We now come to King Henry the Eighth,
whom it has been too much the fashion to call ‘Bluff
King Hal,’ and ‘Burly King Harry,’
and other fine names; but whom I shall take the liberty
to call, plainly, one of the most detestable villains
that ever drew breath. You will be able to judge,
long before we come to the end of his life, whether
he deserves the character.
He was just eighteen years of age
when he came to the throne. People said he was
handsome then; but I don’t believe it.
He was a big, burly, noisy, small-eyed, large-faced,
double-chinned, swinish-looking fellow in later life
(as we know from the likenesses of him, painted by
the famous HANS HOLBEIN), and it is not easy to believe
that so bad a character can ever have been veiled
under a prepossessing appearance.
He was anxious to make himself popular;
and the people, who had long disliked the late King,
were very willing to believe that he deserved to be
so. He was extremely fond of show and display,
and so were they. Therefore there was great rejoicing
when he married the Princess Catherine, and when they
were both crowned. And the King fought at tournaments
and always came off victorious for the courtiers
took care of that and there was a general
outcry that he was a wonderful man. Empson, Dudley,
and their supporters were accused of a variety of crimes
they had never committed, instead of the offences of
which they really had been guilty; and they were pilloried,
and set upon horses with their faces to the tails,
and knocked about and beheaded, to the satisfaction
of the people, and the enrichment of the King.
The Pope, so indefatigable in getting
the world into trouble, had mixed himself up in a
war on the continent of Europe, occasioned by the
reigning Princes of little quarrelling states in Italy
having at various times married into other Royal families,
and so led to their claiming a share in those
petty Governments. The King, who discovered that
he was very fond of the Pope, sent a herald to the
King of France, to say that he must not make war upon
that holy personage, because he was the father of
all Christians. As the French King did not mind
this relationship in the least, and also refused to
admit a claim King Henry made to certain lands in
France, war was declared between the two countries.
Not to perplex this story with an account of the
tricks and designs of all the sovereigns who were
engaged in it, it is enough to say that England made
a blundering alliance with Spain, and got stupidly
taken in by that country; which made its own terms
with France when it could and left England in the
lurch. SIR EDWARD HOWARD, a bold admiral, son
of the Earl of Surrey, distinguished himself by his
bravery against the French in this business; but,
unfortunately, he was more brave than wise, for, skimming
into the French harbour of Brest with only a few row-boats,
he attempted (in revenge for the defeat and death
of SIR THOMAS KNYVETT, another bold English admiral)
to take some strong French ships, well defended with
batteries of cannon. The upshot was, that he
was left on board of one of them (in consequence of
its shooting away from his own boat), with not more
than about a dozen men, and was thrown into the sea
and drowned: though not until he had taken from
his breast his gold chain and gold whistle, which
were the signs of his office, and had cast them into
the sea to prevent their being made a boast of by the
enemy. After this defeat which was
a great one, for Sir Edward Howard was a man of valour
and fame the King took it into his head
to invade France in person; first executing that dangerous
Earl of Suffolk whom his father had left in the Tower,
and appointing Queen Catherine to the charge of his
kingdom in his absence. He sailed to Calais,
where he was joined by MAXIMILIAN, Emperor of Germany,
who pretended to be his soldier, and who took pay
in his service: with a good deal of nonsense of
that sort, flattering enough to the vanity of a vain
blusterer. The King might be successful enough
in sham fights; but his idea of real battles chiefly
consisted in pitching silken tents of bright colours
that were ignominiously blown down by the wind, and
in making a vast display of gaudy flags and golden
curtains. Fortune, however, favoured him better
than he deserved; for, after much waste of time in
tent pitching, flag flying, gold curtaining, and other
such masquerading, he gave the French battle at a
place called Guinegate: where they took such an
unaccountable panic, and fled with such swiftness,
that it was ever afterwards called by the English
the Battle of Spurs. Instead of following up
his advantage, the King, finding that he had had enough
of real fighting, came home again.
The Scottish King, though nearly related
to Henry by marriage, had taken part against him in
this war. The Earl of Surrey, as the English
general, advanced to meet him when he came out of his
own dominions and crossed the river Tweed. The
two armies came up with one another when the Scottish
King had also crossed the river Till, and was encamped
upon the last of the Cheviot Hills, called the Hill
of Flodden. Along the plain below it, the English,
when the hour of battle came, advanced. The
Scottish army, which had been drawn up in five great
bodies, then came steadily down in perfect silence.
So they, in their turn, advanced to meet the English
army, which came on in one long line; and they attacked
it with a body of spearmen, under LORD HOME.
