Studies from Court and Cloister Part 1

Studies from Court and Cloister.

by J.M. Stone.

PREFACE

These studies on various crucial points connected with the history of religion in Europe at the close of the Middle Ages, its decline, revival, and the causes which led to both, have already appeared in print as regards their general outline, although they have for the most part been rewritten, added to, and in each case subjected to a careful revision.

Three of them were originally published in the Dublin Review, four in the Scottish Review, two in Blackwood's Magazine, and three in the Month. One was a contribution to the American Catholic Quarterly Review. By the courtesy of the respective editors of these publications I am enabled to gather them together in this volume.

It will be seen at a glance that a certain cohesion, historical and chronological, exists in their present arrangement, especially with reference to Part I.

The two first studies concern Henry VIII. and his sister the Queen of Scots, the significance of their matrimonial affairs, and the relations which their policy created between England, Scotland, France, and the Empire. The third study has for its subject the distinguished and much-maligned Lieutenant of the Tower of London, who contributed so largely to the accession of the rightful sovereign, and who was appointed to be governor of the Princess Elizabeth during her captivity at Woodstock. His subsequent persecution for the sake of religion was the consequence of Henry VIIIth's rupture with Rome, and Elizabeth's repudiation of England's Catholic past. And as we can only gain an intelligible view of any historical movement by studying its context, its broad outlines, and its connection with foreign nations, the fourth essay describes the condition to which the religious revolution had reduced Germany in the sixteenth century, and the reconversion of a great part of that country, as well as of Austria and Switzerland, to the Catholic faith. This was the work of the Jesuit, Peter Canisius, and we are thus led to a consideration of the newly-founded Society of Jesus and its methods. Its members soon became noted for sanct.i.ty and learning, and emperors, kings, and royal princes clamoured for Jesuits as confessors. The manner in which these acquitted themselves of the difficult and unwelcome task imposed on them, is unconsciously revealed by themselves, in the private correspondence of members of the old Society, which has now been given to the world by one of their Order.

Selections from this correspondence are contained in the fifth study.

As a further result of the revolution that had been effected in the casting off of old beliefs and traditions, we note the revival of Pantheism, an ancient, atheistic philosophy, whose modern apostle was the celebrated Giordano Bruno. His otherwise fruitless visit to England left a deep impression on certain minds, learned and ignorant, and we begin for the first time to hear of examinations and prosecutions for atheism in this country. And this forms the subject of the sixth essay.

The recoil that invariably takes place after any great political, social, or religious upheaval was not wanting to the Reformation in England, and in the reign of Charles I. High-Churchism, under Archbishop Laud, was thought to indicate a desire on the part of the royalists for a return to Catholic unity. A Papal agent was dispatched to England to negotiate between the Catholic Queen, Henrietta Maria and Cardinal Barberini, with a view to the conversion of her husband, which would, it was hoped, ultimately issue in the corporate reunion of the country with Rome.

Thus, Part I. deals with some of the persons who had "their exits and their entrances", who made history during this interesting period. Part II. treats more especially the books and ma.n.u.scripts connected with it.

The theme is therefore the same.

Even before England was England, she was the Isle of Saints, and throughout the Middle Ages religion was her chief care, in a manner almost incredible in this secular and materialistic age. She not only covered the land with magnificent churches and cathedrals, to the architecture of which we cannot in these days approach, even by imitation, distantly, but she also built huge monasteries, and these monasteries were the cradles, the homes of vast stores of ever-acc.u.mulating knowledge. A system of philosophy, to which the world is even now returning, recognising that there is no better training for the human intellect, is so distinctly mediaeval, that all that savoured even remotely of St. Thomas Aquinas or Duns Scotus in the University was utterly destroyed in a great bonfire made at Oxford in 1549. At the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII., the labour, the learning, the genius of centuries were as nought. Exquisitely written and illuminated Bibles, missals and other choice ma.n.u.scripts, displaying a wealth of palaeographic art to which we have lost the key, were torn from their jewelled bindings, and were either thrown aside to spoil and rot, or to become the prey of any who needed wrappers for small merchandise. It is a marvel that so many should have escaped destruction, to be collected when men had returned to their sane senses, and formed again into libraries for the delight and instruction of posterity to the end of time. And almost as strange as this circ.u.mstance, is the fact that so few among us know of the existence of these treasures which have become our national inheritance. Otherwise, how could the reviewer of one of our foremost literary publications, in his notice of the exhibition of medieval needlework at the Burlington Fine Arts Club, in the spring of 1905, have discovered in it a surprising revelation of the "refinement" of the Middle Ages?

The three last studies in the present volume are, therefore, devoted to a description of some of the precious spoils of mediaeval refinement.

