A Student's History of England Volume II Part 2

[Ill.u.s.tration: John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, 1504-1535; from a drawing by Holbein in the Royal Library, Windsor Castle.]

3. =The Monks of the Charterhouse. 1534.=--It can hardly be doubted that Henry's chief adviser in these tyrannical measures was the able and unscrupulous Cromwell. It was Cromwell's plan to exalt the royal authority into a despotism by means of a subservient Parliament. He was already Henry's secretary; and in =1535= was appointed the king's Vicar-General in ecclesiastical matters. He was quite ready to push the Acts of Parliament which had recently been pa.s.sed to their extreme consequences. His first object was to get rid of the Friars Observant, who had shown themselves most hostile to what they called in plainness of speech the king's adultery. All their houses were suppressed, and some of the inmates put to death. Then Cromwell fell on the London Charterhouse,[3] the inmates of which had been imprisoned in the year before simply for a refusal to take the oath of the Act of Succession, though they had not uttered a word against the king's proceedings. They could now be put to death under the new Treason Act, for denying the king's supremacy, and many of them were accordingly executed after the usual barbarous fas.h.i.+on, whilst others perished of starvation or of diseases contracted in the filthy prisons in which they were confined. "I profess," said the Prior, Houghton, "that it is not out of obstinate malice or a mind of rebellion that I do disobey the king, but only for the fear of G.o.d, that I offend not the Supreme Majesty; because our Holy Mother the Church hath decreed and appointed otherwise than the king and Parliament hath ordained." Houghton and his fellows were as truly martyrs as Frith had been. They at least had sown no seeds of rebellion, and they died because a tyrannical king insisted on ruling over consciences as well as over bodily acts.

[Footnote 3: The Charterhouse here means the house of the Carthusians.]

4. =Execution of Fisher and More. 1535.=--Fisher and More were the next to suffer on the same charge, though their sentences were commuted to death by beheading. More preserved his wit to the last.

"I pray you," he said as he mounted the scaffold, "see me safe up, and for my coming down I will s.h.i.+ft for myself." After he had knelt to place his head on the block, he raised it again to move his beard aside. "Pity," he muttered, "that should be cut that has not committed treason."

5. =The Dissolution of the Smaller Monasteries. 1536.=--Money never came amiss to Henry, and Cromwell now rooted himself firmly in his master's favour by pointing out to him fresh booty. The English monasteries were rich and weak, and it was easy to trump up or exaggerate charges against them. Cromwell sent commissioners to inquire into their moral state (=1535=), and the commissioners, who were as unscrupulous as himself, rushed round the monasteries in such a hurry that they had no time to make any real inquiry, but nevertheless returned with a number of scandalous tales. These tales referred to some of the larger monasteries as well as the smaller, but, when Parliament met in =1536=, Henry contented himself with asking that monasteries having property worth less than 200_l._ a year should be dissolved, and their estates given to himself, on the ground that whilst the smaller ones were dens of vice the larger ones were examples of virtue. Parliament granted his request, and the work of spoliation began. There can be no doubt that vice did exist in the monasteries, though there was not so much of it as the commissioners a.s.serted. It would have been indeed strange if innocence had been preserved in communities living in enforced celibacy, with no stress of work to occupy their thoughts, and with the high ideals of their profession neglected or cast aside. On the other hand, the monks were easy landlords, were hospitable to the stranger and kindly to the poor, whilst neither the king himself nor those to whom he gave or sold the lands which he acquired cared for more than to make money. The real weakness of the monks lay in their failure to conciliate the more active minds of the age, or to meet its moral needs. The attack upon the vast edifice of Henry's despotism in Church and State could only be carried on successfully by the combined effort of men like the scholars of the Renascence, whose thoughts were unfettered, and of those who, like the Protestants, were full of aggressive vigour, and who subst.i.tuted for the duty of obedience the duty of following their own convictions.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, brother of Jane Seymour, afterwards Duke of Somerset, known as 'the Protector', at the age of 28 (1535), 1507-1552: from a painting at Sudeley Castle.]

6. =The Execution of Anne Boleyn. 1536.=--Before the end of =1536= there was a new queen. Henry became tired of Anne, as he had been tired of Catharine, and on a series of monstrous charges, so monstrous as to be hardly credible, he had her tried and executed.

