|
HENRY VIII.
_BY THE SAME AUTHOR._
FROM THE ACCESSION OF EDWARD VI. TO THE
DEATH OF ELIZABETH (1547-1603). (Political History
of England, Vol. VI.). With 2 Maps.
THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR. 8vo.
THE WAR: ITS HISTORY AND MORALS. 8vo.
THE REIGN OF HENRY VII. FROM CONTEMPORARY SOURCES.
Selected and arranged with an Introduction.
Crown 8vo.
Vol. I. Narrative Extracts.
Vol. II. Constitutional, Social, and Economic History.
Vol. III. Diplomacy, Ecclesiastical Affairs and Ireland.
* * * * *
UNIVERSITY OF LONDON INTERMEDIATE SOURCE-BOOKS
OF HISTORY.
ILLUSTRATIONS OF CHAUCER'S ENGLAND. Edited
by MISS DOROTHY HUGHES. With a Preface by A.F. POLLARD,
M.A., Litt.D., Fellow of All Souls, and Professor of
English History in the University of London. Crown 8vo.
ENGLAND UNDER THE YORKISTS. 1460-1485. Illustrated
from Contemporary Sources by ISOBEL D. THORNLEY, M.A.,
Assistant in the Department of History, University
College, London. With a Preface by A.F. POLLARD, M.A.,
Litt.D. Crown 8vo.
LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO.,
LONDON, NEW YORK, BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS.
HENRY VIII.
BY
A.F. POLLARD, M.A.
Professor Of Constitutional History At University College,
London; Examiner In Modern History In The Universities Of Oxford
And London; Author Of "A Life Of Cranmer," "England Under
Protector Somerset," Etc., Etc.
_NEW IMPRESSION_
LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
FOURTH AVENUE & 30th STREET, NEW YORK
BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS
1919
_First published by Messrs. Goupil & Co.
in June, 1902, with numerous illustrations._
_New Edition, May, 1905._
_Reprinted, January, 1913, and October, 1919._
PREFACE. (p. v)
It is perhaps a matter rather for regret than for surprise that so few
attempts have been made to describe, as a whole, the life and
character of Henry VIII. No ruler has left a deeper impress on the
history of his country, or done work which has been the subject of
more keen and lasting contention. Courts of law are still debating the
intention of statutes, the tenor of which he dictated; and the moral,
political, and religious, are as much in dispute as the legal, results
of his reign. He is still the Great Erastian, the protagonist of laity
against clergy. His policy is inextricably interwoven with the high
and eternal dilemma of Church and State; and it is well-nigh
impossible for one who feels keenly on these questions to treat the
reign of Henry VIII. in a reasonably judicial spirit. No period
illustrates more vividly the contradiction between morals and
politics. In our desire to reprobate the immorality of Henry's
methods, we are led to deny their success; or, in our appreciation of
the greatness of the ends he achieved, we seek to excuse the means he
took to achieve them. As with his policy, so with his character. (p. vi)
There was nothing commonplace about him; his good and his bad
qualities alike were exceptional. It is easy, by suppressing the one
or the other, to paint him a hero or a villain. He lends himself
readily to polemic; but to depict his character in all its varied
aspects, extenuating nothing nor setting down aught in malice, is a
task of no little difficulty. It is two centuries and a half since
Lord Herbert produced his _Life and Reign of Henry VIII_.[1] The late
Mr. Brewer, in his prefaces to the first four volumes of the _Letters
and Papers of the Reign of Henry VIII._, published under the direction
of the Master of the Rolls, dealt adequately with the earlier portion
of Henry's career. But Mr. Brewer died when his work reached the year
1530; his successor, Dr. James Gairdner, was directed to confine his
prefaces to the later volumes within the narrowest possible limits;
and students of history were deprived of the prospect of a
satisfactory account of Henry's later years from a writer of
unrivalled learning.
[Footnote 1: The edition cited in the text is that
of 1672.]
Henry's reign, from 1530 onwards, has been described by the late Mr.
Froude in one of the most brilliant and fascinating masterpieces of
historical literature, a work which still holds the field in popular,
if not in scholarly, estimation. But Mr. Froude does not begin until
Henry's reign was half over, until his character had been determined
by influences and events which lie outside the scope of Mr. (p. vii)
Froude's inquiry. Moreover, since Mr. Froude wrote, a flood of light
has been thrown on the period by the publication of the above-mentioned
_Letters and Papers_;[2] they already comprise a summary of between
thirty and forty thousand documents in twenty thousand closely printed
pages, and, when completed, will constitute the most magnificent body
of materials for the history of any reign, ancient or modern, English
or foreign. Simultaneously there have appeared a dozen volumes
containing the State papers preserved at Simancas,[3] Vienna and
Brussels and similar series comprising the correspondence relating to
Venice,[4] Scotland[5] and Ireland;[6] while the despatches of French
ambassadors have been published under the auspices of the Ministry for
Foreign Affairs at Paris.[7] Still further information has been (p. viii)
provided by the labours of the Historical Manuscripts Commission,[8]
the Camden,[9] the Royal Historical,[10] and other learned Societies.
[Footnote 2: This series, unlike the _Calendars of
State Papers_, includes documents not preserved at
the Record Office; it is often inaccurately cited
as _Calendar of State Papers_, but the word
"Calendar" does not appear in the title and it
includes much besides State papers; such a
description also tends to confuse it with the
eleven volumes of Henry VIII.'s State papers
published _in extenso_ in 1830-51. The series now
extends to Dec., 1544, and is cited in the text as
_L. and P._.]
[Footnote 3: Cited as _Spanish Calendar_; the
volume completing Henry's reign was published in
1904.]
[Footnote 4: Cited as _Ven. Cal._; this
correspondence diminishes in importance as the
reign proceeds, and also, after 1530, the documents
are epitomised afresh in _L. and P._.]
[Footnote 5: Three series, _viz._, that edited by
Thorp (2 vols., 1858), a second edited by Bain (2
vols., 1898) and the _Hamilton Papers_ (2 vols.,
1890-92).]
[Footnote 6: Vol. i. of the _Irish Calendar_, and
also of the _Carew MSS._; see also the _Calendar of
Fiants_ published by the Deputy-Keeper of Records
for Ireland.]
[Footnote 7: _Correspondance de MM. Castillon et
Marillac_, edited by Kaulek, and of _Odet de
Selve_, 1888.]
[Footnote 8: The most important of these is vol. i.
of Lord Salisbury's MSS.; other papers of Henry
VIII.'s reign are scattered up and down the
Appendices to a score and more of reports.]
[Footnote 9: _E.g._, Wriothesley's _Chronicle_,
_Chron. of Calais_, and _Greyfriars Chron_.]
[Footnote 10: _E.g._, Leadam, _Domesday of
Inclosures_, and _Transactions_, _passim_.]
These sources probably contain at least a million definite facts
relating to the reign of Henry VIII.; and it is obvious that the task
of selection has become heavy as well as invidious. Mr. Froude has
expressed his concurrence in the dictum that the facts of history are
like the letters of the alphabet; by selection and arrangement they
can be made to spell anything, and nothing can be arranged so easily
as facts. _Experto crede_. Yet selection is inevitable, and
arrangement essential. The historian has no option if he wishes to be
intelligible. He will naturally arrange his facts so that they spell
what he believes to be the truth; and he must of necessity suppress
those facts which he judges to be immaterial or inconsistent with the
scale on which he is writing. But if the superabundance of facts
compels both selection and suppression, it counsels no less a
restraint of judgment. A case in a court of law is not simplified by a
cloud of witnesses; and the new wealth of contemporary evidence (p. ix)
does not solve the problems of Henry's reign. It elucidates some
points hitherto obscure, but it raises a host of others never before
suggested. In ancient history we often accept statements written
hundreds of years after the event, simply because we know no better;
in modern history we frequently have half a dozen witnesses giving
inconsistent accounts of what they have seen with their own eyes.
Dogmatism is merely the result of ignorance; and no honest historian
will pretend to have mastered all the facts, accurately weighed all
the evidence, or pronounced a final judgment.
The present volume does not profess to do more than roughly sketch
Henry VIII.'s more prominent characteristics, outline the chief
features of his policy, and suggest some reasons for the measure of
success he attained. Episodes such as the divorce of Catherine of
Aragon, the dissolution of the monasteries, and the determination of
the relations between Church and State, would severally demand for
adequate treatment works of much greater bulk than the present. On the
divorce valuable light has recently been thrown by Dr. Stephan Ehses
in his _Roemische Dokumente_.[11] The dissolution of the monasteries
has been exhaustively treated from one point of view by Dr. Gasquet;[12]
but an adequate and impartial history of what is called the Reformation
still remains to be written. Here it is possible to deal with (p. x)
these questions only in the briefest outline, and in so far as they
were affected by Henry's personal action. For my facts I have relied
entirely on contemporary records, and my deductions from these facts
are my own. I have depended as little as possible even on contemporary
historians,[13] and scarcely at all on later writers.[14] I have,
however, made frequent use of Dr. Gairdner's articles in the _Dictionary
of National Biography_, particularly of that on Henry VIII., the best
summary extant of his career; and I owe not a little to Bishop
Stubbs's two lectures on Henry VIII., which contain some fruitful
suggestions as to his character.[15]
A.F. POLLARD.
PUTNEY, _11th January, 1905_.
[Footnote 11: Paderborn, 1893; _cf. Engl. Hist.
Rev._, xix., 632-45.]
[Footnote 12: _Henry VIII. and the English
Monasteries_, 2 vols., 1888.]
[Footnote 13: Of these the most important are
Polydore Vergil (Basel, 1534), Hall's _Chronicle_
(1548) and Fabyan's _Chronicle_ (edited by Ellis,
1811). Holinshed and Stow are not quite
contemporary, but they occasionally add to earlier
writers on apparently good authority.]
[Footnote 14: I have in this edition added
references to those which seem most important; for
a collected bibliography see Dr. Gairdner in
_Cambridge Modern History_, ii., 789-94. I have
also for the purpose of this edition added
references to the original sources--a task of some
labour when nearly every fact is taken from a
different document. The text has been revised, some
errors removed, and notes added on special points,
especially those on which fresh light has recently
been thrown.]
[Footnote 15: In _Lectures on Mediaeval and Modern
History_, 1887.]
CONTENTS. (p. xi)
CHAPTER I.
Page
The Early Tudors 1
CHAPTER II.
Prince Henry and His Environment 15
CHAPTER III.
The Apprenticeship of Henry VIII. 43
CHAPTER IV.
The Three Rivals 78
CHAPTER V.
King and Cardinal 108
CHAPTER VI.
From Calais to Rome 136
CHAPTER VII.
The Origin of the Divorce 173
CHAPTER VIII.
The Pope's Dilemma 195
CHAPTER IX. (p. xii)
The Cardinal's Fall 228
CHAPTER X.
The King and His Parliament 249
CHAPTER XI.
"Down with the Church" 278
CHAPTER XII.
"The Prevailing of the Gates of Hell" 302
CHAPTER XIII.
The Crisis 331
CHAPTER XIV.
Rex et Imperator 362
CHAPTER XV.
The Final Struggle 397
CHAPTER XVI.
Conclusion 427
Index 441
CHAPTER I. (p. 001)
THE EARLY TUDORS.
In the whole range of English history there is no monarch whose
character has been more variously depicted by contemporaries or more
strenuously debated by posterity than the "majestic lord who broke the
bonds of Rome". To one historian an inhuman embodiment of cruelty and
vice, to another a superhuman incarnation of courage, wisdom and
strength of will, Henry VIII. has, by an almost universal consent,
been placed above or below the grade of humanity. So unique was his
personality, so singular his achievements, that he appears in the
light of a special dispensation sent like another Attila to be the
scourge of mankind, or like a second Hercules to cleanse, or at least
to demolish, Augean stables. The dictates of his will seemed as
inexorable as the decrees of fate, and the history of his reign is
strewn with records of the ruin of those who failed to placate his
wrath. Of the six queens he married, two he divorced, and two he
beheaded. Four English cardinals[16] lived in his reign; one perished
by the executioner's axe, one escaped it by absence, and a third (p. 002)
by a timely but natural death. Of a similar number of dukes[17] half
were condemned by attainder; and the same method of speedy despatch
accounted for six or seven earls and viscounts and for scores of
lesser degree. He began his reign by executing the ministers of his
father,[18] he continued it by sending his own to the scaffold. The
Tower of London was both palace and prison, and statesmen passed
swiftly from one to the other; in silent obscurity alone lay
salvation. Religion and politics, rank and profession made little
difference; priest and layman, cardinal-archbishop and "hammer of the
monks," men whom Henry had raised from the mire, and peers, over whose
heads they were placed, were joined in a common fate. Wolsey and More,
Cromwell and Norfolk, trod the same dizzy path to the same fatal end;
and the English people looked on powerless or unmoved. They sent their
burgesses and knights of the shire to Westminster without let or
hindrance, and Parliament met with a regularity that grew with the
rigour of Henry's rule; but it seemed to assemble only to register the
royal edicts and clothe with a legal cloak the naked violence of
Henry's acts. It remembered its privileges only to lay them at Henry's
feet, it cancelled his debts, endowed his proclamations with the force
of laws, and authorised him to repeal acts of attainder and dispose of
his crown at will. Secure of its support Henry turned and rent the
spiritual unity of Western Christendom, and settled at a blow that
perennial struggle between Church and State, in which kings and (p. 003)
emperors had bitten the dust. With every epithet of contumely and
scorn he trampled under foot the jurisdiction of him who was believed
to hold the keys of heaven and hell. Borrowing in practice the old
maxim of Roman law, _cujus regio, ejus religio_,[19] he placed himself
in the seat of authority in religion and presumed to define the faith
of which Leo had styled him defender. Others have made themselves
despots by their mastery of many legions, through the agency of a
secret police, or by means of an organised bureaucracy. Yet Henry's
standing army consisted of a few gentlemen pensioners and yeomen of
the guard; he had neither secret police nor organised bureaucracy.
Even then Englishmen boasted that they were not slaves like the
French,[20] and foreigners pointed a finger of scorn at their turbulence.
Had they not permanently or temporarily deprived of power nearly half
their kings who had reigned since William the Conqueror? Yet Henry
VIII. not only left them their arms, but repeatedly urged them to keep
those arms ready for use.[21] He eschewed that air of mystery with
which tyrants have usually sought to impose on the mind of the people.
All his life he moved familiarly and almost unguarded in the midst of
his subjects, and he died in his bed, full of years, with the spell of
his power unbroken and the terror of his name unimpaired.
[Footnote 16: Bainbridge, Wolsey, Fisher, Pole.
Bainbridge was a cardinal after Julius II's own
heart, and he received the red hat for military
services rendered to that warlike Pope (_Ven.
Cal._, ii., 104).]
[Footnote 17: There were two Dukes of Norfolk, the
second of whom was attainted, as was the Duke of
Buckingham; the fourth Duke was Henry's
brother-in-law, Suffolk.]
[Footnote 18: Empson and Dudley.]
[Footnote 19: "Sua cuique civitati religio est,
nostra nobis." Cicero, _Pro Flacco_, 28; _cf._ E.
Bourre, _Des Inequalites de condition resultant de
la religion en droit Romain_, Paris, 1895.]
[Footnote 20: _Cf._ Bishop Scory to Edward VI. in
Strype, _Eccl. Mem._, II., ii., 482; Fortescue, ed.
Plummer, pp. 137-142.]
[Footnote 21: _E.g._, _L. and P._, i., 679.]
What manner of man was this, and wherein lay the secret of his (p. 004)
strength? Is recourse necessary to a theory of supernatural agency, or
is there another and adequate solution? Was Henry's individual will of
such miraculous force that he could ride roughshod in insolent pride
over public opinion at home and abroad? Or did his personal ends,
dictated perhaps by selfish motives and ignoble passions, so far
coincide with the interests and prejudices of the politically
effective portion of his people, that they were willing to condone a
violence and tyranny, the brunt of which fell after all on the few?
Such is the riddle which propounds itself to every student of Tudor
history. It cannot be answered by paeans in honour of Henry's intensity
of will and force of character, nor by invectives against his vices
and lamentations over the woes of his victims. The miraculous
interpretation of history is as obsolete as the catastrophic theory of
geology, and the explanation of Henry's career must be sought not so
much in the study of his character as in the study of his environment,
of the conditions which made things possible to him that were not
possible before or since and are not likely to be so again.
* * * * *
It is a singular circumstance that the king who raised the personal
power of English monarchy to a height to which it had never before
attained, should have come of humble race and belonged to an upstart
dynasty. For three centuries and a half before the battle of Bosworth
one family had occupied the English throne. Even the usurpers, Henry
of Bolingbroke and Richard of York, were directly descended in unbroken
male line from Henry II., and from 1154 to 1485 all the sovereigns of
England were Plantagenets. But who were the Tudors? They were a (p. 005)
Welsh family of modest means and doubtful antecedents.[22] They
claimed, it is true, descent from Cadwallader, and their pedigree was
as long and quite as veracious as most Welsh genealogies; but Henry
VII.'s great-grandfather was steward or butler to the Bishop of
Bangor. His son, Owen Tudor, came as a young man to seek his fortune
at the Court of Henry V., and obtained a clerkship of the wardrobe to
Henry's Queen, Catherine of France. So skilfully did he use or abuse
this position of trust, that he won the heart of his mistress; and
within a few years of Henry's death his widowed Queen and her clerk of
the wardrobe were secretly, and possibly without legal sanction,
living together as man and wife. The discovery of their relations
resulted in Catherine's retirement to Bermondsey Abbey, and Owen's to
Newgate prison. The Queen died in the following year, but Owen
survived many romantic adventures. Twice he escaped from prison, twice
he was recaptured. Once he took sanctuary in the precincts of
Westminster Abbey, and various attempts to entrap him were made by
enticing him to revels in a neighbouring tavern. Finally, on the
outbreak of the Wars of the Roses, he espoused the Lancastrian cause,
and was beheaded by order of Edward IV. after the battle of Mortimer's
Cross. Two sons, Edmund and Jasper, were born of this singular match
between Queen and clerk of her wardrobe. Both enjoyed the favour of
their royal half-brother, Henry VI. Edmund, the elder, was first
knighted and then created Earl of Richmond. In the Parliament of 1453,
he was formally declared legitimate; he was enriched by the grant of
broad estates and enrolled among the members of Henry's council. (p. 006)
But the climax of his fortunes was reached when, in 1455, he married
the Lady Margaret Beaufort. Owen Tudor had taken the first step which
led to his family's greatness; Edmund took the second. The blood-royal
of France flowed in his veins, the blood-royal of England was to flow
in his children's; and the union between Edmund Tudor and Margaret
Beaufort gave Henry VII. such claim as he had by descent to the
English throne.
[Footnote 22: _Archaeologia Cambrensis_, 1st ser.,
iv., 267; 3rd ser., xv., 278, 379.]
The Beauforts were descended from Edward III., but a bar sinister
marred their royal pedigree. John of Gaunt had three sons by Catherine
Swynford before she became his wife. That marriage would, by canon
law, have made legitimate the children, but the barons had, on a
famous occasion, refused to assimilate in this respect the laws of
England to the canons of the Church; and it required a special Act of
Parliament to confer on the Beauforts the status of legitimacy. When
Henry IV. confirmed this Act, he introduced a clause specifically
barring their contingent claim to the English throne. This limitation
could not legally abate the force of a statute; but it sufficed to
cast a doubt upon the Beaufort title, and has been considered a
sufficient explanation of Henry VII.'s reluctance to base his claim
upon hereditary right. However that may be, the Beauforts played no
little part in the English history of the fifteenth century; their
influence was potent for peace or war in the councils of their royal
half-brother, Henry IV., and of the later sovereigns of the House of
Lancaster. One was Cardinal-Bishop of Winchester, another was Duke of
Exeter, and a third was Earl of Somerset. Two of the sons of the Earl
became Dukes of Somerset; the younger fell at St. Albans, the (p. 007)
earliest victim of the Wars of the Roses, which proved so fatal to
his House; and the male line of the Beauforts failed in the third
generation. The sole heir to their claims was the daughter of the
first Duke of Somerset, Margaret, now widow of Edmund Tudor; for,
after a year of wedded life, Edmund had died in November, 1456. Two
months later his widow gave birth to a boy, the future Henry VII.;
and, incredible as the fact may seem, the youthful mother was not
quite fourteen years old. When fifteen more years had passed, the
murder of Henry VI. and his son left Margaret Beaufort and Henry Tudor
in undisputed possession of the Lancastrian title. A barren honour it
seemed. Edward IV. was firmly seated on the English throne. His right
to it, by every test, was immeasurably superior to the Tudor claim,
and Henry showed no inclination and possessed not the means to dispute
it. The usurpation by Richard III., and the crimes which polluted his
reign, put a different aspect on the situation, and set men seeking
for an alternative to the blood-stained tyrant. The battle of Bosworth
followed, and the last of the Plantagenets gave way to the first of
the Tudors.
For the first time, since the Norman Conquest, a king of decisively
British blood sat on the English throne. His lineage was, indeed,
English in only a minor degree; but England might seem to have lost at
the battle of Hastings her right to native kings; and Norman were
succeeded by Angevin, Angevin by Welsh, Welsh by Scots, and Scots by
Hanoverian sovereigns. The Tudors were probably more at home on the
English throne than most of England's kings; and their humble and
British origin may have contributed to their unique capacity for (p. 008)
understanding the needs, and expressing the mind, of the English
nation. It was well for them that they established their throne in the
hearts of their people, for no dynasty grasped the sceptre with less
of hereditary right. Judged by that criterion, there were many
claimants whose titles must have been preferred to Henry's. There were
the daughters of Edward IV. and the children of George, Duke of
Clarence; and their existence may account for Henry's neglect to press
his hereditary claim. But there was a still better reason. Supposing
the Lancastrian case to be valid and the Beauforts to be the true
Lancastrian heirs, even so the rightful occupant of the throne was not
Henry VII., but his mother, Margaret Beaufort. England had never
recognised a Salic law at home; on occasion she had disputed its
validity abroad. But Henry VII. was not disposed to let his mother
rule; she could not unite the Yorkist and Lancastrian claims by
marriage, and, in addition to other disabilities, she had a second
husband in Lord Stanley, who might demand the crown matrimonial. So
Henry VII.'s hereditary title was judiciously veiled in vague
obscurity. Parliament wisely admitted the accomplished fact and
recognised that the crown was vested in him, without rashly venturing
upon the why or the wherefore. He had in truth been raised to the
throne because men were weary of Richard. He was chosen to vindicate
no theory of hereditary or other abstract right, but to govern with a
firm hand, to establish peace within his gates and give prosperity to
his people. That was the true Tudor title, and, as a rule, they
remembered the fact; they were _de facto_ kings, and they left the _de
jure_ arguments to the Stuarts.
Peace, however, could not be obtained at once, nor the embers of (p. 009)
thirty years' strife stamped out in a moment. For fifteen years
open revolt and whispered sedition troubled the rest of the realm and
threatened the stability of Henry's throne. Ireland remained a hot-bed
of Yorkist sympathies, and Ireland was zealously aided by Edward IV.'s
sister, Margaret of Burgundy; she pursued, like a vendetta, the family
quarrel with Henry VII., and earned the title of Henry's Juno by
harassing him as vindictively as the Queen of Heaven vexed the pious
AEneas. Other rulers, with no Yorkist bias, were slow to recognise the
_parvenu_ king and quick to profit by his difficulties. Pretenders to
their rivals' thrones were useful pawns on the royal chess-board; and
though the princes of Europe had no reason to desire a Yorkist
restoration, they thought that a little judicious backing of Yorkist
claimants would be amply repaid by the restriction of Henry's energies
to domestic affairs. Seven months after the battle of Bosworth there
was a rising in the West under the Staffords, and in the North under
Lovell; and Henry himself was nearly captured while celebrating at
York the feast of St. George. A year later a youth of obscure origin,
Lambert Simnel,[23] claimed to be first the Duke of York and then the
Earl of Warwick. The former was son, and the latter was nephew, of
Edward IV. Lambert was crowned king at Dublin amid the acclamations of
the Irish people. Not a voice was raised in Henry's favour; Kildare,
the practical ruler of Ireland, earls and archbishops, bishops and
barons, and great officers of State, from Lord Chancellor downwards,
swore fealty to the reputed son of an Oxford tradesman. Ireland was
only the volcano which gave vent to the subterranean flood; (p. 010)
treason in England and intrigue abroad were working in secret concert
with open rebellion across St. George's Channel. The Queen Dowager was
secluded in Bermondsey Abbey and deprived of her jointure lands. John
de la Pole, who, as eldest son of Edward IV.'s sister, had been named
his successor by Richard III., fled to Burgundy; thence his aunt
Margaret sent Martin Schwartz and two thousand mercenaries to co-operate
with the Irish invasion. But, at East Stoke, De la Pole and Lovell,
Martin Schwartz and his merry men were slain; and the most serious of
the revolts against Henry ended in the consignment of Simnel to the
royal scullery and of his tutor to the Tower.
[Footnote 23: See the present writer in _D.N.B._,
lii., 261.]
