History of England from the fall of Wolsey to the death of Elizabeth Volume III Part 16

[Sidenote: The Abbott of Stratford excommunicates his monks for revealing convent scandals.]

[Sidenote: The Abbot of Woburn repents of his apostasy,]

[Sidenote: Takes up his cross and dies.]

Or, once more to turn to the surviving abbeys, here, too, each house was "divided against itself, and could not stand." The monks of Stratford complained to Sir Thomas Cholmondley that their abbot had excommunicated them for breach of oath in revealing convent secrets to the royal visitors. Their allegiance, the brave abbot had said, was to the superior of their order abroad, not to the secular sovereign in England.

He cared nothing for acts of parliament or king's commissions. The king could but kill him, and death was a small matter compared to perjury.[293] Death, therefore, he resolutely risked, and in some manner, we know not how, he escaped. Another abbot with the same courage was less fortunate. In the spring and summer of 1537 Woburn Abbey was in high confusion. The brethren were tr.i.m.m.i.n.g to the times, anxious merely for secular habits, wives, and freedom. In the midst of them, Robert Hobbes the abbot, who in the past year had accepted the oath of supremacy in a moment of weakness, was lying worn down with sorrow, unable to govern his convent, or to endure the burden of his conscience. On Pa.s.sion Sunday in that spring, dying as it seemed of a broken heart, he called the fraternity to his side, and exhorted them to charity, and prayed them to be obedient to their vows. Hard eyes and mocking lips were all the answer of the monks of Woburn. "Then, being in a great agony, the abbot rose up in his bed, and cried out, and said, 'I would to G.o.d it would please Him to take me out of this wretched world, and I would I had died with the good men that have suffered death for holding with the Pope. My conscience--my conscience doth grudge me for it.'" Abbot Hobbes should have his wish. Strength was left him to take up his cross once more where he had cast it down. Spiteful tongues carried his words to the council, and the law, remorseless as destiny, flung its meshes over him on the instant. He was swept up to London and interrogated in the usual form--"Was he the king's subject or the Pope's?" He stood to his faith like a man, and the scaffold swallowed him.[294]

[Sidenote: The king believes in unity.]

So went the world in England, rus.h.i.+ng forward, rocking and reeling in its course. What hand could guide it! Alone, perhaps, of living men, the king still believed that unity was possible--that these headstrong spirits were as horses broken loose, which could be caught again and harnessed for the road. For a thousand years there had been one faith in Western Christendom. From the Isles of Arran to the Danube thirty generations had followed each other to the grave who had held all to the same convictions, who had prayed all in the same words. What was this that had gone out among men that they were so changed? Why, when he had but sought to cleanse the dirt from off the temple, and restore its original beauty, should the temple itself crumble into ruins?

[Sidenote: Questions on the nature and number of the sacraments.]

[Sidenote: The real presence almost the only doctrine on which there is general agreement.]

The sacraments, the Divine mysteries, had existed in the Church for fifteen centuries. For all those ages they had been supposed to be the rivulets which watered the earth with the graces of the Spirit. After so long experience it should have been at least possible to tell what they were, or how many they were; but the question was suddenly asked, and none could answer it. The bishops were applied to. Interrogatories were sent round among them for opinions, and some said there were three sacraments, some seven, some a hundred. The Archbishop of York insisted on the apostolical succession; the Archbishop of Canterbury believed that priests and bishops might be nominated by the crown, and he that was so appointed needed no consecration, for his appointment was sufficient.[295] Transubstantiation remained almost the only doctrine beyond the articles of the three creeds on which a powerful majority was agreed.[296]

[Sidenote: Fresh rule of faith made necessary.]

[Sidenote: "The Inst.i.tution of a Christian Man."]

[Sidenote: Doctrine of sacramental grace.]

Something, however, must be done. Another statement must be made of the doctrine of the Church of England--if the Church of England were to pretend to possess a doctrine--more complete than the last. The slander must be put to silence which confounded independence with heresy; the clergy must be provided with some guide to their teaching which it should be penal to neglect. Under orders, therefore, from the crown, the bishops agreed at last upon a body of practical divinity, which was published under the t.i.tle of "The Bishop's Book," or "the Inst.i.tution of a Christian Man." It consisted of four commentaries, on the creed, the sacraments, the ten commandments, and the Lord's prayer, and in point of language was beyond question the most beautiful composition which had as yet appeared in English prose. The doctrine was moderate, yet more Catholic, and, in the matter of the sacraments, less ambiguous than the articles of 1536. The mystic number seven was restored, and the nature of sacramental grace explained in the old manner. Yet there was a manifest attempt, rather, perhaps, in tendency than in positive statement, to unite the two ideas of symbolic and instrumental efficacy, to indicate that the grace conveyed through the mechanical form was the spiritual instruction indicated in the form of the ceremony. The union among the bishops which appeared in the t.i.tle of the book was in appearance only, or rather it was a.s.sumed by the will of the king, and in obedience to his orders. When the doctrines had been determined by the bench, he even thought it necessary to admonish the composers to observe their own lesson.

