History of England from the fall of Wolsey to the death of Elizabeth Volume II Part 37

[Sidenote: They had in consequence been committed to the Tower, where they were treated with the utmost kindness.]

[Sidenote: Kindness had, however, produced no effect; they had continued to obstruct the government; and had therefore been tried and condemned by the ordinary laws of the realm.]

"At length knowing that they had incurred the king's displeasure, and fearing lest they might fail of accomplis.h.i.+ng their purposes, they chose out persons on whose courage, readiness, and devotion to themselves they could depend; and taking these men into their councils, they fed them with the poison which they had conceived, forgetting their allegiance to their king, and their duty to their country.[470] Thus were their seditious opinions scattered over the country. And when his Highness began to trace this impious conspiracy to its source, Sir Thomas More and the Bishop of Rochester were found to be the undoubted authors of the same; and their guilt was proved against them by the evidence of their own handwrit, and the confessions of their own lips. For these causes, therefore, and for many others of like kind, our most gracious sovereign was compelled to imprison them as rebellious subjects, as disturbers of the public peace, and as movers of sedition and tumult.

Nor was it possible for him to do other than punish them, unless, after their crimes had been detected, he had so far forgotten his duty as to leave the contagion to spread unchecked, to the utter destruction of the nation. They were in consequence thrown into the Tower, where, however, their treatment was far different from what their demerits had deserved; they were allowed the society of their friends; their own servants were admitted to attend upon them, and they received all such indulgences in food and dress as their families desired. Clemency, however, produced no effect on persons in whom duty and allegiance had given place to treason and malice. They chose rather to persist in their wicked courses than to make trial by repentance of the king's goodness. For after that certain laws had been decreed by authority of parliament, and had been by the whole nation admitted and accepted as expedient for the realm, and agreeable to true religion, they alone refused their consent to these laws, hoping that something might occur to sustain them in their impiety; and while professing to have left all care and thought for human things, they were considering by what arguments, in furtherance of their seditious purposes, they might, to the common hurt, elude, refute, and disturb the said laws.

"Of this their treason there are proofs extant--letters written, when ink failed them, with chalk or charcoal, and pa.s.sed secretly from one to the other. Our most merciful king could therefore no longer tolerate their grievous faults. He allowed them to be tried by process of ordinary law. They were found guilty of high treason, and sentenced to death. Their punishment was milder than that which the law prescribed, or which their crimes had deserved; and many persons have by this example been brought to a better mind."[471]

To Cromwell evidently the case appeared so clear as to require no apology. To modern writers it has appeared so clear as to admit of none.

The value of the defence turns upon the point of the actual danger to the state, and the extent to which the conduct of the sufferers imperilled the progress of the Reformation. As written for the eyes of the pope and cardinals, however, such a letter could be understood only as daring them to do their worst. It ignored the very existence of such rules of judgment as the heads of the Roman church would alone acknowledge, and represented the story as it appeared from the position which England had a.s.sumed on its revolt from its old allegiance.

[Sidenote: The reply of the pope.]

There were no more false efforts at conciliation, and open war thenceforth appeared to be the only possible relation between the papacy and Henry VIII. Paul III. replied, or designed to reply, with his far-famed bull of interdict and deposition, which, though reserved at the moment in deference to Francis of France, and not issued till three years later, was composed in the first burst of his displeasure.[472]

The substance of his voluminous anathemas may be thus briefly epitomized.

[Sidenote: The bull of interdict and deposition.]

The pope, quoting and applying to himself the words of Jeremiah, "Behold, I have set thee over nations and kingdoms, that thou mayest root out and destroy, and that thou mayest plant and build again,"

addressed Henry as a disobedient va.s.sal. Already lying under the censures of the church, he had gone on to heap crime on crime; and therefore, a specific number of days being allowed him to repent and make his submission, at the expiration of this period of respite the following sentence was to take effect.

The king, with all who abetted him in his crimes, was p.r.o.nounced accursed--cut off from the body of Christ, to perish. When he died, his body should lie without burial; his soul, blasted with anathema, should be cast into h.e.l.l for ever. The lands of his subjects who remained faithful to him were laid under an interdict: their children were disinherited, their marriages illegal, their wills invalid; only by one condition could they escape their fate--by instant rebellion against the apostate prince. All officers of the crown were absolved from their oaths; all subjects, secular or ecclesiastic, from their allegiance.

