A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century Part 13

It was now inevitable that the question from which all had started in England, as to the relation between State and Church, should be decided completely in favour of the secular principle. It is very true that Cranmer held fast to the objective view of the visible church. If the ceremonies were altered with which the Romish church imparts the spiritual consecration, yet in this respect only the mystical usages introduced in recent centuries were abandoned, and the ritual restored to the form used in more primitive times, especially in the African church. But it was surely a violent change, when those who wished to receive consecration were now previously asked, whether their inward call agreed both with the will of the Redeemer and the law of the land; they were required to a.s.sent to the principle that Scripture contains all which it is necessary for man to know, and to pledge themselves to guard against any doctrine not in conformity with Scripture. It is generally believed, and the fact is of lasting importance, that the Convocation of the clergy, a commission of the spiritualty, the Primate-Archbishop and a number of bishops, took part in the change; but yet the decisive decrees went forth from the Parliament, to which the spiritual power had been irrevocably attached since Henry VIII, and sometimes from the Privy Council alone. To establish a normal form of doctrine, men set to work to compose a Confession, which was completed at that time in forty-two Articles.

There had been a wish that Melanchthon should have come over in person to aid in composing it; at any rate his labours had much influence in deciding the shape it took. The Articles belong to the cla.s.s of Confessions, as they were then framed in Saxony by Melanchthon, in Swabia by Brenz, to be laid before the coming Council. And it is just in this that their value lies, that by them England attached herself most closely to the Protestant community on the Continent. They are the work of Cranmer, who was entrusted with their composition by the King and Privy Council, and communicated his labours first to the King's tutor, Cheke, and the Secretary of State, Cecil: in conjunction with them he next laid them before the King; with the a.s.sistance of some chaplains their final form was given them; then the Privy Council ordered them to be subscribed. The influence of the government on the nominations to the office of bishop was now still more open: the bishops were to hold office as long as they conducted themselves well,--in other words, as long as the ruling powers were content with them: the church jurisdiction was no longer administered in the name of the bishopric, but, like the temporal jurisdiction, in the King's name and under the King's seal; when they proceeded to revise the church laws, the primary maxim was, not to admit anything that contravened the temporal laws.[153] The use of the power of the keys was also derived by Cranmer from the permission of the sovereign.

Against this ever-increasing dependence some bishops of the old views made a struggle; to avoid coming into direct conflict with the supremacy, which they had acknowledged, they put forth the a.s.sertion that it could not be exercised by a King under age; they connived at the ma.s.s being read in side-chapels of their cathedrals, or refused to allow the change of the altars into communion-tables, or kept alive the controversy as to the doctrine of faith. The government on their side persisted in enforcing uniformity. They brought all opponents before a commission consisting of secular as well as ecclesiastical dignities, which had no scruple in p.r.o.nouncing the deprivation of the bishops: a fate which befell Gardiner of Winchester, Bonner of London, Day of Chichester, Heath of Worcester. In vain did they plead that the court before which they were brought was not a canonical one; the government appealed to the general rights of the temporal power as it had once been exercised by the Roman Emperors. In the conflict of church opinions the Protestant-minded prelates now had the upper hand.

Many who did not conform bought toleration from the government by sacrifices of money and goods. Elsewhere the newly-appointed bishops a.s.sented to concessions which did not always profit even the crown, but sometimes, as at Lichfield, private persons.[154] Already the further question was discussed whether there is in fact any essential distinction between bishops and presbyters: a church of foreigners was set up in London, to present a pattern of the pure apostolic const.i.tution as an example to the country. The government which had acquired such a thorough mastery over the clergy developed an open disinclination to the old forms of const.i.tution in the church. Who could have said, so long as things remained in the path thus once entered upon, whither this would lead?

NOTES:

[139] Froude iv. 515 (extracts from the doc.u.ments).

[140] Collier ii. 220 (Records lii).

[141] Proclamation of 8 July 1549 in Tytler, England under Edward VI and Mary I, p. 180.