[Sidenote: The king's exhortation to the bishops.]

[Sidenote: He will have all preachers agree;]

"Experience," he wrote to them, "has taught us that it is much better for no laws to be made, than when many be well made none to be kept; and even so it is much better nothing should be written concerning religion, than when many things be well written nothing of them be taught and observed.... Our commandment is, therefore, that you agree in your preaching, and that vain praise of crafty wits and worldly estimation be laid aside, and true religion sought for. You serve G.o.d in your calling, and not your own glory or vile profit. We will no correcting of things, no glosses that take away the text; being much desirous, notwithstanding, that if in any place you have not written so plainly as you might have done, in your sermons to the people you utter all that is in G.o.d's Word. We will have no more thwarting--no more contentions whereby the people are much more set against one another than any taketh profit by such undiscreet doctrines. We had much sooner to pray you than command you, and if the first will serve we will leave out the second.

Howbeit, we will in any case that all preachers agree; for if any shall dissent, let him that will defend the worser part a.s.sure himself that he shall run into our displeasure."[297]

[Sidenote: And he will find that they cannot agree.]

"The wind bloweth where it listeth, and we hear the sound thereof, but we cannot tell whence it cometh nor whither it goeth, so is every one that is born of the Spirit." Henry would have the bishops agree; as easily could he bind the winds, and bid them blow at his pleasure. Under conditions, and within limits which he did not imagine, some measure of the agreement which he desired would be at last accomplished when the time and season would permit. Meanwhile, though his task was an impossible one, it was better to try and fail than to sit by and let the dissensions rage. Nor was Henry a man to submit patiently to failure. He would try and try again; when milder methods were unsuccessful he would try with bills of six articles, and pains and penalties. He was wrestling against destiny; yet then, now, and ever, it was and remains true, that in this great matter of religion, in which to be right is the first condition of being right in anything--not variety of opinion, but unity--not the equal licence of the wise and the foolish to choose their belief, but an ordered harmony, where wisdom prescribes a law to ignorance, is the rule which reasonable men should most desire for themselves and for mankind.

But if Henry erred, his errors might find excuse in the mult.i.tude of business which was crowded upon him. Insurrection and controversy, foreign leagues, and Papal censures did not exhaust the number of his difficulties. All evil things in nature seemed to have combined to thwart him.

[Sidenote: Neglected state of the English navy.]

[Sidenote: The Iceland fleet.]

[Sidenote: Piracy in the Channel.]

[Sidenote: English fis.h.i.+ng vessels plundered by the French and the Flemings.]

[Sidenote: Unprotected state of the harbours.]

[Sidenote: Battle between the French and the Spaniards in Falmouth harbour.]

In the first few years after he became king, he had paid particular attention to the navy. He had himself some skill as a naval engineer, and had conducted experiments in the construction of hulls and rigging, and in s.h.i.+p artillery. Other matters had subsequently called off his attention, and especially since the commencement of the Reformation every moment had brought with it its own urgent claims, and the dockyards had fallen into decay. The finances had been straitened by the Irish wars, and from motives of economy the s.h.i.+ps which the government possessed had fallen many of them out of commission, and were rotting in harbour. A few small vessels were kept on the coast of Ireland; but in the year 1536 there was scarcely in all the Channel a single royal cruiser carrying the English flag. Materials to man a fleet existed amply in the fishermen who went year after year in vast numbers to Iceland and to Ireland,[298]--hardy sailors, who, taught by necessity, went always armed, and had learnt to fight as well as to work; but, from a neglect not the less injurious because intelligible, the English authority in their own waters had sunk to a shadow. Pirates swarmed along the coasts--entering fearlessly into the harbours, and lying there in careless security. The war breaking out between Charles and Francis, the French and Flemish s.h.i.+ps of war captured prizes or fought battles in the mouths of English rivers, or under the windows of English towns; and through preying upon each other as enemies in the ordinary sense, both occasionally made prey of heretic English as enemies of the Church.