Her unpardonable crime was probably that her only living child was a daughter, and not a son. Ten days after Anne's death Henry married a third wife, Jane Seymour. As Catharine was now dead, there could be no doubt of the legitimacy of Jane's offspring, but to make a.s.surance doubly sure, a new Parliament pa.s.sed an Act settling the succession on Jane's children, and declaring both Mary and Elizabeth illegitimate.

7. =The Ten Articles. 1536.=--It is probable that when Henry took the t.i.tle of Supreme Head he intended to maintain the doctrines and practices of the Church exactly as he found them. In =1536= the clergy were crying out not merely against attacks on their faith, but against the ribaldry with which these attacks were often conducted. One a.s.sailant, for instance, declared the oil used in extreme unction to be no more than the Bishop of Rome's grease or b.u.t.ter, and another that it was of no more use to invoke a saint than it was to whirl a stone against the wind. Many of the clergy would have been well pleased with mere repression. Henry, however, and the bishops whom he most trusted wished repression to be accompanied with reasonable explanations of the doctrines and practices enforced. The result was seen in the Ten Articles which were drawn up by Convocation, and sent abroad with the authority of the king. There was to be uniformity, to be obtained by the circulation of a written doc.u.ment, in which the old doctrines were stripped of much that had given offence, and their acceptance made easy for educated men. Of the seven sacraments, three only, Baptism, Penance, and the Sacrament of the Altar, were explained, whilst the other four--those of Marriage, Orders, Confirmation, and Extreme Unction--were pa.s.sed over in silence. On the whole the Ten Articles in some points showed a distinct advance in the direction of Lutheranism, though there was also to be discerned in them an equally distinct effort to explain rather than to reject the creed of the mediaeval Church.

8. =The Translation of the Bible authorised. 1536.=--The same tendency to appeal to educated intelligence showed itself in the sanction given by the king and Cromwell in =1536= to a translation of the Bible which had been completed in =1535= by Miles Coverdale, whose version of the New Testament was founded on an earlier one by Tyndale. It is probable that Henry, in authorising the circulation of this version, thought of the support which he might derive from the silence of the Bible on the Papal claims. The circulation of the Bible was, however, likely to work in a direction very different from that of the Ten Articles. The Ten Articles were intended to promote unity of belief. The Bible, once placed in the hands of everyone who could read, was likely to promote diversity. It would be the storehouse in which Lutherans, Zwinglians, and every divergent sect would find weapons to support their own special ideas. It would help on the growth of those individual opinions which were springing up side by side with the steady forward progress of the clergy of the Renascence. The men who attempted to make the old creed intellectually acceptable and the men who proclaimed a new one, under the belief that they were recurring to one still older, were together laying the foundations of English Protestantism.

9. =The Pilgrimage of Grace. 1536-1537.=--Slight as these changes were, they were sufficient to rouse suspicion that further change was impending. The ma.s.ses who could neither read nor write were stirred by the greed and violence with which the dissolution of the smaller monasteries was carried on, and by the cessation of the kindly relief which these monasteries had afforded to the wants of the poor. A rumour spread that when Cromwell had despoiled the monasteries he would proceed to despoil the parish churches. In the autumn of =1536= there was a rising in Lincolns.h.i.+re, which was easily suppressed, but was followed by a more formidable rising in Yorks.h.i.+re. The insurgents, headed by Robert Aske, called it the Pilgrimage of Grace, and bore a banner embroidered with the five wounds of Christ. They asked among other things for the restoration of the monasteries, the punishment of Cromwell and his chief supporters, the deprivation of the reforming bishops, the extirpation of heresy, and the restoration of the Papal authority in a modified form. Their force grew so large that the Duke of Norfolk, who was sent to disperse it, did not venture to make the attempt, and the king found himself obliged to issue a general pardon and to promise that a Parliament should meet in the North for the redress of grievances. On this the insurgents returned home. Early in =1537= Henry, who had no intention of keeping his word, took advantage of some new troubles in the North to declare that his engagement was no longer binding, and seized and executed, not merely the leaders, but many of the lesser supporters of the insurrection. Of the Parliament in the North nothing more was heard, but a Council of the North was established to keep the people of those parts in order, and to execute justice in the king's name.

