History of England from the fall of Wolsey to the death of Elizabeth Volume III Part 34

To this judgment two archbishops, seventeen bishops, and a hundred and thirty-nine clergy set their hands.[601] Their sentence was undoubtedly legal, according to a stricter interpretation of the canon law than had been usual in the ecclesiastical courts. The case was of a kind in which the queen, on her separate suit, could, with clear right, have obtained a divorce _a vinculo_ had she desired; and the country had been accustomed to see separations infinitely more questionable obtained in the court of the Rota or at home, with easy and scandalous levity.[602]

Nor could the most scrupulous person, looking at the marriage between Henry and Anne of Cleves on its own merits, pretend that any law, human or divine, would have been better fulfilled, or that any feeling ent.i.tled to respect would have been less outraged, by the longer maintenance of so unhappy a connexion. Yet it is much to be regretted that the clergy should have been compelled to meddle with it; under however plausible an aspect the divorce might be presented, it gave a colour to the interpretation which represented the separation from Catherine as arising out of caprice, and enabled the enemies of the Church of England to represent her synods as the instruments of the king's licentiousness.[603]

[Sidenote: The queen signifies her acquiescence.]

[Sidenote: She will remain in England with the rank of a princess; palaces, pensions, and establishments.]

For good or for evil, however, the judgment was given. The Bishop of Winchester spoke a few words in explanation to the two houses of parliament when it was presented;[604] and the next day the Duke of Suffolk and Wriothesley waited on the queen, and communicated the fortune which was impending over her. Anne herself--who, after the slight agitation which the first mooting of the matter naturally produced, had acquiesced in everything which was proposed to her--received the intimation with placidity. She wrote at their request to the king, giving her consent in writing. She wrote also to her brother, declaring herself satisfied, and expressing her hope that he would be satisfied as well. So much facility increased the consideration which her treatment ent.i.tled her to claim. The Bishop of Bath had taken with him to the Duke of Cleves an offer, which ought to have been an insult, of a pecuniary compensation for his sister's injury. It was withdrawn or qualified, before it was known to have been refused, to increase the settlement on the ex-queen. For many reasons the king desired that she should remain in England; but she had rank and precedence a.s.signed to her as if she had been a princess of the blood.

Estates were granted for her maintenance producing nearly three thousand a year. Palaces, dresses, jewels, costly establishments were added in lavish profusion, to be her dowry, as she was significantly told, should she desire to make a fresh experiment in matrimony. And she not only (it is likely) preferred a splendid independence to the poverty of a petty court in Germany, but perhaps, also, to the doubtful magnificence which she had enjoyed as Henry's bride.[605]

[Sidenote: Monday, July 12. The bill for the divorce is pa.s.sed in parliament.]

[Sidenote: Displeasure of the Duke of Cleves,]

[Sidenote: And want of generosity on the part of the king,]

Parliament made haste with the concluding stroke. On Monday the 12th the bill for the divorce was introduced: it was disposed of with the greatest haste which the forms of the Houses would allow; and the conclusion of the matter was announced to the queen's own family and the foreign powers almost as soon as it was known to be contemplated. The Duke of Cleves, on the first audience of the Bishop of Bath, had shown himself "heavy and hard to pacify and please." When all was over, the Bishops of Winchester and Durham, with other n.o.ble lords, wrote to him themselves, persuading him to acquiesce in a misfortune which could no longer be remedied; his sister had already declared her own satisfaction; and Henry, through his commissioners, informed him in detail of the proceedings in parliament and convocation, and trusted that the friends.h.i.+p between the courts would not be interrupted in consequence. It would have been well had he added nothing to a bare narrative of facts; but questionable actions are rarely improved in the manner of their execution. The king was irritated at the humiliation to which the conduct of the German powers had exposed him in the spring; and the Duke of Cleves had afterwards increased his displeasure by a secret intrigue with the court of Paris. Satisfied with his settlements upon Anne, he avowed an anxiety to be extricated from his offer of money to the duke, "who might percase, to his miscontentment, employ it by the advice of others, or at least without commodity to the giver."[606]

In fact, he said, as he had done nothing but what was right, "if the lady's contentation would not content her friends, it should not be honourable for him, with detriment and waste of his treasure, to labour to satisfy those who without cause misliked his doings, which were just, and without injury to be pa.s.sed over."[607] Finally, he concluded: "In case the duke sheweth himself untractable and high-couraged, in such sort as devising interests and respects, he shall further set forth the matter, and increase it with words more largely than reason would he should, alledging, percase, that though the lady is contented, yet he is not contented, her mother is not contented, requiring why and wherefore, and such other behaviour as men in high stomach, forgetting reason, shew and utter, in that case you, the Bishop of Bath, declaring unto the duke how we sent you not thither to render an account of our just proceedings, but friendly to communicate them, you shall desire the duke to license you to depart."[608]

[Sidenote: Which does not contrast favourably with the conduct of the duke.]