At first they had the best of it; but the English
recovered themselves so bravely, and fought with such
valour, that, when the Scottish King had almost made
his way up to the Royal Standard, he was slain, and
the whole Scottish power routed. Ten thousand
Scottish men lay dead that day on Flodden Field; and
among them, numbers of the nobility and gentry.
For a long time afterwards, the Scottish peasantry
used to believe that their King had not been really
killed in this battle, because no Englishman had found
an iron belt he wore about his body as a penance for
having been an unnatural and undutiful son.
But, whatever became of his belt, the English had his
sword and dagger, and the ring from his finger, and
his body too, covered with wounds. There is
no doubt of it; for it was seen and recognised by
English gentlemen who had known the Scottish King well.
When King Henry was making ready to
renew the war in France, the French King was contemplating
peace. His queen, dying at this time, he proposed,
though he was upwards of fifty years old, to marry
King Henry’s sister, the Princess Mary, who,
besides being only sixteen, was betrothed to the Duke
of Suffolk. As the inclinations of young Princesses
were not much considered in such matters, the marriage
was concluded, and the poor girl was escorted to France,
where she was immediately left as the French King’s
bride, with only one of all her English attendants.
That one was a pretty young girl named ANNE BOLEYN,
niece of the Earl of Surrey, who had been made Duke
of Norfolk, after the victory of Flodden Field.
Anne Boleyn’s is a name to be remembered, as
you will presently find.
And now the French King, who was very
proud of his young wife, was preparing for many years
of happiness, and she was looking forward, I dare
say, to many years of misery, when he died within three
months, and left her a young widow. The new
French monarch, FRANCIS THE FIRST, seeing how important
it was to his interests that she should take for her
second husband no one but an Englishman, advised her
first lover, the Duke of Suffolk, when King Henry
sent him over to France to fetch her home, to marry
her. The Princess being herself so fond of that
Duke, as to tell him that he must either do so then,
or for ever lose her, they were wedded; and Henry
afterwards forgave them. In making interest with
the King, the Duke of Suffolk had addressed his most
powerful favourite and adviser, THOMAS WOLSEY a
name very famous in history for its rise and downfall.
Wolsey was the son of a respectable
butcher at Ipswich, in Suffolk and received so excellent
an education that he became a tutor to the family
of the Marquis of Dorset, who afterwards got him appointed
one of the late King’s chaplains. On the
accession of Henry the Eighth, he was promoted and
taken into great favour. He was now Archbishop
of York; the Pope had made him a Cardinal besides;
and whoever wanted influence in England or favour
with the King whether he were a foreign
monarch or an English nobleman was obliged
to make a friend of the great Cardinal Wolsey.
He was a gay man, who could dance
and jest, and sing and drink; and those were the roads
to so much, or rather so little, of a heart as King
Henry had. He was wonderfully fond of pomp and
glitter, and so was the King. He knew a good
deal of the Church learning of that time; much of which
consisted in finding artful excuses and pretences for
almost any wrong thing, and in arguing that black
was white, or any other colour. This kind of
learning pleased the King too. For many such
reasons, the Cardinal was high in estimation with
the King; and, being a man of far greater ability,
knew as well how to manage him, as a clever keeper
may know how to manage a wolf or a tiger, or any other
cruel and uncertain beast, that may turn upon him
and tear him any day. Never had there been seen
in England such state as my Lord Cardinal kept.
His wealth was enormous; equal, it was reckoned,
to the riches of the Crown. His palaces were
as splendid as the King’s, and his retinue was
eight hundred strong. He held his Court, dressed
out from top to toe in flaming scarlet; and his very
shoes were golden, set with precious stones.
His followers rode on blood horses; while he, with
a wonderful affectation of humility in the midst of
his great splendour, ambled on a mule with a red velvet
saddle and bridle and golden stirrups.
Through the influence of this stately
priest, a grand meeting was arranged to take place
between the French and English Kings in France; but
on ground belonging to England. A prodigious
show of friendship and rejoicing was to be made on
the occasion; and heralds were sent to proclaim with
brazen trumpets through all the principal cities of
Europe, that, on a certain day, the Kings of France
and England, as companions and brothers in arms, each
attended by eighteen followers, would hold a tournament
against all knights who might choose to come.
CHARLES, the new Emperor of Germany
(the old one being dead), wanted to prevent too cordial
an alliance between these sovereigns, and came over
to England before the King could repair to the place
of meeting; and, besides making an agreeable impression
upon him, secured Wolsey’s interest by promising
that his influence should make him Pope when the next
vacancy occurred. On the day when the Emperor
left England, the King and all the Court went over
to Calais, and thence to the place of meeting, between
Ardres and Guisnes, commonly called the Field of the
Cloth of Gold. Here, all manner of expense and
prodigality was lavished on the decorations of the
show; many of the knights and gentlemen being so superbly
dressed that it was said they carried their whole estates
upon their shoulders.