Lambert, however, was barely initiated in his new duties when the son
of a boatman of Tournay started on a similar errand with a less
congenial end. An unwilling puppet at first, Perkin Warbeck was on a
trading visit to Ireland, when the Irish, who saw a Yorkist prince in
every likely face, insisted that Perkin was Earl of Warwick. This he
denied on oath before the Mayor of Cork. Nothing deterred, they
suggested that he was Richard III.'s bastard; but the bastard was safe
in Henry's keeping, and the imaginative Irish finally took refuge in
the theory that Perkin was Duke of York. Lambert's old friends rallied
round Perkin; the re-animated Duke was promptly summoned to the Court
of France and treated with princely honours. When Charles VIII. had
used him to beat down Henry's terms, Perkin found a home with
Margaret, aunt to all the pretenders. As usual, there were traitors in
high places in England. Sir William Stanley, whose brother had married
Henry's mother, and to whom Henry himself owed his victory at (p. 011)
Bosworth, was implicated. His sudden arrest disconcerted the plot,
and when Perkin's fleet appeared off the coast of Kent, the rustics
made short work of the few who were rash enough to land. Perkin sailed
away to the Yorkist refuge in Ireland, but Kildare was no longer
deputy. Waterford, to which he laid siege, was relieved, and the
pretender sought in Scotland a third basis of operations. An abortive
raid on the Borders and a high-born Scottish wife[24] were all that he
obtained of James IV., and in 1497, after a second attempt in Ireland,
he landed in Cornwall. The Cornishmen had just risen against Henry's
extortions, marched on London and been defeated at Blackheath; but
Henry's lenience encouraged a fresh revolt, and three thousand men
flocked to Perkin's standard. They failed to take Exeter; Perkin was
seized at Beaulieu and sent up to London to be paraded through the
streets amid the jeers and taunts of the people. Two years later a
foolish attempt at escape and a fresh personation of the Earl of
Warwick by one Ralf Wulford[25] led to the execution of all three,
Perkin, Wulford, and the real Earl of Warwick, who had been a prisoner
and probably the innocent centre of so many plots since the accession
of Henry VII. Warwick's death may have been due to the instigation of
Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, who were negotiating for the marriage
of Catherine of Aragon with Prince Arthur. They were naturally anxious
for the security of the throne their daughter was to share with (p. 012)
Henry's son; and now their ambassador wrote triumphantly that there
remained in England not a doubtful drop of royal blood.[26] There were
no more pretenders, and for the rest of Henry's reign England enjoyed
such peace as it had not known for nearly a century. The end which
Henry had sought by fair means and foul was attained, and there was no
practical alternative to his children in the succession to the English
throne.
[Footnote 24: Perkin was the first of Lady
Catherine Gordon's four husbands; her second was
James Strangways, gentleman-usher to Henry VIII.,
her third Sir Matthew Cradock (d. 1531), and her
fourth Christopher Ashton, also gentleman-usher;
she died in 1537 and was buried in Fyfield Church
(_L. and P._, ii., 3512).]
[Footnote 25: See the present writer in _Dict. Nat.
Biog._, lxiii., 172.]
[Footnote 26: _Sp. Cal._, i., No. 249; see below,
p. 179.]
But all his statecraft, his patience and labour would have been writ
in water without children to succeed him and carry on the work which
he had begun; and at times it seemed probable that this necessary
condition would remain unfulfilled. For the Tudors were singularly
luckless in the matter of children. They were scarcely a sterile race,
but their offspring had an unfortunate habit of dying in childhood. It
was the desire for a male heir that involved Henry VIII. in his breach
with Rome, and led Mary into a marriage which raised a revolt; the
last of the Tudors perceived that heirs might be purchased at too
great a cost, and solved the difficulty by admitting its insolubility.
Henry VIII. had six wives, but only three children who survived
infancy; of these, Edward VI. withered away at the age of fifteen, and
Mary died childless at forty-two. By his two[27] mistresses he seems
to have had only one son, who died at the age of eleven, and as far as
we know, he had not a single grandchild, legitimate or other. His
sisters were hardly more fortunate. Margaret's eldest son by James IV.
died a year after his birth; her eldest daughter died at birth; her
second son lived only nine months; her second daughter died at (p. 013)
birth; her third son lived to be James V., but her fourth found an
early grave. Mary, the other sister of Henry VIII., lost her only son
in his teens. The appalling death-rate among Tudor infants cannot be
attributed solely to medical ignorance, for Yorkist babies clung to
life with a tenacity which was quite as inconvenient as the readiness
with which Tudor infants relinquished it; and Richard III., Henry VII.
and Henry VIII. all found it necessary to accelerate, by artificial
means, the exit from the world of the superfluous children of other
pretenders. This drastic process smoothed their path, but could not
completely solve the problem; and the characteristic Tudor infirmity
was already apparent in the reign of Henry VII. He had three sons; two
predeceased him, one at the age of fifteen years, the other at fifteen
months. Of his four daughters, two died in infancy, and the youngest
cost the mother her life.[28] The fruit of that union between the Red
Rose and the White, upon which so much store had been set,[29] seemed
doomed to fail.
[Footnote 27: There is no definite evidence that he
had more.]
[Footnote 28: _Ven. Cal._, i., 833.]
[Footnote 29: _Cf._ Skelton, _Works_, ed. Dyce.
vol. i., pp. ix-xi.]
The hopes built upon it had largely contributed to the success of
Henry's raid upon the English throne, and before he started on his
quest he had solemnly promised to marry Elizabeth, eldest daughter of
Edward IV., and heiress of the House of York. But he was resolute to
avoid all appearance of ruling in her right; his title had been
recognised by Parliament, and he had been five months _de facto_ king
before he wedded his Yorkist wife (18th January, 1486). Eight months
and two days later, the Queen gave birth, in the priory of St. Swithin's,
at Winchester, to her first-born son. Four days later, on Sunday, (p. 014)
24th September, the child was christened in the minster of the old
West Saxon capital, and given in baptism the name of Arthur, the old
British king. It was neither Yorkist nor Lancastrian, it evoked no
bitter memories of civil strife, and it recalled the fact that the
Tudors claimed a pedigree and boasted a title to British sovereignty,
beside the antiquity of which Yorkist pretentions were a mushroom
growth. Duke of Cornwall from his birth, Prince Arthur was, when three
years old, created Prince of Wales. Already negotiations had been
begun for his marriage with Catherine, the daughter of Ferdinand of
Aragon and Isabella of Castile. Both were cautious sovereigns, and
many a rebellion had to be put down and many a pretender put away,
before they would consent to entrust their daughter to the care of an
English king. It was not till 2nd October, 1501, that Catherine landed
at Plymouth. At her formal reception into England, and at her
marriage, six weeks later, in St. Paul's, she was led by the hand of
her little brother-in-law, Prince Henry, then ten years old.[30]
Against the advice of his council, Henry VII. sent the youthful bride
and bridegroom to live as man and wife at Ludlow Castle, and there,
five and a half months later, their married life came to a sudden end.
Prince Arthur died on 2nd April, 1502, and was buried in princely
state in Worcester Cathedral.
[Footnote 30: _L. and P._, _Henry VII._, i.,
413-415; _L. and P._, _Henry VIII._, iv., 5791.]
CHAPTER II. (p. 015)
PRINCE HENRY AND HIS ENVIRONMENT.
The Prince, who now succeeded to the position of heir-apparent, was
nearly five years younger than his brother. The third child and second
son of his parents, he was born on 28th June, 1491, at Greenwich, a
palace henceforth intimately associated with the history of Tudor
sovereigns. The manor of Greenwich had belonged to the alien priory of
Lewisham, and, on the dissolution of those houses, had passed into the
hands of Henry IV. Then it was granted to Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester,
who began to enclose the palace grounds; on his death it reverted to
the Crown; and Edward IV., many of whose tastes and characteristics
were inherited by his grandson, Henry VIII., took great delight in
beautifying and extending the palace. He gave it to his Queen,
Elizabeth, and in her possession it remained until her sympathy with
Yorkist plots was punished by the forfeiture of her lands. Henry VII.
then bestowed it on his wife, the dowager's daughter, and thus it
became the birthplace of her younger children. Here was the scene of
many a joust and tournament, of many a masque and revel; here the
young Henry, as soon as he came to the throne, was wedded to Catherine
of Aragon; here Henry's sister was married to the Duke of Suffolk; and
here were born all future Tudor sovereigns, Edward VI., Mary, (p. 016)
and Elizabeth. At Greenwich, then, through the forfeit of his
grandmother, Henry was born; he was baptised in the Church of the
Observant Friars, an Order, the object first of his special favour,[31]
and then of an equally marked dislike; the ceremony was performed by
Richard Fox,[32] then Bishop of Exeter, and afterwards one of the
child's chief advisers. His nurse was named Ann Luke, and years
afterwards, when Henry was King, he allowed her the annual pension of
twenty pounds, equivalent to about three hundred in modern currency.
The details of his early life are few and far between. Lord Herbert,
who wrote his _Life and Reign_ a century later, records that the young
Prince was destined by his father for the see of Canterbury,[33] and
provided with an education more suited to a clerical than to a lay
career. The motive ascribed to Henry VII. is typical of his character;
it was more economical to provide for younger sons out of ecclesiastical,
than royal, revenues. But the story is probably a mere inference from
the excellence of the boy's education, and from his father's thrift.
If the idea of an ecclesiastical career for young Henry was ever
entertained, it was soon abandoned for secular preferment. On 5th
April, 1492, before the child was ten months old, he was appointed to
the ancient and important posts of Warden of the Cinque Ports and
Constable of Dover Castle.[34] A little later he received the still
more honourable office of Earl Marshal; the duties were performed by
deputy, but a goodly portion of the fees was doubtless (p. 017)
appropriated for the expenses of the boy's establishment, or found its
way into the royal coffers. Further promotion awaited him at the
mature age of three. On 12th September, 1494, he became Lord-Lieutenant
of Ireland;[35] six weeks later he was created Duke of York, and
dubbed, with the usual quaint and formal ceremonies,[36] a Knight of
the Bath. In December, he was made Warden of the Scottish Marches, and
he was invested with the Garter in the following May.[37]
[Footnote 31: _L. and P._, i., 4871.]
[Footnote 32: Fox's own statement, _L. and P._,
iv., 5791.]
[Footnote 33: Herbert gives Paolo Sarpi as his
authority.]
[Footnote 34: G.E.C [okayne], _Complete Peerage_,
_s.v._ Cornwall.]
[Footnote 35: _L. and P._, _Henry VII._, Rolls
Ser., ii., 374.]
[Footnote 36: _Ib._, i., 388-404; _Paston Letters_,
iii., 384-85.]
[Footnote 37: _L. and P._, _Henry VII._, ii., 57.]
The accumulation of these great offices of State, any one of which
might have taxed the powers of a tried administrator, in the feeble
hands of a child appears at first sight a trifle irrational; but there
was always method in Henry's madness. In bestowing these administrative
posts upon his children he was really concentrating them in his own
person and bringing them directly under his own supervision. It was
the policy whereby the early Roman Emperors imposed upon Republican
Rome the substance, without the form, of despotism. It limited the
powers of mischief which Henry's nobles might otherwise have enjoyed,
and provided incomes for his children without increasing taxation or
diminishing the privy purse. The work of administration could be done
at least as effectively, much more economically, and with far less
danger to internal peace by deputies of lower rank than the dukes and
earls and barons who had been wont to abuse these high positions for
the furtherance of private ends, and often for the levying of (p. 018)
private war. Nowhere were the advantages of Henry's policy more
conspicuous than in his arrangements for the government of Ireland.
Ever since Richard, Duke of York, and George, Duke of Clarence, had
ruled as Irish viceroys, Ireland had been a Yorkist stronghold. There
Simnel had been crowned king, and there peers and peasants had fought
for Perkin Warbeck. Something must be done to heal the running sore.
Possibly Henry thought that some of Ireland's loyalty might be
diverted from Yorkist channels by the selection of a Tudor prince as
its viceroy; but he put his trust in more solid measures. As deputy to
his infant son he nominated one who, though but a knight, was perhaps
the ablest man among his privy council. It was in this capacity that
Sir Edward Poynings[38] crossed to Ireland about the close of 1494,
and called the Parliament of Drogheda. Judged by the durability of its
legislation, it was one of the most memorable of parliaments; and for
nearly three hundred years Poynings' laws remained the foundation upon
which rested the constitutional relations between the sister kingdoms.
Even more lasting was the precedent set by Prince Henry's creation as
Duke of York; from that day to this, from Henry VIII. to the present
Prince of Wales, the second son of the sovereign or of the heir-apparent
has almost invariably been invested with that dukedom.[39] The original
selection of the title was due to substantial reasons. Henry's name
was distinctively Lancastrian, his title was no less distinctively
Yorkist; it was adopted as a concession to Yorkist prejudice. (p. 019)
It was a practical reminder of the fact which the Tudor laureate,
Skelton, celebrated in song: "The rose both red and white, in one rose
now doth grow". It was also a tacit assertion of the death of the last
Duke of York in the Tower and of the imposture of Perkin Warbeck, now
pretending to the title.
[Footnote 38: See the present writer in _D.N.B._,
xlvi., 271.]
[Footnote 39: An exception was made in the case of
the late Duke of Edinburgh. It was designed if
Henry VIII. had a second son, to make him Duke of
York (_L. and P._, vii., 1364).]
But thoughts of the coercion of Ireland and conciliation of Yorkists
were as yet far from the mind of the child, round whose person these
measures were made to centre. Precocious he must have been, if the
phenomenal development of brow and the curiously mature expression
attributed to him in his portrait[40] are any indication of his
intellectual powers at the age at which he is represented. Without the
childish lips and nose, the face might well be that of a man of fifty;
and with the addition of a beard, the portrait would be an unmistakable
likeness of Henry himself in his later years. When the Prince was no
more than a child, says Erasmus, he was set to study.[41] He had, we
are told, a vivid and active mind, above measure able to execute
whatever tasks he undertook; and he never attempted anything in which
he did not succeed.[42] The Tudors had no modern dread of educational
over-pressure when applied to their children, and the young Henry was
probably as forward a pupil as his son, Edward VI., his daughter,
Elizabeth, or his grand-niece, Lady Jane Grey. But, fortunately for
Henry, a physical exuberance corrected his mental precocity; and, (p. 020)
as he grew older, any excessive devotion to the Muses was checked by
an unwearied pursuit of bodily culture. He was the first of English
sovereigns to be educated under the new influence of the Renaissance.
Scholars, divines and poets thronged the Court of Henry VII. Margaret
Beaufort, who ruled in Henry's household, was a signal benefactor to
the cause of English learning. Lady Margaret professors commemorate
her name in both our ancient universities, and in their bidding prayers
she is to this day remembered. Two colleges at Cambridge revere her as
their foundress; Caxton, the greatest of English printers, owed much
to her munificence, and she herself translated into English books from
both Latin and French. Henry VII., though less accomplished that the
later Tudors, evinced an intelligent interest in art and letters, and
provided for his children efficient instructors; while his Queen,
Elizabeth of York, is described by Erasmus as possessing the soundest
judgment and as being remarkable for her prudence as well as for her
piety. Bernard Andre,[43] historian and poet, who had been tutor to
Prince Arthur, probably took no small part in the education of his
younger brother; to him he dedicated, after Arthur's death, two of the
annual summaries of events which he was in the habit of compiling.
Giles D'Ewes,[44] apparently a Frenchman and the author of a notable
French grammar, taught that language to Prince Henry, as many (p. 021)
years later he did to his daughter, Queen Mary; probably either D'Ewes
or Andre trained his handwriting, which is a curious compromise
between the clear and bold Italian style, soon to be adopted by
well-instructed Englishmen, and the old English hieroglyphics in which
more humbly educated individuals, including Shakespeare, concealed the
meaning of their words. But the most famous of Henry's teachers was
the poet Skelton, the greatest name in English verse from Lydgate down
to Surrey. Skelton was poet laureate to Henry VII. Court, and refers
in his poems to his wearing of the white and green of Tudor
liveries.[45] He celebrated in verse Arthur's creation as Prince of
Wales and Henry's as Duke of York;[46] and before the younger prince
was nine years old, this "incomparable light and ornament of British
Letters," as Erasmus styles him, was directing Henry's studies.
Skelton himself writes.--
The honor of England I learned to spell,
I gave him drink of the sugred well
Of Helicon's waters crystalline,
Acquainting him with the Muses nine.
[Footnote 40: This is an anonymous portrait of
Henry at the age of eighteen months or two years
belonging to Sir Edmund and Lady Verney.]
[Footnote 41: Erasmus, _Epist._, p. 1182; _L. and
P._, iv., 5412.]
[Footnote 42: This testimonial was written in 1528
before Henry VIII. had given the most striking
demonstrations of its truth.]
[Footnote 43: See _D.N.B._, i., 398. Erasmus,
however, described Andre as being "of mean
abilities" (_L. and P._, iv., 626).]
[Footnote 44: _D.N.B._, xiv., 449; _cf._ _L. and
P._, i., 513. On Henry VIII's accession D'Ewes was
appointed keeper of the King's library at Richmond
with a salary of L10 per year.]
[Footnote 45: Skelton, _Works_, ed. Dyce, vol. i.,
p. xiii.; the white and green still survive as the
colours of Jesus College, Oxford, founded by Queen
Elizabeth.]
[Footnote 46: _Ib._, p. xxi.; a copy of the latter,
which Dyce could not find, is in _Brit. Mus. Addit.
MS. 26787_.]
The coarseness of Skelton's satires and his open disregard of the
clerical vows of chastity may justify some doubt of the value of the
poet's influence on Henry's character; but he so far observed the
conventional duties of his post as to dedicate to his royal pupil, in
1501, a moral treatise in Latin of no particular worth.[47] More
deserving of Henry's study were two books inscribed to him a (p. 022)
little later by young Boerio, son of the King's Genoese physician and
a pupil of Erasmus, who, according to his own account, suffered untold
afflictions from the father's temper. One was a translation of
Isocrates' _De Regno_, the other of Lucian's tract against believing
calumnies.[48] The latter was, to judge from the tale of Henry's
victims, a precept which he scarcely laid to heart in youth. In other
respects he was apt enough to learn. He showed "remarkable docility
for mathematics," became proficient in Latin, spoke French with ease,
understood Italian, and, later on, possibly from Catherine of Aragon,
acquired a knowledge of Spanish. In 1499 Erasmus himself, the greatest
of the humanists, visited his friend, Lord Mountjoy, near Greenwich,
and made young Henry's acquaintance. "I was staying," he writes,[49]
"at Lord Mountjoy's country house when Thomas More came to see me, and
took me out with him for a walk as far as the next village, where all
the King's children, except Prince Arthur, who was then the eldest
son, were being educated. When we came into the hall, the attendants
not only of the palace, but also of Mountjoy's household, were all
assembled. In the midst stood Prince Henry, now nine years old, and
having already something of royalty in his demeanour in which there
was a certain dignity combined with singular courtesy. On his right
was Margaret, about eleven years of age, afterwards married to James,
King of Scots; and on his left played Mary, a child of four. Edmund
was an infant in arms. More, with his companion Arnold, after (p. 023)
paying his respects to the boy Henry, the same that is now King of
England, presented him with some writing. For my part, not having
expected anything of the sort, I had nothing to offer, but promised
that, on another occasion, I would in some way declare my duty towards
him. Meantime, I was angry with More for not having warned me, especially
as the boy sent me a little note, while we were at dinner, to challenge
something from my pen. I went home, and in the Muses' spite, from whom
I had been so long divorced, finished the poem within three days." The
poem,[50] in which Britain speaks her own praise and that of her
princes, Henry VII. and his children, was dedicated to the Duke of
York and accompanied by a letter in which Erasmus commended Henry's
devotion to learning. Seven years later Erasmus again wrote to Henry,
now Prince of Wales, condoling with him upon the death of his
brother-in-law, Philip of Burgundy, King of Castile. Henry replied in
cordial manner, inviting the great scholar to continue the correspondence.
The style of his letter so impressed Erasmus that he suspected, as he
says,[51] "some help from others in the ideas and expressions. In a
conversation I afterwards had with William, Lord Mountjoy, he tried by
various arguments to dispel that suspicion, and when he found he could
not do so he gave up the point and let it pass until he was
sufficiently instructed in the case. On another occasion, when we were
talking alone together, he brought out a number of the Prince's
letters, some to other people and some to himself, and among them one
which answered to mine: in these letters were manifest signs of (p. 024)
comment, addition, suppression, correction and alteration--You might
recognise the first drafting of a letter, and you might make out the
second and third, and sometimes even the fourth correction; but
whatever was revised or added was in the same handwriting. I had then
no further grounds for hesitation, and, overcome by the facts, I laid
aside all suspicion." Neither, he adds, would his correspondent doubt
Henry VIII's authorship of the book against Luther if he knew that
king's "happy genius". That famous book is sufficient proof that
theological studies held no small place in Henry's education. They
were cast in the traditional mould, for the Lancastrians were very
orthodox, and the early Tudors followed in their steps. Margaret
Beaufort left her husband to devote herself to good works and a
semi-monastic life; Henry VII. converted a heretic at the stake and
left him to burn;[52] and the theological conservatism, which Henry
VIII. imbibed in youth, clung to him to the end of his days.
[Footnote 47: _Brit. Mus. Add. MS. 26787._]
[Footnote 48: _Brit. Mus. Add. MS. 19553._]
[Footnote 49: F.M. Nichols, _Epistles of Erasmus_,
i., 201.]
[Footnote 50: Printed in 1500 at the end of
Erasmus's _Adagia_.]
[Footnote 51: F.M. Nichols, pp. 423-24; _L. and
P._, iv., 5412.]
[Footnote 52: _Cotton MS._, Vitellius, A., xvi., f.
172.]
Nor were the arts neglected, and in his early years Henry acquired a
passionate and lifelong devotion to music. Even as Duke of York he had
a band of minstrels apart from those of the King and Prince Arthur;[53]
and when he was king his minstrels formed an indispensable part of his
retinue, whether he went on progress through his kingdom, or crossed
the seas on errands of peace or war.[54] He became an expert performer
on the lute, the organ and the harpsichord, and all the cares of State
could not divert him from practising on those instruments both day (p. 025)
and night. He sent all over England in search of singing men and boys
for the chapel royal, and sometimes appropriated choristers from
Wolsey's chapel, which he thought better provided than his own.[55]
From Venice he enticed to England the organist of St. Mark's, Dionysius
Memo, and on occasion Henry and his Court listened four hours at a
stretch to Memo's organ recitals.[56] Not only did he take delight in
the practice of music by himself and others; he also studied its
theory and wrote with the skill of an expert. Vocal and instrumental
pieces of his own composition, preserved among the manuscripts at the
British Museum,[57] rank among the best productions of the time; and
one of his anthems, "O Lorde, the Maker of all thyng," is of the
highest order of merit, and still remains a favourite in English
cathedrals.
[Footnote 53: _Hist. MSS. Comm._, 5th Rep., App.,
p. 549.]
[Footnote 54: _L. and P._, i., 4314.]
[Footnote 55: _L. and P._, ii., 410, 4024.]
[Footnote 56: _Ven. Cal._, ii., 780; _L. and P._,
ii., 2401, 3455.]
[Footnote 57: _E.g._, _Add. MS. 31922_.]
In April, 1502, at the age of ten, Henry became the heir-apparent to
the English throne. He succeeded at once to the dukedom of Cornwall,
but again a precedent was set which was followed but yesterday; and
ten months were allowed to elapse before he was, on 18th February,
1503, created Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester, the dukedom of York
becoming void until a king or an heir apparent should again have a
second son.[58] The first sign of his increased importance was his
implication in the maze of matrimonial intrigues which formed so large
a part of sixteenth-century diplomacy. The last thing kings (p. 026)
considered was the domestic felicity of their children; their marriages
were pieces in the diplomatic game and sometimes the means by which
States were built up. While Duke of York, Henry had been proposed as a
husband for Eleanor,[59] daughter of the Archduke Philip; and his
sister Mary as the bride of Philip's son Charles, who, as the heir of
the houses of Castile and of Aragon, of Burgundy and of Austria, was
from the cradle destined to wield the imperial sceptre of Caesar. No
further steps were taken at the time, and Prince Arthur's death
brought other projects to the front.
[Footnote 58: The next prince to hold the title was
Charles, afterwards Charles I., who was created
Duke of York on 6th Jan., 1605.]
[Footnote 59: Afterwards Queen of Portugal and then
of France. _L. and P._, _Henry VII._, i., 285,
425.]
Immediately on receiving the news, and two days before they dated
their letter of condolence to Henry VII., Ferdinand and Isabella
commissioned the Duke of Estrada to negotiate a marriage between the
widowed Catherine and her youthful brother-in-law.[60] No doubt was
entertained but that the Pope would grant the necessary dispensation,
for the spiritual head of Christendom was apt to look tenderly on the
petitions of the powerful princes of this world. A more serious
difficulty was the question of the widow's dower. Part only had been
paid, and Ferdinand not merely refused to hand over the rest, but
demanded the return of his previous instalments. Henry, on the other
hand, considered himself entitled to the whole, refused to refund a
penny, and gave a cold reception to the proposed marriage between
Catherine and his sole surviving son. He was, however, by no means
blind to the advantages of the Spanish matrimonial and political
alliance, and still less to the attractions of Catherine's dower; (p. 027)
he declined to send back the Princess, when Isabella, shocked at Henry
VII.'s proposal to marry his daughter-in-law himself, demanded her
return; and eventually, when Ferdinand reduced his terms, he suffered
the marriage treaty to be signed. On 25th June, 1503, Prince Henry and
Catherine were solemnly betrothed in the Bishop of Salisbury's house,
in Fleet Street.