[Sidenote: The duke will not admit that his sister has been honourably treated; but will not pres his quarrel to a rupture.]

The high style of Henry contrasts unfavourably with the more dignified moderation of the answer. The duke wrote himself briefly to the king: he replied through his minister to the amba.s.sador, that "he was sorry for the the chance, and would well have wished it had been otherwise; yet, seeing it was thus, he would not depart from his amity for his Majesty for any such matter. He could have wished that his sister should return to Germany; but, if she was satisfied to remain, he had confidence that the king would act uprightly towards her, and he would not press it." Of the offer of money he took little notice or none.[609] The bishop laboured to persuade him to pay respect to the judgment of the Church; this, however, the duke resolutely refused, altogether ignoring it as of no manner of moment; neither would he allow that the Lady Anne had been treated honourably, although the bishop much pressed for the admission.

A cold acquiescence in an affront which he was too weak to resent, and a promise that his private injuries should not cause the dissolution of an alliance which had been useful to the interests of religion, was the most which could be extorted from the Duke of Cleves; and, in calmer moments, Henry could neither have desired nor looked for more. But no one at that crisis was calm in England. The pa.s.sions roused in the strife of convictions which divided rank from rank, which divided families, which divided every earnest man against himself, extended over all subjects which touched the central question. The impulse of the moment a.s.sumed the character of right, and everything was wrong which refused to go along with it.

[Sidenote: The divorce is communicated to Francis,]

Sir Edward Karne made the communication to Francis, prefacing his story with the usual prelude of the succession, and the anxiety of the country that the king should have more children. "Even at that point" Francis started, expecting that something serious was to follow. When Sir Edward went on to say that "the examination of the king's marriage was submitted to the clergy," "What," he said, "the matrimony made with the queen that now is?" Karne a.s.sented. "Then he fetched a great sigh, and spake no more" till the conclusion, when he answered, "he could nor would take any other opinion of his Highness but as his loving brother and friend should do;" for the particular matter, "his Highness's conscience must be judge therein."[610]

[Sidenote: And to the Emperor.]

[Sidenote: The king had lost Germany and gained the Empire.]

"The Emperor," wrote the resident Pate, "when I declared my commission, gave me good air, with one gesture and countenance throughout, saving that suddenly, as I touched the pith of the matter, thereupon he steadfastly cast his eye upon me a pretty while, and then interrupting me, demanded what the causes were of the doubts concerning the marriage with the daughter of Cleves." Pate was not commissioned to enter into details; and Charles, at the end, contented himself with sending his hearty recommendations, and expressing his confidence that, as the king was wise, so he was sure he would do nothing "which should not be to the discharge of his conscience and the tranquillity of his realm."[611] In confidence, a few days later, he avowed a hope that all would now go well in England; the enormities of the past had been due to the pernicious influence of Cromwell; or were "beside the king's pleasure or knowledge, being a prince," the Emperor said, "no less G.o.dly brought up than endued and imbued with so many virtuous qualities as whom all blasts and storms could never alter nor move, but as vice might alter true virtue."[612] On the whole, the impression left by the affair on the Continent was that Henry "had lost the hearts of the German princes, but had gained the Emperor instead."[613] Both the loss and the gain were alike welcome to the English conservatives. The latter, happy in their victory, and now freed from all impediments, had only to follow up their advantage.

[Sidenote: Bill for the moderation of the Six Articles in favour of incontinence.]

[Sidenote: Appointment of a standing committee of religion, with extraordinary powers.]