[142] The point of view under which it was drawn up appears in a declaration inserted in the edition of 1549: 'the most weighty cause of the abolishment of certain ceremonies was, that they were abused partly by the superst.i.tious blindness of the unlearned, and partly by unsatiable avarice.--Where the old (ceremonies) may be well used there they [their opponents] cannot reprove the old only for their age. They ought rather to have reverence unto them for their antiquity, if they will declare themselves to be more studious of unity and concord, than of innovations and newfangleness which--is always to be eschewed.'

[143] 12 Sept. 1547 in Halliwell ii. 31. Cranmer appointed a prayer in church for the marriage of Edward and Mary, 'to confound all those, which labour to the lett and interruption of so G.o.dly a quiet and amity.' In Somerset's prayer printed, since the first edition of this book, in Froude v. 47, it is said: 'Look upon the small portion of the earth, which professeth thy holy name; especially have an eye to thy small isle of Britain;--that the Scotismen and we might thereafter live in one love and amity, knit into one nation by the marriage of the King's Majesty and the young Scotish Queen.'

[144] G.o.dwin, Rerum Anglicarum Annales 315.

[145] Proofs in Froude v. 136.

[146] So Queen Elizabeth tells us. Ellis, Letters ii. ii. 257.

[147] Cecil however was not the first Master of Requests: Thomas More already appears under this t.i.tle; Nares, Life of Burghley i. 179.

[148] 'You have suffered the rebels to lie in camp and armour against the King his n.o.bles and gentlemen; you did comfort divers of the said rebels.' Articles against the Lord Protector, in Strype, Memorials of Cranmer ii. 342.

[149] Marillac 26 Oct. 1549. 'Ceux-ci (at the Emperor's court) font une merveilleuse demonstration de joye de ce que le protecteur est abattu.' In Turnbull, Calendar of State Papers 1861 p. 47 an Instruction of the Council is mentioned, 'to acquaint the Emperor with the proceeding taken against the Duke of Somerset.' We should like to be better informed about this Instruction, in which too the Emperor was asked for aid.

[150] Soranzo, Relatione d'Inghilterra 1554. 'Per posseder la sua grazia ben amplamente, non solo faceva qualche spettacolo, per dargli piacere, ma gli diede liberta di danari.' Florentine Collection viii.

37.

[151] As he advises a friend: 'Apply yourself to riding shooting or tennis--not forgetting sometimes when you have leisure, your learning, chiefly reading the Scripture.' Halliwell ii. 49.

[152] Wheatly in Soames, History of the Reformation iii. 604.

[153] In the commission of 32 members (bishops, divines, civilians, lawyers) we find the names of Will. Cecil, Will Peters, Thomas Smith.

[154] Compare Heylin, History of the Reformation 50, 101.

CHAPTER VII.

TRANSFER OF THE GOVERNMENT TO A CATHOLIC QUEEN.

We can easily see how the power of the crown, founded by the first Tudor, and developed by the second through the emanc.i.p.ation from the Papacy, was further strengthened under the third. From Edward VI we have essays, in which he speaks about the spiritual and temporal government with the consciousness of a sovereign, whose actions depend only on himself. In the Homilies, which obtained legal sanction, there is found an express condemnation of resistance to the King, 'for G.o.des sake, from whom Kings are, and for orders sake.'

Whilst men were now expecting that Edward VI would arrive at manhood, and take the government completely into his own hands, and conduct it in the sense he had hitherto foreshadowed--not merely carrying out the Reformation thoroughly at home, but a.s.suming the leaders.h.i.+p of the Protestant world, symptoms appeared in him of the malady to which his half-brother Richmond had succ.u.mbed at an early age. But how then if the same fate befell him? According to Henry VIII's arrangement Mary was then to ascend the throne who, through her descent from Queen Catharine and from an inborn disposition which had become all the more confirmed by her opposition to her father and brother, represented the Catholic and Spanish interest. Nothing else could be expected but that she would employ the whole power of the State in support of her own views, would, so far as it could possibly be done, bring back the church to its earlier form, would depress the men who had hitherto played a great part by the side of the King and subject them to the opposite faction. But were they quietly to acquiesce in their fate?