[Footnote 60: _Sp. Cal._, i., 267.]
The papal dispensation arrived in time to solace Isabella on her
death-bed in November, 1504; but that event once more involved in
doubt the prospects of the marriage. The crown of Castile passed from
Isabella to her daughter Juana; the government of the kingdom was
claimed by Ferdinand and by Juana's husband, Philip of Burgundy. On
their way from the Netherlands to claim their inheritance, Philip and
Juana were driven on English shores. Henry VII. treated them with all
possible courtesy, and made Philip a Knight of the Garter, while
Philip repaid the compliment by investing Prince Henry with the Order
of the Golden Fleece.[61] But advantage was taken of Philip's plight
to extort from him the surrender of the Earl of Suffolk, styled the
White Rose, and a commercial treaty with the Netherlands, which the
Flemings named the Malus Intercursus. Three months after his arrival
in Castile, Philip died, and Henry began to fish in the troubled
waters for a share in his dominions. Two marriage schemes occurred to
him; he might win the hand of Philip's sister Margaret, now Regent of
the Netherlands, and with her hand the control of those provinces; or
he might marry Juana and claim in her right to administer Castile. On
the acquisition of Castile he set his mind. If he could not gain (p. 028)
it by marriage with Juana, he thought he could do so by marrying
her son and heir, the infant Charles, to his daughter Mary. Whichever
means he took to further his design, it would naturally irritate
Ferdinand and make him less anxious for the completion of the marriage
between Catherine and Prince Henry. Henry VII. was equally averse from
the consummation of the match. Now that he was scheming with Charles's
other grandfather, the Emperor Maximilian, to wrest the government of
Castile from Ferdinand's grasp, the alliance of the King of Aragon had
lost its attraction, and it was possible that the Prince of Wales
might find elsewhere a more desirable bride. Henry's marriage with
Catherine was to have been accomplished when he completed the age of
fourteen; but on the eve of his fifteenth birthday he made a solemn
protestation that the contract was null and void, and that he would
not carry out his engagements.[62] This protest left him free to
consider other proposals, and enhanced his value as a negotiable
asset. More than once negotiations were started for marrying him to
Marguerite de Valois, sister of the Duke of Angouleme, afterwards
famous as Francis I.;[63] and in the last months of his father's
reign, the Prince of Wales was giving audience to ambassadors from
Maximilian, who came to suggest matrimonial alliances between the
prince and a daughter of Duke Albert of Bavaria, and between Henry
VII. and the Lady Margaret of Savoy, Regent of the Netherlands.[64]
Meanwhile, Ferdinand, threatened on all sides, first came to terms (p. 029)
with France; he married a French princess, Germaine de Foix, abandoned
his claim to Navarre, and bought the security of Naples by giving
Louis XII. a free hand in the north of Italy. He then diverted
Maximilian from his designs on Castile by humouring his hostility to
Venice. By that bait he succeeded in drawing off his enemies, and the
league of Cambrai united them all, Ferdinand and Louis, Emperor and
Pope, in an iniquitous attack on the Italian Republic. Henry VII.,
fortunately for his reputation, was left out of the compact. He was
still cherishing his design on Castile, and in December, 1508, the
treaty of marriage between Mary and Charles was formally signed. It
was the last of his worldly triumphs; the days of his life were
numbered, and in the early months of 1509 he was engaged in making a
peace with his conscience.
[Footnote 61: _L. and P._, _Henry VII._, ii., 158;
_Ven. Cal._, i., 867.]
[Footnote 62: _Sp. Cal._, i., 458; _L. and P._,
iv., 5791.]
[Footnote 63: _L. and P._, _Henry VII._, i.,
241-47; ii. 342-43.]
[Footnote 64: _Sp. Cal._, Suppl., p. 23.]
* * * * *
The twenty-four years during which Henry VII. had guided the destinies
of England were a momentous epoch in the development of Western
civilisation. It was the dawn of modern history, of the history of
Europe in the form in which we know it to-day. The old order was in a
state of liquidation. The mediaeval ideal, described by Dante, of a
universal monarchy with two aspects, spiritual and temporal, and two
heads, emperor and pope, was passing away. Its place was taken by the
modern but narrower ideal of separate polities, each pursuing its own
course, independent of, and often in conflict with, other societies.
Unity gave way to diversity of tongues, of churches, of states; and
the cosmopolitan became nationalist, patriot, separatist. Imperial
monarchy shrank to a shadow; and kings divided the emperor's power (p. 030)
at the same time that they consolidated their own. They extended their
authority on both sides, at the expense of their superior, the
emperor, and at the expense of their subordinate feudal lords. The
struggle between the disruptive forces of feudalism and the central
power of monarchy ended at last in monarchical triumph; and internal
unity prepared the way for external expansion. France under Louis XI.
was first in the field. She had surmounted her civil troubles half a
century earlier than England. She then expelled her foreign foes,
crushed the remnants of feudal independence, and began to expand at
the cost of weaker States. Parts of Burgundy, Provence, and Brittany
became merged in France; the exuberant strength of the new-formed
nation burst the barriers of the Alps and overflowed into the plains
of Italy. The time of universal monarchy was past, but the dread of it
remained; and from Charles VIII.'s invasion of Italy in 1494 to
Francis I.'s defeat at Pavia in 1525, French dreams of world-wide
sovereignty were the nightmare of other kings. Those dreams might, as
Europe feared, have been realised, had not other States followed
France in the path of internal consolidation. Ferdinand of Aragon
married Isabella of Castile, drove out the Moors, and founded the
modern Spanish kingdom. Maximilian married Mary, the daughter of
Charles the Bold, and joined the Netherlands to Austria. United France
found herself face to face with other united States, and the political
system of modern Europe was roughly sketched out. The boundaries of
the various kingdoms were fluctuating. There still remained minor
principalities and powers, chiefly in Italy and Germany, which offered
an easy prey to their ambitious neighbours; for both nations had (p. 031)
sacrificed internal unity to the shadow of universal dominion, Germany
in temporal, and Italy in spiritual, things. Mutual jealousy of each
other's growth at the expense of these States gave rise to the theory
of the balance of power; mutual adjustment of each other's disputes
produced international law; and the necessity of watching each other's
designs begat modern diplomacy.[65]
[Footnote 65: _Cf._ A.O. Meyer, _Die Englische
Diplomatie_, Breslau, 1901.]
Parallel with these developments in the relations between one State
and another marched a no less momentous revolution in the domestic
position of their sovereigns. National expansion abroad was marked by
a corresponding growth in royal authority at home. The process was not
new in England; every step in the path of the tribal chief of Saxon
pirates to the throne of a united England denoted an advance in the
nature of kingly power. Each extension of his sway intensified his
authority, and his power grew in degree as it increased in area. So
with fifteenth-century sovereigns. Local liberties and feudal rights
which had checked a Duke of Brittany or a King of Aragon were
powerless to restrain the King of France or of Spain. The sphere of
royal authority encroached upon all others; all functions and all
powers tended to concentrate in royal hands. The king was the emblem
of national unity, the centre of national aspirations, and the object
of national reverence. The Renaissance gave fresh impetus to the
movement. Men turned not only to the theology, literature, and art of
the early Christian era; they began to study anew its political
organisation and its system of law and jurisprudence. The code of
Justinian was as much a revelation as the original Greek of the (p. 032)
New Testament. Roman imperial law seemed as superior to the barbarities
of common law as classical was to mediaeval Latin; and Roman law
supplanted indigenous systems in France and in Germany, in Spain and
in Scotland. Both the Roman imperial law and the Roman imperial
constitution were useful models for kings of the New Monarchy; the
Roman Empire was a despotism; _quod principi placuit legis habet
vigorem_ ran the fundamental principle of Roman Empire.[66] Nor was
this all; Roman emperors were habitually deified, and men in the
sixteenth century seemed to pay to their kings while alive the Divine
honours which Romans paid to their emperors when dead. "Le nouveau
Messie," says Michelet, "est le roi."[67]
[Footnote 66: The conclusion of the maxim _utpote
cum lege regia quae de imperio ejus lata est,
populus ei et in eum omne suum imperium et
potestatem conferat_ (Ulpian, _Digest_, I., iv.,
1), was conveniently forgotten by apologists for
absolutism, though the Tudors respected it in
practice.]
[Footnote 67: _Hist. de France_, ed. 1879, ix.,
301.]
Nowhere was the king more emphatically the saviour of society than in
England. The sixty years of Lancastrian rule were in the seventeenth
century represented as the golden age of parliamentary government, a
sort of time before the fall to which popular orators appealed when
they wished to paint in vivid colours the evils of Stuart tyranny. But
to keen observers of the time the pre-eminent characteristic of
Lancastrian rule appeared to be its "lack of governance" or, in modern
phrase, administrative anarchy.[68] There was no subordination in the
State. The weakness of the Lancastrian title left the king at the
mercy of Parliament, and the limitations of Parliament were never (p. 033)
more apparent than when its powers stood highest. Even in the realm of
legislation, the statute book has seldom been so barren. Its principal
acts were to narrow the county electorate to an oligarchy, to restrict
the choice of constituencies to resident knights and burgesses, and to
impair its own influence as a focus of public opinion. It was not
content with legislative authority; it interfered with an executive
which it could hamper but could not control. It was possessed by the
inveterate fallacy that freedom and strong government are things
incompatible; that the executive is the natural enemy of the Legislature;
that if one is strong, the other must be weak; and of the two
alternatives it vastly preferred a weak executive. So, to limit the
king's power, it sought to make him "live of his own," when "his own"
was absolutely inadequate to meet the barest necessities of government.
Parliament was in fact irresponsible; the connecting link between it
and the executive had yet to be found. Hence the Lancastrian "lack of
governance"; it ended in a generation of civil war, and the memory of
that anarchy explains much in Tudor history.
[Footnote 68: Fortescue, _Governance of England_,
ed. Plummer, 1885.]
The problems of Henry VIII.'s reign can indeed only be solved by
realising the misrule of the preceding century, the failure of
parliamentary government, and the strength of the popular demand for a
firm and masterful hand. It is a modern myth that Englishmen have
always been consumed with enthusiasm for parliamentary government and
with a thirst for a parliamentary vote. The interpretation of history,
like that of the Scriptures, varies from age to age; and present
political theories colour our views of the past. The political
development of the nineteenth century created a parliamentary legend;
and civil and religious liberty became the inseparable stage (p. 034)
properties of the Englishman. Whenever he appeared on the boards, he
was made to declaim about the rights of the subject and the privileges
of Parliament. It was assumed that the desire for a voice in the
management of his own affairs had at all times and all seasons been
the mainspring of his actions; and so the story of Henry's rule was
made into a political mystery. In reality, love of freedom has not
always been, nor will it always remain, the predominant note in the
English mind. At times the English people have pursued it through
battle and murder with grim determination, but other times have seen
other ideals. On occasion the demand has been for strong government
irrespective of its methods, and good government has been preferred to
self-government. Wars of expansion and wars of defence have often
cooled the love of liberty and impaired the faith in parliaments; and
generally English ideals have been strictly subordinated to a passion
for material prosperity.
Never was this more apparent than under the Tudors. The parliamentary
experiment of the Lancastrians was premature and had failed.
Parliamentary institutions were discredited and people were
indifferent to parliamentary rights and privileges: "A plague on both
your Houses," was the popular feeling, "give us peace, above all peace
at home to pursue new avenues of wealth, new phases of commercial
development, peace to study new problems of literature, religion, and
art"; and both Houses passed out of the range of popular imagination,
and almost out of the sphere of independent political action.
Parliament played during the sixteenth century a modester part than it
had played since its creation. Towards the close of the period (p. 035)
Shakespeare wrote his play of _King John_, and in that play there is
not the faintest allusion to Magna Carta.[69] Such an omission would
be inconceivable now or at any time since the death of Elizabeth; for
the Great Charter is enshrined in popular imagination as the palladium
of the British constitution. It was the fetish to which Parliament
appealed against the Stuarts. But no such appeal would have touched a
Tudor audience. It needed and desired no weapon against a sovereign
who embodied national desires, and ruled in accord with the national
will. References to the charter are as rare in parliamentary debates
as they are in the pages of Shakespeare. The best hated instruments of
Stuart tyranny were popular institutions under the Tudors; and the
Star Chamber itself found its main difficulty in the number of suitors
which flocked to a court where the king was judge, the law's delays
minimised, counsel's fees moderate, and justice rarely denied merely
because it might happen to be illegal. England in the sixteenth
century put its trust in its princes far more than it did in its
parliaments; it invested them with attributes almost Divine. By Tudor
majesty the poet was inspired with thoughts of the divinity that doth
hedge a king. "Love for the King," wrote a Venetian of Henry VIII. in
the early years of his reign, "is universal with all who see him, for
his Highness does not seem a person of this world, but one (p. 036)
descended from heaven."[70] _Le nouveau Messie est le Roi._
[Footnote 69: Magna Carta may almost be said to
have been "discovered" by the parliamentary
opponents of the Stuarts; and in discovering it,
they misinterpreted several of its clauses such as
the _judicium parium_. Allusion was, however, made
to Magna Carta in the proceedings against Wolsey
for _Praemunire_ (Fox, vi., 43).]
[Footnote 70: _Ven Cal._, ii., 336.]
Such were the tendencies which Henry VII. and Henry VIII. crystallised
into practical weapons of absolute government. Few kings have attained
a greater measure of permanent success than the first of the Tudors;
it was he who laid the unseen foundations upon which Henry VIII.
erected the imposing edifice of his personal authority. An orphan from
birth and an exile from childhood, he stood near enough to the throne
to invite Yorkist proscription, but too far off to unite in his favour
Lancastrian support. He owed his elevation to the mistakes of his
enemies and to the cool, calculating craft which enabled him to use
those mistakes without making mistakes of his own. He ran the great
risk of his life in his invasion of England, but henceforth he left
nothing to chance. He was never betrayed by passion or enthusiasm into
rash adventures, and he loved the substance, rather than the pomp and
circumstance of power. Untrammelled by scruples, unimpeded by principles,
he pursued with constant fidelity the task of his life, to secure the
throne for himself and his children, to pacify his country, and to
repair the waste of the civil wars. Folly easily glides into war, but
to establish a permanent peace required all Henry's patience, clear
sight and far sight, caution and tenacity. A full exchequer, not empty
glory, was his first requisite, and he found in his foreign wars a
mine of money. Treason at home was turned to like profit, and the
forfeited estates of rebellious lords accumulated in the hands of the
royal family and filled the national coffers. Attainder, the
characteristic instrument of Tudor policy, was employed to (p. 037)
complete the ruin of the old English peerage which the Wars of the
Roses began: and by 1509 there was only one duke and one marquis left
in the whole of England.[71] Attainder not only removed the particular
traitor, but disqualified his family for place and power; and the process
of eliminating feudalism from the region of government, started by
Edward I., was finished by Henry VII. Feudal society has been described
as a pyramid; the upper slopes were now washed away leaving an
impassable precipice, with the Tudor monarch alone in his glory at its
summit. Royalty had become a caste apart. Marriages between royal
children and English peers had hitherto been no uncommon thing; since
Henry VII.'s accession there have been but four, two of them in our
own day. Only one took place in the sixteenth century, and the Duke of
Suffolk was by some thought worthy of death for his presumption in
marrying the sister of Henry VIII. The peerage was weakened not only
by diminishing numbers, but by the systematic depression of those who
remained. Henry VII., like Ferdinand of Aragon,[72] preferred to
govern by means of lawyers and churchmen; they could be rewarded by
judgeships and bishoprics, and required no grants from the royal
estates. Their occupancy of office kept out territorial magnates who
abused it for private ends. Of the sixteen regents nominated by Henry
VIII. in his will, not one could boast a peerage of twelve years'
standing;[73] and all the great Tudor ministers, Wolsey and (p. 038)
Cromwell, Cecil and Walsingham, were men of comparatively humble birth.
With similar objects Henry VII. passed laws limiting the number of
retainers and forbidding the practice of maintenance. The courts of
Star Chamber and Requests were developed to keep in order his powerful
subjects and give poor men protection against them. Their civil law
procedure, influenced by Roman imperial maxims, served to enhance the
royal power and dignity, and helped to build up the Tudor autocracy.
[Footnote 71: The Duke was Buckingham, and the
Marquis was Dorset.]
[Footnote 72: See a description of Ferdinand's
court by John Stile, the English envoy, in _L. and
P._, i., 490.]
[Footnote 73: See the present writer's _England
under Protector Somerset_, p. 38.]
* * * * *
To the office of king thus developed and magnified, the young Prince
who stood upon the steps of the throne brought personal qualities of
the highest order, and advantages to which his father was completely a
stranger. His title was secure, his treasury overflowed, and he
enjoyed the undivided affections of his people. There was no alternative
claimant. The White Rose, indeed, had languished in the Tower since
his surrender by Philip, and the Duke of Buckingham had some years
before been mentioned as a possible successor to the throne;[74] but
their claims only served to remind men that nothing but Henry's life
stood between them and anarchy, for his young brother Edmund, Duke of
Somerset, had preceded Arthur to an early grave. Upon the single
thread of Henry's life hung the peace of the realm; no other could
have secured the throne without a second civil war. It was small
wonder if England regarded Henry with a somewhat extravagant loyalty.
Never had king ascended the throne more richly endowed with mental and
physical gifts. He was ten weeks short of his eighteenth year. (p. 039)
From both his parents he inherited grace of mind and of person. His
father in later years was broken in health and soured in spirit, but
in the early days of his reign he had charmed the citizens of York
with his winning smile. His mother is described by the Venetian
ambassador as a woman of great beauty and ability. She transmitted to
Henry many of the popular characteristics of her father, Edward IV.,
though little of the military genius of that consummate commander who
fought thirteen pitched battles and lost not one. Unless eye-witnesses
sadly belied themselves, Henry VIII. must have been the desire of all
eyes. "His Majesty," wrote one a year or two later,[75] "is the
handsomest potentate I ever set eyes on; above the usual height, with
an extremely fine calf to his leg; his complexion fair and bright,
with auburn hair combed straight and short in the French fashion, and
a round face so very beautiful that it would become a pretty woman,
his throat being rather long and thick.... He speaks French, English,
Latin, and a little Italian; plays well on the lute and harpsichord,
sings from the book at sight, draws the bow with greater strength than
any man in England, and jousts marvellously." Another foreign resident
in 1519[76] described him as "extremely handsome. Nature could not
have done more for him. He is much handsomer than any other sovereign
in Christendom; a great deal handsomer than the King of France; very
fair and his whole frame admirably proportioned. On hearing that
Francis I. wore a beard, he allowed his own to grow, and as it is (p. 040)
reddish, he has now got a beard that looks like gold. He is very
accomplished, a good musician, composes well, is a capital horseman, a
fine jouster, speaks French, Latin, and Spanish.... He is very fond of
hunting, and never takes his diversion without tiring eight or ten
horses which he causes to be stationed beforehand along the line of
country he means to take, and when one is tired he mounts another, and
before he gets home they are all exhausted. He is extremely fond of
tennis, at which game it is the prettiest thing in the world to see
him play, his fair skin glowing through a shirt of the finest
texture."
[Footnote 74: _L. and P., Henry VII._, i., 180,
233, 319.]
[Footnote 75:_L. and P._, ii., 395.]
[Footnote 76: Giustinian, _Despatches_, ii., 312;
_Ven. Cal._, ii., 1287; _L. and P._, iii., 402.]
The change from the cold suspicious Henry VII. to such a king as this
was inevitably greeted with a burst of rapturous enthusiasm. "I have
no fear," wrote Mountjoy to Erasmus,[77] "but when you heard that our
Prince, now Henry the Eighth, whom we may well call our Octavius, had
succeeded to his father's throne, all your melancholy left you at
once. For what may you not promise yourself from a Prince, with whose
extraordinary and almost Divine character you are well acquainted....
But when you know what a hero he now shows himself, how wisely he
behaves, what a lover he is of justice and goodness, what affection he
bears to the learned, I will venture to swear that you will need no
wings to make you fly to behold this new and auspicious star. If you
could see how all the world here is rejoicing in the possession of so
great a Prince, how his life is all their desire, you could not
contain your tears for joy. The heavens laugh, the earth exults, all
things are full of milk, of honey, of nectar! Avarice is expelled the
country. Liberality scatters wealth with a bounteous hand. Our (p. 041)
King does not desire gold or gems or precious metals, but virtue,
glory, immortality." The picture is overdrawn for modern taste, but
making due allowance for Mountjoy's turgid efforts to emulate his
master's eloquence, enough remains to indicate the impression made by
Henry on a peer of liberal education. His unrivalled skill in national
sports and martial exercises appealed at least as powerfully to the
mass of his people. In archery, in wrestling, in joust and in tourney,
as well as in the tennis court or on the hunting field, Henry was a
match for the best in his kingdom. None could draw a bow, tame a
steed, or shiver a lance more deftly than he, and his single-handed
tournaments on horse and foot with his brother-in-law, the Duke of
Suffolk, are likened by one who watched them to the combats of
Achilles and Hector. These are no mere trifles below the dignity of
history; they help to explain the extraordinary hold Henry obtained
over popular imagination. Suppose there ascended the throne to-day a
young prince, the hero of the athletic world, the finest oar, the best
bat, the crack marksman of his day, it is easy to imagine the
enthusiastic support he would receive from thousands of his people who
care much for sport, and nothing at all for politics. Suppose also
that that prince were endowed with the iron will, the instinctive
insight into the hearts of his people, the profound aptitude for
government that Henry VIII. displayed, he would be a rash man who
would guarantee even now the integrity of parliamentary power or the
continuance of cabinet rule. In those days, with thirty years of civil
war and fifteen more of conspiracy fresh in men's minds, with no
alternative to anarchy save Henry VIII., with a peerage fallen (p. 042)
from its high estate, and a Parliament almost lost to respect, royal
autocracy was not a thing to dread or distrust. "If a lion knew his
strength," said Sir Thomas More of his master to Cromwell, "it were
hard for any man to rule him." Henry VIII. had the strength of a lion;
it remains to be seen how soon he learnt it, and what use he made of
that strength when he discovered the secret.
[Footnote 77: F.M. Nichols, _Epistles of Erasmus_,
i., 457.]
CHAPTER III. (p. 043)
THE APPRENTICESHIP OF HENRY VIII.
Quietly and peacefully, without a threat from abroad or a murmur at
home, the crown, which his father had won amid the storm and stress of
the field of battle, devolved upon Henry VIII. With an eager profusion
of zeal Ferdinand of Aragon placed at Henry's disposal his army, his
fleet, his personal services.[78] There was no call for this sacrifice.
For generations there had been no such tranquil demise of the crown.
Not a ripple disturbed the surface of affairs as the old King lay sick
in April, 1509, in Richmond Palace at Sheen. By his bedside stood his
only surviving son; and to him the dying monarch addressed his last
words of advice. He desired him to complete his marriage with Catherine,
he exhorted him to defend the Church, and to make war on the infidel;
he commended to him his faithful councillors, and is believed to have
urged upon him the execution of De la Pole, Earl of Suffolk, the White
Rose of England. On the 22nd he was dead. A fortnight later the funeral
procession wended its way from Sheen to St. Paul's, where the illustrious
John Fisher, cardinal and martyr, preached the _eloge_. Thence it (p. 044)
passed down the Strand, between hedges and willows clad in the fresh
green of spring, to
That acre sown indeed
With the richest, royallest seed
That the earth did e'er drink in.
There, in the vault beneath the chapel in Westminster Abbey, which
bears his name and testifies to his magnificence in building, Henry
VII. was laid to rest beside his Queen; dwelling, says Bacon, "more
richly dead in the monument of his tomb than he did alive in Richmond
or any of his palaces". For years before and after, Torrigiano, the
rival of Buonarotti, wrought at its "matchless altar," not a stone of
which survived the Puritan fury of the civil war.
[Footnote 78: _Sp. Cal._, ii., 4.]
On the day of his father's death, or the next, the new King removed
from Richmond Palace to the Tower, whence, on 23rd April, was dated
the first official act of his reign. He confirmed in ampler form the
general pardon granted a few days before by Henry VII.; but the ampler
form was no bar to the exemption of fourscore offenders from the act
of grace.[79] Foremost among them were the three brothers De la Pole,
Sir Richard Empson and Edmund Dudley. The exclusion of Empson and
Dudley from the pardon was more popular than the pardon itself. If
anything could have enhanced Henry's favour with his subjects, it was
the condign punishment of the tools of his father's extortion. Their
death was none the less welcome for being unjust. They were not merely
refused pardon and brought to the block; a more costly concession was
made when their bonds for the payment of loans were cancelled.[80]
Their victims, so runs the official record, had been "without (p. 045)
any ground or matter of truth, by the undue means of certain of the
council of our said late father, thereunto driven contrary to law,
reason and good conscience, to the manifest charge and peril of the
soul of our said late father".