The entire nation, under penalty of excommunication, was commanded no longer to acknowledge Henry as their sovereign.[473] No true son of the church should hold intercourse with him or his adherents. They must neither trade with them, speak with them, nor give them food. The clergy, leaving behind a few of their number to baptize the new-born infants, were to withdraw from the accursed land, and return no more till it had submitted. If the king, trusting to force, persevered in his iniquity, the lords and commons of England, dukes, marquises, earls, and all other persons, were required, under the same penalty of excommunication, to expel him from the throne; and the Christian princes of Europe were called on to show their fidelity to the Holy See, by aiding in so G.o.dly a work.

In conclusion, as the king had commanded his clergy to preach against the pope in their churches, so the pope commanded them to retaliate upon the king, and with bell, book, and candle declare him cursed.

This was loud thunder; nor, when abetted by Irish ma.s.sacres and English treasons, was it altogether impotent. If Henry's conceptions of the royal supremacy were something imperious, the papal supremacy was not more modest in its self-a.s.sertion; and the language of Paul III. went far to justify the rough measures by which his menaces were parried. If any misgiving had remained in the king's mind on the legitimacy of the course which he had pursued, the last trace of it must have been obliterated by the perusal of this preposterous bombast.

[Sidenote: Peril of Henry's position.]

For the moment, as I said, the bull was suspended through the interference of Francis. But Francis remained in communion with the See of Rome: Francis was at that moment labouring to persuade the Lutheran states in Germany to return to communion with it: and Henry knew, that, although in their hearts the European powers might estimate the pope's pretences at their true value, yet the bull of excommunication might furnish a convenient and dangerous pretext against him in the event of a Catholic combination. His position was full of peril; and in spite of himself, he was driven once more to seek for an alliance among the foreign Protestants, before the French intrigues should finally antic.i.p.ate him.

[Sidenote: Intrigues of the French in Germany.]

That he really might be too late appeared an immediate likelihood. The quarrel between the Lutherans and the followers of Zwingli, the Anabaptist anarchy and the increasing confusion throughout the Protestant states, had so weighed on Luther's spirit that he was looking for the end of all things and the coming of Christ; and although Luther himself never quailed, too many "murmurers in the wilderness" were looking wistfully back into Egypt. The French king, availing himself skilfully of the turning tide, had sent the Bishop of Paris to the courts of Saxony and Bavaria, in the beginning of August, to feel his way towards a reconciliation; and his efforts had been attended with remarkable success.

[Sidenote: Probability of a reconciliation of the Lutherans with the See of Rome.]

The bishop had been in communication with Melancthon and many of the leading Lutheran theologians upon the terms on which they would return to the church. The Protestant divines had drawn up a series of articles, the first of which was a profession of readiness to recognise the authority of the pope;[474] accompanying this statement with a declaration that they would accept any terms not plainly unjust and impious. These articles were transmitted to Paris, and again retransmitted to Germany, with every prospect of a mutually satisfactory result; and Melancthon was waiting only till the bishop could accompany him, to go in person to Paris, and consult with the Sorbonne.[475]

[Sidenote: Of which Henry is partly the cause.]

[Sidenote: Henry is driven to conciliate the German princes.]

This momentary (for it was only momentary) weakness of the German Protestants was in part owing to their want of confidence in Henry VIII.[476] The king had learnt to entertain a respect for the foreign Reformers, far unlike the repugnance of earlier years; but the prospect of an alliance with them had hitherto been too much used by him as a weapon with which to menace the Catholic powers, whose friends.h.i.+p he had not concealed that he would prefer. The Protestant princes had shrunk therefore, and wisely, from allowing themselves to be made the instruments of worldly policy; and the efforts at a combination had hitherto been illusive and ineffectual. Danger now compelled the king to change his hesitation into more honest advances. If Germany accepted the mediation of Francis, and returned to communion with Rome; and if, under the circ.u.mstances of a reunion, a general council were a.s.sembled; there could be little doubt of the att.i.tude in which a council, called together under such auspices, would place itself towards the movement in England. To escape so imminent a peril, Henry was obliged (as Elizabeth after him) to seek the support of a party from which he had shrunk: he was forced, in spite of himself, to identify his cause with the true cause of freedom, and consequently to admit an enlarged toleration of the Reformed doctrines in his own dominions. There could be little doubt of the support of the Germans, if they could be once a.s.sured that they would not again be trifled with; and a Protestant league, the steady object of Cromwell's efforts, seemed likely at length to be realized.