There were sham castles, temporary
chapels, fountains running wine, great cellars full
of wine free as water to all comers, silk tents, gold
lace and foil, gilt lions, and such things without
end; and, in the midst of all, the rich Cardinal out-shone
and out-glittered all the noblemen and gentlemen assembled.
After a treaty made between the two Kings with as
much solemnity as if they had intended to keep it,
the lists nine hundred feet long, and three
hundred and twenty broad were opened for
the tournament; the Queens of France and England looking
on with great array of lords and ladies. Then,
for ten days, the two sovereigns fought five combats
every day, and always beat their polite adversaries;
though they do write that the King of England,
being thrown in a wrestle one day by the King of France,
lost his kingly temper with his brother-in-arms,
and wanted to make a quarrel of it. Then, there
is a great story belonging to this Field of the Cloth
of Gold, showing how the English were distrustful
of the French, and the French of the English, until
Francis rode alone one morning to Henry’s tent;
and, going in before he was out of bed, told him in
joke that he was his prisoner; and how Henry jumped
out of bed and embraced Francis; and how Francis helped
Henry to dress, and warmed his linen for him; and
how Henry gave Francis a splendid jewelled collar,
and how Francis gave Henry, in return, a costly bracelet.
All this and a great deal more was so written about,
and sung about, and talked about at that time (and,
indeed, since that time too), that the world has had
good cause to be sick of it, for ever.
Of course, nothing came of all these
fine doings but a speedy renewal of the war between
England and France, in which the two Royal companions
and brothers in arms longed very earnestly to damage
one another. But, before it broke out again,
the Duke of Buckingham was shamefully executed on
Tower Hill, on the evidence of a discharged servant really
for nothing, except the folly of having believed in
a friar of the name of HOPKINS, who had pretended
to be a prophet, and who had mumbled and jumbled out
some nonsense about the Duke’s son being destined
to be very great in the land. It was believed
that the unfortunate Duke had given offence to the
great Cardinal by expressing his mind freely about
the expense and absurdity of the whole business of
the Field of the Cloth of Gold. At any rate,
he was beheaded, as I have said, for nothing.
And the people who saw it done were very angry, and
cried out that it was the work of ‘the butcher’s
son!’
The new war was a short one, though
the Earl of Surrey invaded France again, and did some
injury to that country. It ended in another treaty
of peace between the two kingdoms, and in the discovery
that the Emperor of Germany was not such a good friend
to England in reality, as he pretended to be.
Neither did he keep his promise to Wolsey to make
him Pope, though the King urged him. Two Popes
died in pretty quick succession; but the foreign priests
were too much for the Cardinal, and kept him out of
the post. So the Cardinal and King together found
out that the Emperor of Germany was not a man to keep
faith with; broke off a projected marriage between
the King’s daughter MARY, Princess of Wales,
and that sovereign; and began to consider whether it
might not be well to marry the young lady, either
to Francis himself, or to his eldest son.
There now arose at Wittemberg, in
Germany, the great leader of the mighty change in
England which is called The Reformation, and which
set the people free from their slavery to the priests.
This was a learned Doctor, named MARTIN LUTHER, who
knew all about them, for he had been a priest, and
even a monk, himself. The preaching and writing
of Wickliffe had set a number of men thinking on this
subject; and Luther, finding one day to his great
surprise, that there really was a book called the New
Testament which the priests did not allow to be read,
and which contained truths that they suppressed, began
to be very vigorous against the whole body, from the
Pope downward. It happened, while he was yet
only beginning his vast work of awakening the nation,
that an impudent fellow named TETZEL, a friar of very
bad character, came into his neighbourhood selling
what were called Indulgences, by wholesale, to raise
money for beautifying the great Cathedral of St. Peter’s,
at Rome. Whoever bought an Indulgence of the
Pope was supposed to buy himself off from the punishment
of Heaven for his offences. Luther told the people
that these Indulgences were worthless bits of paper,
before God, and that Tetzel and his masters were a
crew of impostors in selling them.
The King and the Cardinal were mightily
indignant at this presumption; and the King (with
the help of SIR THOMAS MORE, a wise man, whom he afterwards
repaid by striking off his head) even wrote a book
about it, with which the Pope was so well pleased
that he gave the King the title of Defender of the
Faith. The King and the Cardinal also issued
flaming warnings to the people not to read Luther’s
books, on pain of excommunication. But they
did read them for all that; and the rumour of what
was in them spread far and wide.