[Footnote 79: _L. and P._, i., 2, 12.]
[Footnote 80: _Cf. L. and P._, i., 1004.]
If filial piety demanded the delivery of his father's soul from peril,
it counselled no less the fulfilment of his dying requests, and the
arrangements for Catherine's marriage were hurried on with an almost
indecent haste. The instant he heard rumours of Henry VII.'s death,
Ferdinand sent warning to his envoy in England that Louis of France
and others would seek by all possible means to break off the match.[81]
To further it, he would withdraw his objections to the union of Charles
and Mary; and a few days later he wrote again to remove any scruples
Henry might entertain about marrying his deceased brother's wife;
while to Catherine herself he declared with brutal frankness that she
would get no other husband than Henry.[82] All his paternal anxiety
might have been spared. Long before Ferdinand's persuasions could
reach Henry's ears, he had made up his mind to consummate the marriage.
He would not, he wrote to Margaret of Savoy,[83] disobey his father's
commands, reinforced as they were by the dispensation of the Pope and
by the friendship between the two families contracted by his sister
Mary's betrothal to Catherine's nephew Charles. There were other
reasons besides those he alleged. A council trained by Henry VII. was
loth to lose the gold of Catherine's dower; it was of the utmost
importance to strengthen at once the royal line; and a full-blooded
youth of Henry's temperament was not likely to repel a comely (p. 046)
wife ready to his hand, when the dictates of his father's policy no
longer stood between them. So on 11th June, barely a month after Henry
VII.'s obsequies, the marriage, big with destinies, of Henry VIII. and
Catherine of Aragon was privately solemnised by Archbishop Warham "in
the Queen's closet" at Greenwich.[84] On the same day the commission
of claims was appointed for the King's and Queen's coronation. A week
then sufficed for its business, and on Sunday, 24th June, the Abbey
was the scene of a second State function within three months. Its
splendour and display were emblematic of the coming reign. Warham
placed the crown on the King's head; the people cried, "Yea, yea!" in
a loud voice when asked if they would have Henry as King; Sir Robert
Dymock performed the office of champion; and a banquet, jousts and
tourneys concluded the ceremonies.
[Footnote 81: _Sp. Cal._, ii., 3.]
[Footnote 82: _Ibid._, ii., 8, 15.]
[Footnote 83: _L. and P._, i., 224.]
[Footnote 84: _L. and P._, iv., 5774.]
* * * * *
Though he had wedded a wife and been crowned a king, Henry was as yet
little more than a boy. A powerful mind ripens slowly in a vigorous
frame, and Henry's childish precocity had given way before a youthful
devotion to physical sports. He was no prodigy of early development.
His intellect, will and character were of a gradual, healthier growth;
they were not matured for many years after he came to the throne. He
was still in his eighteenth year; and like most young Englishmen of
means and muscle, his interests centred rather in the field than in
the study. Youth sat on the prow and pleasure at the helm. "Continual
feasting" was the phrase in which Catherine described their early married
life. In the winter evenings there were masks and comedies, romps (p. 047)
and revels, in which Henry himself, Bessie Blount and other young
ladies of his Court played parts.[85] In the spring and summer there
were archery and tennis. Music, we are told, was practised day and
night. Two months after his accession Henry wrote to Ferdinand that he
diverted himself with jousts, birding, hunting, and other innocent and
honest pastimes, in visiting various parts of his kingdom, but that he
did not therefore neglect affairs of State.[86] Possibly he was as
assiduous in his duties as modern university athletes in their studies;
the neglect was merely comparative. But Ferdinand's ambassador remarked
on Henry's aversion to business, and his councillors complained that
he cared only for the pleasures of his age. Two days a week, said the
Spaniard, were devoted to single combats on foot, initiated in imitation
of the heroes of romance, Amadis and Lancelot;[87] and if Henry's
other innocent and honest pastimes were equally exacting, his view of
the requirements of State may well have been modest. From the earliest
days of his reign the general outline of policy was framed in accord
with his sentiments, and he was probably consulted on most questions
of importance. But it was not always so; in August, 1509, Louis XII.
acknowledged a letter purporting to come from the English King with a
request for friendship and peace. "Who wrote this letter?" burst out
Henry. "I ask peace of the King of France, who dare not look me in the
face, still less make war on me!"[88] His pride at the age of eighteen
was not less than his ignorance of what passed in his name. He had (p. 048)
yet to learn the secret that painful and laborious mastery of detail
is essential to him who aspires not merely to reign but to rule; and
matters of detail in administration and diplomacy were still left in
his ministers' hands.
[Footnote 85: _L. and P._, vol. ii., p. 1461.]
[Footnote 86: _Sp. Cal._, ii., 19.]
[Footnote 87: _Ibid._, ii., 44, 45.]
[Footnote 88: _Ven. Cal._, ii., 11.]
With the exception of Empson and Dudley, Henry made little or no change
in the council his father bequeathed him. Official precedence appertained
to his Chancellor, Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury. Like most of
Henry VII.'s prelates, he received his preferment in the Church as a
reward for services to the State. Much of the diplomatic work of the
previous reign had passed through his hands; he helped to arrange the
marriage of Arthur and Catherine, and was employed in the vain attempt
to obtain Margaret of Savoy as a bride for Henry VII. As Archbishop he
crowned and married Henry VIII., and as Chancellor he delivered
orations at the opening of the young King's first three Parliaments.[89]
They are said to have given general satisfaction, but apart from them,
Warham, for some unknown reason, took little part in political
business. So far as Henry can be said at this time to have had a Prime
Minister, that title belongs to Fox, his Lord Privy Seal and Bishop of
Winchester. Fox had been even more active than Warham in politics, and
more closely linked with the personal fortunes of the two Tudor kings.
He had shared the exile of Henry of Richmond; the treaty of Etaples,
the Intercursus Magnus, the marriage of Henry's elder daughter to
James IV., and the betrothal of his younger to Charles, were largely
the work of his hands. Malicious gossip described him as willing to
consent to his own father's death to serve the turn of his king, (p. 049)
and a better founded belief ascribed to his wit the invention of
"Morton's fork".[90] He was Chancellor of Cambridge in 1500, as Warham
was of Oxford, but won more enduring fame by founding the college of
Corpus Christi in the university over which the Archbishop presided.
He had baptised Henry VIII. and advocated his marriage to Catherine;
and to him the King extended the largest share in his confidence.
Badoer, the Venetian ambassador, called him "alter rex,"[91] and
Carroz, the Spaniard, said Henry trusted him most; but Henry was not
blind to the failings of his most intimate councillors, and he warned
Carroz that the Bishop of Winchester was, as his name implied, a fox
indeed.[92] A third prelate, Ruthal of Durham, divided with Fox the
chief business of State; and these clerical advisers were supposed to
be eager to guide Henry's footsteps in the paths of peace, and
counteract the more adventurous tendencies of their lay colleagues.
[Footnote 89: _L. and P._, i., 811, 2082; ii.,
114.]
[Footnote 90: _D.N.B._, xx., 152.]
[Footnote 91: _Ven. Cal._, ii., 63.]
[Footnote 92: _Sp. Cal._, ii., 44.]
At the head of the latter stood Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, soon to
be rewarded for his victory at Flodden by his restoration to the
dukedom of Norfolk. He and his son, the third duke, were Lord High
Treasurers throughout Henry's reign; but jealousy of their past, Tudor
distrust of their rank, or personal limitations, impaired the
authority that would otherwise have attached to their official
position; and Henry never trusted them as he did ministers whom he
himself had raised from the dust. Surrey had served under Edward IV.
and Richard III.; he had fought against Henry at Bosworth, been
attainted and sent to the Tower. Reflecting that it was better to (p. 050)
be a Tudor official at Court than a baronial magnate in prison, he
submitted to the King and was set up as a beacon to draw his peers
from their feudal ways. The rest of the council were men of little
distinction. Shrewsbury, the Lord High Steward, was a pale reflex of
Surrey, and illustrious in nought but descent. Charles Somerset, Lord
Herbert, who was Chamberlain and afterwards Earl of Worcester, was a
Beaufort bastard,[93] and may have derived some little influence from
his harmless kinship with Henry VIII. Lovell, the Treasurer, Poynings
the Controller of the Household, and Harry Marney, Chancellor of the
Duchy of Lancaster, were tried and trusty officials. Bishop Fisher was
great as a Churchman, a scholar, a patron of learning, but not as a
man of affairs; while Buckingham, the only duke in England, and his
brother, the Earl of Wiltshire, were rigidly excluded by dynastic
jealousy from all share in political authority.
[Footnote 93: He is a link in the hereditary chain
which began with Beauforts, Dukes of Somerset and
ended in Somersets, Dukes of Beaufort.]
The most persistent of Henry's advisers was none of his council. He
was Ferdinand the Catholic, King of Aragon; and to his inspiration has
been ascribed[94] the course of foreign policy during the first five
years of his son-in-law's reign. He worked through his daughter; the
only thing she valued in life, wrote Catherine a month after her
marriage, was her father's confidence. When Membrilla was recalled
because he failed to satisfy Catherine's somewhat exacting temper, she
was herself formally commissioned to act in his place as (p. 051)
Ferdinand's ambassador at Henry's Court; Henry was begged to give her
implicit credence and communicate with Spain through her mediation!
"These kingdoms of _your_ highness," she wrote to her father, "are in
great tranquillity."[95] Well might Ferdinand congratulate himself on
the result of her marriage, and the addition of fresh, to his already
extensive, domains. He needed them all to ensure the success of his
far-reaching schemes. His eldest grandson, Charles, was heir not only
to Castile and Aragon, Naples and the Indies, which were to come to
him from his mother, Ferdinand's imbecile daughter, Juana, but to
Burgundy and Austria, the lands of his father, Philip, and of Philip's
father, the Emperor Maximilian. This did not satisfy Ferdinand's
grasping ambition; he sought to carve out for his second grandson,
named after himself, a kingdom in Northern Italy.[96] On the Duchy of
Milan, the republics of Venice, Genoa and Florence, his greedy eyes
were fixed. Once conquered, they would bar the path of France to
Naples; compensated by these possessions, the younger Ferdinand might
resign his share in the Austrian inheritance to Charles; while Charles
himself was to marry the only daughter of the King of Hungary, add
that to his other dominions, and revive the empire of Charlemagne. (p. 052)
Partly with these objects in view, partly to draw off the scent from
his own track, Ferdinand had, in 1508, raised the hue and cry after
Venice. Pope and Emperor, France and Spain, joined in the chase, but
of all the parties to the league of Cambrai, Louis XII. was in a position
to profit the most. His victory over Venice at Agnadello (14th May,
1509), secured him Milan and Venetian territory as far as the Mincio;
it also dimmed the prospects of Ferdinand's Italian scheme and threatened
his hold on Naples; but the Spanish King was restrained from open
opposition to France by the fact that Louis was still mediating
between him and Maximilian on their claims to the administration of
Castile, the realm of their daughter and daughter-in-law, Juana.
[Footnote 94: By Bergenroth in his prefaces to the
_Calendar of Spanish State Papers_. He greatly
exaggerates Ferdinand's influence.]
[Footnote 95: _Sp. Cal._, ii., 12, 21; _L. and P._,
i., 368.]
[Footnote 96: _Ibid._, ii., 153, 159. The following
pedigree may be useful for reference:--
Charles = Margaret
the Bold of York, "aunt to all the Pretenders"
|
|
Mary = Emperor Ferdinand = Isabella
Maximilian of Aragon | of Castile
| (_d._ 1519) |
| +---------------------+
| | |
Archduke = Juana Catherine
Philip | of
(_d._ 1506) | Aragon
|
+----------------------+
| |
Charles V., Emperor Ferdinand, Emperor
1519-1556 1556-1564]
* * * * *
Such was the situation with which Henry VIII. and his council were
required to deal. The young King entered the arena of Europe, a child
of generous impulse in a throng of hoary intriguers--Ferdinand,
Maximilian, Louis XII., Julius II.--each of whom was nearly three
times his age. He was shocked to see them leagued to spoil a petty
republic, a republic, too, which had been for ages the bulwark of
Christendom against the Turk and from time immemorial the ally of
England. Venice had played no small part in the revival of letters
which appealed so strongly to Henry's intellectual sympathies. Scholars
and physicians from Venice, or from equally threatened Italian
republics, frequented his Court and Cabinet. Venetian merchants
developed the commerce of London; Venetian galleys called twice a year
at Southampton on their way to and from Flanders, and their trade (p. 053)
was a source of profit to both nations. Inevitably Henry's sympathies
went out to the sore-pressed republic. They were none the less strong
because the chief of the spoilers was France, for Henry and his people
were imbued with an inborn antipathy to everything French.[97] Before
he came to the throne he was reported to be France's enemy; and
speculations were rife as to the chances of his invading it and
imitating the exploits of his ancestor Henry V. It needed no
persuasion from Ferdinand to induce him to intervene in favour of
Venice. Within a few weeks of his accession he refused to publish the
papal bull which cast the halo of crusaders over the bandits of
Cambrai. The day after his coronation he deplored to Badoer Louis'
victory at Agnadello, and a week later he wrote to the sovereigns of
Europe urging the injustice of their Venetian crusade. In September he
sent Bainbridge, Cardinal-Archbishop of York, to reside at the Papal
Court, and watch over the interests of Venice as well as of England.
"Italy," wrote Badoer, "was entirely rescued from the barbarians by
the movements of the English King; and, but for that, Ferdinand would
have done nothing."[98] Henry vainly endeavoured to persuade
Maximilian, the Venetian's lifelong foe, to accept arbitration; but he
succeeded in inducing the Doge to make his peace with the Pope, and
Julius to remove his ecclesiastical censures. To Ferdinand he declared
that Venice must be preserved as a wall against the Turk, and he
hinted that Ferdinand's own dominions in Italy would, if Venice were
destroyed, "be unable to resist the ambitious designs of certain (p. 054)
Christian princes".[99] The danger was as patent to Julius and
Ferdinand as it was to Henry; and as soon as Ferdinand had induced
Louis to give a favourable verdict in his suit with the Emperor, the
Catholic King was ready to join Henry and the Pope in a league of
defence.
[Footnote 97: _Ven. Cal._, i., 941, 942, 945; ii.,
1.]
[Footnote 98: _L. and P._, i., 922, 932, 3333;
_Ven. Cal._, ii., 5, 7, 9, 19-22, 28, 33, 39, 40,
45, 51.]
[Footnote 99: _Sp. Cal._, ii., 23.]
But, in spite of Venetian, Spanish and papal instigations to "recover
his noble inheritance in France," in spite of his own indignation at
the treatment of Venice, and the orders issued in the first year of
his reign to his subjects to furnish themselves with weapons of war,
for which the long peace had left them unprepared,[100] Henry, or the
peace party in his council, was unwilling to resort to the arbitrament
of arms. He renewed his father's treaties not only with other powers,
but, much to the disgust of Ferdinand, Venice and the Pope, with Louis
himself. His first martial exploit, apart from 1,500 archers whom he
was bound by treaty to send to aid the Netherlands against the Duke of
Guelders,[101] was an expedition for the destruction of the enemies of
the faith.[102] Such an expedition, he once said, he owed to God for
his peaceful accession; at another time he declared[103] that he
cherished, like an heirloom, the ardour against the infidel which he
inherited from his father. He repressed that ardour, it must be added,
with as much success as Henry VII.; and apart from this one youthful
indiscretion, he did not suffer his ancestral zeal to escape into
action. His generous illusions soon vanished before the sordid
realities of European statecraft; and the defence of Christendom (p. 055)
became with him, as with others, a hollow pretence, a diplomatic
fiction, the infinite varieties of which age could not wither nor
custom stale. Did a monarch wish for peace? Peace at once was
imperative to enable Christian princes to combine against the Turk.
Did he desire war? War became a disagreeable necessity to restrain the
ambition of Christian princes who, "worse than the infidel," disturbed
the peace of Christendom and opened a door for the enemies of the
Church. Nor did the success of Henry's first crusade encourage him to
persist in similar efforts. It sailed from Plymouth in May, 1511, to
join in Ferdinand's attack on the Moors, but it had scarcely landed
when bickerings broke out between the Christian allies, and Ferdinand
informed the English commanders that he had made peace with the
Infidel, to gird his loins for war with the Most Christian King.
[Footnote 100: _L. and P._, i., 679.]
[Footnote 101: _Ven. Cal._, ii., 16; _L. and P._,
i., 1740.]
[Footnote 102: _L. and P._, i., 1531.]
[Footnote 103: _Ibid._, ii., 4688; _Ven. Cal._,
ii., 178.]
In the midst of their preparation against infidels, so runs the
preamble to the treaty in which Henry and Ferdinand signified their
adhesion to the Holy League, they heard that Louis was besieging the
Pope in Bologna.[104] The thought of violent hands being laid on the
Vicar of Christ stirred Henry to a depth of indignation which no
injuries practised against a temporal power could rouse. His ingenuous
deference to the Papacy was in singular contrast to the contempt with
which it was treated by more experienced sovereigns, and they traded
on the weight which Henry always attached to the words of the Pope. He
had read Maximilian grave lectures on his conduct in countenancing the
schismatic _conciliabulum_ assembled by Louis at Pisa.[105] He wrote
to Bainbridge at the Papal Court that he was ready to sacrifice goods,
life and kingdom for the Pope and the Church;[106] and to the (p. 056)
Emperor that at the beginning of his reign he thought of nothing else
than an expedition against the Infidel. But now he was called by the
Pope and the danger of the Church in another direction; and he
proceeded to denounce the impiety and schism of the French and their
atrocious deeds in Italy. He joined Ferdinand in requiring Louis to
desist from his impious work. Louis turned a deaf ear to their
demands; and in November, 1511, they bound themselves to defend the
Church against all aggression and make war upon the aggressor.
[Footnote 104: _Sp. Cal._, ii., 59.]
[Footnote 105: _L. and P._, i., 1828.]
[Footnote 106: _Ven. Cal._, ii., 177.]
* * * * *
This reversal of the pacific policy which had marked the first two and
a half years of Henry's reign was not exclusively due to the King's
zeal for the Church. The clerical party of peace in his council was
now divided by the appearance of an ecclesiastic who was far more
remarkable than any of his colleagues, and to whose turbulence and
energy the boldness of English policy must, henceforth, for many years
be mainly ascribed. Thomas Wolsey had been appointed Henry's almoner
at the beginning of his reign, but he exercised no apparent influence
in public affairs. It was not till 1511 that he joined the council,
though during the interval he must have been gradually building up his
ascendancy over the King's mind. To Wolsey, restlessly ambitious for
himself, for Henry, and England, was attributed the responsibility for
the sudden adoption of a spirited foreign policy; and it was in the
preparations for the war of 1512 that his marvellous industry and
grasp of detail first found full scope.
The main attack of the English and Spanish monarchs was to be on (p. 057)
Guienne,[107] and in May, 1512, Henry went down to Southampton to
speed the departing fleet.[108] It sailed from Cowes under Dorset's
command on 3rd June, and a week later the army disembarked on the
coast of Guipuscoa.[109] There it remained throughout the torrid
summer, awaiting the Spanish King's forces to co-operate in the
invasion of France. But Ferdinand was otherwise occupied. Navarre was
not mentioned in the treaty with Henry, but Navarre was what Ferdinand
had in his mind. It was then an independent kingdom, surrounded on
three sides by Spanish territory, and an easy prey which would serve
to unite all Spain beyond the Pyrenees under Ferdinand's rule. Under
pretence of restoring Guienne to the English crown, Dorset's army had
been enticed to Passages, and there it was used as a screen against
the French, behind which Ferdinand calmly proceeded to conquer
Navarre. It was, he said, impossible to march into France with Navarre
unsubdued in his rear. Navarre was at peace, but it might join the
French, and he invited Dorset to help in securing the prey. Dorset
refused to exceed his commission, but the presence of his army at
Passages was admitted by the Spaniards to be "quite providential,"[110]
as it prevented the French from assisting Navarre. English indignation
was loud and deep; men and officers vowed that, but for Henry's
displeasure, they would have called to account the perfidious King.
Condemned to inactivity, the troops almost mutinied; they found it
impossible to live on their wages of sixpence a day (equivalent now to
at least six shillings), drank Spanish wine as if it were English (p. 058)
beer, and died of dysentery like flies in the autumn. Discipline
relaxed; drill was neglected. Still Ferdinand tarried, and in October,
seeing no hope of an attempt on Guienne that year, the army took
matters into its own hands and embarked for England.[111]
[Footnote 107: _L. and P._, i., 1980; _Sp. Cal._,
ii., 59; _Ven. Cal._, ii., 122.]
[Footnote 108: _Ibid._, ii., 159.]
[Footnote 109: _L. and P._, i., 3243.]
[Footnote 110: _Ibid._, i., 3352.]
[Footnote 111: _L. and P._, i., 3298, 3355; _Ven.
Cal._, ii., 198, 205. The financial accounts for
the expedition are in _L. and P._, i., 3762.]
Henry's first military enterprise had ended in disgrace and disaster.
The repute of English soldiers, dimmed by long peace, was now further
tarnished. Henry's own envoys complained of the army's insubordination,
its impatience of the toils, and inexperience of the feats, of war;
and its ignominious return exposed him to the taunts of both friends
and foes. He had been on the point of ordering it home, when it came
of its own accord; but the blow to his authority was not, on that
account, less severe. His irritation was not likely to be soothed when
he realised the extent to which he had been duped by his father-in-law.
Ferdinand was loud in complaints and excuses.[112] September and
October were, he said, the proper months for a campaign in Guienne,
and he was marching to join the English army at the moment of its
desertion. In reality, it had served his purpose to perfection. Its
presence had diverted French levies from Italy, and enabled him,
unmolested, to conquer Navarre. With that he was content. Why should
he wish to see Henry in Guienne? He was too shrewd to involve his own
forces in that hopeless adventure, and the departure of the English
furnished him with an excuse for entering into secret negotiations
with Louis. His methods were eloquent of sixteenth-century (p. 059)
diplomacy. He was, he ordered Carroz to tell Henry many months
later,[113] when concealment was no longer possible or necessary,
sending a holy friar to his daughter in England; the friar's health
did not permit of his going by sea; so he went through France, and was
taken prisoner. Hearing of his fame for piety, the French Queen desired
his ghostly advice, and took the opportunity of the interview to
persuade the friar to return to Spain with proposals of peace.
Ferdinand was suddenly convinced that death was at hand; his confessor
exhorted him to forgive and make peace with his enemies. This work of
piety he could not in conscience neglect. So he agreed to a twelvemonth's
truce, which secured Navarre. In spite of his conscience he would
never have consented, had he not felt that the truce was really in
Henry's interests. But what weighed with him most was, he said, the
reformation of the Church. That should be Henry's first and noblest
work; he could render no greater service to God. No reformation was
possible without peace, and so long as the Church was unreformed, wars
among princes would never cease.
[Footnote 112: _Sp. Cal._, ii., 68, 70, 72; _cf._
_L. and P._, i., 3350, 3356.]
[Footnote 113: _Sp. Cal._, ii., 89, 118; _L. and
P._, i., 3839.]
Such reasoning, he thought, would appeal to the pious and unsophisticated
Henry. To other sovereigns he used arguments more suited to their
experience of his diplomacy. He told Maximilian[114] that his main
desire was to serve the Emperor's interests, to put a curb on the
Italians, and to frustrate their design of driving himself, Louis and
Maximilian across the Alps. But the most monumental falsehood he
reserved for the Pope; his ambassador at the Papal Court was to (p. 060)
assure Julius that he had failed in his efforts to concert with Henry
a joint invasion of France, that Henry was not in earnest over the war
and that he had actually made a truce[115] with France. This had
enabled Louis to pour fresh troops into Italy, and compelled him,
Ferdinand, to consult his own interests and make peace! Two days later
he was complaining to Louis that Henry refused to join in the
truce.[116] To punish Henry for his refusal he was willing to aid
Louis against him, but he would prefer to settle the differences
between the French and the English kings by a still more treacherous
expedient. Julius was to be induced to give a written promise that, if
the points at issue were submitted to his arbitration, he would
pronounce no verdict till it had been secretly sanctioned by Ferdinand
and Louis. This promise obtained, Louis was publicly to appeal to the
Pope; Henry's devotion to the Church would prevent his refusing the
Supreme Pontiff's mediation; if he did, ecclesiastical censures could
be invoked against him.[117] Such was the plot Ferdinand was hatching
for the benefit of his daughter's husband. The Catholic King had ever
deceit in his heart and the name of God on his lips. He was accused by
a rival of having cheated him twice; the charge was repeated to
Ferdinand. "He lies," he broke out, "I cheated him three times." He
was faithful to one principle only, self-aggrandisement by fair means
or foul. His favourite scheme was a kingdom in Northern Italy; but in
the way of its realisation his own overreaching ambition placed an
insuperable bar. Italy had been excluded from his truce with France to
leave him free to pursue that design;[118] but in July, 1512, the (p. 061)
Italians already suspected his motives, and a papal legate declared
that they no more wished to see Milan Spanish than French.[119] In the
following November, Spanish troops in the pay and alliance of Venice
drove the French out of Brescia. By the terms of the Holy League, it
should have been restored to its owner, the Venetian Republic.