On the 12th of July the persecuting bill was pa.s.sed, and the t.i.the Bill also, after having been recast by the Commons.[614] On the 16th the Six Articles Bill was moderated, in favour not of heresy, but of the more venial offence of incontinency. Married clergy and incontinent priests by the Six Articles Bill were, on the first offence, to forfeit their benefices; if they persisted they were to be treated as felons. The King's Highness, graciously considering "that the punishment of death was very sore, and too much extreme," was contented to relax the penalty into three gradations. For the first offence the punishment was to be forfeiture of all benefices but one; for the second, forfeiture of the one remaining; for the third, imprisonment for life.[615] A few days later the extension given to the prerogative, by the Act of Proclamations, was again shortened by communicating to the clergy a share of the powers which had been granted absolutely to the crown; and the parliament at the same time restored into the hands of the spiritualty the control of religious opinion. The Protestants had s.h.i.+fted their ground from purgatory and ma.s.ses to free-will and justification; and had thus defied the bishops, and left the law behind them. The king's proclamations had failed through general neglect. A committee of religion was now const.i.tuted, composed of the archbishops, bishops, and other learned doctors of divinity; and an act, which pa.s.sed three readings in the House of Lords in a single day, conferred on this body a power to declare absolutely, under the king's sanction, the judgment of the English Church on all questions of theology which might be raised, either at home or on the Continent, and to compel submission to their decrees, under such pains and penalties as they might think proper to impose, limited only by the common law and by the restrictions attached to the Act of Proclamations.[616]

[Sidenote: Bill of attainder against various persons who had conspired to betray Calais,]

[Sidenote: To which are added the names of Barnes, Garret, and Jerome.]

[Sidenote: Declared guilty of heresy.]

One important matter remained. This statute conferred no powers of life and death; and there were certain chosen champions of Protestantism who had resisted authority, had scoffed at recantation, and had insulted the Bishop of Winchester. Although a penal measure could not be extended to comprehend their doctrine by special definition, an omnipotent parliament might, by a stretch of authority, vindicate the bishop's dignity, and make a conspicuous example of the offenders. A case of high treason was before the Houses. At the time when the invasion was impending, a party of conspirators, Sir Gregory Botolph, Clement Philpot, and three others, had contrived a project to betray Calais either to the French or the Spaniards. The plot had been betrayed by a confederate;[617] and the Anglo-Catholics did not intend to repeat the blunder of showing a leaning towards the Romanists, which had wrecked their fortunes in the preceding summer: they sentenced the offenders to death by an attainder; and after so satisfactory a display of loyalty, the friends of the bishops added three more names to the list in the following words:[618] "And whereas Robert Barnes, late of London, clerk, Thomas Garret, late of London, clerk, and William Jerome, late of Stepney, in the county of Middles.e.x, clerk, being detestable and abominable heretics, and amongst themselves agreed and confederated to set and sow common sedition and variance amongst the king's true and loving subjects within this his realm, not fearing their most bounden duty to G.o.d nor yet their allegiance towards his Majesty, have openly preached, taught, set forth, and delivered in divers and sundry places of this realm, a great number of heresies, false, erroneous opinions, doctrines, and sayings; and thinking themselves to be men of learning, have taken upon them most seditiously and heretically to open and declare divers and many texts of Scripture, expounding and applying the same to many perverse and heretical senses, understandings, and purposes, to the intent to induce and lead his Majesty's said subjects to diffidence and refusal of the true, sincere faith and belief which Christian men ought to have in Christian religion, the number whereof were too long here to be rehea.r.s.ed.... Be it, therefore, enacted that the said persons Robert Barnes, Thomas Garret, and William Jerome, shall be convicted and attainted of heresy, and that they and every of them shall be deemed and adjudged abominable and detestable heretics, and shall have and suffer pains of death by burning or otherwise, as shall please the King's Majesty."

[Sidenote: Dissolution of parliament.]

This was the last measure of consequence in the session. Three days after it closed. On the 24th the king came down to Westminster in person, to thank the parliament for the subsidy. The Speaker of the House of Commons congratulated the country on their sovereign. The chancellor replied, in his Majesty's name, that his only study was for the welfare of his subjects; his only ambition was to govern them by the rule of the Divine law, and the Divine love, to the salvation of their souls and bodies. The bills which had been pa.s.sed were then presented for the royal a.s.sent; and the chancellor, after briefly exhorting the members of both houses to show the same diligence in securing the due execution of these measures as they had displayed in enacting them, declared the parliament dissolved.[619]

[Sidenote: The close of the Cromwell drama.]

[Sidenote: His letters to the king from the Tower.]

[Sidenote: July 28. He goes to execution.]