[Sidenote: August. Nature of the relations of the Tudors to the German Protestants.]

[Sidenote: Mission of the Bishop of Hereford to counteract the French.]

Different indeed would have been the future, both of England and for Germany, if such a league had been possible, if the pressure which compelled this most natural alliance had continued till it had cemented into rock. But the Tudors, representatives in this, as in so many other features of their character, of the people whom they governed, could never cordially unite themselves with a form of thought which permitted resistance to authority, and which they regarded as anarchic and revolutionary. They consented, when no alternative was left them, to endure for short periods a state of doubtful cordiality; but the connexion was terminated at the earliest moment which safety permitted; in their hatred of disorder (for this feeling is the key alike to the strength and to the weakness of the Tudor family), they preferred the incongruities of Anglicanism to a complete reformation; and a "midge-madge"[477] of contradictory formularies to the simplicity of the Protestant faith. In essentials, the English movement was political rather than spiritual. What was gained for the faith, we owe first to Providence, and then to those accidents, one of which had now arisen, which compelled at intervals a deeper and a broader policy. To counteract the French emissaries, Christopher Mount, in August, and in September, Fox, Bishop of Hereford, were despatched to warn the Lutheran princes against their intrigues, and to point out the course which the interests of Northern Europe in the existing conjuncture required. The bishop's instructions were drawn by the king. He was to proceed direct to the court of Saxony, and, after presenting his letters of credit, was to address the elector to the following effect:

[Sidenote: Henry's message to the Elector of Saxony.]

[Sidenote: He desires, in connexion with other princes who have the same cause at heart, to maintain the middle way of truth, according to G.o.d's word.]

[Sidenote: September. He has heard that the Lutherans are again inclining to Rome; and he desires to know their true intentions.]

"Besides and beyond the love, amity, and friends.h.i.+p which n.o.ble blood and progeny had carnally caused and continued in the heart of the King's Highness towards the said duke and his progenitors, and besides that kindness also which of late by mutual communication of gratuities had been not a little augmented and increased between them, there was also stirred up in the heart of the King's Highness a spiritual love and favour towards the said duke and his virtuous intents and proceedings, for that the said duke persisted and continued in his most virtuous mind to set forth, maintain, and defend the sincere teaching of the gospel and the perfect true understanding of the word of G.o.d. In that matter the King's Highness, also illuminated with the same spirit of truth, and wholly addict and dedicate to the advancement thereof, had employed great pain and travail to bring the same to the knowledge of his people and subjects, intending also further and further to proceed therein, as his Grace by good consultation should perceive might tend to the augmentation of the glory of G.o.d and the true knowledge of his word. His said Majesty was of such sincere meaning in the advancing [hereof] as his Grace would neither headily, without good advis.e.m.e.nt, and consultation, and conference with his friends, go in any part beyond the said truth, ne for any respect tarry or stay on this side the truth, but would proceed in the right straight mean way a.s.suredly agreed upon. He had known of certainty divers who by their immoderate zeal or the excessive appet.i.te to novelties had from darkness proceeded to much more darkness, wherein the Anabaptists and sacramentarians were guilty; so by secret report he had been advertised, that upon private communications and conferences, the learned men there [in Germany] had in certain points and articles yielded and relented from their first a.s.severation; by reason whereof it was much doubted whether by other degrees they might be dissuaded in some of the rest. The King's Highness therefore, being very desirous to know the truth therein, and to be ascertained in what points and articles the learned men there were so a.s.suredly and constantly resolved as by no persuasion of man they could be turned from the same, had sent the Bishop of Hereford to the said duke, desiring and praying him in respect of the premises to entertain the said bishop friendly and familiarly concerning the matter aforesaid, as the mutual love carnally, and the zeal of both princes to the increase of the glory of G.o.d spiritually, did require."[478]

[Sidenote: He dissuades a council.]

[Sidenote: But if a council is to meet, let them come to a common understanding with England.]

[Sidenote: The bishop was to apologize for all past coolness,]

[Sidenote: And to conclude with fresh warnings against the pope.]