Where all is so splendidly beautiful, so deeply erudite, or so tenderly naif, choice is difficult; but at all events, here are a few of the priceless gems with which the Dark Ages have endowed a scornful after-world.

And lest it should be supposed that all this mediaeval piety and devotion sprang up suddenly, with no apparent raison d'etre, I have gone further back, and have shown that with the first dawn of Christianity over these Islands, religion was no other than in the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries. The Arthurian legends, which Sir Thomas Malory wove into one consecutive whole, had been handed down from generation to generation for many hundreds of years.

Sometimes they had been written in the French language, but they lived in the minds of the people, and Sir Lancelot, who died "a holy man,"

was as vivid and real to them as was Richard, the troubadour king. With the story of his sharp penance, his fasting and prayers for the soul of Guinevere, was also handed down incidentally the tradition of Britain's obedience to the "Apostle Pope".

Some time after the Anglo-Saxon conquest, in the eighth century, was set up a wonderful churchyard Cross at Ruthwell in Scotland, a "folk-book in stone," alluded to in the Act pa.s.sed by the General a.s.sembly of the Church of Scotland in 1642, "anent the Idolatrous Monuments in Ruthwell," and already two years previously condemned by that enlightened body to be "taken down, demolished, and destroyed."

The story of this ancient Cross, and that of the runes carved upon it, form the subject of the opening study of Part II.

Little need be said here of Foxe, the great calumniator of Queen Mary's bishops. His book, which so long deceived the world, is no more the power it once was, but in it lay the venom which poisoned the wells, as far as the ill-fated reign of Mary was concerned; and the essay which deals with it could scarcely have been omitted.

In the hope that I have been enabled to throw a faint ray of additional light on some vexed but interesting questions, this volume is put forward.

J. M. S.

September 1905.

STUDIES FROM COURT AND CLOISTER

I. MARGARET TUDOR

Notwithstanding the spy-system which was brought to so great a perfection under the Tudors, the study of human nature was in their days yet in its infancy. The world had long ceased to be ingenuous, but nations had not yet learned civilised methods of guarding themselves against their enemies. At a time when distrust was general, it was easier, like Machiavelli, to erect deceit and fraud into a science, and to teach the vile utility of lying, than to scrutinise character and weigh motives. It was then generally understood that opponents might legitimately be hoodwinked to the limits of their gullibility; but it was reserved for Lord Chesterfield, two centuries later, to show how a man's pa.s.sions must be studied with microscopic intensity in order to discover his prevailing pa.s.sion, and how, that pa.s.sion once discovered, he should never be trusted where it was concerned. The study of men's characters and motives as we understand it, formed no part of the policy of sixteenth-century statecraft, or Wolsey would not have been disgraced, or Thomas Cromwell's head have fallen on the block. Wolsey and Cromwell were the subtlest statesmen of their age; indeed, in them statecraft may be said to have had its dawn; yet Henry VIII., by the sheer force of his tyranny and despotic will, baffled them both. While Cromwell, the greatest genius in Europe, thought he held all the threads of intrigue in his own hands, his royal master by the dogged pursuit of one end overthrew the minister's entire scheme. Saturated though he was with Machiavellian theories, a man of one book, and that book The Prince, Cromwell lost all by his inability to read the bent of Henry's mind and purpose.

Henry VIII. and his elder sister, Margaret, were strikingly alike in character. Both proved themselves to be cruel, vindictive, unscrupulous, sensual, and vain. Both were extraordinarily clever, but Henry being far better educated than his sister, contrived to cut a much more imposing, if not a more dignified, figure. In the matter of intrigue, there was nothing to choose between them. That Henry succeeded where Margaret failed, was owing to the fact that circ.u.mstances were in his favour and not in hers. Given two such characters, the only parts that were possible to them were dominating ones. Henry was master of the situation all through the piece; Margaret was not, but she could play no other part. Had she been differently const.i.tuted, had she been barely honest, true, constant, and pure, there is no limit to the love and loyalty she would certainly have inspired.

But, for want of insight into Margaret Tudor's disposition, the Scottish people were repeatedly betrayed by one whose interests they fondly hoped had become, by marriage with their king, identical with their own. She had come among them at an age when new impressions are quickly taken and experiences of every kind have necessarily been very limited, but to the end of her days she remained an alien in their midst.

From the moment that she set foot in Scotland, as a bride of thirteen, she began to sow discord; but although it was soon apparent that she would seize every occasion to turn public events to her own profit, James IV. had so mistaken a belief in her one day becoming a good Scotswoman, that when he went to his death on Flodden Field, he left the whole welfare of his country in her hands. Not only did he confide the treasure of the realm to her custody, but by his will he appointed her to the Regency, with the sole guardians.h.i.+p of his infant son.