While the courts of Brussels and Paris were making professions of goodwill, the cruisers of both governments openly seized English traders and plundered English fis.h.i.+ng vessels, and Henry had for many months been compelled by the insurrection to submit to these aggressions, and to trust his subjects along the coasts to such inadequate defences as they could themselves provide. A French gallia.s.s and galleon came into Dartmouth harbour and attempted to cut out two merchantmen which were lying there: the mayor attacked them in boats and beat them off:[299]

but the harbours in general were poorly defended, and strange scenes occasionally took place in their waters. John Arundel, of Trerice, reports the following story to Cromwell: "There came into Falmouth haven a fleet of Spaniards, and the day after came four s.h.i.+ps of Dieppe, men-of-war, and the Spaniards shot into the Frenchmen, and the Frenchmen shot into the Spaniards, and during three hours great guns shot between them, and the Frenchmen were glad to come higher up the haven; and the morrow after St. Paul's day the Spaniards came up to a.s.sault the Frenchmen, and the Frenchmen came up almost to the town of Truro, and went aground there. I went to the admiral of the Spaniards and commanded him to keep the king's peace, and not to follow further; but the Spaniard would not, but said 'I will have them, or I will die for it.'

And then the Spaniards put their ordnance in their boats, and shot the French admiral forty or sixty shots during a long hour, the gentlemen of the city, Mr. Killigrew and Mr. Trefusis, and others, taking pleasure at it. Then I went to the Spaniards and told them to leave their shooting, or I would raise the country upon them. And so the Spaniards left. My Lord, I and all the country will desire the King's Grace that we may have blockhouses made upon our haven."[300]

Pirates were enemies to which the people were accustomed, and they could in some measure cope with them; but commissioned vessels of war had now condescended to pirates' practices. Sandwich boatmen were pillaged by a Flemish cruiser in the Downs in the autumn of 1536.[301] A smack belonging to Deal was twice boarded and robbed by a Flemish officer of high rank, the admiral of the Sluys.[302]

[Sidenote: Barges pillaged at Dover.]

[Sidenote: Redress cannot be obtained.]

The king had for several years been engaged in making a harbour of refuge at Dover. The workmen saw English traders off the coast, and even the very vessels which brought the iron and timber for the harbour-piers, plundered by French and Flemings under their eyes;[303]

and the London merchants declared, that, although the country was nominally at peace, their s.h.i.+ps could not venture out of port unless the government would undertake their convoy.[304] The remonstrances which were made, of course in loud terms, at Paris and Brussels, were received with verbal apologies, and the queen regent gave orders that her cruisers should cease their outrages; but either their commanders believed that their conduct would be secretly winked at, or they could not be convinced that heretics were not lawful game; or perhaps the zealous subjects of the Catholic powers desired to precipitate the sluggish action of their governments. At any rate, the same insolences continued, and no redress could be obtained.

[Sidenote: A small fleet is fitted out at Portsmouth.]

[Sidenote: A French s.h.i.+p is sunk in Mounts Bay.]

[Sidenote: Action in the Downs.]

[Sidenote: The admiral of the Sluys is taken by Sir John Dudley.]

[Sidenote: The English are again lords of the narrow seas.]

Henry could not afford to declare war. The exchequer was ill-furnished.

The rebellion had consumed the subsidy, and the abbey lands had as yet returned little profit either by their rentals or by sale. The country, however, had not yet sunk so low as to be unable to defend its own coasts and its own traders. Sufficient money was found for the immediate purpose, and a small but admirably equipped fleet was fitted out silently at Portsmouth. Sir Thomas Seymour, the queen's brother, Sir George Carew, Sir John Dudley, and Christopher Coo, a rough English sailor, were appointed to the command; and, when the s.h.i.+ps were ready, they swept out into the Channel. Secrecy had been observed as far as possible, in hope of taking the offenders by surprise. The greater number of them had, unhappily, been warned, and had escaped to their own harbours; but Coo shortly brought two pirate prizes into Rye. The people of Penzance, one August afternoon, heard the thunder of distant cannon.

