The Pope was thrown into a very angry
state of mind when he heard of the King’s marriage,
and fumed exceedingly. Many of the English monks
and friars, seeing that their order was in danger,
did the same; some even declaimed against the King
in church before his face, and were not to be stopped
until he himself roared out ‘Silence!’
The King, not much the worse for this, took it pretty
quietly; and was very glad when his Queen gave birth
to a daughter, who was christened ELIZABETH, and declared
Princess of Wales as her sister Mary had already been.
One of the most atrocious features
of this reign was that Henry the Eighth was always
trimming between the reformed religion and the unreformed
one; so that the more he quarrelled with the Pope,
the more of his own subjects he roasted alive for
not holding the Pope’s opinions. Thus,
an unfortunate student named John Frith, and a poor
simple tailor named Andrew Hewet who loved him very
much, and said that whatever John Frith believed he
believed, were burnt in Smithfield to show
what a capital Christian the King was.
But, these were speedily followed
by two much greater victims, Sir Thomas More, and
John Fisher, the Bishop of Rochester. The latter,
who was a good and amiable old man, had committed
no greater offence than believing in Elizabeth Barton,
called the Maid of Kent another of those
ridiculous women who pretended to be inspired, and
to make all sorts of heavenly revelations, though
they indeed uttered nothing but evil nonsense.
For this offence as it was pretended,
but really for denying the King to be the supreme
Head of the Church he got into trouble,
and was put in prison; but, even then, he might have
been suffered to die naturally (short work having
been made of executing the Kentish Maid and her principal
followers), but that the Pope, to spite the King, resolved
to make him a cardinal. Upon that the King made
a ferocious joke to the effect that the Pope might
send Fisher a red hat which is the way they
make a cardinal but he should have no head
on which to wear it; and he was tried with all unfairness
and injustice, and sentenced to death. He died
like a noble and virtuous old man, and left a worthy
name behind him. The King supposed, I dare say,
that Sir Thomas More would be frightened by this example;
but, as he was not to be easily terrified, and, thoroughly
believing in the Pope, had made up his mind that the
King was not the rightful Head of the Church, he positively
refused to say that he was. For this crime he
too was tried and sentenced, after having been in
prison a whole year. When he was doomed to death,
and came away from his trial with the edge of the
executioner’s axe turned towards him as
was always done in those times when a state prisoner
came to that hopeless pass he bore it quite
serenely, and gave his blessing to his son, who pressed
through the crowd in Westminster Hall and kneeled down
to receive it. But, when he got to the Tower
Wharf on his way back to his prison, and his favourite
daughter, MARGARET ROPER, a very good woman, rushed
through the guards again and again, to kiss him and
to weep upon his neck, he was overcome at last.
He soon recovered, and never more showed any feeling
but cheerfulness and courage. When he was going
up the steps of the scaffold to his death, he said
jokingly to the Lieutenant of the Tower, observing
that they were weak and shook beneath his tread, ’I
pray you, master Lieutenant, see me safe up; and, for
my coming down, I can shift for myself.’
Also he said to the executioner, after he had laid
his head upon the block, ’Let me put my beard
out of the way; for that, at least, has never committed
any treason.’ Then his head was struck
off at a blow. These two executions were worthy
of King Henry the Eighth. Sir Thomas More was
one of the most virtuous men in his dominions, and
the Bishop was one of his oldest and truest friends.
But to be a friend of that fellow was almost as dangerous
as to be his wife.
When the news of these two murders
got to Rome, the Pope raged against the murderer more
than ever Pope raged since the world began, and prepared
a Bull, ordering his subjects to take arms against
him and dethrone him. The King took all possible
precautions to keep that document out of his dominions,
and set to work in return to suppress a great number
of the English monasteries and abbeys.
This destruction was begun by a body
of commissioners, of whom Cromwell (whom the King
had taken into great favour) was the head; and was
carried on through some few years to its entire completion.
There is no doubt that many of these religious establishments
were religious in nothing but in name, and were crammed
with lazy, indolent, and sensual monks. There
is no doubt that they imposed upon the people in every
possible way; that they had images moved by wires,
which they pretended were miraculously moved by Heaven;
that they had among them a whole tun measure full of
teeth, all purporting to have come out of the head
of one saint, who must indeed have been a very extraordinary
person with that enormous allowance of grinders; that
they had bits of coal which they said had fried Saint
Lawrence, and bits of toe-nails which they said belonged
to other famous saints; penknives, and boots, and
girdles, which they said belonged to others; and that
all these bits of rubbish were called Relics, and adored
by the ignorant people. But, on the other hand,
there is no doubt either, that the King’s officers
and men punished the good monks with the bad; did
great injustice; demolished many beautiful things and
many valuable libraries; destroyed numbers of paintings,
stained glass windows, fine pavements, and carvings;
and that the whole court were ravenously greedy and
rapacious for the division of this great spoil among
them. The King seems to have grown almost mad
in the ardour of this pursuit; for he declared Thomas
a Becket a traitor, though he had been dead so many
years, and had his body dug up out of his grave.