When this great change was thus going
on, the King began to show himself in his truest and
worst colours. Anne Boleyn, the pretty little
girl who had gone abroad to France with his sister,
was by this time grown up to be very beautiful, and
was one of the ladies in attendance on Queen Catherine.
Now, Queen Catherine was no longer young or handsome,
and it is likely that she was not particularly good-tempered;
having been always rather melancholy, and having been
made more so by the deaths of four of her children
when they were very young. So, the King fell
in love with the fair Anne Boleyn, and said to himself,
’How can I be best rid of my own troublesome
wife whom I am tired of, and marry Anne?’
You recollect that Queen Catherine
had been the wife of Henry’s brother. What
does the King do, after thinking it over, but calls
his favourite priests about him, and says, O! his
mind is in such a dreadful state, and he is so frightfully
uneasy, because he is afraid it was not lawful for
him to marry the Queen! Not one of those priests
had the courage to hint that it was rather curious
he had never thought of that before, and that his
mind seemed to have been in a tolerably jolly condition
during a great many years, in which he certainly had
not fretted himself thin; but, they all said, Ah!
that was very true, and it was a serious business;
and perhaps the best way to make it right, would be
for his Majesty to be divorced! The King replied,
Yes, he thought that would be the best way, certainly;
so they all went to work.
If I were to relate to you the intrigues
and plots that took place in the endeavour to get
this divorce, you would think the History of England
the most tiresome book in the world. So I shall
say no more, than that after a vast deal of negotiation
and evasion, the Pope issued a commission to Cardinal
Wolsey and CARDINAL CAMPEGGIO (whom he sent over
from Italy for the purpose), to try the whole case
in England. It is supposed and I
think with reason that Wolsey was the Queen’s
enemy, because she had reproved him for his proud
and gorgeous manner of life. But, he did not
at first know that the King wanted to marry Anne Boleyn;
and when he did know it, he even went down on his
knees, in the endeavour to dissuade him.
The Cardinals opened their court in
the Convent of the Black Friars, near to where the
bridge of that name in London now stands; and the King
and Queen, that they might be near it, took up their
lodgings at the adjoining palace of Bridewell, of
which nothing now remains but a bad prison.
On the opening of the court, when the King and Queen
were called on to appear, that poor ill-used lady,
with a dignity and firmness and yet with a womanly
affection worthy to be always admired, went and kneeled
at the King’s feet, and said that she had come,
a stranger, to his dominions; that she had been a
good and true wife to him for twenty years; and that
she could acknowledge no power in those Cardinals to
try whether she should be considered his wife after
all that time, or should be put away. With that,
she got up and left the court, and would never afterwards
come back to it.
The King pretended to be very much
overcome, and said, O! my lords and gentlemen, what
a good woman she was to be sure, and how delighted
he would be to live with her unto death, but for that
terrible uneasiness in his mind which was quite wearing
him away! So, the case went on, and there was
nothing but talk for two months. Then Cardinal
Campeggio, who, on behalf of the Pope, wanted
nothing so much as delay, adjourned it for two more
months; and before that time was elapsed, the Pope
himself adjourned it indefinitely, by requiring the
King and Queen to come to Rome and have it tried there.
But by good luck for the King, word was brought to
him by some of his people, that they had happened to
meet at supper, THOMAS CRANMER, a learned Doctor of
Cambridge, who had proposed to urge the Pope on, by
referring the case to all the learned doctors and
bishops, here and there and everywhere, and getting
their opinions that the King’s marriage was
unlawful. The King, who was now in a hurry to
marry Anne Boleyn, thought this such a good idea, that
he sent for Cranmer, post haste, and said to LORD
ROCHFORT, Anne Boleyn’s father, ’Take
this learned Doctor down to your country-house, and
there let him have a good room for a study, and no
end of books out of which to prove that I may marry
your daughter.’ Lord Rochfort, not at all
reluctant, made the learned Doctor as comfortable
as he could; and the learned Doctor went to work to
prove his case. All this time, the King and Anne
Boleyn were writing letters to one another almost daily,
full of impatience to have the case settled; and Anne
Boleyn was showing herself (as I think) very worthy
of the fate which afterwards befel her.
