and what will happen to your soul I forbear to say. Man is against you; G.o.d is against you; the universe is against you. What can you look for but destruction?"

The hurricane had reached its height; it spent its fury in its last gusts. The note changed, the threats ceased, and the beauty of humiliation and the promises of forgiveness to the penitent closed the volume.

[Sidenote: Pole's central error.]

[Sidenote: The witness of fact.]

Thus wrote an English subject to his sovereign, and professed afterwards to be overwhelmed with astonishment when he learnt that his behaviour was considered unbecoming. As Samuel to Saul, as Nathan to David, as Elijah to Ahab, so was Reginald Pole to Henry the Eighth, the immediate messenger of Heaven, making, however, one central and serious error: that, when between Henry the Eighth and the Papacy there lay to be contended for, on the one side, liberty, light, and justice--on the other, tyranny, darkness, and iniquity, in this great duel the Pope was G.o.d's champion, and Henry was the devil's. No pit opened its mouth to swallow the English bishops; no civil wars wrecked the prosperity of the country; no foreign power overwhelmed it; no dishonour touched its arms, except in the short interval when Catherine's daughter restored the authority of the Papacy, and Pole was Archbishop of Canterbury, and the last relic of the empire of the Plantagenets in France was lost for ever. He was pleased with his composition, however. He determined, in spite of Contarini, to send it. He expected the English council to believe him when he declared that he had no sinister intention, that he seriously imagined that a monarch who had taken the Pope by the beard and hurled him out of the kingdom, would be frightened by the lectures and threats of a petulant youth.

[Sidenote: Cuthbert Tunstall is desired to undertake the first perusal of the book.]

On the 27th of May the book was despatched to England by a messenger from Venice, and with it Pole sent two letters, one to the king, the other to his friend Cuthbert Tunstall, the Bishop of Durham. The first contained little more than the credentials of the bearer. The letter to Tunstall, as well as a verbal message by which it was accompanied, was to the effect, that the book was long, too long for the king himself to read; he desired his friend to undertake, and the king to permit him to undertake, the first perusal. The contents were to be looked upon as a secret communication between himself and his Majesty; no eye had seen more than a small portion of what he had written, and that against his own will. The addresses and apostrophes inserted here and there, which might seem at first sight questionable, were dramatically introduced only to give effect to his argument.[54] These statements seem somewhat adventurous when we think of the correspondence with Cardinal Contarini, and of Pole's a.s.sertion that he was writing less for the king than to undeceive the English people; nor do we readily acquiesce in the belief that the invocation to Charles was not intended for Charles's eyes, when the writer very soon after submitted it to those eyes, and devoted the energies of years to bring the Spaniards into England.

[Sidenote: Effect of the book in England.]

[Sidenote: Pole is required to return to England and explain himself.]