Ferdinand kept it himself; it was to form the nucleus of his North
Italian dominion. Venice at once took alarm and made a compact with
France which kept the Spaniards at bay until after Ferdinand's
death.[120] The friendship between Venice and France severed that
between France and the Emperor; and, in 1513, the war went on with a
rearrangement of partners, Henry and Maximilian on one side,[121]
against France and Venice on the other, with Ferdinand secretly trying
to trick them all.
[Footnote 114: _Ibid._, ii., 96, 101.]
[Footnote 115: _Sp. Cal._, ii., 106.]
[Footnote 116: _Ibid._, ii., 107.]
[Footnote 117: _Ibid._, ii., 104.]
[Footnote 118: _Sp. Cal._, ii., 70.]
[Footnote 119: _L. and P._, i., 3325.]
[Footnote 120: _Ven. Cal._, ii., 208, 234, 254,
283, 298. Bergenroth, in his zeal for Ferdinand,
represents the Pope and not Ferdinand as being
responsible for driving Venice into the arms of
France.]
[Footnote 121: _L. and P._, i., 3649, 3859-61. The
league between Henry and Maximilian was concluded
5th April, 1513; Carroz ratified it on Ferdinand's
behalf on 25th April, though Ferdinand had already
signed a truce with France. A good instance of
Ferdinand's duplicity may be found in _Sp. Cal._,
ii., 104, 207; in the former he is asking for the
hand of Renee for his grandson Ferdinand, in the
latter he tells the Pope that the report that he
had made this request was pure invention.]
* * * * *
For many months Henry knew not, or refused to credit, his father-in-law's
perfidy. To outward appearance, the Spanish King was as eager as ever
for the war in Guienne. He was urging Henry to levy 6,000 Germans (p. 062)
to serve for that purpose in conjunction with Spanish forces; and, in
April, Carroz, in ignorance of his master's real intentions, signed on
his behalf a treaty for the joint invasion of France.[122] This forced
the Catholic King to reveal his hand. He refused his ratification;[123]
now he declared the conquest of Guienne to be a task of such magnitude
that preparations must be complete before April, a date already past;
and he recommended Henry to come into the truce with Louis, the
existence of which he had now to confess. Henry had not yet fathomed
the depths; he even appealed to Ferdinand's feelings and pathetically
besought him, as a good father, not to forsake him entirely.[124] But
in vain; his father-in-law deserted him at his sorest hour of need. To
make peace was out of the question. England's honour had suffered a
stain that must at all costs be removed. No king with an atom of
spirit would let the dawn of his reign be clouded by such an admission
of failure. Wolsey was there to stiffen his temper in case of need;
with him it was almost a matter of life and death to retrieve the
disaster. His credit was pledged in the war. In their moments of anger
under the Spanish sun, the English commanders had loudly imputed to
Wolsey the origin of the war and the cause of all the mischief.[125]
Surrey, for whose banishment from Court the new favourite had
expressed to Fox a wish, and other "great men" at home, repeated the
charge.[126] Had Wolsey failed to bring honour with peace, his name
would not have been numbered among the greatest of England's
statesmen.
[Footnote 122: _Sp. Cal._, ii., 101.]
[Footnote 123: _Ib._, ii., 118, 122.]
[Footnote 124: _Ib._, ii., 125.]
[Footnote 125: _L. and P._, i., 3356, 3451.]
[Footnote 126: _Ib._, i., 3443.]
Henry's temper required no spur. Tudors never flinched in the face (p. 063)
of danger, and nothing could have made Henry so resolved to go on as
Ferdinand's desertion and advice to desist. He was prepared to avenge
his army in person. There were to be no expeditions to distant shores;
there was to be war in the Channel, where Englishmen were at home on
the sea; and Calais was to be the base of an invasion of France over
soil worn by the tramp of English troops. In March, 1513, Henry, to
whom the navy was a weapon, a plaything, a passion, watched his fleet
sail down the Thames; its further progress was told him in letters
from its gallant admiral, Sir Edmund Howard, who had been strictly
charged to inform the King of the minutest details in the behaviour of
every one of the ships.[127] Never had such a display of naval force
left the English shores; twenty-four ships ranging downwards from the
1,600 tons of the _Henry Imperial_, bore nearly 5,000 marines and
3,000 mariners.[128] The French dared not venture out, while Howard
swept the Channel, and sought them in their ports. Brest was
blockaded. A squadron of Mediterranean galleys coming to its relief
anchored in the shallow water off Conquet. Howard determined to cut
them out; he grappled and boarded their admiral's galley. The
grappling was cut away, his boat swept out in the tide, and Howard,
left unsupported, was thrust overboard by the Frenchmen's pikes.[129]
His death was regarded as a national disaster, but he had retrieved
England's reputation for foolhardy valour.
[Footnote 127: _L. and P._, i., 3809, 3820.]
[Footnote 128: _Ib._, i., 3977.]
[Footnote 129: _Ib._, i., 4005; see also _The War
of 1512-13_ (Navy Records Society) where the
documents are printed in full.]
Meanwhile, Henry's army was gathering at Calais.[130] On 30th (p. 064)
June, at 7 P.M., the King himself landed. Before his departure, the
unfortunate Edmund de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk, was brought to the
block for an alleged correspondence with his brother in Louis'
service, but really because rumours were rife of Louis' intention to
proclaim the White Rose as King of England.[131] On 21st July, Henry
left Calais to join his army, which had already advanced into French
territory. Heavy rains impeded its march and added to its discomfort.
Henry, we are told, did not put off his clothes, but rode round the
camp at three in the morning, cheering his men with the remark, "Well,
comrades, now that we have suffered in the beginning, fortune promises
us better things, God willing".[132] Near Ardres some German
mercenaries, of whom there were 8,000 with Henry's forces, pillaged
the church; Henry promptly had three of them hanged. On 1st August the
army sat down before Therouanne; on the 10th, the Emperor arrived to
serve as a private at a hundred crowns a day under the English
banners. Three days later a large French force arrived at Guinegate to
raise the siege; a panic seized it, and the bloodless rout that
followed was named the Battle of Spurs. Louis d'Orleans, Duc de
Longueville, the famous Chevalier Bayard, and others of the noblest
blood in France, were among the captives.[133] Ten days after this
defeat Therouanne surrendered; and on the 24th Henry made his (p. 065)
triumphal entry into the first town captured by English arms since
the days of Jeanne Darc. On the 26th he removed to Guinegate, where he
remained a week, "according," says a curious document, "to the laws of
arms, for in case any man would bid battle for the besieging and
getting of any city or town, then the winner (has) to give battle, and
to abide the same certain days".[134] No challenge was forthcoming,
and on 15th September Henry besieged Tournay, then said to be the
richest city north of Paris. During the progress of the siege the Lady
Margaret of Savoy, the Regent of the Netherlands, joined her father,
the Emperor, and Henry, at Lille. They discussed plans for renewing
the war next year and for the marriage of Charles and Mary. To please
the Lady Margaret and to exhibit his skill Henry played the gitteron,
the lute and the cornet, and danced and jousted before her.[135] He
"excelled every one as much in agility in breaking spears as in
nobleness of stature". Within a week Tournay fell; on 13th October
Henry commenced his return, and on the 21st he re-embarked at Calais.
[Footnote 130: _L. and P._, i., 3885, 3915. There
are three detailed diaries of the campaign in _L.
and P._, two anonymous (Nos. 4253, and 4306), and
the other (No. 4284) by John Taylor, afterwards
Master of the Rolls, for whom see the present
writer in _D.N.B_., lv., 429; the original of his
diary is in _Cotton MS._, Cleopatra, C., v. 64.]
[Footnote 131: _Ib._, i., 4324, 4328-29.]
[Footnote 132: Taylor's _Diary_.]
[Footnote 133: Besides the English accounts
referred to, see _L. and P._, i., 4401.]
[Footnote 134: _L. and P._, i., 4431.]
[Footnote 135: _Ven. Cal_., ii., 328.]
Therouanne, the Battle of Spurs, and Tournay were not the only, or the
most striking, successes in this year of war. In July, Catherine, whom
Henry had left as Regent in England, wrote that she was "horribly busy
with making standards, banners, and badges"[136] for the army in the
North; for war with France had brought, as usual, the Scots upon the
English backs. James IV., though Henry's brother-in-law, preferred to
be the cat's paw of the King of France; and in August the Scots
forces poured over the Border under the command of James himself. (p. 066)
England was prepared; and on 9th September, "at Flodden hills," sang
Skelton, "our bows and bills slew all the flower of their honour".
James IV. was left a mutilated corpse upon the field of battle.[137]
"He has paid," wrote Henry, "a heavier penalty for his perfidy than we
would have wished." There was some justice in the charge. James was
bound by treaty not to go to war with England; he had not even waited
for the Pope's answer to his request for absolution from his oath; and
his challenge to Henry, when he was in France and could not meet it,
was not a knightly deed. Henry wrote to Leo for permission to bury the
excommunicated Scottish King with royal honours in St. Paul's.[138]
The permission was granted, but the interment did not take place. In
Italy, Louis fared no better; at Novara, on 6th June, the Swiss
infantry broke in pieces the grand army of France, drove the fragments
across the Alps, and restored the Duchy of Milan to the native house
of Sforza.
[Footnote 136: _L. and P._, i., 4398; Ellis,
_Original Letters_, 1st ser., i., 83.]
[Footnote 137: _L. and P._, i., 4439, 4441, 4461;
_cf._ popular ballads in Weber's _Flodden Field_,
and _La Rotta de Scocese_ (Bannatyne Club).]
[Footnote 138: _Ven. Cal._, ii., 909; _Sp. Cal._,
i., 137; _L. and P._, i., 4502, 4582.]
* * * * *
The results of the campaign of 1513 were a striking vindication of the
refusal of Henry VIII. and Wolsey to rest under the stigma of their
Spanish expedition of 1512. English prestige was not only restored,
but raised higher than it had stood since the death of Henry V., whose
"name," said Pasqualigo, a Venetian in London, "Henry VIII. would now
renew". He styled him "our great King".[139] Peter Martyr, a resident
at Ferdinand's Court, declared that the Spanish King was "afraid (p. 067)
of the over-growing power of England".[140] Another Venetian in London
reported that "were Henry ambitious of dominion like others, he would
soon give law to the world". But, he added, "he is good and has a good
council. His quarrel was a just one, he marched to free the Church, to
obtain his own, and to liberate Italy from the French."[141] The pomp
and parade of Henry's wars have, indeed, somewhat obscured the
fundamentally pacific character of his reign. The correspondence of
the time bears constant witness to the peaceful tendencies of Henry
and his council. "I content myself," he once said to Giustinian, "with
my own, I only wish to command my own subjects; but, on the other
hand, I do not choose that any one shall have it in his power to
command me."[142] On another occasion he said: "We want all potentates
to content themselves with their own territories; we are content with
this island of ours"; and Giustinian, after four years' residence at
Henry's Court, gave it as his deliberate opinion to his Government,
that Henry did not covet his neighbours' goods, was satisfied with his
own dominions, and "extremely desirous of peace".[143] Ferdinand said,
in 1513, that his pensions from France and a free hand in Scotland
were all that Henry really desired;[144] and Carroz, his ambassador,
reported that Henry's councillors did not like to be at war with any
one.[145] Peace, they told Badoer, suited England better than
war.[146]
[Footnote 139: _Ven. Cal._, ii., 340.]
[Footnote 140: _L. and P._, i., 4864.]
[Footnote 141: _Ven. Cal._, ii., 362.]
[Footnote 142: _L. and P._, ii., 1991.]
[Footnote 143: _Ven. Cal._, ii., 1287; Giustinian,
_Desp._, App., ii., 309.]
[Footnote 144: _Sp. Cal._, ii., 142.]
[Footnote 145: _Ib._, ii., 201.]
[Footnote 146: _Ven. Cal._, ii., 298; _cf. L. and
P._, i., 3081.]
But Henry's actions proclaimed louder than the words of himself (p. 068)
or of others that he believed peace to be the first of English interests.
He waged no wars on the continent except against France; and though he
reigned thirty-eight years, his hostilities with France were compressed
into as many months. The campaigns of 1512-13, Surrey's and Suffolk's
inroads of 1522 and 1523, and Henry's invasion of 1544, represent the
sum of his military operations outside Great Britain and Ireland. He
acquired Tournay in 1513 and Boulogne in 1544, but the one was
restored in five years for an indemnity, and the other was to be given
back in eight for a similar consideration. These facts are in curious
contrast with the high-sounding schemes of recovering the crown of
France, which others were always suggesting to Henry, and which he,
for merely conventional reasons, was in the habit of enunciating
before going to war; and in view of the tenacity which Henry exhibited
in other respects, and the readiness with which he relinquished his
regal pretensions to France, it is difficult to believe that they were
any real expression of settled policy. They were, indeed, impossible
of achievement, and Henry saw the fact clearly enough.[147] Modern
phenomena such as huge armies sweeping over Europe, and capitals from
Berlin to Moscow, Paris to Madrid, falling before them, were quite
beyond military science of the sixteenth century. Armies fought, as a
rule, only in the five summer months; it was difficult enough to
victual them for even that time; and lack of commissariat or transport
crippled all the invasions of Scotland. Hertford sacked Edinburgh, (p. 069)
but he went by sea. No other capital except Rome saw an invading army.
Neither Henry nor Maximilian, Ferdinand nor Charles, ever penetrated
more than a few miles into France, and French armies got no further
into Spain, the Netherlands, or Germany. Machiavelli points out that
the chief safeguard of France against the Spaniards was that the latter
could not victual their army sufficiently to pass the Pyrenees.[148]
If in Italy it was different, it was because Italy herself invited the
invaders, and was mainly under foreign dominion. Henry knew that with
the means at his disposal he could never conquer France; his claims to
the crown were transparent conventions, and he was always ready for
peace in return for the _status quo_ and a money indemnity, with a
town or so for security.
[Footnote 147: In 1520 he described his title "King
of France" as a title given him by others which was
"good for nothing" (_Ven. Cal._, iii., 45). Its
value consisted in the pensions he received as a
sort of commutation.]
[Footnote 148: Machiavelli, _Opera_, iv., 139.]
The fact that he had only achieved a small part of the conquest he
professed to set out to accomplish was, therefore, no bar to
negotiations for peace. There were many reasons for ending the war;
the rapid diminution of his father's treasures; the accession to the
papal throne of the pacific Leo in place of the warlike Julius; the
absolution of Louis as a reward for renouncing the council of Pisa;
the interruption of the trade with Venice; the attention required by
Scotland now that her king was Henry's infant nephew; and lastly, his
betrayal first by Ferdinand and now by the Emperor. In October, 1513,
at Lille, a treaty had been drawn up binding Henry, Maximilian and
Ferdinand to a combined invasion of France before the following
June.[149] On 6th December, Ferdinand wrote to Henry to say he (p. 070)
had signed the treaty. He pointed out the sacrifices he was making
in so doing; he was induced to make them by considering that the war
was to be waged in the interests of the Holy Church, of Maximilian,
Henry, and Catherine, and by his wish and hope to live and die in
friendship with the Emperor and the King of England. He thought,
however, that to make sure of the assistance of God, the allies ought
to bind themselves, if He gave them the victory, to undertake a
general war on the infidel.[150] Ferdinand seems to have imagined that
he could dupe the Almighty as easily as he hoped to cheat his allies,
by a pledge which he never meant to fulfil. A fortnight after this
despatch he ordered Carroz not to ratify the treaty he himself had
already signed.[151] The reason was not far to seek. He was deluding
himself with the hope, which Louis shrewdly encouraged, that the
French King would, after his recent reverses, fall in with the
Spaniard's Italian plans.[152] Louis might even, he thought, of his
own accord cede Milan and Genoa, which would annihilate the French
King's influence in Italy, and greatly facilitate the attack on
Venice.
[Footnote 149: _Sp. Cal._, ii., 138, 143; _L. and
P._, i., 4511, 4560.]
[Footnote 150: _Sp. Cal._, ii., 132.]
[Footnote 151: _Ibid._, ii., 159.]
[Footnote 152: _Ibid._, ii., 158, 163.]
That design had occupied him throughout the summer, before Louis had
become so amenable; then he was urging Maximilian that the Pope must
be kept on their side and persuaded "not to forgive the great sins
committed by the King of France"; for if he removed his ecclesiastical
censures, Ferdinand and Maximilian "would be deprived of a plausible
excuse for confiscating the territories they intended to conquer".[153]
Providence was, as usual, to be bribed into assisting in the (p. 071)
robbery of Venice by a promise to make war on the Turk. But now that
Louis was prepared to give his daughter Renee in marriage to young
Ferdinand and to endow the couple with Milan and Genoa and his claims
on Naples, his sins might be forgiven. The two monarchs would not be
justified in making war upon France in face of these offers. Venice
remained a difficulty, for Louis was not likely to help to despoil his
faithful ally; but Ferdinand had a suggestion. They could all make
peace publicly guaranteeing the Republic's possessions, but Maximilian
and he could make a "mental reservation" enabling them to partition
Venice, when France could no longer prevent it.[154]
[Footnote 153: _Ibid._, ii., 131.]
[Footnote 154: _Sp. Cal._, ii., 153.]
So on 13th March, 1514, Ferdinand renewed his truce with France, and
Maximilian joined it soon after.[155] The old excuses about the
reformation of the Church, his death-bed desire to make peace with his
enemies, could scarcely be used again; so Ferdinand instructed his
agent to say, if Henry asked for an explanation, that there was a
secret conspiracy in Italy.[156] If he had said no more, it would have
been literally true, for the conspiracy was his own; but he went on to
relate that the conspiracy was being hatched by the Italians to drive
him and the Emperor out of the peninsula. The two were alike in their
treachery; both secretly entered the truce with France and broke their
promise to Henry. Another engagement of longer standing was ruptured.
Since 1508, Henry's sister Mary had been betrothed to Maximilian's
grandson Charles. The marriage was to take place when Charles was (p. 072)
fourteen; the pledge had been renewed at Lille, and the nuptials fixed
not later than 15th May, 1514.[157] Charles wrote to Mary signing
himself _votre mari_, while Mary was styled Princess of Castile,
carried about a bad portrait of Charles,[158] and diplomatically
sighed for his presence ten times a day. But winter wore on and turned
to spring; no sign was forthcoming of Maximilian's intention to keep
his grandson's engagement, and Charles was reported as having said
that he wanted a wife and not a mother.[159] All Henry's inquiries
were met by excuses; the Ides of May came and went, but they brought
no wedding between Mary and Charles.
[Footnote 155: _Ibid._, ii., 164; _Ven. Cal._, ii.,
389, 391, 401, 405.]
[Footnote 156: _Sp. Cal._, ii., 167.]
[Footnote 157: _L. and P._, i., 4560.]
[Footnote 158: _Ibid._, i., 5203.]
[Footnote 159: _Ven. Cal_., ii., 295. Charles was
fourteen, Mary eighteen years of age.]
Henry was learning by bitter experience. Not only was he left to face
single-handed the might of Louis; but Ferdinand and Maximilian had
secretly bound themselves to make war on him, if he carried out the
treaty to which they had all three publicly agreed. The man whom he
said he loved as a natural father, and the titular sovereign of
Christendom, had combined to cheat the boy-king who had come to the
throne with youthful enthusiasms and natural, generous instincts. "Nor
do I see," said Henry to Giustinian, "any faith in the world save in
me, and therefore God Almighty, who knows this, prospers my affairs."[160]
This absorbing belief in himself and his righteousness led to strange
aberrations in later years, but in 1514 it had some justification. "Je
vous assure," wrote Margaret of Savoy to her father, the Emperor, (p. 073)
"qu'en lui n'a nulle faintise." "At any rate," said Pasqualigo, "King
Henry has done himself great honour, and kept faith single-handed."[161]
A more striking testimony was forthcoming a year or two later. When
Charles succeeded Ferdinand, the Bishop of Badajos drew up for
Cardinal Ximenes a report on the state of the Prince's affairs. In it
he says: "The King of England has been truer to his engagements
towards the House of Austria than any other prince. The marriage of
the Prince with the Princess Mary, it must be confessed, did not take
place, but it may be questioned whether it was the fault of the King
of England or of the Prince and his advisers. However that may be,
with the exception of the marriage, the King of England has generally
fulfilled his obligations towards the Prince, and has behaved as a
trusty friend. An alliance with the English can be trusted most of
all."[162]
[Footnote 160: _L. and P._, ii., 3163.]
[Footnote 161: _Ven. Cal._, ii., 406.]
[Footnote 162: _Sp. Cal._, ii., 246.]
But the meekest and saintliest monarch could scarce pass unscathed
through the baptism of fraud practised on Henry; and Henry was at no
time saintly or meek. Ferdinand, he complained, induced him to enter
upon the war, and urged the Pope to use his influence with him for
that purpose; he had been at great expense, had assisted Maximilian,
taken Tournay, and reduced France to extremities; and now, when his
enemy was at his feet, Ferdinand talked of truce: he would never trust
any one again.[163] "Had the King of Spain," wrote a Venetian attache,
"kept his promise to the King of England, the latter would never have
made peace with France; and the promises of the Emperor were equally
false, for he had received many thousands of pounds from King (p. 074)
Henry, on condition that he was to be in person at Calais in the month
of May, with a considerable force in the King's pay; but the Emperor
pocketed the money and never came. His failure was the cause of all
that took place, for, as King Henry was deceived in every direction,
he thought fit to take this other course."[164] He discovered that he,
too, could play at the game of making peace behind the backs of his
nominal friends; and when once he had made up his mind, he played the
game with vastly more effect than Maximilian or Ferdinand. It was he
who had been really formidable to Louis, and Louis was therefore
prepared to pay him a higher price than to either of the others. In
February Henry had got wind of his allies' practices with France. In
the same month a nuncio started from Rome to mediate peace between
Henry and Louis;[165] but, before his arrival, informal advances had
probably been made through the Duc de Longueville, a prisoner in
England since the Battle of Spurs.[166] In January Louis' wife, Anne
of Brittany, had died. Louis was fifty-two years old, worn out and
decrepit; but at least half a dozen brides were proposed for his hand.
In March it was rumoured in Rome that he would choose Henry's sister
Mary, the rejected of Charles.[167] But Henry waited till May had
passed, and Maximilian had proclaimed to the world his breach of
promise. Negotiations for the alliance and marriage with Louis then
proceeded apace. Treaties for both were signed in August. Tournay
remained in Henry's hands, Louis increased the pensions paid by
France to England since the Treaty of Etaples, and both kings (p. 075)
bound themselves to render mutual aid against their common
foes.[168]
[Footnote 163: _L. and P._, i., 4864.]
[Footnote 164: _Ven. Cal._, ii., 505.]
[Footnote 165: _Ibid._, ii., 372.]
[Footnote 166: _Ibid._, ii., 505; _L. and P._, i.,
5173, 5278.]
[Footnote 167: _Ven. Cal._, ii., 383.]
[Footnote 168: _L. and P._, i., 5305; _Ven. Cal._,
ii., 482, 483.]
Maximilian and Ferdinand were left out in the cold. Louis not only
broke off his negotiations with them, but prepared to regain Milan and
discussed with Henry the revival of his father's schemes for the
conquest of Castile. Henry was to claim part of that kingdom in right
of his wife, the late Queen's daughter; later on a still more shadowy
title by descent was suggested. As early as 5th October, the Venetian
Government wrote to its ambassador in France, "commending extremely
the most sage proceeding of Louis in exhorting the King of England to
attack Castile".[169] Towards the end of the year it declared that
Louis had wished to attack Spain, and sought to arrange details in an
interview with Henry; but the English King would not consent, delayed
the interview, and refused the six thousand infantry required for the
purpose.[170] But Henry had certainly urged Louis to reconquer
Navarre,[171] and from the tenor of Louis' reply to Henry, late in
November, it would be inferred that the proposed conquest of Castile
also emanated from the English King or his ministers. Louis professed
not to know the laws of succession in Spain, but he was willing to
join the attack, apart from the merits of the case on which it was
based. Whether the suggestion originated in France or in England,
whether Henry eventually refused it or not, its serious discussion
shows how far Henry had travelled in his resentment at the double
dealing of Ferdinand. Carroz complained that he was treated by (p. 076)
the English "like a bull at whom every one throws darts,"[172] and
that Henry himself behaved in a most offensive manner whenever
Ferdinand's name was mentioned. "If," he added, "Ferdinand did not put
a bridle on this young colt," it would afterwards become impossible to
control him. The young colt was, indeed, already meditating a project,
to attain which he, in later years, took the bit in his teeth and
broke loose from control. He was not only betrayed into casting in
Catherine's teeth her father's ill faith, but threatening her with
divorce.[173]
[Footnote 169: _Ven. Cal._, ii., 495.]
[Footnote 170: _Ibid._, ii., 532, 542.]
[Footnote 171: _Sp. Cal._, ii., 192; _L. and P._,
i., 5637.]
[Footnote 172: _Sp. Cal._, ii., 201. A Venetian
reports that the English were so enraged that they
would have killed Carroz had it not been for Henry
(_Ven. Cal._, ii., 248), and Carroz was actually
placed in confinement.]
[Footnote 173: _L. and P._, i., 5718; _Ven. Cal._,
ii., 464.]