The curtain now rises on the closing act of the Cromwell tragedy. In the condemned cells in the Tower, the three Catholics for whose sentence he was himself answerable--the three Protestants whom his fall had left exposed to their enemies--were the companions of the broken minister; and there for six weeks he himself, the central figure, whose will had made many women childless, had sat waiting his own unpitied doom. Twice the king had sent to him "honourable persons, to receive such explanations as he could offer. He had been patiently and elaborately heard."[620] Twice he had himself written,--once, by Henry's desire, an account of the Anne of Cleves marriage,--once a letter, which his faithful friend Sir Ralph Sadler carried to Henry for him; and this last the king caused the bearer three times to read over, and "seemed to be moved therewith."[621] Yet what had Cromwell to say? That he had done his best in the interest of the commonwealth? But his best was better than the laws of the commonwealth. He had endeavoured faithfully to serve the king; but he had endeavoured also to serve One higher than the king. He had thrown himself in the breach against king and people where they were wrong. He had used the authority with which he had been so largely trusted to thwart the parliament and suspend statutes of the realm. He might plead his services; but what would his services avail him! An offence in the king's eyes was ever proportioned to the rank, the intellect, the character of the offender. The _via media Anglicana_, on which Henry had planted his foot, prescribed an even justice; and as Cromwell, in this name of the _via media_, had struck down without mercy the adherents of the Church of Rome, there was no alternative but to surrender him to the same equitable rule, or to declare to the world and to himself that he no longer held that middle place which he so vehemently claimed. To sustain the Six Articles and to pardon the vicegerent was impossible. If the consent to the attainder cost the king any pang, we do not know; only this we know, that a pa.s.sionate appeal for mercy, such as was rarely heard in those days of haughty endurance, found no response; and on the 28th of July the most despotic minister who had ever governed England pa.s.sed from the Tower to the scaffold.

[Sidenote: A false account of his last words printed by authority.]

A speech was printed by authority, and circulated through Europe, which it was thought desirable that he should have been supposed to have uttered before his death. It was accepted as authentic by Hall, and from Hall's pages has been transferred into English history; and "the Lord Cromwell" is represented to have confessed that he had been seduced into heresy, that he repented, and died in the faith of the holy Catholic Church. Reginald Pole, who, like others, at first accepted the official report as genuine, warned a correspondent, on the authority of persons whose account might be relied upon, that the words which were really spoken were very different, and to Catholic minds were far less satisfactory.[622] The last effort of Cromwell's enemies was to send him out of the world with a lie upon his lips, to call in his dying witness in favour of falsehoods which he gave up his life to overthrow. Clear he was not, as what living man was clear? of all taint of superst.i.tion; but a fairer version of his parting faith will be found in words which those who loved him, and who preserved no record of his address to the people, handed down as his last prayer to the Saviour:--

[Sidenote: His prayer on the scaffold.]

[Sidenote: The end.]

"O Lord Jesu, which art the only health of all men living, and the everlasting life of them which die in Thee, I, wretched sinner, do submit myself wholly to thy most blessed will; and, being sure that the thing cannot perish which is submitted to thy mercy, willingly now I leave this frail and wicked flesh, in sure hope that Thou wilt in better wise restore it to me again at the last day in the resurrection of the just. I beseech Thee, most merciful Lord Jesu Christ, that Thou wilt by thy grace make strong my soul against all temptation, and defend me with the buckler of thy mercy against all the a.s.saults of the devil. I see and acknowledge that there is in myself no hope of salvation; but all my confidence, hope, and trust is in thy most merciful goodness. I have no merits nor good works which I may allege before Thee: of sin and evil works, alas! I see a great heap. But yet, through thy mercy, I trust to be in the number of them to whom Thou wilt not impute their sins, but wilt take and accept me for righteous and just, and to be the inheritor of everlasting life. Thou, merciful Lord, wast born for my sake; Thou didst suffer both hunger and thirst for my sake; all thy holy actions and works Thou wroughtest for my sake; Thou sufferedst both grievous pains and torments for my sake; finally, Thou gavest thy most precious body and blood to be shed on the cross for my sake. Now, most merciful Saviour, let all these things profit me that Thou hast freely done for me, which hast given Thyself also for me. Let thy blood cleanse and wash away the spots and foulness of my sins. Let thy righteousness hide and cover my unrighteousness. Let the merits of thy pa.s.sion and bloodshedding be satisfaction for my sins. Give me, Lord, thy grace, that the faith in my salvation in thy blood waver not, but may ever be firm and constant; that the hope of thy mercy and life everlasting never decay in me; that love wax not cold in me; finally, that the weakness of my flesh be not overcome with fear of death. Grant me, merciful Saviour, that when death hath shut up the eyes of my body, yet the eyes of my soul may still behold and look upon Thee; and when death hath taken away the use of my tongue, yet my heart may cry and say unto Thee, Lord, into thy hands I commend my soul. Lord Jesu, receive my spirit. Amen."[623]

[Sidenote: His character.]