Carew and Seymour, searching the western coast, had come on the traces of four French s.h.i.+ps of war, which had been plundering. They came up with them in Mounts Bay, and, closing against heavy odds, they fought them there till night. At daybreak, one of the four lay on the water, a sinking wreck. The others had crawled away in the darkness, and came no more into English waters.[305] Dudley had been even more fortunate. "As he was lying between the Needles and the Cowe," there came a letter to him from the Mayor of Rye, "that the Flemings had boarded a merchant-s.h.i.+p belonging to that port, and had taken goods out of her valued at three hundred pounds." "That hearing," he said, in his despatch to Henry, "I, with another of your Grace's s.h.i.+ps, made all the diligence that was possible towards the said coast of Rye; and, as it chanced, the wind served us so well that we were next morning before day against the Combe, and there we heard news that the said Flemings were departed the day before. Then we prepared towards the Downs, for the wind served for that place, and there we found lying the admiral of the Sluys, with one s.h.i.+p in his company besides himself, being both as well trimmed for the war as I have lightly seen. And when I had perfect knowledge that it was the admiral of the Sluys, of whom I had heard, both at Rye and at Portsmouth, divers robberies and ill-demeanours by him committed against your Highness's subjects, then I commanded my master to bring my s.h.i.+p to an anchor, as nigh to the said admiral as he could, to the intent to have had some communication with him; who incontinent put himself and all his men to defence, and neither would come to communication nor would send none of his men aboard of me. And when I saw what a great brag they set upon it--for they made their drumsalt to strike alarum, and every man settled them to fight--I caused my master gunner to loose a piece of ordnance, and not touched him by a good s.p.a.ce; but he sent one to my s.h.i.+p, and mocked not with me, for he brake down a part of the decks of my s.h.i.+p, and hurt one of my gunners very sore. That done, I trifled no more with him, but caused my master to lay her aboard; and so, within a little fight, she was yielded."

Dudley's second s.h.i.+p had been engaged with the other Fleming; but the latter, as soon as the admiral was taken, slipped her cable and attempted to escape. The Englishman stood after her. Both s.h.i.+ps vanished up Channel, scudding before a gale of wind; but whether the Dutchman was brought back a prize, or whether the pursuer followed too far, and found himself, as Dudley feared, caught on a lee sh.o.r.e off the Holland flats, the Records are silent.[306] Pirates, however, and over-zealous privateers, in these and other encounters, were taught their lesson; and it did not, for some time, require to be repeated: "Your subjects,"

Dudley and Seymour told the king in a joint letter, "shall not only pa.s.s and repa.s.s without danger of taking, but your Majesty shall be known to be lord of these seas."[307] They kept their word. In this one summer the Channel was cleared, and the nucleus was formed of the fleet which, eight years after, held in check and baffled the most powerful armament which had left the French sh.o.r.es against England since the Norman William crossed to Hastings.

[Sidenote: Fortifications of the coast.]

[Sidenote: Commissions issued for a survey.]

[Sidenote: List of fortresses built in the years 1537, 1538, and 1539.]

But Henry did not rest upon his success. The impulse had been given, and the work of national defence went forward. The animus of foreign powers was evidently as bad as possible, Subjects shared the feelings of their rulers. The Pope might succeed, and most likely would succeed at last, in reconciling France and Spain; and experience proved that England lay formidably open to attack. It was no longer safe to trust wholly to the extemporized militia. The introduction of artillery was converting war into a science; and the recent proofs of the unprotected condition of the harbours should not be allowed to pa.s.s without leaving their lesson.

Commissions were issued for a survey of the whole eastern and southern coasts. The most efficient gentlemen residing in the counties which touched the sea were requested to send up reports of the points where invading armies could be most easily landed, with such plans as occurred to them for the best means of throwing up defences.[308] The plans were submitted to engineers in London; and in two years every exposed spot upon the coast was guarded by an earthwork, or a fort or blockhouse.

Batteries were erected to protect the harbours at St. Michael's Mount, Falmouth, Fowey, Plymouth, Dartmouth, Torbay, Portland, Calshot, Cowes, and Portsmouth.[309] Castles (some of them remain to the present day) were built at Dover, Deal, Sandwich, and along both sh.o.r.es of the Thames. The walls and embankments at Guisnes and Calais were repaired and enlarged; and Hull, Scarborough, Newcastle, and Berwick-upon-Tweed were made impregnable against ordinary attack. Each of these places was defended by adequate and trained garrisons;[310] and the musters were kept in training within twenty miles of the coast, and were held in readiness to a.s.semble on any point at any moment.

[Sidenote: Derangement of the revenue owing to the change in the character of war.]

Money was the chief difficulty. The change in the character of war created unforeseen expenses of many kinds. The cost of regular military and naval establishments, a new feature in the national system, was thrown suddenly on the crown; and the revenue was unequal to so large a demand upon it. A fresh political arrangement was displacing the old; and the finances were necessarily long disordered before the country understood its condition, and had devised methods to meet its necessities.

[Sidenote: The abbey lands are disposed of,]

[Sidenote: And employment is found for the poor on public works.]