Henry had struck back with a vengeance. His blow shivered to fragments
the airy castles which Maximilian and Ferdinand were busy constructing.
Their plans for reviving the empire of Charlemagne, creating a new
kingdom in Italy, inducing Louis to cede Milan and Genoa and assist in
the conquest of Venice, disappeared like empty dreams. The younger
Ferdinand found no provision in Italy; he was compelled to retain his
Austrian inheritance, and thus to impair the power of the future
Charles V.; while the children's grandparents were left sadly
reflecting on means of defence against the Kings of England and
France. The blot on the triumph was Henry's desertion of Sforza,[174]
who, having gratefully acknowledged that to Henry he owed his
restoration of Milan,[175] was now left to the uncovenanted mercies
of Louis. But neither the credit nor discredit is due mainly to (p. 077)
Henry. He had learnt much, but his powers were not yet developed
enough to make him a match for the craft and guile of his rivals. The
consciousness of the fact made him rely more and more upon Wolsey, who
could easily beat both Maximilian and Ferdinand at their own game. He
was not more deceitful than they, but in grasp of detail, in boldness
and assiduity, he was vastly superior. While Ferdinand hawked, and
Maximilian hunted the chamois, Wolsey worked often for twelve hours
together at the cares of the State. Possibly, too, his clerical
profession and the cardinalate which he was soon to hold gave him an
advantage which they did not possess; for, whenever he wanted to obtain
credence for a more than usually monstrous perversion of truth, he
swore "as became a cardinal and on the honour of the cardinalate".[176]
His services were richly rewarded; besides livings, prebends,
deaneries and the Chancellorship of Cambridge University, he received
the Bishoprics of Lincoln and of Tournay, the Archbishopric of York,
and finally, in 1515, Cardinalate. This dignity he had already, in May
of the previous year, sent Polydore Vergil to claim from the Pope;
Vergil's mission was unknown to Henry, to whom the grant of the
Cardinal's hat was to be represented as Leo's own idea.[177]
[Footnote 174: _L. and P._, i., 5319.]
[Footnote 175: _Ibid._, i., 4499, 4921.]
[Footnote 176: _Cf._ _Ven. Cal._, ii., 695; _L. and
P._, ii., 1380. Giustinian complains that Wolsey
"never said what he meant but the reverse of what
he intended to do" (_Ibid._, ii., 3081). This
perhaps is no great crime in a diplomatist.]
[Footnote 177: _L. and P._, i., 5110, 5121. Henry's
request that Leo should make Wolsey a Cardinal was
not made till 12th Aug., 1514 (_L. and P._, i.,
5318), at least six months after Wolsey had
instructed Pace to negotiate for that honour.]
CHAPTER IV. (p. 078)
THE THREE RIVALS.
The edifice which Wolsey had so laboriously built up was, however,
based on no surer foundation than the feeble life of a sickly monarch
already tottering to his grave. In the midst of his preparations for
the conquest of Milan and his negotiations for an attack upon Spain,
Louis XII. died on 1st January, 1515; and the stone which Wolsey had
barely rolled up the hill came down with a rush. The bourgeois Louis
was succeeded by the brilliant, ambitious and warlike Francis I., a
monarch who concealed under the mask of chivalry and the culture of
arts and letters a libertinism beside which the peccadilloes of Henry
or Charles seem virtue itself; whose person was tall and whose
features were described as handsome; but of whom an observer wrote
with unwonted candour that he "looked like the Devil".[178] The first
result of the change was an episode of genuine romance. The old King's
widow, "la reine blanche," was one of the most fascinating women of
the Tudor epoch. "I think," said a Fleming, "never man saw a more
beautiful creature, nor one having so much grace and sweetness."[179]
"He had never seen so beautiful a lady," repeated Maximilian's
ambassador, "her deportment is exquisite, both in conversation (p. 079)
and in dancing, and she is very lovely."[180] "She is very beautiful,"
echoed the staid old Venetian, Pasqualigo, "and has not her match in
England; she is tall, fair, of a light complexion with a colour, and
most affable and graceful"; he was warranted, he said, in describing
her as "a nymph from heaven".[181] A more critical observer of
feminine beauty thought her eyes and eyebrows too light,[182] but, as
an Italian, he may have been biassed in favour of brunettes, and even
he wound up by calling Mary "a Paradise". She was eighteen at the
time; her marriage with a dotard like Louis had shocked public
opinion;[183] and if, as was hinted, the gaieties in which his
youthful bride involved him, hastened the French King's end, there was
some poetic justice in the retribution. She had, as she reminded Henry
herself, only consented to marry the "very aged and sickly" monarch on
condition that, if she survived him, she should be allowed to choose
her second husband herself. And she went on to declare, that
"remembering the great virtue" in him, she had, as Henry himself was
aware, "always been of good mind to my Lord of Suffolk".[184]
[Footnote 178: _Ven. Cal._, ii., 582.]
[Footnote 179: _L. and P._, i., 4953.]
[Footnote 180: _L. and P._, i., 5203.]
[Footnote 181: _Ven. Cal._, ii., 499, 500.]
[Footnote 182: _Ibid._, ii., 511.]
[Footnote 183: _L. and P._, i., 5470.]
[Footnote 184: _Ibid._, ii., 227.]
She was probably fascinated less by Suffolk's virtue than by his bold
and handsome bearing. A bluff Englishman after the King's own heart,
he shared, as none else did, in Henry's love of the joust and tourney,
in his skill with the lance and the sword; he was the Hector of
combat, on foot and on horse, to Henry's Achilles. His father, plain
William Brandon, was Henry of Richmond's standard-bearer on Bosworth
field; and as such he had been singled out and killed in personal (p. 080)
encounter by Richard III. His death gave his son a claim on the
gratitude of Henry VII. and Henry VIII.; and similarity of tastes
secured him rapid promotion at the young King's Court. Created Viscount
Lisle, he served in 1513 as marshal of Henry's army throughout his
campaign in France. With the King there were said to be "two obstinate
men who governed everything";[185] one was Wolsey, the other was Brandon.
In July he was offering his hand to Margaret of Savoy, who was
informed that Brandon was "a second king," and that it would be well
to write him "a kind letter, for it is he who does and undoes".[186]
At Lille, in October, he continued his assault on Margaret as a relief
from the siege of Tournay; Henry favoured his suit, and when Margaret
called Brandon a _larron_ for stealing a ring from her finger, the
King was called in to help Brandon out with his French. Possibly it
was to smooth the course of his wooing that Brandon, early in 1514,
received an extraordinary advancement in rank. There was as yet only
one duke in England, but now Brandon was made Duke of Suffolk, at the
same time that the dukedom of Norfolk was restored to Surrey for his
victory at Flodden. Even a dukedom could barely make the son of a
simple esquire a match for an emperor's daughter, and the suit did not
prosper. Political reasons may have interfered. Suffolk, too, is
accused by the Venetian ambassador of having already had three
wives.[187] This seems to be an exaggeration, but the intricacy (p. 081)
of the Duke's marital relationships, and the facility with which he
renounced them might well have served as a precedent to his master in
later years.
[Footnote 185: _L. and P._, i., 4386.]
[Footnote 186: _Ibid._, i., 4405.]
[Footnote 187: _Ven. Cal._, ii., 464. He had made
contracts with three different ladies, but had not
actually married them all. See below, p. 199 and
_D.N.B._, _s.v._ "Brandon".]
In January, 1515, the Duke was sent to Paris to condole with Francis
on Louis' death, to congratulate him on his own accession, and renew
the league with England. Before he set out, Henry made him promise
that he would not marry Mary until their return. But Suffolk was not
the man to resist the tears of a beautiful woman in trouble, and he
found Mary in sore distress. No sooner was Louis dead than his
lascivious successor became, as Mary said, "importunate with her in
divers matters not to her honour," in suits "the which," wrote Suffolk,
"I and the Queen had rather be out of the world than abide".[188]
Every evening Francis forced his attentions upon the beautiful
widow.[189] Nor was this the only trouble which threatened the lovers.
There were reports that the French would not let Mary go, but marry
her somewhere to serve their own political purposes.[190] Henry, too,
might want to betroth her again to Charles; Maximilian was urging this
course, and telling Margaret that Mary must be recovered for Charles,
even at the point of the sword.[191] Early in January, Wolsey had
written to her, warning her not to make any fresh promise of marriage.
Two friars from England, sent apparently by Suffolk's secret enemies,
told Mary the same tale, that if she returned to England she would
never be suffered to marry the Duke, but made to take Charles for her
husband, "than which," she declared, "I would rather be torn in (p. 082)
pieces".[192] Suffolk tried in vain to soothe her fears. She refused
to listen, and brought him to his knees with the announcement that
unless he would wed her there and then, she would continue to believe
that he had come only to entice her back to England and force her into
marriage with Charles. What was the poor Duke to do, between his
promise to Henry and the pleading of Mary? He did what every other man
with a heart in his breast and warm blood in his veins would have
done, he cast prudence to the winds and secretly married the woman he
loved.
[Footnote 188: _L. and P._, ii., 134, 138, 163.]
[Footnote 189: _Ven. Cal._, ii., 574.]
[Footnote 190: _L. and P._, ii., 70, 85, 114.]
[Footnote 191: _Ven. Cal._, ii., 594; _L. and P._,
ii., 124.]
[Footnote 192: _L. and P._, ii., 80, Suffolk to
Henry VIII. This letter is placed under January in
the _Calendar_, but it was obviously written about
6th March, 1514-15.]
The news could not be long concealed, but unfortunately we have only
Wolsey's account of how it was received by Henry. He took it, wrote
the cardinal to Suffolk, "grievously and displeasantly," not only on
account of the Duke's presumption, but of the breach of his promise to
Henry.[193] "You are," he added, "in the greatest danger man was ever
in;" the council were calling for his ruin. To appease Henry and
enable the King to satisfy his council, Suffolk must induce Francis to
intervene in his favour, to pay Henry two hundred thousand crowns as
Mary's dowry, and to restore the plate and jewels she had received;
the Duke himself was to return the fortune with which Henry had endowed
his sister and pay twenty-four thousand pounds in yearly instalments
for the expenses of her marriage. Francis proved unexpectedly willing;
perhaps his better nature was touched by the lovers' distress. He also
saw that Mary's marriage with Suffolk prevented her being used as (p. 083)
a link to bind Charles to Henry; and he may have thought that a
service to Suffolk would secure him a powerful friend at the English
Court, a calculation that was partly justified by the suspicion under
which Suffolk henceforth laboured, of being too partial to Francis.
Yet it was with heavy hearts that the couple left Paris in April and
wended their way towards Calais. Henry had given no sign; from Calais,
Mary wrote to him saying she would go to a nunnery rather than marry
against her desire.[194] Suffolk threw himself on the King's mercy;
all the council, he said, except Wolsey, were determined to put him to
death.[195] Secretly, against his promise, and without Henry's
consent, he had married the King's sister, an act the temerity of
which no one has since ventured to rival. He saw the executioner's axe
gleam before his eyes, and he trembled.
[Footnote 193: _L. and P._, ii., 224.]
[Footnote 194: _L. and P._, ii., 228.]
[Footnote 195: _Ibid._, ii., 367.]
At Calais, Mary said she would stay until she heard from the King.[196]
His message has not been preserved, but fears were never more strangely
belied than when the pair crossed their Rubicon. So far from any attempt
being made to separate them, their marriage was publicly solemnised
before Henry and all his Court on 13th May, at Greenwich.[197] In
spite of all that happened, wrote the Venetian ambassador, Henry
retained his friendship for Suffolk;[198] and a few months later he
asserted, with some exaggeration, that the Duke's authority was
scarcely less than the King's.[199] He and Mary were indeed (p. 084)
required to return all the endowment, whether in money, plate, jewels
or furniture, that she received on her marriage. But both she and the
Duke had agreed to these terms before their offence.[200] They were
not unreasonable. Henry's money had been laid out for political
purposes which could no longer be served; and Mary did not expect the
splendour, as Duchess of Suffolk, which she had enjoyed as Queen of
France. The only stipulation that looks like a punishment was the bond
to repay the cost of her journey to France; though not only was this
modified later on, but the Duke received numerous grants of land to
help to defray the charge. They were indeed required to live in the
country; but the Duke still came up to joust as of old with Henry on
great occasions, and Mary remained his favourite sister, to whose
issue, in preference to that of Margaret, he left the crown by will.
The vindictive suspicions which afterwards grew to rank luxuriance in
Henry's mind were scarcely budding as yet; his favour to Suffolk and
affection for Mary were proof against the intrigues in his Court. The
contrast was marked between the event and the terrors which Wolsey had
painted; and it is hard to believe that the Cardinal played an
entirely disinterested part in the matter.[201] It was obviously his
cue to exaggerate the King's anger, and to represent to the Duke that
its mitigation was due to the Cardinal's influence; and it is more
than possible that Wolsey found in Suffolk's indiscretion the means of
removing a dangerous rival. The "two obstinate men" who had ruled (p. 085)
in Henry's camp were not likely to remain long united; Wolsey could
hardly approve of any "second king" but himself, especially a "second
king" who had acquired a family bond with the first. The Venetian
ambassador plainly hints that it was through Wolsey that Suffolk lost
favour.[202] In the occasional notices of him during the next few
years it is Wolsey, and not Henry, whom Suffolk is trying to appease;
and we even find the Cardinal secretly warning the King against some
designs of the Duke that probably existed only in his own
imagination.[203]
[Footnote 196: _Ibid._, ii., 367, 226. The letters
relating to this episode in _L. and P._ are often
undated and sometimes misplaced; _e.g._, this last
is placed under March, although from Nos. 295, 296,
319, 327, 331, we find that Mary did not leave
Paris till 16th April.]
[Footnote 197: _L. and P._, ii., 468.]
[Footnote 198: _Ven. Cal._, ii., 618.]
[Footnote 199: _Ven. Cal._, ii., 638.]
[Footnote 200: _L. and P._, ii., 436.]
[Footnote 201: Brewer's view is that Wolsey saved
Suffolk from ruin on this occasion.]
[Footnote 202: _Ven. Cal._, ii., 919.]
[Footnote 203: _L. and P._, ii., 4057, 4308; iii.,
1.]
* * * * *
This episode threw into the shade the main purpose of Suffolk's
embassy to France. It was to renew the treaty concluded the year
before, and apparently also the discussions for war upon Spain.
Francis was ready enough to confirm the treaty, particularly as it
left him free to pursue his designs on Milan. With a similar object he
made terms with the Archduke Charles, who this year assumed the
government of the Netherlands, but was completely under the control of
Chievres, a Frenchman by birth and sympathy, who signed his letters to
Francis "your humble servant and vassal".[204] Charles bound himself
to marry Louis XII.'s daughter Renee, and to give his grandfather
Ferdinand no aid unless he restored Navarre to Jean d'Albret. Thus
safeguarded from attack on his rear, Francis set out for Milan. The
Swiss had locked all the passes they thought practicable; but the
French generals, guided by chamois hunters and overcoming almost
insuperable obstacles, transported their artillery over the Alps (p. 086)
near Embrun; and on 13th September, at Marignano, the great "Battle of
the Giants" laid the whole of Northern Italy at the French King's
feet. At Bologna he met Leo X., whose lifelong endeavour was to be
found on both sides at once, or at least on the side of the bigger
battalions; the Pope recognised Francis's claim to Milan, while
Francis undertook to support the Medici in Florence, and to
countenance Leo's project for securing the Duchy of Urbino to his
nephew Lorenzo.
[Footnote 204: _Sp. Cal_., ii., 246.]
Henry watched with ill-concealed jealousy his rival's victorious
progress; his envy was personal, as well as political. "Francis,"
wrote the Bishop of Worcester in describing the interview between the
French King and the Pope at Bologna, "is tall in stature,
broad-shouldered, oval and handsome in face, very slender in the legs
and much inclined to corpulence."[205] His appearance was the subject
of critical inquiry by Henry himself. On May Day, 1515, Pasqualigo[206]
was summoned to Greenwich by the King, whom he found dressed in green,
"shoes and all," and mounted on a bay Frieslander sent him by the
Marquis of Mantua; his guard were also dressed in green and armed with
bows and arrows for the usual May Day sports. They breakfasted in
green bowers some distance from the palace. "His Majesty," continues
Pasqualigo, "came into our arbor, and addressing me in French, said:
'Talk with me awhile. The King of France, is he as tall as I am?' I
told him there was but little difference. He continued, 'Is he as
stout?' I said he was not; and he then inquired, 'What sort of legs
has he?' I replied 'Spare'. Whereupon he opened the front of his (p. 087)
doublet, and placing his hand on his thigh, said: 'Look here; and
I also have a good calf to my leg'. He then told me he was very fond
of this King of France, and that on more than three occasions he was
very near him with his army, but that he would never allow himself to
be seen, and always retreated, which His Majesty attributed to
deference for King Louis, who did not choose an engagement to take
place." After dinner, by way of showing his prowess, Henry "armed
himself _cap-a-pie_ and ran thirty courses, capsizing his opponent,
horse and all". Two months later, he said to Giustinian: "I am aware
that King Louis, although my brother-in-law, was a bad man. I know not
what this youth may be; he is, however, a Frenchman, nor can I say how
far you should trust him;"[207] and Giustinian says he at once
perceived the great rivalry for glory between the two young kings.
[Footnote 205: _L. and P._, ii., 1281.]
[Footnote 206: _Ibid._, ii., 411; Giustinian,
_Desp._, i., 90; _Ven. Cal._, ii., 624.]
[Footnote 207: _Ven. Cal_., ii., 652]
Henry now complained that Francis had concealed his Italian enterprise
from him, that he was ill-treating English subjects, and interfering
with matters in Scotland. The last was his real and chief ground for
resentment. Francis had no great belief that Henry would keep the
peace, and resist the temptation to attack him, if a suitable
opportunity were to arise. So he had sent the Duke of Albany to
provide Henry with an absorbing disturbance in Scotland. Since the
death of James IV. at Flodden, English influence had, in Margaret's
hands, been largely increased. Henry took upon himself to demand a
voice in Scotland's internal affairs. He claimed the title of
"Protector of Scotland"; and wrote to the Pope asking him to (p. 088)
appoint no Scottish bishops without his consent, and to reduce the
Archbishopric of St. Andrews to its ancient dependence on York.[208]
Many urged him to complete the conquest of Scotland, but this
apparently he refused on the ground that his own sister was really its
ruler and his own infant nephew its king. Margaret, however, as an
Englishwoman, was hated in Scotland, and she destroyed much of her
influence by marrying the Earl of Angus. So the Scots clamoured for
Albany, who had long been resident at the French Court and was heir to
the Scottish throne, should James IV.'s issue fail. His appearance was
the utter discomfiture of the party of England; Margaret was besieged
in Stirling and ultimately forced to give up her children to Albany's
keeping, and seek safety in flight to her brother's dominions.[209]
[Footnote 208: _L. and P._, i., 4483, 4502; ii.,
654.]
[Footnote 209: It was said by the Scots Estates
that she had forfeited her claim to their custody
by her marriage with Angus (_ibid._, ii., 1011).]
Technically, Francis had not broken his treaty with England, but he
had scarcely acted the part of a friend; and if Henry could retaliate
without breaking the peace, he would eagerly seize any opportunity
that offered. The alliance with Ferdinand and Maximilian was renewed,
and a new Holy League formed under Leo's auspices. But Leo soon
afterwards made his peace at Bologna with France. Charles was under
French influence, and Henry's council and people were not prepared for
war. So he refused, says Giustinian, Ferdinand's invitations to join
in an invasion of France. He did so from no love of Francis, and it
was probably Wolsey's ingenuity which suggested the not very scrupulous
means of gratifying Henry's wish for revenge. Maximilian was (p. 089)
still pursuing his endless quarrel with Venice; and the seizure of
Milan by the French and Venetian allies was a severe blow to
Maximilian himself, to the Swiss, and to their protege, Sforza. Wolsey
now sought to animate them all for an attempt to recover the duchy,
and Sforza promised him 10,000 ducats a year from the date of his
restoration. There was nothing but the spirit of his treaty with
France to prevent Henry spending his money as he thought fit; and it
was determined to hire 20,000 Swiss mercenaries to serve under the
Emperor in order to conquer Milan and revenge Marignano.[210] The
negotiation was one of great delicacy; not only was secrecy absolutely
essential, but the money must be carefully kept out of Maximilian's
reach. "Whenever," wrote Pace, "the King's money passed where the
Emperor was, he would always get some portion of it by force or false
promises of restitution."[211] The accusation was justified by
Maximilian's order to Margaret, his daughter, to seize Henry's
treasure as soon as he heard it was on the way to the Swiss.[212] "The
Emperor," said Julius II., "is light and inconstant, always begging
for other men's money, which he wastes in hunting the chamois."[213]
[Footnote 210: _L. and P._, ii., 1065.]
[Footnote 211: _Ibid._, ii., 1817.]
[Footnote 212: _Ibid._, ii., 1231.]
[Footnote 213: _Ibid._, ii., 1877.]
The envoy selected for this difficult mission was Richard Pace,
scholar and author, and friend of Erasmus and More. He had been in
Bainbridge's service at Rome, was then transferred to that of Wolsey
and Henry, and as the King's secretary, was afterwards thought to be
treading too close on the Cardinal's heels. He set out in October, and
arrived in Zurich just in time to prevent the Swiss from coming (p. 090)
to terms with Francis. Before winter had ended the plans for invasion
were settled. Maximilian came down with the snows from the mountains
in March; on the 23rd he crossed the Adda;[214] on the 25th he was
within nine miles of Milan, and almost in sight of the army of France.
On the 26th he turned and fled without striking a blow. Back he went
over the Adda, over the Oglio, up into Tyrol, leaving the French and
Venetians in secure possession of Northern Italy. A year later they
had recovered for Venice the last of the places of which it had been
robbed by the League of Cambrai.
[Footnote 214: _L. and P._, ii., 1697, 1699, 1721,
1729, 1736, 1754, 1831, 2011, 2034, 2114.]
Maximilian retreated, said Pace, voluntarily and shamefully, and was
now so degraded that it signified little whether he was a friend or an
enemy.[215] The cause of his ignominious flight still remains a
mystery; countless excuses were made by Maximilian and his friends. He
had heard that France and England had come to terms; 6,000 of the
Swiss infantry deserted to the French on the eve of the battle.
Ladislaus of Hungary had died, leaving him guardian of his son, and he
must go to arrange matters there. He had no money to pay his troops.
The last has an appearance of verisimilitude. Money was at the bottom
of all his difficulties, and drove him to the most ignominious shifts.
He had served as a private in Henry's army for 100 crowns a day. His
councillors robbed him; on one occasion he had not money to pay for
his dinner;[216] on another he sent down to Pace, who was ill in bed,
and extorted a loan by force. He had apparently seized 30,000 (p. 091)
crowns of Henry's pay for the Swiss;[217] the Fuggers, Welzers and
Frescobaldi, were also accused of failing to keep their engagements,
and only the first month's pay had been received by the Swiss when
they reached Milan. On the Emperor's retreat the wretched Pace was
seized by the Swiss and kept in prison as security for the remainder.[218]
His task had been rendered all the more difficult by the folly of
Wingfield, ambassador at Maximilian's Court, who, said Pace, "took the
Emperor for a god and believed that all his deeds and thoughts
proceeded _ex Spiritu Sancto_".[219] There was no love lost between
them; the lively Pace nicknamed his colleague "Summer shall be green,"
in illusion perhaps to Wingfield's unending platitudes, or to his
limitless belief in the Emperor's integrity and wisdom.[220] Wingfield
opened Pace's letters and discovered the gibe, which he parried by
avowing that he had never known the time when summer was not
green.[221] On another occasion he forged Pace's signature, with a
view of obtaining funds for Maximilian;[222] and he had the hardihood
to protest against Pace's appointment as Henry's secretary. At last
his conduct brought down a stinging rebuke from Henry;[223] but the
King's long-suffering was not yet exhausted, and Wingfield continued
as ambassador to the Emperors Court.
[Footnote 215: _Ibid._, ii., 1877.]
[Footnote 216: _Ibid._, ii., 2152, 1892, 1896,
2034, 2035.]
[Footnote 217: _L. and P._, ii., 1231, 1792, 1854.]
[Footnote 218: _Ibid._, ii., 1877.]
[Footnote 219: _Ibid._, ii., 1817.]
[Footnote 220: _Ibid._, ii., 1566, 1567.]
[Footnote 221: _Ibid._, ii., 1775.]
[Footnote 222: _Ibid._, ii., 1813.]
[Footnote 223: _Ibid._, ii., 2177.]
* * * * *
The failure of the Milan expedition taught Wolsey and Henry a bitter
but salutary lesson. It was their first attempt to intervene in a
sphere of action so distant from English shores and so remote (p. 092)
from English interests as the affairs of Italian States. Complaints in
England were loud against the waste of money; the sagacious Tunstall
wrote that he did not see why Henry should bind himself to maintain
other men's causes.[224] All the grandees, wrote Giustinian, were
opposed to Wolsey's policy, and its adoption was followed by what
Giustinian called a change of ministry in England.[225] Warham
relinquished the burdens of the Chancellorship which he had long
unwillingly borne; Fox sought to atone for twenty-eight years' neglect
of his diocese by spending in it the rest of his days.[226] Wolsey
succeeded Warham as Chancellor, and Ruthal, who "sang treble to
Wolsey's bass,"[227] became Lord Privy Seal in place of Fox. Suffolk
was out of favour, and the neglect of his and Fox's advice was,
according to the Venetian, resented by the people, who murmured
against the taxes which Wolsey's intervention in foreign affairs
involved.