The ambition of the Duke of Northumberland a.s.sociated itself with the great interests of religion, to prevent the threatening ruin. He persuaded the young King that it lay in his power to alter his father's settlement of the succession, as in itself not conformable to law, neither Mary nor the younger sister Elizabeth being ent.i.tled to the throne, as the two marriages from which they sprang had been declared illegal, and a b.a.s.t.a.r.d could not be made capable of wearing the English crown by any act of Parliament. Henry VIII had in his settlement of the succession pa.s.sed over the descendants of his elder sister, married in Scotland, as foreigners, but acknowledged those of the younger, Mary of Suffolk, as the next heirs after his own children. Mary's elder daughter Frances had married Henry Grey of Dorset, who had already obtained the t.i.tle of Suffolk, and had three daughters, the eldest of whom was Jane Grey. It was to her, whom the Duke of Northumberland married to one of his sons, that he now directed the King's attention, and induced him to prefer her to his sisters. Yet it was not so much to herself in person as to her male issue that Edward's attention was originally directed. Never yet had a Queen ruled in England in her own right, and even now there was a wish to avoid it. Edward arranged that, if he himself died without male heirs, the male heirs of Lady Frances, and if she too left none, then those of Lady Jane, should succeed. He hoped still to live till such an heir should be eighteen years old, in which case he could enter on the government immediately after himself. If his death occurred earlier, Jane was to conduct the administration during the interval, not as Queen but as Regent, and conjointly with a Council of government still to be named by him.[155] This Council of executors was to avoid all war, all other change, and especially not to alter the established religion in any point: rather it was to devote itself to completing the ecclesiastical legislation in conformity with that religion, and to the abolition of the Papal claims.[156] We see that Edward's view was, like that of many other sovereigns, to secure the continuance of his political and religious system of government for long years after his own death. The members of the Privy Council, before whom these arrangements were laid in the King's handwriting, promised on their oath and their honour to carry them out in every article, and to defend them with all their power.[157]

And if the affair had been undertaken in this manner, who could say that it might not have succeeded? Northumberland did not neglect to form a strong family interest in favour of the new combination that he designed. He married his own daughter to Lord Hastings, who was descended from the house of York, and one of Jane's sisters with the son of the powerful Earl of Pembroke. He could reckon on the support of the King of France, to whom the succession of a niece of the Emperor was odious, and on the consent of the Privy Council, which was in great part dependent on him; how could the Protestant feeling have failed to gain him a large party in the country, especially since something might be said for the plan itself.

But Edward VI's malady developed quicker than was expected. At the last moment he was further induced to award the succession not to the male heirs of Lady Jane, but to herself and her male heirs.[158] He died with the prayer that G.o.d would guard England from the Papacy.

Lady Jane Grey had hitherto devoted her days to study. For father and mother were severe and found much in her to blame: on the other hand quiet hours of inward satisfaction were given her by the instructions of a teacher, always alike kindly disposed, who initiated her into learning and an acquaintance with literature: bending over her Plato, she did not miss the amus.e.m.e.nt of the chase which others were enjoying in the Park. After her marriage too, which did not make her exactly happy, she still lived thus with her thoughts withdrawn from the world, when she was one day summoned to Sion-House where she found a great and brilliant a.s.sembly. She still knew nothing of the King's death. What were her feelings, when she was told that Edward VI was dead; that to secure the kingdom from the Popish faith and the government of his two sisters who were not legitimate, he had declared her, Lady Jane, his heiress, and when the great dignitaries of the realm bent their knees and reverenced her as their Queen! At times they had already talked to her of her claim to the throne, but she had never thought much of it. When it now thus became a reality, her whole soul was overcome by it: she fell to the ground and burst into a flood of tears. Whether she had a full right to the throne, she could not judge: what she felt was her incapacity to rule. But whilst she uttered this, a different feeling pa.s.sed through her, as she has told us herself: she prayed in the depths of her soul that, if the highest office belonged to her legally, G.o.d might give her the grace to administer it to his honour. The next day she betook herself by water to the Tower, and received the homage offered her. The heralds proclaimed her accession in the capital.

