Henry VIII Part 26

[Footnote 832: _Ibid._, vi., 296.]

[Footnote 833: _Ibid._, vi., 89.]

[Footnote 834: _Ibid._, vi., 142, 160. The nuncio sat on Henry's right and the French amba.s.sador on his left, this trinity ill.u.s.trating the league existing between Pope, Henry and Francis.]

[Footnote 835: _Ibid._, vi., 276, 311, 317, 491.]

[Footnote 836: The germ of this Act may be found in a despatch from Henry dated 7th October, 1530; that the system of appeals had been subject to gross abuse is obvious from the fact that the Council of Trent prohibited it (_Cambridge Modern Hist._, ii., 671).]

[Footnote 837: _L. and P._, vi., 1489.]

[Footnote 838: _Ibid._, vi., 296.]

[Footnote 839: _Ibid._, XII., ii., 952.]

Henry's path was now clear. Cranmer was archbishop and _legatus natus_ with a t.i.tle which none could dispute. By Act of Parliament his court was the final resort for all ecclesiastical cases. No appeals from his decision could be lawfully made. So, on 11th April, before he was yet consecrated, he besought the King's gracious permission to determine his "great cause of matrimony, because much bruit exists among the common people on the subject".[840] No doubt there did; but that (p. 300) was not the cause for the haste. Henry was pleased to accede to this request of the "princ.i.p.al minister of our spiritual jurisdiction"; and, on the 10th of May, the Archbishop opened his Court at Dunstable.

Catherine, of course, could recognise no authority in Cranmer to try a cause that was before the papal curia. She was declared contumacious, and, on the 23rd, the Archbishop gave his sentence. Following the line of Convocation, he p.r.o.nounced that the Pope had no power to license marriages such as Henry's, and that the King and Catherine had never been husband and wife.[841] Five days later, after a secret investigation, he declared that Henry and Anne Boleyn were lawfully married, and on Whitsunday, the 1st of June, he crowned Anne as Queen in Westminster Abbey.[842] Three months later, on Sunday, the 7th of September, between three and four in the afternoon, Queen Anne gave birth to a daughter at Greenwich.[843] The child was christened on the following Wednesday by Stokesley, Bishop of London, and Cranmer stood G.o.dfather.

Chapuys scarcely considered the matter worth mention. The King's _amie_ had given birth to a b.a.s.t.a.r.d, a detail of little importance to any one, and least of all to a monarch like Charles V.[844] (p. 301) Yet the "b.a.s.t.a.r.d" was Queen Elizabeth, and the child, thus ushered into a contemptuous world, lived to humble the pride of Spain, and to bear to a final triumph the banner which Henry had raised.

[Footnote 840: Cranmer, _Works_, ii., 237.]

[Footnote 841: _Ibid._, ii., 241, 244; _L. and P._, vi., 332, 469, 470, 525. This sentence did not b.a.s.t.a.r.dise the Princess Mary according to Chapuys, for "even if the marriage were null, the Princess was legitimate owing to the lawful ignorance of her parents. The Archbishop of Canterbury had foreseen this and had not dared to be so shameless as to declare her a b.a.s.t.a.r.d" (_ibid._, vii., 94).]

[Footnote 842: See _Tudor Tracts_ edited by the present writer, 1903, pp. 10-28, and _L. and P._, vi., 561, 563, 584, 601.]

[Footnote 843: _L. and P._, vi., 1089, 1111.]

[Footnote 844: _L. and P._, vi., 1112.]

CHAPTER XII. (p. 302)

"THE PREVAILING OF THE GATES OF h.e.l.l."

That victorious issue of the Tudor struggle with the power, against which Popes proclaimed that the gates of h.e.l.l should not prevail, was distant enough in 1533. Then the Tudor monarch seemed rus.h.i.+ng headlong to irretrievable ruin. Sure of himself and his people, and feeling no longer the need of Clement's favour, Henry threw off the mask of friends.h.i.+p, and, on the 9th of July, confirmed, by letters patent, the Act of Annates.[845] Cranmer's proceedings at Dunstable, Henry's marriage, and Anne's coronation, const.i.tuted a still more flagrant defiance of Catholic Europe. The Pope's authority was challenged with every parade of contempt. He could do no less than gather round him the relics of his dignity and prepare to launch against Henry the final ban of the Church.[846] So, on the 11th of July, the sentence of the greater excommunication was drawn up. Clement did not yet, (p. 303) nor did he ever, venture to a.s.sert his claims to temporal supremacy in Christendom, by depriving the English King of his kingdom; he thought it prudent to rely on his own undisputed prerogative. His spiritual powers seemed ample; and he applied to himself the words addressed to the Prophet Jeremiah, "Behold, I have set thee above nations and kingdoms that thou mayest root up and destroy, build and plant, a lord over all kings of the whole earth and over all peoples bearing rule".[847] In virtue of this prerogative Henry was cut off from the Church while he lived, removed from the pale of Christian society, and deprived of the solace of the rites of religion; when he died, he must lie without burial, and in h.e.l.l suffer torment for ever.[848]

[Footnote 845: _L. and P._, vi., 793.]