[Footnote 224: _L. and P._, ii., 2270.]
[Footnote 225: _Ibid._, ii., 1814, 2487, 2500.]
[Footnote 226: _Ven. Cal._, ii., 750, 798, 801; _L.
and P._, ii., 2183.]
[Footnote 227: _L. and P._, ii., 2205.]
But Wolsey still hoped that bribes would keep Maximilian faithful to
England and induce him to counteract the French influences with which
his grandson Charles was surrounded. Ferdinand had died in January,
1516,[228] having, said the English envoy at his Court, wilfully
shortened his life by hunting and hawking in all weathers, and following
the advice of his falconers rather than that of his physicians.
Charles thus succeeded to Castile, Aragon and Naples;[229] but (p. 093)
Naples was seriously threatened by the failure of Maximilian's
expedition and the omnipotence of Francis in Italy. "The Pope is
French," wrote an English diplomatist, "and everything from Rome to
Calais."[230] To save Naples, Charles, in July, 1516, entered into the
humiliating Treaty of Noyon with France.[231] He bound himself to
marry Francis's infant daughter, Charlotte, to do justice to Jean
d'Albret in the matter of Navarre, and to surrender Naples, Navarre,
and Artois, if he failed to keep his engagement. Such a treaty was not
likely to stand; but, for the time, it was a great feather in
Francis's cap, and a further step towards the isolation of England. It
was the work of Charles's Gallicised ministry, and Maximilian
professed the utmost disgust at their doings. He was eager to come
down to the Netherlands with a view to breaking the Treaty of Noyon
and removing his grandson's advisers, but of course he must have money
from England to pay his expenses. The money accordingly came from the
apparently bottomless English purse;[232] and in January, 1517, the
Emperor marched down to the Netherlands, breathing, in his despatches
to Henry, threatenings and slaughter against Charles's misleaders. His
descent on Flanders eclipsed his march on Milan. "Mon fils," he said
to Charles, "vous allez tromper les Francais, et moi, je vais tromper
les Anglais."[233] So far from breaking the Treaty of Noyon, he (p. 094)
joined it himself, and at Brussels solemnly swore to observe its
provisions. He probably thought he had touched the bottom of Henry's
purse, and that it was time to dip into Francis's. Seventy-five
thousand crowns was his price for betraying Henry.[234]
[Footnote 228: On 23rd Jan. (_L. and P._, ii.,
1541, 1610). Brewer in his introduction to vol. ii.
of the _L. and P._ says "in February".]
[Footnote 229: His mother Juana was rightfully
Queen, but she was regarded as mad; she thought her
husband, the Archduke Philip, might come to life
again, and carried him about in a coffin with her
wherever she went (_Ven. Cal._, ii., 564).]
[Footnote 230: _L. and P._, ii., 2930.]
[Footnote 231: _L. and P._, ii., 2303, 2327, 2387;
_Ven. Cal._, ii., 769, 773.]
[Footnote 232: _L. and P._, ii., 2406, 2573, 2626,
2702.]
[Footnote 233: _Ibid._, ii., 2930.]
[Footnote 234: _L. and P._, ii., 2891.]
In conveying the news to Wolsey, Tunstall begged him to urge Henry "to
refrain from his first passions" and "to draw his foot out of the
affair as gently as if he perceived it not, giving good words for good
words which they yet give us, thinking our heads to be so gross that
we perceive not their abuses".[235] Their persistent advances to
Charles had, he thought, done them more harm than good; let the King
shut his purse in time, and he would soon have Charles and the Emperor
again at his feet.[236] Tunstall was ably seconded by Dr. William
Knight, who thought it would be foolish for England to attempt to undo
the Treaty of Noyon; it contained within itself the seeds of its own
dissolution. Charles would not wait to marry Francis's daughter, and
then the breach would come.[237] Henry and Wolsey had the good sense
to act on this sound advice. Maximilian, Francis and Charles formed at
Cambrai a fresh league for the partition of Italy,[238] but they were
soon at enmity and too much involved with their own affairs to think
of the conquest of others. Disaffection was rife in Spain, where a
party wished Ferdinand, Charles's brother, to be King.[239] If Charles
was to retain his Spanish kingdoms, he must visit them at once. He
could not go unless England provided the means. His request for (p. 095)
a loan was graciously accorded and his ambassadors were treated with
magnificent courtesy.[240] "One day," says Chieregati,[241] the papal
envoy in England, "the King sent for these ambassadors, and kept them
to dine with him privately in his chamber with the Queen, a very
unusual proceeding. After dinner he took to singing and playing on
every musical instrument, and exhibited a part of his very excellent
endowments. At length he commenced dancing," and, continues another
narrator, "doing marvellous things, both in dancing and jumping,
proving himself, as he is in truth, indefatigable." On another day
there was "a most stately joust." Henry was magnificently attired in
"cloth of silver with a raised pile, and wrought throughout with
emblematic letters". When he had made the usual display in the lists,
the Duke of Suffolk entered from the other end, with well-nigh equal
array and pomp. He was accompanied by fourteen other jousters. "The
King wanted to joust with all of them; but this was forbidden by the
council, which, moreover, decided that each jouster was to run six
courses and no more, so that the entertainment might be ended on that
day.... The competitor assigned to the King was the Duke of Suffolk;
and they bore themselves so bravely that the spectators fancied
themselves witnessing a joust between Hector and Achilles." "They
tilted," says Sagudino, "eight courses, both shivering their lances at
every time, to the great applause of the spectators." Chieregati
continues: "On arriving in the lists the King presented himself before
the Queen and the ladies, making a thousand jumps in the air, and (p. 096)
after tiring one horse, he entered the tent and mounted another...
doing this constantly, and reappearing in the lists until the end of
the jousts". Dinner was then served, amid a scene of unparalleled
splendour, and Chieregati avers that the "guests remained at table for
seven hours by the clock". The display of costume on the King's part
was equally varied and gorgeous. On one occasion he wore "stiff
brocade in the Hungarian fashion," on another, he "was dressed in
white damask in the Turkish fashion, the above-mentioned robe all
embroidered with roses, made of rubies and diamonds"; on a third, he
"wore royal robes down to the ground, of gold brocade lined with
ermine"; while "all the rest of the Court glittered with jewels and
gold and silver, the pomp being unprecedented".
[Footnote 235: _Ibid._, ii., 2923, 2940.]
[Footnote 236: _Ibid._, ii., 2910.]
[Footnote 237: _Ibid._, ii., 2930.]
[Footnote 238: _Ibid._, ii., 2632, 3008; _Monumenta
Habsburgica_, ii., 37.]
[Footnote 239: _L. and P._, ii., 3076, 3077, 3081.]
[Footnote 240: _L. and P._, ii., 3402, 3439-41.]
[Footnote 241: _Ven. Cal._, ii., 918; _L. and P._,
ii., 3455, 3462.]
All this riot of wealth would no doubt impress the impecunious
Charles. In September he landed in Spain, so destitute that he was
glad to accept the offer of a hobby from the English ambassador.[242]
At the first meeting of his Cortes, they demanded that he should marry
at once, and not wait for Francis's daughter; the bride his subjects
desired was the daughter of the King of Portugal.[243] They were no
more willing to part with Navarre; and Charles was forced to make to
Francis the feeble excuse that he was not aware, when he was in the
Netherlands, of his true title to Navarre, but had learnt it since his
arrival in Spain; he also declined the personal interview to which
Francis invited him.[244] A rupture between Francis and Charles was
only a question of time; and, to prepare for it, both were anxious (p. 097)
for England's alliance. Throughout the autumn of 1517 and spring of
1518, France and England were feeling their way towards friendship.
Albany had left Scotland, so that source of irritation was gone. Henry
had now a daughter, Mary, and Francis a son. "I will unite them," said
Wolsey;[245] and in October, 1518, not only was a treaty of marriage
and alliance signed between England and France, but a general peace
for Europe. Leo X. sent Campeggio with blessings of peace from the
Vicar of Christ, though he was kept chafing at Calais for three
months, till he could bring with him Leo's appointment of Wolsey as
legate and the deposition of Wolsey's enemy, Hadrian, from the
Bishopric of Bath and Wells.[246] The ceremonies exceeded in splendour
even those of the year before. They included, says Giustinian, a "most
sumptuous supper" at Wolsey's house, "the like of which, I fancy, was
never given by Cleopatra or Caligula; the whole banqueting hall being
so decorated with huge vases of gold and silver, that I fancied myself
in the tower of Chosroes,[247] when that monarch caused Divine honours
to be paid him. After supper... twelve male and twelve female dancers
made their appearance in the richest and most sumptuous array possible,
being all dressed alike.... They were disguised in one suit of fine
green satin, all over covered with cloth of gold, undertied together
with laces of gold, and had masking hoods on their heads; the ladies
had tires made of braids of damask gold, with long hairs of white
gold. All these maskers danced at one time, and after they had danced
they put off their visors, and then they were all known.... The (p. 098)
two leaders were the King and the Queen Dowager of France, and all the
others were lords and ladies."[248] These festivities were followed by
the formal ratification of peace.[249] Approval of it was general, and
the old councillors who had been alienated by Wolsey's Milan expedition,
hastened to applaud. "It was the best deed," wrote Fox to Wolsey,
"that ever was done for England, and, next to the King, the praise of
it is due to you."[250] Once more the wheel had come round, and the
stone of Sisyphus was lodged more secure than before some way up the
side of the hill.
[Footnote 242: _L. and P._, ii., 3705.]
[Footnote 243: _Ibid._, ii., 4022.]
[Footnote 244: _Ibid._, ii., 4164, 4188.]
[Footnote 245: _L. and P._, ii., 4047.]
[Footnote 246: _Ibid._, ii., 4348.]
[Footnote 247: Chosroes I. (Nushirvan) of Persia.]
[Footnote 248: _Ven. Cal._, ii., 1085, 1088; _cf._
Shakespeare, _Henry VIII_.]
[Footnote 249: _L. and P._, ii., 4468, 4483, 4564,
4669.]
[Footnote 250: _Ibid._, ii., 4540.]
* * * * *
This general peace, which closed the wars begun ten years before by
the League of Cambrai, was not entirely due to a universal desire to
beat swords into ploughshares or to even turn them against the Turk.
That was the everlasting pretence, but eighteen months before,
Maximilian had suffered a stroke of apoplexy; men, said Giustinian,
commenting on the fact, did not usually survive such strokes a year,
and rivals were preparing to enter the lists for the Empire.
Maximilian himself, faithful to the end to his guiding principle,
found a last inspiration in the idea of disposing of his succession
for ready money. He was writing to Charles that it was useless to
expect the Empire unless he would spend at least as much as the
French.[251] "It would be lamentable," he said, "if we should now lose
all through some pitiful omission or penurious neglect;" and Francis
was "going about covertly and laying many baits,"[252] to attain (p. 099)
the imperial crown. To Henry himself Maximilian had more than once
offered the prize, and Pace had declared that the offer was only
another design for extracting Henry's gold "for the electors would
never allow the crown to go out of their nation".[253] The Emperor had
first proposed it while serving under Henry's banners in France.[254]
He renewed the suggestion in 1516, inviting Henry to meet him at
Coire. The brothers in arms were thence to cross the Alps to Milan,
where the Emperor would invest the English King with the duchy; he
would then take him on to Rome, resign the Empire himself, and have
Henry crowned. Not that Maximilian desired to forsake all earthly
authority; he sought to combine a spiritual with a temporal glory; he
was to lay down the imperial crown and place on his brows the papal
tiara.[255] Nothing was too fantastic for the Emperor Maximilian; the
man who could not wrest a few towns from Venice was always deluding
himself with the hope of leading victorious hosts to the seat of the
Turkish Empire and the Holy City of Christendom; the sovereign whose
main incentive in life was gold, informed his daughter that he
intended to get himself canonised, and that after his death she would
have to adore him. He died at Welz on 12th January, 1519, neither Pope
nor saint, with Jerusalem still in the hands of the Turk, and the
succession to the Empire still undecided.
[Footnote 251: _Ibid._, ii., 4172.]
[Footnote 252: _L. and P._, ii., 4159.]
[Footnote 253: _Ibid._, ii., 1923.]
[Footnote 254: _Ibid._, ii., 1398, 1878, 1902,
2218, 2911, 4257.]
[Footnote 255: _Cf._ W. Boehm, _Hat Kaiser
Maximilian I. im Jahre 1511 Papst werden wollen?_
1873.]
The contest now broke out in earnest, and the electors prepared (p. 100)
to garner their harvest of gold. The price of a vote was a hundredfold
more than the most corrupt parliamentary elector could conceive in his
wildest dreams of avarice. There were only seven electors and the prize
was the greatest on earth. Francis I. said he was ready to spend
3,000,000 crowns, and Charles could not afford to lag far behind.[256]
The Margrave of Brandenburg, "the father of all greediness," as the
Austrians called him, was particularly influential because his brother,
the Archbishop of Mainz, was also an elector and he required an
especially exorbitant bribe. He was ambitious as well as covetous, and
the rivals endeavoured to satisfy his ambitions with matrimonial
prizes. He was promised Ferdinand's widow, Germaine de Foix; Francis
sought to parry this blow by offering to the Margrave's son the French
Princess Renee; Charles bid higher by offering his sister Catherine.[257]
Francis relied much on his personal graces, the military renown he had
won by the conquest of Northern Italy, and the assistance of Leo. With
the Pope he concluded a fresh treaty that year for the conquest of
Ferrara, the extension of the papal States, and the settlement of
Naples on Francis's second son, on condition that it was meanwhile to
be administered by papal legates,[258] and that its king was to
abstain from all interference in spiritual matters. Charles, on the
other hand, owed his advantages to his position and not to his person.
Cold, reserved and formal, he possessed none of the physical or
intellectual graces of Francis I. and Henry VIII. He excelled in (p. 101)
no sport, was unpleasant in features and repellent in manners. No
gleam of magnanimity or chivalry lightened his character, no deeds in
war or statecraft yet sounded his fame. He was none the less heir of
the Austrian House, which for generations had worn the imperial crown;
as such, too, he was a German prince, and the Germanic constitution
forbade any other the sovereignty of the Holy Roman Empire. Against
this was the fact that his enormous dominions, including Naples and
Spain, would preclude his continued residence in Germany and might
threaten the liberties of the German people.
[Footnote 256: For details of the sums promised to
the various German princes see _L. and P._, iii.,
36, etc.; it has been said that there was really
little or no bribery at this election.]
[Footnote 257: _Ven. Cal._, ii., 1165, 1187; _L.
and P._, ii., 4159; iii., 130.]
[Footnote 258: _Sp. Cal._, ii., 267.]
But was there no third candidate? Leo at heart regarded the election
of either as an absolute evil.[259] He had always dreaded Maximilian's
claims to the temporal power of the Church, though Maximilian held not
a foot of Italian soil. How much more would he dread those claims in
the hands of Francis or Charles! One threatened the papal States from
Milan, and the other from Naples. Of the two, he feared Francis the
less;[260] for the union of Naples with the Empire had been such a
terror to the Popes, that before granting the investiture of that
kingdom, they bound its king by oath not to compete for the Empire.[261]
But a third candidate would offer an escape from between the upper and
the nether mill-stone; and Leo suggested at one time Charles's brother
Ferdinand,[262] at another a German elector. Precisely the same
recommendations had been secretly made by Henry VIII. In public he
followed the course he commended to Leo; he advocated the claims (p. 102)
of both Charles and Francis, when asked so to do, but sent trusty
envoys with his testimonials to explain that no credence was to be
given them.[263] He told the French King that he favoured the election
of Francis, and the Spanish King the election of Charles, but like Leo
he desired in truth the election of neither. Why should he not come
forward himself? His dominions were not so extensive that, when
combined with the imperial dignity, they would threaten to dominate
Europe; and his election might seem to provide a useful check in the
balance of power. In March he had already told Francis that his claims
were favoured by some of the electors, though he professed a wish to
promote the French King's pretensions. In May, Pace was sent to
Germany with secret instructions to endeavour to balance the parties
and force the electors into a deadlock, from which the only escape
would be the election of a third candidate, either Henry himself or
some German prince. It is difficult to believe that Henry really
thought his election possible or was seriously pushing his claim. He
had repeatedly declined Maximilian's offers; he had been as often
warned by trusty advisers that no non-German prince stood a chance of
election; he had expressed his content with his own islands, which,
Tunstall told him with truth, were an Empire worth more than the
barren imperial crown.[264] Pace went far too late to secure a party
for Henry, and, what was even more fatal, he went without the
persuasive of money. Norfolk told Giustinian, after Pace's departure,
that the election would fall on a German prince, and such, said the
Venetian, was the universal belief and desire in England.[265] (p. 103)
After the election, Leo expressed his "regret that Henry gave no
attention to a project which would have made him a near, instead of a
distant, neighbour of the papal States". Under the circumstances, it
seems more probable that the first alternative in Pace's instructions
no more represented a settled design in Henry's mind than his
often-professed intention of conquering France, and that the real
purport of his mission was to promote the election of the Duke of
Saxony or another German prince.[266]
[Footnote 259: _L. and P._, iii., 149.]
[Footnote 260: _Ven. Cal._, ii., 1227.]
[Footnote 261: _Ibid._, ii., 1246.]
[Footnote 262: _Ibid._, ii., 1163.]
[Footnote 263: _L. and P._, iii., 137.]
[Footnote 264: _Ibid._, ii., 2911.]
[Footnote 265: _Ven. Cal._, ii., 1220.]
[Footnote 266: _L. and P._, ii., 241.]
Whether that was its object or not the mission was foredoomed to
failure. The conclusion was never really in doubt. Electors might
trouble the waters in order to fish with more success. They might
pretend to Francis that if he was free with his money he might be
elected, and to Charles that unless he was free with his money he
would not, but no sufficient reason had been shown why they should
violate national prejudices, the laws of the Empire, and prescriptive
hereditary right, in order to place Henry or Francis instead of a
German upon the imperial throne. Neither people nor princes nor
barons, wrote Leo's envoys, would permit the election of the Most
Christian King;[267] and even if the electors wished to elect him, it
was not in their power to do so. The whole of the nation, said Pace,
was in arms and furious for Charles; and had Henry been elected, they
would in their indignation have killed Pace and all his servants.[268]
The voice of the German people spoke in no uncertain tones; they would
have Charles and no other to be their ruler. Leo himself saw the (p. 104)
futility of resistance, and making a virtue of necessity, he sent
Charles an absolution from his oath as King of Naples. As soon as it
arrived, the electors unanimously declared Charles their Emperor on
28th June.[269]
[Footnote 267: _Ven. Cal._, ii., 1227.]
[Footnote 268: _L. and P._, iii., 326.]
[Footnote 269: _L. and P._, iii., 339.]
Thus was completed the shuffling of the cards for the struggle which
lasted till Henry's death. Francis had now succeeded to Louis, Charles
to both his grandfathers, and Henry at twenty-eight was the _doyen_ of
the princes of Europe. He was two years older than Francis and eight
years older than Charles. Europe had passed under the rule of youthful
triumvirs whose rivalry troubled its peace and guided its destinies
for nearly thirty years. The youngest of all was the greatest in
power. His dominions, it is true, were disjointed, and funds were
often to seek, but these defects have been overrated. It was neither
of these which proved his greatest embarrassment. It was a cloud in
Germany, as yet no bigger than a man's hand, but soon to darken the
face of Europe. Ferdinand and Maximilian had at times been dangerous;
Charles wielded the power of both. He ruled over Castile and Aragon,
the Netherlands and Naples, Burgundy and Austria; he could command the
finest military forces in Europe; the infantry of Spain, the science
of Italy, the lance-knights of Germany, for which Ferdinand sighed,
were at his disposal; and the wealth of the Indies was poured out at
his feet. He bestrode the narrow world like a Colossus, and the only
hope of lesser men lay in the maintenance of Francis's power. Were
that to fail, Charles would become arbiter of Christendom, Italy a
Spanish kingdom, and the Pope little more than the Emperor's (p. 105)
chaplain. "Great masters," said Tunstall, with reference to a papal
brief urged by Charles in excuse for his action in 1517, "could get
great clerks to say what they liked."[270] The mastery of Charles in
1517 was but the shadow of what it became ten years later; and if
under its dominance "the great clerk" were called upon to decide
between "the great master" and Henry, it was obvious already that all
Henry's services to the Papacy would count for nothing.
[Footnote 270: _L. and P._, ii., 3054.]
* * * * *
For the present, those services were to be remembered. They were not,
indeed, inconsiderable. It would be absurd to maintain that, since his
accession, Henry had been actuated by respect for the Papacy more than
by another motive; but it is indisputable that that motive had entered
more largely into his conduct than into that of any other monarch.
James IV. and Louis had been excommunicated, Maximilian had obstinately
countenanced a schismatic council and wished to arrogate to himself
the Pope's temporal power. Ferdinand's zeal for his house had eaten
him up and left little room for less selfish impulses; his anxiety for
war with the Moor or the Turk was but a cloak; and the value of his
frequent demands for a Reformation may be gauged by his opinion that
never was there more need for the Inquisition, and by his anger with
Leo for refusing the Inquisitors the preferments he asked.[271] From
hypocrisy like Ferdinand's Henry was, in his early years, singularly
free, and the devotion to the Holy See, which he inherited, was of a
more than conventional type. "He is very religious," wrote (p. 106)
Giustinian, "and hears three masses daily when he hunts, and sometimes
five on other days. He hears the office every day in the Queen's chamber,
that is to say, vesper and compline."[272] The best theologians and
doctors in his kingdom were regularly required to preach at his Court,
when their fee for each sermon was equivalent to ten or twelve pounds.
He was generous in his almsgiving, and his usual offering on Sundays
and saints' days was six shillings and eightpence or, in modern
currency, nearly four pounds; often it was double that amount, and
there were special offerings besides, such as the twenty shillings he
sent every year to the shrine of St. Thomas at Canterbury. In January,
1511, the gentlemen of the King's chapel were paid what would now be
seventy-five pounds for praying for the Queen's safe delivery, and
similar sums were no doubt paid on other occasions.[273] In 1513,
Catherine thought Henry's success was all due to his zeal for
religion,[274] and a year or two later Erasmus wrote that Henry's
Court was an example to all Christendom for learning and piety.[275]
[Footnote 271: _Sp. Cal._, ii., 80, 89, 167, 175.]
[Footnote 272: _Ven. Cal._, ii., 1287; Giustinian,
_Desp._, ii., App., 309; _L. and P._, iii., 402.]
[Footnote 273: These details are from the King's
"Book of Payments" calendared at the end of _L. and
P._, vol. ii.]
[Footnote 274: _L. and P._, i., 4417.]
[Footnote 275: _Ibid._, ii., 4115.]
Piety went hand in hand with a filial respect for the head of the
Church. Not once in the ten years is there to be found any expression
from Henry of contempt for the Pope, whether he was Julius II. or Leo
X. There had been no occasion on which Pope and King had been brought
into conflict, and almost throughout they had acted in perfect harmony.
It was the siege of Julius by Louis that drew Henry from his peaceful
policy to intervene as the champion of the Papal See, and it was (p. 107)
as the executor of papal censures that he made war on France.[276] If
he had ulterior views on that kingdom, he could plead the justification
of a brief, drawn up if not published, by Julius II., investing him
with the French crown.[277] A papal envoy came to urge peace in 1514,
and a Pope claimed first to have suggested the marriage between Mary
and Louis.[278] The Milan expedition of 1516 was made under cover of a
new Holy League concluded in the spring of the previous year, and the
peace of 1518 was made with the full approval and blessings of Leo.
Henry's devotion had been often acknowledged in words, and twice by
tangible tokens of gratitude, in the gift of the golden rose in 1510
and of the sword and cap in 1513.[279] But did not his services merit
some more signal mark of favour? If Ferdinand was "Catholic," and
Louis "Most Christian," might not some title be found for a genuine
friend? And, as early as 1515, Henry was pressing the Pope for "some
title as protector of the Holy See".[280] Various names were suggested,
"King Apostolic," "King Orthodox," and others; and in January, 1516,
we find the first mention of "Fidei Defensor".[281] But the prize was
to be won by services more appropriate to the title than even ten
years' maintenance of the Pope's temporal interests. His championship
of the Holy See had been the most unselfish part of Henry's policy
since he came to the throne; and his whole conduct had been an
example, which others were slow to follow, and which Henry himself was
soon to neglect.
[Footnote 276: _L. and P._, i., 3876, 4283.]
[Footnote 277: _Arch. R. Soc. Rom._, xix., 3, 4.]
[Footnote 278: _L. and P._, i., 5543.]
[Footnote 279: _Ven. Cal._, ii., 53-54, 361; _L.
and P._, i., 976, 4621.]
[Footnote 280: _Ibid._, ii., 887, 967.]
[Footnote 281: _Ibid._, ii., 1456, 1928; iii.,
1369.]