Such a thing was unprecedented in Scotland, and it needed all the fidelity of the Scottish lords to their chivalrous sovereign, as well as their enthusiasm for his young and beautiful widow, to induce them to tolerate an arrangement so distasteful to them all. Had Margaret cared to fit herself for the duties that lay before her, her lot might have been a brilliant one. Instead of the wretched wars which made a perpetual wilderness of the Borders, keeping the nation in a constant state of ferment, an advantageous treaty would have secured prosperity to both England and Scotland, while the various disturbing factions, which rendered Scotland so difficult to govern by main force, would gradually have subsided under the gentle influence of a queen who united all parties through the loyalty she inspired. Fierce and rebellious as were so many of the elements which went to make up the Scottish people at that time, Margaret had a far easier task than her grand-daughter, Mary Stuart, for at least fanatical religious differences did not enter into the difficulties she had to encounter.

But such a queen of Scotland as would have claimed the respect and won the lasting love of her subjects was by no means the Margaret Tudor of history, as she stands revealed in her correspondence.

While James IV. lived she had comparatively few opportunities of betraying State secrets, but from the disaster of Flodden to her death, her history is one long series of intrigues, the outcome of her ruling pa.s.sions--vanity and greed. Her first short-sighted act of treachery after the death of James was to appropriate to her own use the treasure which he had entrusted to her for his successors, the queen thereby incurring life-long retribution in her ineffectual attempts to wring her jointure from an exchequer which she had herself wantonly impoverished. Hence the tiresome and ridiculous wrangling in connection with her "conjunct feoffment," neither Margaret nor Henry being conscious, in the complete absence of all sense of humour on their part, that the situation was occasionally grotesque. Stolidly unmindful of the effect they produced on the minds of others in the pursuit of their own selfish ends, they pursued the tenor of their way with bucolic doggedness. The doggedness ended in the defeat of all Henry's enemies; in Margaret's case it ended in her own.

The eleven months which elapsed between the 9th September 1513 to the 4th August 1514, were the most eventful of her whole life. The catastrophe of Flodden left her, perhaps not without cause, the least mournful woman in Scotland, for James IV., with all the heroism that attaches to his name, had little claim to be called a faithful husband.

Unhindered, therefore, by any excess of grief, she was the better able to attend to the affairs of State, and to hasten the coronation of her little son, a baby of one year and five months. In December she convened the Parliament of Scotland to meet at Stirling Castle, and formally took up the dignity of regent with the consent of the a.s.sembled n.o.bility of the realm. At this sitting the greatest unanimity prevailed. In the Acts of the Privy Council of Scotland, under date 12th January 1514, occurs the following entry: "To advise of the setting up of the Queen's household, and what persons and officers are necessary thereto, and to advise of the expenses for the supportation of the same, and by what ways it shall be gotten." All was peace for a short time, and the most friendly relations existed between the queen and her Council, till the first high-handed attempt of Henry VIII. to interfere through his sister in the government of Scotland, resulted in her temporary banishment, and the removal of the infant king from his mother's care.*

* P. Martyr, Ep. 535. For a detailed account of the state of Scotland for the first nine years after the disastrous defeat at Flodden, see vol. xiv. Of the Exchequer Rolls of Scotland, edited by George Burnett, LL.D., Lyon King-of-Arms, and A. Y. G. Mackay, M.A. (Oxon.), LL.D.

(Edin.), etc., His Majesty's General Register House, Edinburgh.

On the 30th April Margaret gave birth to a posthumous son, who received the t.i.tle of Duke of Rothesay; and scarcely had she reappeared in public after the birth of this child, when an envoy from the Emperor Maximilian brought overtures of marriage. About the same time, she received a like proposal from Louis XII. of France, who afterwards married her younger sister Mary. Dismissing both aspirants to her hand, before the first year of her widowhood had run its course, she married Archibald, Earl of Angus, Margaret being in her twenty-fifth, he in his nineteenth year. The union was equally unfortunate for the queen herself and for her wretched husband, who, when the first charm of novelty had pa.s.sed, was disdainfully flung aside, and never restored to favour.

There was an ancient custom of the realm, which placed the executive power and the person of the king, should he be a minor at the death of the preceding sovereign, in the hands of the next male heir, and the appointment of James's widow to the regency and the guardians.h.i.+p of his son was made in distinct disregard of all recognised precedent. The consent of the Scottish lords to the innovation had been given entirely from a sense of loyalty to their beloved and unfortunate monarch James IV. But a proviso had been made in his will, that in the event of the queen's remarriage, the regency, as well as the guardians.h.i.+p of the king, should pa.s.s to John, Duke of Albany, the next heir to the throne.