10. =Birth of a Prince. 1537.=--In =1537= Jane Seymour gave birth to a boy, who was afterwards Edward VI. Henry had at last a male heir of undoubted legitimacy, but in a few days his wife died.

11. =The Beginning of the Attack on the Greater Monasteries.

1537-1538.=--The failure of the Pilgrimage of Grace brought in fresh booty to Henry. Abbots and priors who had taken part in it, or were accused of doing so, were hanged, and their monasteries confiscated.

Where nothing could be proved against the greater monasteries, which had been declared by Parliament to be free from vice, their heads were terrified into an appearance of voluntary submission. Cromwell had his spies and informers everywhere, and it was as easy for them to lie as to speak the truth. In =1537= and =1538= many abbots bowed before the storm, and, confessing that they and their monks had been guilty of the most degrading sins, asked to be allowed to surrender their monasteries to the king. Cromwell's commissioners then took possession, sold the bells, the lead on the roof, and every article which had its price, and left the walls to serve as a quarry for the neighbourhood. The lands went to the king. It not unfrequently happened that Henry promoted to ecclesiastical benefices those monks who had been most ready to confess themselves sinners beyond other men. There is no doubt that the confessions were prepared beforehand to deceive contemporaries, and there is therefore no reason why they should deceive posterity.

12. =Destruction of Relics and Images. 1538.=--The attack on the monasteries was accompanied by an attack on relics and such images as attracted more than ordinary reverence. The explanation of the zeal with which they were hunted down is in many cases to be found in the gold and jewels with which they were adorned. Some of them were credited with miraculous powers. The figure of the Saviour on the rood at Boxley, in Kent, moved its head and eyes. A phial at Hales, in Worcesters.h.i.+re, contained a substance which had been brought from Germany in the thirteenth century, and was said to be the blood of the Saviour. Pilgrims thronged in numbers to adore, and their offerings brought in no small profit to the monks who owned such treasures. What was fondly believed by the common people was derided by critical spirits, and Henry was well pleased to destroy all reverence for anything which brought credit to the monks. The rood of Boxley was exhibited in London, where the Bishop of Rochester pulled the wires which caused its motions, and the blood in the phial of Hales was declared to be no more than a coloured gum. An ancient wooden figure, wors.h.i.+pped in Wales under the name of Darvel Gathern, served to make a fire which burned Friar Forest, who maintained that in spiritual things obedience was due to the Pope and not to the king. Instead of hanging him under the Treason Act (see p. 392) Henry had him burnt as a heretic. It was the first and only time when the denial of the royal supremacy was held to be heresy. When war was made against superst.i.tion, the shrine of St.

Thomas of Canterbury could hardly be allowed to escape. Thomas was a saint who had bearded a king, and his shrine, which had attracted such crowds of pilgrims that the marks which they left as they shuffled forward on their knees towards it are still to be seen on the stone floor, was smashed, and the bones of the saint burnt.

Shrines were usually covered with gold and jewels, and all shrines shared the fate of that of St. Thomas.[4] The images in parish churches, not being attractive to the covetous, and being valued by the people for ordinary purposes of devotion, were still left untouched.

[Footnote 4: Shrines were receptacles above ground of the bodies of saints. That of Edward the Confessor at Westminster was rebuilt by queen Mary, and that of St. Alban at St. Albans in recent times.

These two are the only shrines now to be seen in England.]

13. =The Trial of Lambert. 1538.=--Henry's violence against monasticism and superst.i.tion made him extremely anxious to show his orthodoxy. The opinion held by Zwingli, the reformer of Zurich, that the Body and Blood of Christ were in no way present in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper was now spreading in England, and those who held it were known as Sacramentaries. One of these, John Lambert, was tried before Henry himself. Henry told Lambert scornfully that the words of Christ, 'This is My Body,' settled the whole question, and Lambert was condemned and burnt.