He must have been as miraculous as the monks pretended,
if they had told the truth, for he was found with
one head on his shoulders, and they had shown another
as his undoubted and genuine head ever since his death;
it had brought them vast sums of money, too.
The gold and jewels on his shrine filled two great
chests, and eight men tottered as they carried them
away. How rich the monasteries were you may infer
from the fact that, when they were all suppressed,
one hundred and thirty thousand pounds a year in
those days an immense sum came to the Crown.
These things were not done without
causing great discontent among the people. The
monks had been good landlords and hospitable entertainers
of all travellers, and had been accustomed to give
away a great deal of corn, and fruit, and meat, and
other things. In those days it was difficult
to change goods into money, in consequence of the roads
being very few and very bad, and the carts, and waggons
of the worst description; and they must either have
given away some of the good things they possessed
in enormous quantities, or have suffered them to spoil
and moulder. So, many of the people missed what
it was more agreeable to get idly than to work for;
and the monks who were driven out of their homes and
wandered about encouraged their discontent; and there
were, consequently, great risings in Lincolnshire
and Yorkshire. These were put down by terrific
executions, from which the monks themselves did not
escape, and the King went on grunting and growling
in his own fat way, like a Royal pig.
I have told all this story of the
religious houses at one time, to make it plainer,
and to get back to the King’s domestic affairs.
The unfortunate Queen Catherine was
by this time dead; and the King was by this time as
tired of his second Queen as he had been of his first.
As he had fallen in love with Anne when she was in
the service of Catherine, so he now fell in love with
another lady in the service of Anne. See how
wicked deeds are punished, and how bitterly and self-reproachfully
the Queen must now have thought of her own rise to
the throne! The new fancy was a LADY JANE SEYMOUR;
and the King no sooner set his mind on her, than he
resolved to have Anne Boleyn’s head. So,
he brought a number of charges against Anne, accusing
her of dreadful crimes which she had never committed,
and implicating in them her own brother and certain
gentlemen in her service: among whom one Norris,
and Mark Smeaton a musician, are best remembered.
As the lords and councillors were as afraid of the
King and as subservient to him as the meanest peasant
in England was, they brought in Anne Boleyn guilty,
and the other unfortunate persons accused with her,
guilty too. Those gentlemen died like men, with
the exception of Smeaton, who had been tempted by
the King into telling lies, which he called confessions,
and who had expected to be pardoned; but who, I am
very glad to say, was not. There was then only
the Queen to dispose of. She had been surrounded
in the Tower with women spies; had been monstrously
persecuted and foully slandered; and had received no
justice. But her spirit rose with her afflictions;
and, after having in vain tried to soften the King
by writing an affecting letter to him which still
exists, ‘from her doleful prison in the Tower,’
she resigned herself to death. She said to those
about her, very cheerfully, that she had heard say
the executioner was a good one, and that she had a
little neck (she laughed and clasped it with her hands
as she said that), and would soon be out of her pain.
And she was soon out of her pain, poor creature,
on the Green inside the Tower, and her body was flung
into an old box and put away in the ground under the
chapel.
There is a story that the King sat
in his palace listening very anxiously for the sound
of the cannon which was to announce this new murder;
and that, when he heard it come booming on the air,
he rose up in great spirits and ordered out his dogs
to go a-hunting. He was bad enough to do it;
but whether he did it or not, it is certain that he
married Jane Seymour the very next day.
I have not much pleasure in recording
that she lived just long enough to give birth to a
son who was christened EDWARD, and then to die of a
fever: for, I cannot but think that any woman
who married such a ruffian, and knew what innocent
blood was on his hands, deserved the axe that would
assuredly have fallen on the neck of Jane Seymour,
if she had lived much longer.
Cranmer had done what he could to
save some of the Church property for purposes of religion
and education; but, the great families had been so
hungry to get hold of it, that very little could be
rescued for such objects. Even MILES COVERDALE,
who did the people the inestimable service of translating
the Bible into English (which the unreformed religion
never permitted to be done), was left in poverty while
the great families clutched the Church lands and money.
The people had been told that when the Crown came
into possession of these funds, it would not be necessary
to tax them; but they were taxed afresh directly afterwards.