But here this proclamation was received in silence and even with murmurs. The succession had been settled by Henry VIII on the basis of an act of Parliament: nothing else was expected but that this would be adhered to, and Mary succeed her brother: that Edward without any legal authorisation of a similar kind had now put a distant relative in his sister's place, seemed an open robbery of the lawful heir. It made no impression, that at the proclamation men were reminded of the Popery of the Princess Mary and her intention to restore the Papal power. Religious discord had not yet become so strong in England as to make men forget the fundamental principles of right on its account.

The man who brought the princess the first news of Edward's death (which was still kept secret) remarks expressly in telling it, that he did not love her religion but abhorred the attempt to set aside lawful heirs. Mary prudently betook herself to Norfolk, where she had the most determined friends, to a castle on the sea; so as to be able, if her opponent should maintain the upper hand, to escape to the Emperor.

But every one declared for her, the Catholics who saw in her the born champion of their religion and were strongest in those very districts, and the Protestants to whom the princess made some, though not binding, promises; she was proclaimed Queen in Norwich. If the Duke of Northumberland wished to carry out his projects, it was necessary for him to suppress this movement by force. He at once took the field for this purpose, with a fine body of artillery and two thousand infantry, and occupied a position in the neighbourhood of Cambridge.

It seemed as though the crown would once more be fought for in open field just as it had been a century before, and that in fact, just as then, the neighbouring powers would interfere. On Northumberland's side French help was expected; on the other hand application was already made to the Emperor to send armed troops over the sea to his cousin.[159] It was not however this time to reach such a point: while the combination attempted in favour of Jane Grey met with strong popular resistance, it was shattered to pieces by internal discord. If the new Queen had such a good right as they told her, she would share it with none, not even with her husband; she would not appear as a creature of the Dudleys and a tool of their ambition: she would only name him a duke and would not allow him to be crowned with her as King. We recognise in this her high idea of the kingly power and its divine right; but we can also easily conceive that the discord which broke out on this point in the family could not but act on the members of the Privy Council, of whom only a section were in complete understanding with Northumberland, while the rest had merely yielded to the ascendancy of his power. While the duke was expecting armed reinforcements from London, a complete revolution took place there: under the management of the Privy Council Mary was proclaimed Queen, and a summons sent to Northumberland to submit to her. The fleet which was destined to prevent Mary's flight had already declared for her; the troops which were called out in the counties to fight against her crossed over to her side; in Northumberland's camp the same opinion gained the upper hand: the duke felt himself incapable of withstanding it: he allowed himself to be carried along by it like the rest. Men saw the extraordinary spectacle of the man who had marched out to destroy Mary now ordering her accession to be proclaimed in his encampment, he accompanied the herald and himself cried out Mary's name.[160] These English n.o.bles have boundless ambition, they grasp with bold hand at the highest prizes: but they have no inner power of resistance, as against the course of events and public opinion they have no will of their own. However the duke might behave, he could not save either his freedom or his life. Soon afterwards Mary entered London amid the joyous shouts of the people. She was still united as closely as possible with her sister Elizabeth: they appeared together hand in hand. Jane Grey remained as a prisoner in the Tower, which she had entered as Queen. Never did the natural right of succession, as it was established by the testator of the inheritance and the Parliament, obtain a greater triumph.

After the succession was decided, the great questions of government came into the foreground, above all the question what position Mary should take up with regard to religious matters.

Among the Protestants the opinion prevailed that it could not yet be known whether she would not let religion remain in the state in which she found it. Towns where the Protestant feeling was strongest joyfully attached themselves to her in this expectation.

Her cousin, the Emperor Charles, who justly regarded her accession as a victory, and who from the first moment exercised the greatest influence on her resolutions, advised her before all things to moderate her Catholic zeal. She should reflect that many of the lords by whom she was now supported, a part of the Privy Council, and the people of London, were Protestants, and guard against estranging them.

She should at once call a Parliament to show that she meant to rule in the accustomed manner, and take care that the Northern counties, as well as Cornwall, where men still held the most firmly to Catholicism, were represented in it.