14. =The Marquis of Exeter and the Poles. 1538.=--Amongst the descendants of the Duke of Clarence was Reginald Pole.[5] He had been scandalised by the divorce, had left England, had been made a Cardinal in =1536=, and had poured out a torrent of invective against the wickedness of Henry. In the end of =1538= Henry, having been informed that some of Pole's kinsfolk had been muttering dissatisfaction, sent them to execution together with his own cousin, the Marquis of Exeter, the son of his mother's sister.

[Footnote 5: Genealogy of the de la Poles and Poles:--

Richard, Duke of York | +---------------+--------+------------------------+ | | | EDWARD IV. Elizabeth = John de la Pole, George, Duke of | Duke of Suffolk Clarence | | +---------------+------+-----------+ | | | | | John Edmund Richard Margaret, = Sir R. Pole de la Pole, de la Pole, de la Pole, Countess | Earl of Lincoln, Earl of Suffolk, killed at Pavia, of | killed at Stoke, beheaded 1525 Salisbury | 1487 (see p. 347) 1513 | Reginald Pole]

15. =The Six Articles. 1539.=--Cruel and unscrupulous as Henry was, he was in many respects a representative Englishman, sympathising with the popular disgust at the spread of ideas. .h.i.therto unheard of.

In a new Parliament which met in =1539= he obtained the willing consent of both Houses to the statute of the Six Articles. This statute declared in favour of: (1) the real presence of 'the natural Body and Blood of Christ' in the Lord's Supper; (2) the sufficiency of communion in one kind; (3) clerical celibacy; (4) the perpetual obligation of vows of chast.i.ty; (5) private ma.s.ses; and (6) auricular confession. Whoever spoke against the first was to be burnt; whoever spoke against the other five was to suffer imprisonment and loss of goods for the first offence, and to be hanged for the second. By those who suffered from the Act it was known as 'The Whip with Six Strings.' Cranmer, who was a married archbishop, was forced to dismiss his wife. Bishops Latimer and Shaxton, whose opinions had gradually advanced beyond the line at which Henry's orthodoxy ended, were driven from their sees; but the number of those put to death under the new Act was not great.

16. =Completion of the Suppression of the Monasteries.

1539-1540.=--So completely was the statute of the Six Articles in accordance with public opinion, that Henry had no difficulty in obtaining the consent of Parliament to an Act giving to his proclamations the force of law, and to another Act securing to him the whole of the monasteries whether they had been already suppressed or not. Before the end of =1540= not a single monastery was left. Three abbots, those of Glas...o...b..ry, Colchester, and Reading, had been hanged the year before after the mere semblance of a trial. The disappearance of the abbots from the House of Lords made the lay peers, for the first time, more numerous than the ecclesiastical members of the House. The lay peers, on the other hand, were reinforced by new creations from amongst Henry's favourites, whom he had enriched by grants of abbey lands. The new peers and the more numerous country gentlemen who had shared in the spoil were interested in maintaining the independence of the English Church, lest the Pope, if his jurisdiction were restored, should insist on their disgorging their prey. Of that which fell into the hands of the king, a small portion was spent on the foundation of five new bishoprics, whilst part of the rest was employed on s.h.i.+pbuilding and the erection of fortifications on the coast, part in meeting the general expenditure of the Crown.

17. =Anne of Cleves and the Fall of Cromwell. 1539-1540.=--In all that had been done Cromwell had been the leading spirit. It had been his plan to erect an absolute despotism, and thereby to secure his own high position and to enrich himself as well as his master. He was naturally hated by the old n.o.bility and by all who suffered from his extortions and cruelty. In the summer of =1539= he was eager for an alliance with the German Protestants against the Emperor Charles V., and suggested to Henry a fourth marriage with a German princess, Anne of Cleves. Holbein, a great German painter settled in England, was sent to take a portrait of the lady, and Henry was so pleased with it that he sent for her to make her his wife. When she arrived he found her anything but good-looking. In =1540= he went through the marriage ceremony with her, but he divorced her shortly afterwards. Fortunately for herself, Anne made no objection, and was allowed to live in England on a good allowance till her death. For a time Cromwell seemed to be as high as ever in Henry's good opinion, and was created Earl of Ess.e.x. Henry, however, was inwardly annoyed, and he had always the habit of dropping ministers as soon as their unpopularity brought discredit on himself. Cromwell was charged with treason by the Duke of Norfolk. A Bill of attainder[6] was rapidly pa.s.sed, and Cromwell was sent to the scaffold without being even heard in his own defence.