It was bad for Cardinal Wolsey that
he had left Cranmer to render this help. It
was worse for him that he had tried to dissuade the
King from marrying Anne Boleyn. Such a servant
as he, to such a master as Henry, would probably have
fallen in any case; but, between the hatred of the
party of the Queen that was, and the hatred of the
party of the Queen that was to be, he fell suddenly
and heavily. Going down one day to the Court
of Chancery, where he now presided, he was waited upon
by the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, who told him
that they brought an order to him to resign that office,
and to withdraw quietly to a house he had at Esher,
in Surrey. The Cardinal refusing, they rode off
to the King; and next day came back with a letter
from him, on reading which, the Cardinal submitted.
An inventory was made out of all the riches in his
palace at York Place (now Whitehall), and he went
sorrowfully up the river, in his barge, to Putney.
An abject man he was, in spite of his pride; for being
overtaken, riding out of that place towards Esher,
by one of the King’s chamberlains who brought
him a kind message and a ring, he alighted from his
mule, took off his cap, and kneeled down in the dirt.
His poor Fool, whom in his prosperous days he had
always kept in his palace to entertain him, cut a
far better figure than he; for, when the Cardinal said
to the chamberlain that he had nothing to send to
his lord the King as a present, but that jester who
was a most excellent one, it took six strong yeomen
to remove the faithful fool from his master.
The once proud Cardinal was soon further
disgraced, and wrote the most abject letters to his
vile sovereign; who humbled him one day and encouraged
him the next, according to his humour, until he was
at last ordered to go and reside in his diocese of
York. He said he was too poor; but I don’t
know how he made that out, for he took a hundred and
sixty servants with him, and seventy-two cart-loads
of furniture, food, and wine. He remained in
that part of the country for the best part of a year,
and showed himself so improved by his misfortunes,
and was so mild and so conciliating, that he won all
hearts. And indeed, even in his proud days,
he had done some magnificent things for learning and
education. At last, he was arrested for high
treason; and, coming slowly on his journey towards
London, got as far as Leicester. Arriving at
Leicester Abbey after dark, and very ill, he said when
the monks came out at the gate with lighted torches
to receive him that he had come to lay
his bones among them. He had indeed; for he was
taken to a bed, from which he never rose again.
His last words were, ’Had I but served God as
diligently as I have served the King, He would not
have given me over, in my grey hairs. Howbeit,
this is my just reward for my pains and diligence,
not regarding my service to God, but only my duty to
my prince.’ The news of his death was
quickly carried to the King, who was amusing himself
with archery in the garden of the magnificent Palace
at Hampton Court, which that very Wolsey had presented
to him. The greatest emotion his royal mind
displayed at the loss of a servant so faithful and
so ruined, was a particular desire to lay hold of fifteen
hundred pounds which the Cardinal was reported to
have hidden somewhere.
The opinions concerning the divorce,
of the learned doctors and bishops and others, being
at last collected, and being generally in the King’s
favour, were forwarded to the Pope, with an entreaty
that he would now grant it. The unfortunate
Pope, who was a timid man, was half distracted between
his fear of his authority being set aside in England
if he did not do as he was asked, and his dread of
offending the Emperor of Germany, who was Queen Catherine’s
nephew. In this state of mind he still evaded
and did nothing. Then, THOMAS CROMWELL, who had
been one of Wolsey’s faithful attendants, and
had remained so even in his decline, advised the King
to take the matter into his own hands, and make himself
the head of the whole Church. This, the King
by various artful means, began to do; but he recompensed
the clergy by allowing them to burn as many people
as they pleased, for holding Luther’s opinions.
You must understand that Sir Thomas More, the wise
man who had helped the King with his book, had been
made Chancellor in Wolsey’s place. But,
as he was truly attached to the Church as it was even
in its abuses, he, in this state of things, resigned.
Being now quite resolved to get rid
of Queen Catherine, and to marry Anne Boleyn without
more ado, the King made Cranmer Archbishop of Canterbury,
and directed Queen Catherine to leave the Court.
She obeyed; but replied that wherever she went, she
was Queen of England still, and would remain so, to
the last. The King then married Anne Boleyn privately;
and the new Archbishop of Canterbury, within half
a year, declared his marriage with Queen Catherine
void, and crowned Anne Boleyn Queen.
She might have known that no good
could ever come from such wrong, and that the corpulent
brute who had been so faithless and so cruel to his
first wife, could be more faithless and more cruel
to his second. She might have known that, even
when he was in love with her, he had been a mean and
selfish coward, running away, like a frightened cur,
from her society and her house, when a dangerous sickness
broke out in it, and when she might easily have taken
it and died, as several of the household did.
But, Anne Boleyn arrived at all this knowledge too
late, and bought it at a dear price. Her bad
marriage with a worse man came to its natural end.
Its natural end was not, as we shall too soon see,
a natural death for her.