It was fortunate for them, indeed, that so many nobles
were so greedy for this wealth; since, if it had remained
with the Crown, there might have been no end to tyranny
for hundreds of years. One of the most active
writers on the Church’s side against the King
was a member of his own family a sort of
distant cousin, REGINALD POLE by name who
attacked him in the most violent manner (though he
received a pension from him all the time), and fought
for the Church with his pen, day and night. As
he was beyond the King’s reach being
in Italy the King politely invited him
over to discuss the subject; but he, knowing better
than to come, and wisely staying where he was, the
King’s rage fell upon his brother Lord Montague,
the Marquis of Exeter, and some other gentlemen:
who were tried for high treason in corresponding with
him and aiding him which they probably
did and were all executed. The Pope
made Reginald Pole a cardinal; but, so much against
his will, that it is thought he even aspired in his
own mind to the vacant throne of England, and had hopes
of marrying the Princess Mary. His being made
a high priest, however, put an end to all that.
His mother, the venerable Countess of Salisbury who
was, unfortunately for herself, within the tyrant’s
reach was the last of his relatives on
whom his wrath fell. When she was told to lay
her grey head upon the block, she answered the executioner,
’No! My head never committed treason,
and if you want it, you shall seize it.’
So, she ran round and round the scaffold with the
executioner striking at her, and her grey hair bedabbled
with blood; and even when they held her down upon
the block she moved her head about to the last, resolved
to be no party to her own barbarous murder.
All this the people bore, as they had borne everything
else.
Indeed they bore much more; for the
slow fires of Smithfield were continually burning,
and people were constantly being roasted to death still
to show what a good Christian the King was. He
defied the Pope and his Bull, which was now issued,
and had come into England; but he burned innumerable
people whose only offence was that they differed from
the Pope’s religious opinions. There was
a wretched man named LAMBERT, among others, who was
tried for this before the King, and with whom six
bishops argued one after another. When he was
quite exhausted (as well he might be, after six bishops),
he threw himself on the King’s mercy; but the
King blustered out that he had no mercy for heretics.
So, he too fed the fire.
All this the people bore, and more
than all this yet. The national spirit seems
to have been banished from the kingdom at this time.
The very people who were executed for treason, the
very wives and friends of the ‘bluff’
King, spoke of him on the scaffold as a good prince,
and a gentle prince just as serfs in similar
circumstances have been known to do, under the Sultan
and Bashaws of the East, or under the fierce old tyrants
of Russia, who poured boiling and freezing water on
them alternately, until they died. The Parliament
were as bad as the rest, and gave the King whatever
he wanted; among other vile accommodations, they gave
him new powers of murdering, at his will and pleasure,
any one whom he might choose to call a traitor.
But the worst measure they passed was an Act of Six
Articles, commonly called at the time ’the whip
with six strings;’ which punished offences against
the Pope’s opinions, without mercy, and enforced
the very worst parts of the monkish religion.
Cranmer would have modified it, if he could; but, being
overborne by the Romish party, had not the power.
As one of the articles declared that priests should
not marry, and as he was married himself, he sent his
wife and children into Germany, and began to tremble
at his danger; none the less because he was, and had
long been, the King’s friend. This whip
of six strings was made under the King’s own
eye. It should never be forgotten of him how
cruelly he supported the worst of the Popish doctrines
when there was nothing to be got by opposing them.
This amiable monarch now thought of
taking another wife. He proposed to the French
King to have some of the ladies of the French Court
exhibited before him, that he might make his Royal
choice; but the French King answered that he would
rather not have his ladies trotted out to be shown
like horses at a fair. He proposed to the Dowager
Duchess of Milan, who replied that she might have
thought of such a match if she had had two heads;
but, that only owning one, she must beg to keep it
safe. At last Cromwell represented that there
was a Protestant Princess in Germany those
who held the reformed religion were called Protestants,
because their leaders had Protested against the abuses
and impositions of the unreformed Church named
ANNE OF CLEVES, who was beautiful, and would answer
the purpose admirably. The King said was she
a large woman, because he must have a fat wife?
‘O yes,’ said Cromwell; ’she was
very large, just the thing.’ On hearing
this the King sent over his famous painter, Hans Holbein,
to take her portrait. Hans made her out to be
so good-looking that the King was satisfied, and the
marriage was arranged. But, whether anybody had
paid Hans to touch up the picture; or whether Hans,
like one or two other painters, flattered a princess
in the ordinary way of business, I cannot say:
all I know is, that when Anne came over and the King
went to Rochester to meet her, and first saw her without
her seeing him, he swore she was ‘a great Flanders
mare,’ and said he would never marry her.
Being obliged to do it now matters had gone so far,
he would not give her the presents he had prepared,
and would never notice her. He never forgave
Cromwell his part in the affair. His downfall
dates from that time.