[Footnote 6: A Bill of attainder was brought into one or other of the Houses of Parliament, and became law, like any other Act of Parliament, after it had pa.s.sed both Houses and received the Royal a.s.sent. Its object was condemnation to death, and, as the legislative powers of Parliament were unlimited, it need not be supported by the production of evidence, unless Parliament chose to ask for it. Henry VIII. preferred this mode of getting rid of ministers with whom he was dissatisfied to the old way of impeachment; as in an impeachment (see p. 262) there was at least the semblance of a judicial proceeding, the Commons appearing as accusers, and the Lords as judges.]

18. =Catherine Howard and Catherine Parr. 1540-1543.=--In =1540= Henry married a fifth wife, Catherine Howard. Norfolk, who was her uncle, gained the upper hand at court, and was supported by Gardiner (see p. 382), now Bishop of Winchester, who was strongly opposed to all further ecclesiastical innovations. Those who denied the king's supremacy were sent to the gallows, those who denied the doctrine of transubstantiation to the stake. In =1541= the old Countess of Salisbury, the mother of Cardinal Pole, and the daughter of the brother of Edward IV., was executed in the belief that she had favoured an abortive conspiracy. Before the end of =1540= Henry discovered that his young wife had, before her marriage, been guilty of incontinency, and in =1542= she was beheaded. In =1543= Henry married a sixth wife, Catherine Parr, who actually survived him.

19. =Ireland. 1534.=--Henry's masterful rule had made him many enemies abroad as well as at home, and he was therefore constantly exposed to the risk of an attack from the Continent. In the face of such danger he could no longer allow Ireland to remain as disorganised as it had been in his father's reign and in the early years of his own, lest Ireland should become the stepping-stone to an invasion of England. In Ireland the Celtic chiefs maintained their independence, carrying on destructive wars with one another, both they and their followers being inspired with a high spirit of tribal patriotism, but without the slightest idea of national union.

The Anglo-Norman lords ruling a Celtic population were quite as quarrelsome and even more oppressive than the Celtic chiefs, whilst the inhabitants of the English Pale (see p. 265), ruled over by what was only in name a civilised government, were subjected alike to the oppressive exactions of the authorities at Dublin and to the plundering of the so-called 'Irish enemies,' from whom these authorities were unable to protect them. The most powerful of the Anglo-Norman lords was still the Earl of Kildare (see p. 347), who, whenever he bore the t.i.tle of Lord Deputy, unblus.h.i.+ngly used the king's name in wreaking vengeance on his private enemies.

20. =The Geraldine Rebellion. 1534-1535.=--In =1534= Henry summoned Kildare to England and threw him into the Tower. On a rumour of Kildare's death his son, Lord Thomas Fitzgerald--Silken Thomas, as he was called in Ireland--rose against the king. The Geraldines, as the Fitzgeralds were sometimes called, had often frightened kings by rebelling, but this time they failed in their object. In =1535= the Lord Deputy Skeffington brought heavy guns and battered down the walls of the great Geraldine castle at Maynooth. One by one all the males of Kildare's family, with the exception of two boys, were captured and put to death.

[Ill.u.s.tration: King Henry VIII.: from a picture belonging to the Earl of Warwick.]

21. =Lord Leonard Grey. 1536-1539.=--Lord Leonard Grey became Lord Deputy in =1536=. The Irish Parliament which met in that year was still only a Parliament of the English Pale, but its acts showed that Henry intended, if possible, to rule all Ireland. On the one hand the royal supremacy was declared. On the other hand an Act was pa.s.sed which showed how little was, in those days, understood of the difficulties standing in the way of the a.s.similation of two peoples at different stages of civilisation. The native Irish were ordered to be exactly as the English. They were to use the English language, to adopt the English dress, and to cut their hair after the English fas.h.i.+on. It was to be in the Church as it was to be in the State. No one was to receive any ecclesiastical preferment who did not speak English. Such laws naturally could not be put in force, but they served as indications of the spirit of the Government. Even more obnoxious was the conduct of the Archbishop of Dublin, George Browne, a mere creature of Henry and Cromwell. The a.s.sertion of the royal supremacy, indeed, if it had stood alone, would have made little difference in the church-life of Ireland. Browne, however, persisted, in obedience to orders from England, in destroying relics and images which were regarded by the whole population with the deepest reverence. The doubting spirit of the Renascence found no echo in Ireland, because that country was far behind England in education and culture. It would have been of less consequence if these unwise proceedings had been confined to the English Pale. Lord Leonard Grey was, however, a stern warrior, and carried his arms successfully amongst the Irish tribes. When he left Ireland in =1539= a large part of the Celtic population had been compelled to submit to Henry, and that population was even less prepared than were the inhabitants of the Pale for violent alterations of religious ceremonial.