This good advice was not without influence on the Queen. In a tumult which arose two days after her arrival in the city, she had the Lord Mayor summoned in order to tell him that she would force no man's conscience, she hoped that the people would through good instruction come back to the religion which she herself professed with full conviction. When she repeated this soon after in a proclamation, she added that these things must shortly be ordered by common consent. But of what kind this order would be, there could be already no doubt after these words: she desired a change, but intended to bring it about in a legal manner.

In all the steps taken by her government her Catholic sympathies predominated. She felt no scruple in using the spiritual rights, which the const.i.tution gave her, in favour of Catholicism. As 'Head of the Church next under G.o.d,' Mary forbade all preaching and interpretation of Scripture without special permission. But she entrusted the power of giving this permission to the same Bishop Gardiner who had offered the most persevering resistance to the Protestant tendencies of the previous government. The antagonism between the bishops entered again on an entirely new phase: the Catholics rose, the Protestants were depressed to the uttermost. Tonstal, Heath, and Day were, like Gardiner, restored to their sees on the ground of the protests lodged against the proceedings taken with reference to them at their deprivation, protests which were regarded as valid. Ridley had to give up the see of London again to Bonner: the Bishops of Gloucester and Exeter experienced the royal displeasure; not merely Latimer but also Cranmer were imprisoned in the Tower. Everywhere the images were replaced, in many churches the celebration of the ma.s.s was revived.

Those preachers who declared themselves against it had to follow their bishops to prison. The Calvinistic model-congregation was dissolved.

The foreign scholars quitted the country; and their most zealous followers also fled to the continent before the coming storm of persecution.

At the beginning of October the Queen's coronation took place with the old customary ceremonies, for which the Emperor's leading minister, Granvella, Bishop of Arras, sent over a vase of consecrated oil, on the mystical meaning of which great stress was again laid. The Queen had some scruples about the coronation, as she wished previously to get rid of her t.i.tle, 'Head of the Church': but the Emperor saw danger in delay; he thought the declaration she had in the deepest secrecy made to the Roman See, that she meant to re-establish its authority, removed any religious scruple. He fully approved of the coronation preceding the Parliament, and recommended the Queen, in virtue of her const.i.tutional right, without any delay to name bishops and prelates, who might be useful to her at its impending meeting.

But the supreme power once const.i.tuted, as formerly in the civil wars, so also in the times of the Reformation movement, had always exercised a decisive influence on the composition of the Parliamentary a.s.semblies; would not this then be the case when it had declared itself again Catholic? No doubt the government, at the head of which Gardiner appeared as Lord Chancellor, used all the means at its disposal to guide the elections according to its views. It appears to have been with the same motive that the Queen in a proclamation, which generally breathed nothing but benevolence, remitted payment of the subsidies last voted under her brother. Yet we can hardly attribute the result wholly to this. Parliamentary elections are wont to receive their impulse from the mistakes of the last administration and the evils that have come to light: and much had undeniably been done under Edward VI which could not but call forth discontent. The ferment at home was increased by financial disorder: church property had suffered enormous losses. But above all the supreme power had taken a sudden start in breaking through its ancient bounds. And, last of all, the Protestant tendencies had allied themselves with an undertaking which ran directly counter to the customary law and to previous Parliamentary enactments. And so it might come to pa.s.s that the same feelings swayed the elections which had mainly brought about Mary's accession.