It was quickened by his enemies, in
the interests of the unreformed religion, putting
in the King’s way, at a state dinner, a niece
of the Duke of Norfolk, CATHERINE HOWARD, a young
lady of fascinating manners, though small in stature
and not particularly beautiful. Falling in love
with her on the spot, the King soon divorced Anne of
Cleves after making her the subject of much brutal
talk, on pretence that she had been previously betrothed
to some one else which would never do for
one of his dignity and married Catherine.
It is probable that on his wedding day, of all days
in the year, he sent his faithful Cromwell to the
scaffold, and had his head struck off. He further
celebrated the occasion by burning at one time, and
causing to be drawn to the fire on the same hurdles,
some Protestant prisoners for denying the Pope’s
doctrines, and some Roman Catholic prisoners for denying
his own supremacy. Still the people bore it,
and not a gentleman in England raised his hand.
But, by a just retribution, it soon
came out that Catherine Howard, before her marriage,
had been really guilty of such crimes as the King
had falsely attributed to his second wife Anne Boleyn;
so, again the dreadful axe made the King a widower,
and this Queen passed away as so many in that reign
had passed away before her. As an appropriate
pursuit under the circumstances, Henry then applied
himself to superintending the composition of a religious
book called ’A necessary doctrine for any Christian
Man.’ He must have been a little confused
in his mind, I think, at about this period; for he
was so false to himself as to be true to some one:
that some one being Cranmer, whom the Duke of Norfolk
and others of his enemies tried to ruin; but to whom
the King was steadfast, and to whom he one night gave
his ring, charging him when he should find himself,
next day, accused of treason, to show it to the council
board. This Cranmer did to the confusion of his
enemies. I suppose the King thought he might
want him a little longer.
He married yet once more. Yes,
strange to say, he found in England another woman
who would become his wife, and she was CATHERINE PARR,
widow of Lord Latimer. She leaned towards the
reformed religion; and it is some comfort to know,
that she tormented the King considerably by arguing
a variety of doctrinal points with him on all possible
occasions. She had very nearly done this to her
own destruction. After one of these conversations
the King in a very black mood actually instructed GARDINER,
one of his Bishops who favoured the Popish opinions,
to draw a bill of accusation against her, which would
have inevitably brought her to the scaffold where
her predecessors had died, but that one of her friends
picked up the paper of instructions which had been
dropped in the palace, and gave her timely notice.
She fell ill with terror; but managed the King so
well when he came to entrap her into further statements by
saying that she had only spoken on such points to divert
his mind and to get some information from his extraordinary
wisdom that he gave her a kiss and called
her his sweetheart. And, when the Chancellor
came next day actually to take her to the Tower, the
King sent him about his business, and honoured him
with the epithets of a beast, a knave, and a fool.
So near was Catherine Parr to the block, and so narrow
was her escape!
There was war with Scotland in this
reign, and a short clumsy war with France for favouring
Scotland; but, the events at home were so dreadful,
and leave such an enduring stain on the country, that
I need say no more of what happened abroad.
A few more horrors, and this reign
is over. There was a lady, ANNE ASKEW, in Lincolnshire,
who inclined to the Protestant opinions, and whose
husband being a fierce Catholic, turned her out of
his house. She came to London, and was considered
as offending against the six articles, and was taken
to the Tower, and put upon the rack probably
because it was hoped that she might, in her agony,
criminate some obnoxious persons; if falsely, so much
the better. She was tortured without uttering
a cry, until the Lieutenant of the Tower would suffer
his men to torture her no more; and then two priests
who were present actually pulled off their robes,
and turned the wheels of the rack with their own hands,
so rending and twisting and breaking her that she
was afterwards carried to the fire in a chair.
She was burned with three others, a gentleman, a clergyman,
and a tailor; and so the world went on.
Either the King became afraid of the
power of the Duke of Norfolk, and his son the Earl
of Surrey, or they gave him some offence, but he resolved
to pull them down, to follow all the rest who
were gone. The son was tried first of
course for nothing and defended himself
bravely; but of course he was found guilty, and of
course he was executed. Then his father was
laid hold of, and left for death too.
But the King himself was left for
death by a Greater King, and the earth was to be rid
of him at last. He was now a swollen, hideous
spectacle, with a great hole in his leg, and so odious
to every sense that it was dreadful to approach him.
When he was found to be dying, Cranmer was sent for
from his palace at Croydon, and came with all speed,
but found him speechless. Happily, in that hour
he perished. He was in the fifty-sixth year
of his age, and the thirty-eighth of his reign.
Henry the Eighth has been favoured
by some Protestant writers, because the Reformation
was achieved in his time. But the mighty merit
of it lies with other men and not with him; and it
can be rendered none the worse by this monster’s
crimes, and none the better by any defence of them.
The plain truth is, that he was a most intolerable
ruffian, a disgrace to human nature, and a blot of
blood and grease upon the History of England.