22. =Henry VIII. King of Ireland. 1541.=--In =1541= a Parliament at Dublin acknowledged Henry to be king of Ireland. Hitherto he had been but Lord of Ireland. As that t.i.tle had been granted by Pope Adrian IV. to Henry II. (see p. 152), Henry VIII. wished to have a new one which should mark his complete independence of Rome. This Parliament was the first attended by the native chiefs, and the a.s.sumption of the new t.i.tle therefore indicated a new stage in Irish history. Unfortunately Henry bent himself to conciliate the chiefs rather than their tribes. He gave to the chiefs English t.i.tles--the O'Neill, for instance, becoming Earl of Tyrone, and O'Brien, Earl of Th.o.m.ond--whilst he hoped to win their support by dissolving the monasteries, and by giving them a share in the plunder. All this Henry did in the hope that the chiefs would use their influence to spread English habits and English law amongst a people who were attached to their own ways. For the time he gained what he wanted.

As long as the plunder of the abbeys was to be had the chiefs kept quiet. When that had been absorbed both chiefs and people would revolt against a Government which wanted to bring about, in a few years, a complete change in their mode of life. It is indeed useless to regret that Henry did not content himself with forcing the tribes to keep peace with one another, whilst allowing them gradually to grow in civilisation in their own fas.h.i.+on. There are often things which it would be well to do, but which no government can do. In the first place Henry had not money enough to enforce peace, the whole revenue of Ireland at that time being no more than 5,000_l._ a year.

In the second place he was roused to futile efforts to convert Irishmen into Englishmen because he was in constant dread of the intervention in Ireland of his Continental enemies.

23. =Solway Moss. 1542.=--Henry was probably the more distrustful of a possibly independent Ireland because an actually independent Scotland gave him so much trouble. In Scotland there had been no Wars of the Roses, and the warlike n.o.bility still resembled petty kings in their own districts. James V., the son of Henry's sister Margaret, strove to depress the n.o.bles by allying himself with the Church and the Commons. Scotland was always ready to come to blows with England, and the clergy urged James to break with a king of England who had broken with the Pope. From =1532= to =1534= there had been actual war between the kingdoms. Even after peace was restored James's att.i.tude was constantly menacing. In =1542= war broke out again, and the Duke of Norfolk crossed the Tweed and wasted the border counties of Scotland. Then James launched an army across the Border into c.u.mberland. His distrust of the n.o.bles, however, made him place at the head of it a mere court favourite, Oliver Sinclair. The Scottish army was hara.s.sed by the hors.e.m.e.n of the English border, and as night was drawing on was suddenly a.s.sailed by a small English party. Having no confidence in Sinclair, the whole mult.i.tude fled in a panic, to be slain or captured in Solway Moss. James's health broke down under the evil tidings. As he lay sick, news was brought to him that his wife had given birth to a child. Hearing that the child was a girl, and remembering how the heiress of the Bruces had brought the crown to the House of Stuart (see p. 295), he was saddened by the thought that the Stuart name also would come to an end. "It came with a la.s.s," he murmured, "and it will go with a la.s.s." In a few days he died, and his infant daughter, the Queen of Scots, received the name of Mary.[7]

[Footnote 7: James's foreboding was not realised, because Mary married a Stuart.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Angel of Henry VIII. 1543.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Part of the encampment at Marquison, 1544, showing military equipment in the time of Henry VIII.: from an engraving made by Vertue for the Society of Antiquaries from the now destroyed painting at Cowdray House.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Part of the siege of Boulogne by Henry VIII., 1544, showing military operations: from an engraving made by Vertue for the Society of Antiquaries from the now destroyed painting at Cowdray House.][2 Ill.u.s.trations.]