But Margaret, who had not scrupled to make away with the royal treasure, was scarcely likely to be very conscientious in regard to the duty of laying down a sceptre, the pleasantness of which she had only just begun to taste. She was already at variance with her Council, who, in despair of any order being established, had invited Albany, then in France, to come over and take up the reins of government. As early as April 1514, a Bill for his recall had been read in Parliament, and it was formally enacted that all the fortresses in Scotland should be given up, a blow aimed primarily at Stirling, the queen's chief stronghold.* Here she and Angus had shut themselves up, on hearing that Beaton, Archbishop of Glasgow, was marching on Edinburgh. They were captured, but escaped and returned to Stirling, where they were besieged by John Hepburn, Prior of St. Andrews.

* Brewer--Preface to Cal. 2, part i. (note).

Margaret, a.s.suming a tone of injured innocence, wrote to Henry VIII., telling him that she and her party are in great trouble till they know what help he will give them; that her enemies continue to usurp the king's authority in Parliament, holding her and her friends to be rebels; and she entreats him to hasten his army against Scotland by sea and by land.* This was clearly as much an act of treason as if she had deliberately invited any other foreign enemy to come and take possession of the realm; for although her object was merely to regain the powers she had lost by her own acts, she could estimate the ruin which would have resulted to Scotland, if Henry had really been in a position to invade the country. His answer to her appeal was to send the most urgent instructions to his sister to prevent Albany's landing by every means at her disposal. In the meanwhile she waited impatiently, but in vain, for both troops and money from Henry, who did not think it necessary to inform her that the French king had agreed to detain Albany in France, on condition that his dear cousin should send his sister no help, but leave the various parties in Scotland to fight out their quarrels alone.

* Queen Margaret to Henry VI II., 23rd November 1514; MS. Cott., Calig.

B 1, 164; Brit. Mus.

As a result of this policy, Margaret at last began to find her position intolerable, and she, no less than her enemies looked forward to the duke's arrival as a means of extricating herself from a labyrinth of difficulties. This was perhaps what Francis I. had foreseen; notwithstanding his promise to Henry, he had no intention of permanently preventing Albany, who was more than half a Frenchman, from a.s.suming a dignity that would result in a strong bond of union between Scotland and France. Albany was therefore quietly allowed to escape at a given moment; and when, after running the gauntlet of Henry's s.h.i.+ps, which were watching for him, he landed in Scotland, Margaret resolved, for once wisely, to be friends with him.*

* Seb. Giustinian to the Doge, London, 5th August 1515; Venetian Archives.

But Henry instructed Lord Dacre, the formidable chief of the Marches, to stir up all the strife possible between his sister, the new regent, and the Scottish lords, and accordingly, whenever there was a sign of a better understanding between the three parties, Dacre was always careful to insinuate to the queen that her brother was her best friend.

Finding that Albany had escaped the vigilance of his fleet, Henry wrote a high-handed letter to the Scottish Council requesting that he might be sent back to France forthwith. Their reply was as dignified as Albany's own conduct throughout, and in strong contrast to Margaret's att.i.tude. They have, they say, received Henry's letter, dated 1st July 1516, desiring them to remove John, Duke of Albany, the regent from the person of their king, in order to promote the amity of the two realms.

The duke was chosen Protector by the unanimous voice of the Three Estates, and was sent for by them from France; he left his master, his lady, his living; he has taken great pains in the king's service; he has given, and proposes to give, no cause for dissatisfaction, and if he would leave, they would not let him. Moreover, it is in exact conformity with their laws that the nearest in succession should have the governance; security has been taken by the queen and others to remove all cause of suspicion, and they will spend their lives if any attempt be made against his Highness.* This doc.u.ment was signed and sealed by twenty-eight spiritual and temporal lords, whose names are still legible. Ten other names are mutilated beyond recognition, although their seals remain.

* Scottish lords to Henry VIII., 4th July 1516; Record Office.

Albany had meanwhile written to Lord Dacre, denying that he had usurped the king's authority, and declaring that he had done nothing but by order of the Estates of the realm. But Henry was bent on picking a quarrel with him, and Dacre's letter to the King of England's Council shows the part which Dacre was instructed to play in the troubles of Scotland, fomenting feuds between Albany and every member of his government, in the hope of driving him out of the country.* Difficult, however, as Henry's policy made it, the regent was bent on maintaining peace, and would probably have succeeded but for Margaret.**

* Cotton MS., Calig. B 2, 341; Brit. Mus.

** Albany to Dacre,10th August 1515; R.O.