But, after all, the result of these elections was not such as to make a complete return to the Papal authority probable. The Emperor Charles, who mainly guided the Queen's steps, warned her from attempting it. She had prayed him to communicate to her the Pope's declarations issued in favour of her hereditary right: he sent them to her, but with the advice to make no use of them, since they might involve her in difficulties without end. It seemed to him sufficient if the Parliament simply repealed the enactments which had formerly been pa.s.sed respecting the invalidity of her mother's marriage with her father. In the bill which was drawn up on this point in the Upper House it was merely stated that the marriage, in itself valid and approved by the wisest persons of the realm, had been made displeasing to the King through evil influences and annulled by a sentence of Archbishop Cranmer, on whom the greatest blame fell. To many men this seemed already going too far, since together with the dispensation the old church authority was again recognised: but as there was not a word about the Pope in it, this was less apparent: the bill was pa.s.sed unanimously. The act might be regarded as a political one. On the other hand religion was very directly affected by the proposal to repeal the alterations in the church service which had been introduced under Edward VI, and to abolish the Common Prayer-book. On this ensued the hottest conflict. Once the proposal had to be laid aside: when it was resumed, the debate on it lasted six days: a third of the members were steadily against it. But in the majority the opinion again prevailed that Henry VIII's church const.i.tution--retention of the Catholic doctrines and emanc.i.p.ation from the Papacy--was the most suitable for England: a resolution was carried to the effect that only such books as were in use under Henry VIII should be henceforth used in the church. The new forms of divine service, which contained a clearly marked body of doctrine, were abolished and the old ones restored.

The position which the Parliament took up in relation to another scarcely less important question coincided with this sense of national independence.

It was a very widespread wish in England that the Queen should give her hand to young Courtenay, son of that Marquis of Exeter who had himself once thought of marrying Mary against her father's wishes. He was a young man of suitable age, handsome figure, and mental activity; Mary had not merely freed him from the prison in which her brother had kept him, but also endowed him with the Earldom of Devon, one of his father's possessions; in this act many saw a token of personal inclination. Bishop Gardiner was decidedly in his favour, and we can conceive how a great ecclesiastic, who had the power of the state in his hands, wished to altogether exclude every foreign influence; he of course knew that Courtenay would also conform in church matters.

Gardiner spoke once with the Queen about it and was very pressing: she was absolutely against it. The old chronicle is entirely in error when it repeats the then widespread rumour of Mary's inclination for Courtenay. Mary told the Imperial amba.s.sador that she was altogether ignorant of what love was; she had never seen Courtenay but once in her life, at the moment when she released him. She intended to marry, since she was a.s.sured that the welfare of the realm required it, but not an Englishman, not one who was a subject. As in other things, so in this, she requested the Emperor to give her his advice.

Charles V would not have been absolutely against the plan of his cousin giving her hand to an English lord, whom England might obey more easily than a stranger: but, when she showed such an aversion to it, he did not hesitate for a moment as to what advice to give her.

One of his brother's sons was taken into consideration, but rejected by him on the ground that there was already much ill-will against Spain stirring in the Netherlands, and a union of the German line with England might some day make it difficult for his own son to maintain those provinces: he therefore proposed him to the Queen. Don Philip, not yet thirty but already a widower for the second time, was just then negociating for a marriage with a Portuguese princess. These negociations were broken off and counter ones opened with England.

Mary showed a joyful inclination to it at the first word: it was to this that her secret thoughts had turned.

It looked as if the dynastic union of the Burgundian-Spanish house with the English, which was also a political alliance and had been violently broken off at the same time with that alliance, would now be restored more closely than before, and this time for ever. Men took up the idea that Philip's eldest son was to continue the Spanish line, as Ferdinand and his sons the German, but that from the new marriage, if it should be blest with offspring, an English line of the house of Burgundy was to proceed: a prospect of the extension of the power of England and of her influence on the continent, which it was expected would set aside all opposition.

In England however every voice was against it, among n.o.bles and commons, people and Parliament, high and low. The imperial court fully believed that it was Gardiner who brought the matter forward in Parliament. The House resolved to send a deputation to the Queen with the request that she would marry an Englishman. Mary, who had as high an idea of her prerogative as any of her predecessors or successors, felt herself almost insulted; she interrupted the speech as soon as she understood its purport, and declared that Parliament was taking too much on itself in wis.h.i.+ng to give her advice in this matter: only with G.o.d, from whom she derived her crown, would she take counsel thereon.[161] When the Parliament, not satisfied with this, prepared a fresh application to her, it was dissolved.

But if this happened among men who adhered to her views in other points, what would those say who saw themselves, contrary to their expectation, oppressed and endangered by the Queen's measures in religious matters?