With these words upon his lips perished a statesman whose character will for ever remain a problem.[624] For eight years his influence had been supreme with the king--supreme in parliament--supreme in convocation; the nation, in the ferment of revolution, was absolutely controlled by him; and he has left the print of his individual genius stamped indelibly, while the metal was at white heat, into the const.i.tution of the country. Wave after wave has rolled over his work. Romanism flowed back over it under Mary. Puritanism, under another even grander Cromwell, overwhelmed it. But Romanism ebbed again, and Puritanism is dead, and the polity of the Church of England remains as it was left by its creator.

And not in the Church only, but in all departments of the public service, Cromwell was the sovereign guide. In the Foreign Office and the Home Office, in Star Chamber and at council table, in dockyard and law court, Cromwell's intellect presided--Cromwell's hand executed. His gigantic correspondence remains to witness for his varied energy.

Whether it was an amba.s.sador or a commissioner of sewers, a warden of a company or a tradesman who was injured by the guild, a bishop or a heretic, a justice of the peace, or a serf crying for emanc.i.p.ation, Cromwell was the universal authority to whom all officials looked for instruction, and all sufferers looked for redress. Hated by all those who had grown old in an earlier system--by the wealthy, whose interests were touched by his reforms--by the superst.i.tious, whose prejudices he wounded--he was the defender of the weak, the defender of the poor, defender of the "fatherless and forsaken"; and for his work, the long maintenance of it has borne witness that it was good--that he did the thing which England's true interests required to be done.

Of the manner in which that work was done it is less easy to speak.

Fierce laws fiercely executed--an unflinching resolution which neither danger could daunt nor saintly virtue move to mercy--a long list of solemn tragedies--weigh upon his memory. He had taken upon himself a task beyond the ordinary strength of man. His difficulties could be overcome only by inflexible persistence in the course which he had marked out for himself and for the state; and he supported his weakness by a determination which imitated the unbending fixity of a law of nature. He pursued an object the excellence of which, as his mind saw it, transcended all other considerations--the freedom of England and the destruction of idolatry: and those who from any motive, n.o.ble or base, pious or impious, crossed his path, he crushed, and pa.s.sed on over their bodies.

Whether the same end could have been attained by gentler methods is a question which many persons suppose they can easily answer in the affirmative. Some diffidence of judgment, however, ought to be taught by the recollection that the same end was purchased in every other country which had the happiness to attain to it at all, only by years of bloodshed, a single day or week of which caused larger human misery than the whole period of the administration of Cromwell. Be this as it will, his aim was n.o.ble. For his actions he paid with his life; and he followed his victims by the same road which they had trodden before him, to the high tribunal, where it may be that great natures who on earth have lived in mortal enmity may learn at last to understand each other.

[Sidenote: July 30. Double execution of Protestants and Romanists.]

Two days after, Barnes, Garret, and Jerome died bravely at the stake, their weakness and want of wisdom all atoned for, and serving their Great Master in their deaths better than they had served Him in their lives. With them perished, not as heretics, but as traitors, the three Romanizing priests. The united executions were designed as an evidence of the even hand of the council. The execution of traitors was not to imply an indulgence of heresy; the punishment of heretics should give no hope to those who were disloyal to their king and country. But scenes of such a kind were not repeated. The effect was to shock, not to edify.[625] The narrow theory could be carried out to both its cruel extremes only where a special purpose was working upon pa.s.sions specially excited.

END OF VOL. III.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] He told Sir Gregory Ca.s.salis that he had been compelled by external pressure to issue threats, "quae tamen nunquam in animo habuit ad exitum perducere."--Sir Gregory Ca.s.salis to Henry VIII.: _MS. Cotton.

Vitellius_, B 14, fol. 215.