24. =War with Scotland and France. 1542-1546.=--Henry, anxious to disarm Scottish hostility, proposed a marriage between his son Edward and the young queen. The proposal was rejected, and an alliance formed between Scotland and France. In =1544= Henry, having formed an alliance with Charles V., who was now at war with France, invaded France and took Boulogne after a long siege--thus enlarging the English possessions in the neighbourhood of Calais--whilst Charles concluded a peace with Francis at Crepy and left his ally in the lurch. In the same year Henry sent Lord Hertford, Jane Seymour's brother, to invade Scotland. Hertford burnt every house and cottage between Berwick and Edinburgh, took Edinburgh itself, and burnt the town. In =1546= peace was made between England and France, in which Scotland was included. The war had been expensive, and in =1544= Parliament had come to Henry's help by enacting that he need not repay a loan which he had gathered, yet even then Henry had had recourse to the desperate remedy of debasing the coinage.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Armour as worn in the reign of Henry VIII.: from the bra.s.s of John Lymsey, 1545, in Hackney Church.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Margaret, wife of John Lymsey: from her bra.s.s in Hackney Church, showing the costume of a lady _circa_ 1545.]

25. =The Litany and the Primer. 1544-1545.=--In =1544=, when Henry was besieging Boulogne, Cranmer ordered prayers to be offered for his success. In the true spirit of the Renascence he wished these prayers to be intelligible, and directed that they should be in English. In the same year he composed the English Litany, intended to be recited by priests and people going in procession. This Litany was the foundation-stone of the future Book of Common Prayer.

It was issued in =1544= together with a Primer, or book of private prayer, also in English. In the public services the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments were to be in English, the remainder being left in Latin as before.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Thomas Howard, third Duke of Norfolk, 1473(?)--1554: from the picture by Holbein at Windsor Castle.]

26. =The Last Days of Henry VIII. 1545-1547.=--When once inquiring intelligence is let loose on an antiquated system, it is hard to say where the desire of making alterations will stop, and there are reasons to believe that Henry was contemplating further changes.

There were two parties at court, the one anxious to resist further change, headed, amongst the temporal lords, by the Duke of Norfolk and his son, the Earl of Surrey, and amongst the bishops by Gardiner; the other, desiring doctrinal innovations, especially if money was to be got by them, headed by the Earl of Hertford. In =1545= an Act had been pa.s.sed for the dissolution of chantries, hospitals, and free chapels. The chantries had been founded for the maintenance of priests to say ma.s.s for the souls of the founders, and it was convenient for those who sought to divert this maintenance to their own use to believe that it was wrong to pray for the dead. In the end of =1546= Henry was taken ill, and, feeling himself to be dying, ordered the arrest of Norfolk and Surrey on charges of treason. It is probable that Henry turned against Norfolk and Surrey because he thought Hertford, as the uncle of the young Prince of Wales, more likely to be faithful to the future king. On January 27, =1547=, Surrey was executed. His father was to have suffered on the 28th. Before he reached the scaffold, Henry died, and he was conducted back to prison. Henry, before his death, had done something to provide against the danger of a disputed succession. An Act of Parliament, pa.s.sed in =1544=, had given back to Mary and Elizabeth the places in the line of inheritance to which they would have been ent.i.tled if no doubt had ever been cast on the legitimacy of their birth,[8] and had authorised Henry to provide by will for the future occupancy of the throne in case of the failure of his own descendants. In accordance with this Act he left the crown, in case of such failure, to the descendants of his younger sister Mary, leaving out those of his elder sister Margaret, with whose son, James V., he had had so much reason to be displeased.

[Footnote 8: Genealogy of the children of Henry VIII.:--

(1) Catharine = HENRY VIII. =(2) Anne =(3) Jane Seymour =(4) Anne of of Aragon | | Boleyn | Cleves | | | =(5) Catherine MARY ELIZABETH EDWARD VI. Howard (1553-1558) (1558-1603) (1547-1553) =(6) Catherine Parr]