[Footnote 846: _Ibid._, vi., 807, App. 3; vii., 185. The declaration of it was at the same time suspended until September, and the delicate question of entrusting the _executoriales_ to princes who repudiated the honour caused further delays. The bull of excommunication was eventually dated 30th August, 1535 (ix., 207); and a bull depriving Henry of his kingdom was sanctioned, printed and prepared for publication (x., Introd., p. xv., Nos. 82, 107), but first Francis and then Charles put difficulties in the way. In December, 1538, Paul III., now that he, Charles and Francis were united in the bond of friends.h.i.+p, published with additions the bull of August, 1535 (XIII., ii., 1087, Introd., p. xli.). Even then no bull of deprivation was published. Apparently that was an honour reserved for Henry's daughter.]

[Footnote 847: Jeremiah i. 10. The Vulgate text adopted in Papal bulls differs materially from that in the English Authorised Version.]

[Footnote 848: See the text in Burnet, ed. Poc.o.c.k, iv., 318-31.]

What would be the effect of this terrific anathema? The omens looked ill for the English King. If he had flouted the Holy See, he had also offended the temporal head of Christendom. The Emperor's aunt had been divorced, his cousin's legitimacy had been impugned, and the despatches of his envoy, Chapuys, were filled with indignant lamentations over the treatment meted out to Catherine and to her daughter. Both proud and stubborn women, they resolutely refused to admit in any way the validity of Henry's acts and recent legislation.

Catherine would rather starve as Queen, than be sumptuously clothed and fed as Princess Dowager. Henry would give her anything she asked, if she would acknowledge that she was not the Queen, nor her daughter the Princess; but her bold resistance to his commands and wishes (p. 304) brought out all the worst features of his character.[849] His anger was not the worst the Queen and her daughter had to fear; he still preserved a feeling of respect for Catherine and of affection for Mary. "The King himself," writes Chapuys, "is not ill-natured; it is this Anne who has put him in this perverse and wicked temper, and alienates him from his former humanity."[850] The new Queen's jealous malignity pa.s.sed all bounds. She caused her aunt to be made governess to Mary, and urged her to box her charge's ears; and she used every effort to force the Princess to serve as a maid upon her little half-sister, Elizabeth.[851]

[Footnote 849: _L. and P._, vi., 805, 1186.]

[Footnote 850: _Ibid._, vi., 351; vii., 171, 871; _cf._ v., 216, where Chapuys says Anne hated the Princess Mary more than she did Queen Catherine because she saw that Henry had some affection for Mary, and praised her in Anne's presence. At the worst Henry's manners were generally polite; on one occasion, writes Chapuys, "when the King was going to mount his horse, the Princess went on to a terrace at the top of the house to see him. The King, either being told of it or by chance, turned round, and seeing her on her knees with her hands joined, bowed to her and put his hand to his hat.

Then all those present who had not dared to raise their heads to look at her [surely they may not have seen her] rejoiced at what the King had done, and saluted her reverently with signs of good-will and compa.s.sion" (_ibid._, vii., 83).]

[Footnote 851: _Ibid._, vii., 171.]