The bishop was then to speak of the council, the a.s.sembling of which he understood that the German princes so much desired. He was to dissuade them from pressing it, to the extent of his ability. They would find themselves opposed inevitably in all essential matters by the pope, the emperor, and the French king, whose factions united would outnumber and outvote them; and in the existing state of Europe, a general council would only compromise their position and embarra.s.s their movements. If, however, notwithstanding his remonstrances, the princes persisted in their wish, then the bishop was to urge them to come to some understanding with England on the resolutions which they desired to maintain. Let them communicate to the English bishops such points "as they would stick to without relenting;" and the two countries, "standing together, would be so much stronger to withstand their adversaries."

Without definitely promising to sign the Confession of Augsburg, Henry held out strong hopes that he might sign that Confession, if they would send representatives to London to discuss the articles of it with himself.[479] The bishop was to apologize for any previous slackness on the king's part in his communications with the elector, and to express his hopes, that for the future their relations might be those of cordial unanimity. He was especially to warn the elector to beware of re-admitting the papal supremacy under any pretext. The English had shaken off the pope, "provoked thereunto in such wise as would have provoked them rather to have expelled him from them by wrong, than to suffer him so to oppress them with injuries." If in Germany they "opened the great gate" to let him in again, he would rebuild "the fortresses that were thrown down, and by little and little bring all to the former estate again." Finally, with respect to the council--if a council there was to be--they must take care that it was held in a place indifferent, where truth might be heard or spoken; "considering that else in a council, were not the remedy that all good men sought, but the mischief that all good men did abhor."

These advances, consented to by Henry, were the act of Cromwell, and were designed as the commencement of a _Foedus Evangelic.u.m_--a league of the great Reforming nations of Europe. It was a grand scheme, and history can never cease to regret that it was grasped at with too faint a hand. The bishop succeeded in neutralizing partially the scheming of the French, partially in attracting the sympathies of the German powers towards England; but the two great streams of the Teutonic race, though separated by but a narrow ridge of difference, were unable to reach a common channel. Their genius drove them into courses which were to run side by side for centuries, yet ever to remain divided. And if the lines in which their minds have flowed seem to be converging at last, and if hereafter Germans and English are again to unite in a single faith, the remote meeting point is still invisible, and the terms of possible agreement can be but faintly conjectured.

NOTES:

[383] "These be no causes to die for," was the favourite phrase of the time. It was the expression which the Bishop of London used to the Carthusian monks (_Historia Martyrum Anglorum_), and the Archbishop of York in his diocese generally.--Ellis, third series, Vol. II. p. 375.

[384] Si Rex Praefatus, vel alii, inhibitioni ac prohibitioni et interdicto hujusmodi contravenerint, Regem ipsum ac alios omnes supradictos, sententias censuras et poenas praedictas ex nunc prout ex tunc incurrisse declaramus, et ut tales publicari ac publice nunciari et evitari--ac interdictum per totum regnum Angliae sub dictis poenis observari debere, volumus atque mandamus.--_First Brief of Clement_: Legrand, Vol. III. pp. 451, 452. The Church of Rome, however, draws a distinction between a sentence implied and a sentence directly p.r.o.nounced.

[385] Strype's _Memorials_, Vol. I. p. 292. Ellis, third series, Vol.

II. p. 336.

[386] It is remarkable that in this paper it seems to be a.s.sumed, that the pope would have fulfilled this engagement if Henry had fully submitted. "He openly confessed," it says, "that our master had the right; but because our prince and master would not prejudicate for his jurisdictions, and uphold his usurped power by sending a proctor, ye may evidently here see that this was only the cause why the judgment of the Bishop of Rome was not given in his favour; whereby it may appear that there lacked not any justice in our prince's cause, but that ambition, vain glory, and too much mundanity were the lets thereof."

[387] An Order for Preaching: printed in Burnet's _Collectanea_, p. 447.

[388] Ellis, third series, Vol. II. p. 373.

[389] John ap Rice to Secretary Cromwell, with an account of the search of the Bishop of Durham's chamber: _Rolls House MS._

[390] Bedyll to Cromwell: _State Papers_, Vol. I. p. 422. Bedyll had been directed by Cromwell to observe how the injunctions were obeyed. He said that he was "in much despair of the reformation of the friars by any gentle or favourable means;" and advised, "that fellows who leave sermons should be put in prison, and made a terrible example of."

[391] _State Papers_, Vol. I. p. 422, et seq.

[392] Strype's _Memorials_, Vol. I. p. 305.

[393] Confessions of Father Forest: _Rolls House MS._ This seems to have been generally known at the time. Latimer alludes to it in one of his sermons.