This humiliation was deeply resented by the people, who, says Chapuys, though forbidden, on pain of their lives, to call Catherine Queen, shouted it at the top of their voices.[852] "You cannot imagine," he writes a few weeks later to Charles, "the great desire of all this people that your Majesty should send men. Every day I have been applied to about it by Englishmen of rank, wit and learning, (p. 305) who give me to understand that the last King Richard was never so much hated by his people as this King."[853] The Emperor, he went on, had a better chance of success than Henry VII., and Ortiz at Rome was cheris.h.i.+ng the belief that England would rise against the King for his contumacy and schismatic disobedience.[854] Fisher was urgent that Charles should prepare an invasion of England; the young Marquis of Exeter, a possible claimant to the throne, was giving the same advice.[855] Abergavenny, Darcy and other peers brooded in sullen discontent. They were all listening to the hysterical ravings of Elizabeth Barton,[856] the Nun of Kent, who prophesied that Henry had not a year to live. Charles's emissaries were busy in Ireland, where Kildare was about to revolt. James V. of Scotland was hinting at his claims to the English crown, should Henry be deprived by the Pope;[857] and Chapuys was divided in mind whether it would be better to make James the executor of the papal sentence, or marry Mary to some great English n.o.ble, and raise an internal rebellion.[858] At Catherine's suggestion he recommended to the Emperor Reginald Pole, a grandson of George, Duke of Clarence, as a suitor for Mary's hand; and he urged, on his own account, Pole's claims to the English throne.[859] Catherine's scruples, not about deposing her husband, or pa.s.sing over the claims of Henry's sisters, but on the score of Edward IV.'s grandson, the Marquis of Exeter, might, thought Chapuys, (p. 306) be removed by appealing to the notorious sentence of Bishop Stillington, who, on the demand of Richard III., had p.r.o.nounced Edward IV.'s marriage void and his children illegitimate.[860] Those who had been the King's firm supporters when the divorce first came up were some of them wavering, and others turning back.[861] Archbishop Lee, Bishops Tunstall and Gardiner, and Bennet,[862] were now all in secret or open opposition, and even Longland was expressing to Chapuys regrets that he had ever been Henry's confessor;[863] like other half-hearted revolutionists, they would never have started at all, had they known how far they would have to go, and now they were setting their sails for an adverse breeze. It was the King, and the King alone, who kept England on the course which he had mapped out. Pope and Emperor were defied; Europe was shocked; Francis himself disapproved of the breach with the Church; Ireland was in revolt; Scotland, as ever, was hostile; legislation had been thrust down the throats of a recalcitrant Church, and, we are asked to believe, of a no less unwilling House of Commons, while the people at large were seething with indignation at the insults heaped upon the injured Queen and her daughter. By all the laws of nature, of morals, and of politics, it would seem, Henry was doomed to the fate of the monarch in the Book of Daniel the Prophet,[864] who did according to his will and exalted and magnified himself above every G.o.d; who divided the land for gain, and had power over the treasures of gold and silver; who was troubled by tidings from the east and from the north; who went forth with (p. 307) great fury to destroy and utterly make away many, and yet came to his end, and none helped him.

[Footnote 852: _Ibid._, vi., 918.]

[Footnote 853: _L. and P._, vi., 508; vii., 121.]

[Footnote 854: _Ibid._, v., 1324.]

[Footnote 855: _Ibid._, v., 416.]

[Footnote 856: See _Transactions of the Royal Hist.

Soc._, N.S., xviii.; _L. and P._, vi., 1419, 1445, 1464, 1467, 1468.]

[Footnote 857: _L. and P._, v., 609, 807; vi., 815, 821.]

[Footnote 858: _Ibid._, vi., 446, 541; vii., 114.]

[Footnote 859: _Ibid._, vi., 1164.]

[Footnote 860: _L. and P._, vii., 1368.]

[Footnote 861: Even Norfolk, and Suffolk and his wife wanted to dissuade Henry in 1531 from persisting in the divorce (_ibid._, v., 287).]

[Footnote 862: _Ibid._, v., 696.]

[Footnote 863: _Ibid._, vii., 14.]

[Footnote 864: Daniel xi., 36-45.]

All these circ.u.mstances, real and alleged, would be quite convincing as reasons for Henry's failure; but they are singularly inconclusive as explanations of his success, of the facts that his people did not rise and depose him, that no Spanish Armada disgorged its host on English sh.o.r.es, and that, for all the papal thunderbolts, Henry died quietly in his bed fourteen years later, and was buried with a pomp and respect to which Popes themselves were little accustomed. He may have stood alone in his confidence of success, and in his penetration through these appearances into the real truth of the situation behind.

That, from a purely political or non-moral point of view, is his chief t.i.tle to greatness. He knew from the beginning what he could do; he had counted the cost and calculated the risks; and, writes Russell in August, 1533, "I never saw the King merrier than he is now".[865] As early as March, 1531, he told Chapuys that if the Pope issued 10,000 excommunications he would not care a straw for them.[866] When the papal nuncio first hinted at excommunication and a papal appeal to the secular arm, Henry declared that he cared nothing for either.[867] He would open the eyes of princes, he said, and show them how small was really the power of the Pope;[868] and "when the Pope had done what he liked on his side, Henry would do what he liked here".[869] That threat, at least, he fulfilled with a vengeance. He did not fear the Spaniards; they might come, he said (as they did in 1588), but (p. 308) perhaps they might not return.[870] England, he told his subjects, was not conquerable, so long as she remained united;[871] and the patriotic outburst with which Shakespeare closes "King John" is but an echo and an expansion of the words of Henry VIII.

This England never did, nor never shall, Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror, But when it first did help to wound itself....

Come the three corners of the world in arms, And we shall shock them. Nought shall make us rue, If England to itself do rest but true.

[Footnote 865: _L. and P._, vi., 948.]

[Footnote 866: _Ibid._, v., 148.]

[Footnote 867: _Ibid._, v., 738.]