CHAPTER V. (p. 108)
KING AND CARDINAL.
"Nothing," wrote Giustinian of Wolsey in 1519, "pleases him more than
to be called the arbiter of Christendom."[282] Continental statesmen
were inclined to ridicule and resent the Cardinal's claim. But the
title hardly exaggerates the part which the English minister was
enabled to play during the next few years by the rivalry of Charles
and Francis, and by the apparently even balance of their powers. The
position which England held in the councils of Europe in 1519 was a
marvellous advance upon that which it had occupied in 1509. The first
ten years of Henry's reign had been a period of fluctuating, but
continual, progress. The campaign of 1513 had vindicated England's
military prowess, and had made it possible for Wolsey, at the peace of
the following year, to place his country on a level with France and
Spain and the Empire. Francis's conquest of Milan, and the haste with
which Maximilian, Leo and Charles sought to make terms with the
victor, caused a temporary isolation of England and a consequent
decline in her influence. But the arrangements made between Charles
and Francis contained, in themselves, as acute English diplomatists
saw, the seeds of future disruption; and, in 1518, Wolsey was able (p. 109)
so to play off these mutual jealousies as to reassert England's
position. He imposed a general peace, or rather a truce, which raised
England even higher than the treaties of 1514 had done, and made her
appear as the conservator of the peace of Europe. England had almost
usurped the place of the Pope as mediator between rival Christian
princes.[283]
[Footnote 282: _L. and P._, iii., 125; Giustinian,
_Desp._, ii., 256.]
[Footnote 283: _L. and P._, iii., 125. Men were
shocked when the Pope was styled "comes" instead of
"princeps confederationis" of 1518. "The chief
author of these proceedings," says Giustinian, "is
Wolsey, whose sole aim is to procure incense for
his king and himself" (_Desp._ ii., 256).]
These brilliant results were achieved with the aid of very moderate
military forces and an only respectable navy. They were due partly to
the lavish expenditure of Henry's treasures, partly to the extravagant
faith of other princes in the extent of England's wealth, but mainly
to the genius for diplomacy displayed by the great English Cardinal.
Wolsey had now reached the zenith of his power; and the growth of his
sense of his own importance is graphically described by the Venetian
ambassador. When Giustinian first arrived in England, Wolsey used to
say, "His Majesty will do so and so". Subsequently, by degrees,
forgetting himself, he commenced saying, "We shall do so and so". In
1519 he had reached such a pitch that he used to say, "I shall do so
and so".[284] Fox had been called by Badoer "a second King," but
Wolsey was now "the King himself".[285] "We have to deal," said Fox,
"with the Cardinal, who is not Cardinal, but King; and no one in the
realm dares attempt aught in opposition to his interests."[286] On
another occasion Giustinian remarks: "This Cardinal is King, nor does
His Majesty depart in the least from the opinion and counsel of (p. 110)
his lordship".[287] Sir Thomas More, in describing the negotiations
for the peace of 1518, reports that only after Wolsey had concluded a
point did he tell the council, "so that even the King hardly knows in
what state matters are".[288] A month or two later there was a curious
dispute between the Earl of Worcester and West, Bishop of Ely, who
were sent to convey the Treaty of London to Francis. Worcester, as a
layman, was a partisan of the King, West of the Cardinal. Worcester
insisted that their detailed letters should be addressed to Henry, and
only general ones to Wolsey. West refused; the important letters, he
thought, should go to the Cardinal, the formal ones to the King; and,
eventually, identical despatches were sent to both.[289] In
negotiations with England, Giustinian told his Government, "if it were
necessary to neglect either King or Cardinal, it would be better to
pass over the King; he would therefore make the proposal to both, but
to the Cardinal first, _lest he should resent the precedence conceded
to the King_".[290] The popular charge against Wolsey, repeated by
Shakespeare, of having written _Ego et rex meus_, though true in
fact,[291] is false in intention, because no Latin scholar could put
the words in any other order; but the Cardinal's mental attitude is
faithfully represented in the meaning which the familiar phrase was
supposed to convey.
[Footnote 284: _Ven._ Cal., ii. 1287.]
[Footnote 285: _L. and P._, ii., 1380.]
[Footnote 286: _Ibid._, ii., 3558.]
[Footnote 287: _Cf. Ven. Cal._, ii., 671, 875,
894.]
[Footnote 288: _L. and P._, ii., 4438.]
[Footnote 289: _Ibid._, ii., 4664. On other
occasions Wolsey took it upon himself to open
letters addressed to the King (_Ibid._, iii.,
2126).]
[Footnote 290: _Ven. Cal._, ii., 1215.]
[Footnote 291: It will be found in _Ven. Cal._,
iii., p. 43; Shakespeare, _Henry VIII._, Act III.,
Sc. ii.]
His arrogance does not rest merely on the testimony of personal (p. 111)
enemies like the historian, Polydore Vergil, and the poet Skelton, or
of chroniclers like Hall, who wrote when vilification of Wolsey
pleased both king and people, but on the despatches of diplomatists
with whom he had to deal, and on the reports of observers who narrowly
watched his demeanour. "He is," wrote one, "the proudest prelate that
ever breathed."[292] During the festivities of the Emperor's visit to
England, in 1520, Wolsey alone sat down to dinner with the royal
party, while peers, like the Dukes of Suffolk and Buckingham,
performed menial offices for the Cardinal, as well as for Emperor,
King and Queen.[293] When he celebrated mass at the Field of Cloth of
Gold, bishops invested him with his robes and put sandals on his feet,
and "some of the chief noblemen in England" brought water to wash his
hands.[294] A year later, at his meeting with Charles at Bruges, he
treated the Emperor as an equal. He did not dismount from his mule,
but merely doffed his cap, and embraced as a brother the temporal head
of Christendom.[295] When, after a dispute with the Venetian ambassador,
he wished to be friendly, he allowed Giustinian, with royal condescension,
and as a special mark of favour, to kiss his hand.[296] He never
granted audience either to English peers or foreign ambassadors until
the third or fourth time of asking.[297] In 1515 it was the custom of
ambassadors to dine with Wolsey before presentation at Court, but four
years later they were never served until the viands had been removed
from the Cardinal's table.[298] A Venetian, describing Wolsey's (p. 112)
embassy to France in 1527, relates that his "attendants served cap in
hand, and, when bringing the dishes, knelt before him in the act of
presenting them. Those who waited on the Most Christian King, kept
their caps on their heads, dispensing with such exaggerated
ceremonies."[299]
[Footnote 292: _Ven. Cal._, iii., 56.]
[Footnote 293: _Ibid._, iii., 50.]
[Footnote 294: _Ibid._, vol. iii., p. 29.]
[Footnote 295: _Ibid._, iii., 298.]
[Footnote 296: _L. and P._, ii., 3733.]
[Footnote 297: Giustinian, _Desp._, App. ii., 309.]
[Footnote 298: Giustinian, _Desp._, App. ii., 309.]
[Footnote 299: _Ven. Cal._, iii., p. 84.]
Pretenders to royal honours seldom acquire the grace of genuine
royalty, and the Cardinal pursued with vindictive ferocity those who
offended his sensitive dignity. In 1515, Polydore Vergil said, in
writing to his friend, Cardinal Hadrian, that Wolsey was so tyrannical
towards all men that his influence could not last, and that all
England abused him.[300] The letter was copied by Wolsey's secretary,
Vergil was sent to the Tower,[301] and only released after many months
at the repeated intercession of Leo X. His correspondent, Cardinal
Hadrian, was visited with Wolsey's undying hatred. A pretext for his
ruin was found in his alleged complicity in a plot to poison the Pope;
the charge was trivial, and Leo forgave him.[302] Not so Wolsey, who
procured Hadrian's deprivation of the Bishopric of Bath and Wells,
appropriated the see for himself, and in 1518 kept Campeggio, the
Pope's legate, chafing at Calais until he could bring with him the
papal confirmation of these measures.[303] Venice had the temerity to
intercede with Leo on Hadrian's behalf; Wolsey thereupon overwhelmed
Giustinian with "rabid and insolent language"; ordered him not to (p. 113)
put anything in his despatches without his consent; and revoked the
privileges of Venetian merchants in England.[304] In these outbursts
of fury, he paid little respect to the sacrosanct character of
ambassadors. He heard that the papal nuncio, Chieregati, was sending
to France unfavourable reports of his conduct. The nuncio "was sent
for by Wolsey, who took him into a private chamber, laid rude hands
upon him, fiercely demanding what he had written to the King of
France, and what intercourse he had held with Giustinian and his son,
adding that he should not quit the spot until he had confessed
everything, and, if fair means were not sufficient, he should be put
upon the rack".[305] Nine years later, Wolsey nearly precipitated war
between England and the Emperor by a similar outburst against
Charles's ambassador, De Praet. He intercepted De Praet's
correspondence, and confined him to his house. It was a flagrant
breach of international law. Tampering with diplomatic correspondence
was usually considered a sufficient cause for war; on this occasion
war did not suit Charles's purpose, but it was no fault of Wolsey's
that his fury at an alleged personal slight did not provoke
hostilities with the most powerful prince in Christendom.[306]
[Footnote 300: _L. and P._, ii., 215.]
[Footnote 301: _Ibid._, ii., 491, 865, 1229.]
[Footnote 302: _Ibid._, ii., 3581, 3584; _Ven.
Cal._, ii., 902, 951.]
[Footnote 303: _L. and P._, ii., 4348.]
[Footnote 304: _Ven. Cal._, ii., 951, 953, 978; _L.
and P._, ii., 3584.]
[Footnote 305: _L. and P._, ii., 2643.]
[Footnote 306: _Sp. Cal._, iii., pp. 50, 76, 78,
92.]
Englishmen fared no better than others at Wolsey's hands. He used the
coercive power of the State to revenge his private wrongs as well as
to secure the peace of the realm. In July, 1517, Sir Robert Sheffield,[307]
who had been Speaker in two Parliaments, was sent to the Tower for
complaining of Wolsey, and to point the moral of Fox's assertion, (p. 114)
that none durst do ought in opposition to the Cardinal's interests.[308]
Again, the idea reflected by Shakespeare, that Wolsey was jealous of
Pace, has been described as absurd; but it is difficult to draw any
other inference from the relations between them after 1521. While
Wolsey was absent at Calais, he accused Pace, without ground, of
misrepresenting his letters to Henry, and of obtaining Henry's favour
on behalf of a canon of York;[309] he complained that foreign powers
were trusting to another influence than his over the King; and, when
he returned, he took care that Pace should henceforth be employed, not
as secretary to Henry, but on almost continuous missions to Italy. In
1525, when the Venetian ambassador was to thank Henry for making a
treaty with Venice, which Pace had concluded, he was instructed not to
praise him so highly, if the Cardinal were present, as if the oration
were made to Henry alone;[310] and, four years later, Wolsey found an
occasion for sending Pace to the Tower--treatment which eventually
caused Pace's mind to become unhinged.[311]
[Footnote 307: _L. and P._, ii., 3487.]
[Footnote 308: _L. and P._, ii., 3558.]
[Footnote 309: _Ibid._, iii., 1713.]
[Footnote 310: _Ven. Cal._, iii., 975.]
[Footnote 311: Brewer (Henry VIII., ii., 388; _L.
and P._, vol. iv., Introd., p. dxxxv. _n._) is very
indignant at this allegation, and when recording
Chapuys' statement in 1529 that Pace had been
imprisoned for two years in the Tower and elsewhere
by Wolsey, declares that "Pace was never committed
to the Tower, nor kept in prison by Wolsey" but was
"placed under the charge of the Bishop of Bangor,"
and that Chapuys' statement is "an instance how
popular rumour exaggerates facts, or how Spanish
ambassadors were likely to misrepresent them". It
is rather an instance of the lengths to which
Brewer's zeal for Wolsey carried him. He had not
seen the despatch from Mendoza recording Pace's
committal to the Tower on 25th Oct., 1527, "for
speaking to the King in opposition to Wolsey and
the divorce" (_Sp. Cal._, 1527-29, p. 440). It is
true that Pace was in the charge of the Bishop of
Bangor, but he was not transferred thither until
1528 (Ellis, _Orig. Letters_, 3rd ser., ii., 151);
he was released immediately upon Wolsey's fall.
Erasmus, thereupon, congratulating him on the fact,
remarked that he was consoled by Pace's experience
for his own persecution and that God rescued the
innocent and cast down the proud (_ibid._, iv.,
6283). The _D.N.B._ (xliii., 24), has been misled
by Brewer. Wolsey had long had a grudge against
Pace, and in 1514 was anxious to make "a fearful
example" of him (_L. and P._, i., 5465); and his
treatment of Pace was one of the charges brought
against him in 1529 (_ibid._, iv., p. 2552).]
Wolsey's pride in himself, and his jealousy of others, were not (p. 115)
more conspicuous than his thirst after riches. His fees as Chancellor
were reckoned by Giustinian at five thousand ducats a year. He made
thrice that sum by New Year's presents, "which he receives like the
King".[312] His demand for the Bishopric of Bath and Wells, coupled
with the fact that it was he who petitioned for Hadrian's deprivation,
amazed even the Court at Rome, and, "to avoid murmurs,"[313] compliance
was deferred for a time. But these scruples were allowed no more than
ecclesiastical law to stand in the way of Wolsey's preferment. One of
the small reforms decreed by the Lateran Council was that no bishoprics
should be held _in commendam_; the ink was scarcely dry when Wolsey
asked _in commendam_ for the see of the recently conquered Tournay.[314]
Tournay was restored to France in 1518, but the Cardinal took care
that he should not be the loser. A _sine qua non_ of the peace was
that Francis should pay him an annual pension of twelve thousand
livres as compensation for the loss of a bishopric of which he had
never obtained possession.[315] He drew other pensions for political
services, from both Francis and Charles; and, from the Duke of Milan,
he obtained the promise of ten thousand ducats a year before Pace (p. 116)
set out to recover the duchy.[316] It is scarcely a matter for wonder
that foreign diplomatists, and Englishmen, too, should have accused
Wolsey of spending the King's money for his own profit, and have
thought that the surest way of winning his favour was by means of a
bribe.[317] When England, in 1521, sided with Charles against Francis,
the Emperor bound himself to make good to Wolsey all the sums he would
lose by a breach with France; and from that year onwards Charles
paid--or owed--Wolsey eighteen thousand livres a year.[318] It was
nine times the pensions considered sufficient for the Dukes of Norfolk
and Suffolk; and even so it does not include the revenue Wolsey
derived from two Spanish bishoprics. These were not bribes in the
sense that they affected Wolsey's policy; they were well enough known
to the King; to spoil the Egyptians was considered fair game, and
Henry was generous enough not to keep all the perquisites of peace or
war for himself.
[Footnote 312: Giustinian, _Desp._, App. ii., 309.]
[Footnote 313: _Ven. Cal._, ii., 1045.]
[Footnote 314: _L. and P._, i., 5457.]
[Footnote 315: _Ibid._, ii., 4354.]
[Footnote 316: _L. and P._, ii., 1053, 1066.]
[Footnote 317: _Ibid._, ii., 1931; _cf._
Shakespeare, _Henry VIII._, Act. I., Sc. i.:--
Thus the Cardinal
Does buy and sell his honour as he pleases
And for his own advantage.]
[Footnote 318: _L. and P._, iii., 709, 2307 (where
it is given as nine thousand "crowns of the sun");
_Sp. Cal._, ii., 273, 600. In 1527 Charles
instructed his ambassador to offer Wolsey in
addition to his pension of nine thousand ducats
with arrears a further pension of six thousand
ducats and a marquisate in Milan worth another
twelve or fifteen thousand ducats a year (_L. and
P._, iv., 3464).]
Two years after the agreement with Charles, Ruthal, Bishop of Durham,
died, and Wolsey exchanged Bath and Wells for the richer see formerly
held by his political ally and friend. But Winchester was richer (p. 117)
even than Durham; so when Fox followed Ruthal to the grave, in 1528,
Wolsey exchanged the northern for the southern see, and begged that
Durham might go to his natural son, a youth of eighteen.[319] All
these were held _in commendam_ with the Archbishopric of York, but
they did not satisfy Wolsey; and, in 1521, he obtained the grant of
St. Albans, the greatest abbey in England. His palaces outshone in
splendour those of Henry himself, and few monarchs have been able to
display such wealth of plate as loaded the Cardinal's table. Wolsey is
supposed to have conceived vast schemes of ecclesiastical reform,
which time and opportunity failed him to effect.[320] If he had ever
seriously set about the work, the first thing to be reformed would
have been his own ecclesiastical practice. He personified in himself
most of the clerical abuses of his age. Not merely an "unpreaching
prelate," he rarely said mass; his _commendams_ and absenteeism were
alike violations of canon law. Three of the bishoprics he held he
never visited at all; York, which he had obtained fifteen years
before, he did not visit till the year of his death, and then through
no wish of his own. He was equally negligent of the vow of chastity;
he cohabited with the daughter of "one Lark," a relative of the Lark
who is mentioned in the correspondence of the time as "omnipotent"
with the Cardinal, and as resident in his household.[321] By her (p. 118)
he left two children, a son,[322] for whom he obtained a deanery, four
archdeaconries, five prebends, and a chancellorship, and sought the
Bishopric of Durham, and a daughter who became a nun. The accusation
brought against him by the Duke of Buckingham and others, of procuring
objects for Henry's sensual appetite, is a scandal, to which no
credence would have been attached but for Wolsey's own moral laxity,
and the fact that the governor of Charles V. performed a similar
office.[323]
[Footnote 319: _L. and P._, iv., 4824.]
[Footnote 320: There is no doubt about his
eagerness for the power which would have enabled
him to carry out a reformation. As legate he
demanded from the Pope authority to visit and
reform the secular clergy as well as the
monasteries; this was refused on the ground that it
would have superseded the proper functions of the
episcopate (_L. and P._, ii., 4399; iii., 149).]
[Footnote 321: _L. and P._, ii., 629, 2637, 4068.
Lark became prebendary of St. Stephen's (_Ibid._,
iv., _Introd._, p. xlvi.).]
[Footnote 322: Called Thomas Wynter, see the
present writer's _Life of Cranmer_, p. 324 _n._
Some writers have affected to doubt Wolsey's
parentage of Wynter, but this son is often referred
to in the correspondence of the time, _e.g._, _L. and
P._, iv., p. 1407, Nos. 4824, 5581, 6026, 6075.
Art. 27.]
[Footnote 323: _Ibid._, iii., 1284; iv., p. 2558;
ii., 2930.]
Repellent as was Wolsey's character in many respects, he was yet the
greatest, as he was the last, of the ecclesiastical statesmen who have
governed England. As a diplomatist, pure and simple, he has never been
surpassed, and as an administrator he has had few equals. "He is,"
says Giustinian, "very handsome, learned, extremely eloquent, of vast
ability and indefatigable. He alone transacts the same business as
that which occupies all the magistracies, offices, and councils of
Venice, both civil and criminal; and all State affairs are managed by
him, let their nature be what it may. He is thoughtful, and has the
reputation of being extremely just; he favours the people exceedingly,
and especially the poor, hearing their suits and seeking to despatch
them instantly. He also makes the lawyers plead gratis for all poor
suitors. He is in very great repute, seven times more so than if (p. 119)
he were Pope."[324] His sympathy with the poor was no idle sentiment,
and his commission of 1517, and decree against enclosures in the
following year, were the only steps taken in Henry's reign to mitigate
that curse of the agricultural population.
[Footnote 324: _Ven. Cal._, ii., 1287; Giustinian,
_D sp._, App. ii., 309; _L. and P._, iii., 402.]
The Evil May Day riots of 1517 alone disturbed the peace of Wolsey's
internal administration; and they were due merely to anti-foreign
prejudice, and to the idea that strangers within the gates monopolised
the commerce of England and diverted its profits to their own advantage.
"Never," wrote Wolsey to a bishop at Rome in 1518, "was the kingdom in
greater harmony and repose than now; such is the effect of my
administration of justice and equity."[325] To Henry his strain was
less arrogant. "And for your realm," he says, "our Lord be thanked, it
was never in such peace nor tranquillity; for all this summer I have
had neither of riot, felony, nor forcible entry, but that your laws be
in every place indifferently ministered without leaning of any manner.
Albeit, there hath lately been a fray betwixt Pygot, your Serjeant,
and Sir Andrew Windsor's servants for the seisin of a ward, whereto
they both pretend titles; in the which one man was slain. I trust the
next term to learn them the law of the Star Chamber that they shall
ware how from henceforth they shall redress their matter with their
hands. They be both learned in the temporal law, and I doubt not good
example shall ensue to see them learn the new law of the Star Chamber,
which, God willing, they shall have indifferently administered (p. 120)
to them, according to their deserts."[326]
[Footnote 325: _Ibid._, ii., 3973.]
[Footnote 326: _L. and P._, ii., App. No. 38; for
the Star Chamber see Scofield, _Star Chamber_,
1902, and Leadam, _Select Cases_ (Selden Soc.,
1904).]
Wolsey's "new law of the Star Chamber," his stern enforcement of the
statutes against livery and maintenance, and his spasmodic attempt to
redress the evils of enclosures,[327] probably contributed as much as
his arrogance and ostentation to the ill-favour in which he stood with
the nobility and landed gentry. From the beginning there were frequent
rumours of plots to depose him, and his enemies abroad often talked of
the universal hatred which he inspired in England. The classes which
benefited by his justice complained bitterly of the impositions
required to support his spirited foreign policy. Clerics who regarded
him as a bulwark on the one hand against heresy, and, on the other,
against the extreme view which Henry held from the first of his
authority over the Church, were alienated by the despotism Wolsey
wielded by means of his legatine powers. Even the mild and aged Warham
felt his lash, and was threatened with _Praemunire_ for having wounded
Wolsey's legatine authority by calling a council at Lambeth.[328]
Peers, spiritual no less than temporal, regarded him as "the great
tyrant". Parliament he feared and distrusted; he had urged the speedy
dissolution of that of 1515; only one sat during the fourteen years of
his supremacy, and with that the Cardinal quarrelled. He possessed no
hold over the nation, but only over the King, in whom alone he put his
trust.
[Footnote 327: _L. and P._, App. No. 53; _cf._
Leadam, _Domesday of Enclosures_ (Royal Hist.
Soc.).]
[Footnote 328: _Ibid._, iii., 77, 98; _cf._ ii.,
3973; iii. 1142.]
For the time he seemed secure enough. No one could touch a hair (p. 121)
of his head so long as he was shielded by Henry's power, and Henry
seemed to have given over his royal authority to Wolsey's hands with a
blind and undoubting confidence. "The King," said one, in 1515, "is a
youngling, cares for nothing but girls and hunting, and wastes his
father's patrimony."[329] "He gambled," reported Giustinian in 1519,
"with the French hostages, occasionally, it was said, to the amount of
six or eight thousand ducats a day."[330] In the following summer
Henry rose daily at four or five in the morning and hunted till nine
or ten at night; "he spares," said Pace, "no pains to convert the
sport of hunting into a martyrdom".[331] "He devotes himself," wrote
Chieregati, "to accomplishments and amusements day and night, is
intent on nothing else, and leaves business to Wolsey, who rules
everything."[332] Wolsey, it was remarked by Leo X., made Henry go
hither and thither, just as he liked,[333] and the King signed State
papers without knowing their contents. "Writing," admitted Henry, "is
to me somewhat tedious and painful."[334] When Wolsey thought it
essential that autograph letters in Henry's hand should be sent to
other crowned heads, he composed the letters and sent them to Henry to
copy out.[335] Could the most constitutional monarch have been more
dutiful? But constitutional monarchy was not then invented, and it is
not surprising that Giustinian, in 1519, found it impossible to (p. 122)
say much for Henry as a statesman. _Agere cum rege_, he said, _est
nihil agere_;[336] anything told to the King was either useless or was
communicated to Wolsey. Bishop West was sure that Henry would not take
the pains to look at his and Worcester's despatches; and there was a
widespread impression abroad and at home that the English King was a
negligible quantity in the domestic and foreign affairs of his own
kingdom.
[Footnote 329: _L. and P._, ii., 1105; _cf. ibid._,
ii., 215.]
[Footnote 330: Giustinian, _Desp._, App. ii., 309.]
[Footnote 331: _L. and P._, iii., 950; _cf._ iii.,
1160, where Fitzwilliam describes Henry as a
"master" in deer-hunting.]
[Footnote 332: _Ven. Cal._, ii., 788.]
[Footnote 333: _Sp. Cal._, ii., 281.]
[Footnote 334: _L. and P._, iii., 1.]
[Footnote 335: _Ibid._, iii., 1453, 3377.]
[Footnote 336: _Ven. Cal._, ii., 1110.]
For ten years Henry had reigned while first his council, and then
Wolsey, governed. Before another decade had passed, Henry was King and
Government in one; and nobody in the kingdom counted for much but the
King. He stepped at once into Wolsey's place, became his own prime
minister, and ruled with a vigour which was assuredly not less than
the Cardinal's. Such transformations are not the work of a moment, and
Henry's would have been impossible, had he in previous years been so
completely the slave of Vanity Fair, as most people thought. In
reality, there are indications that beneath the superficial gaiety of
his life, Henry was beginning to use his own judgment, form his own
conclusions, and take an interest in serious matters. He was only
twenty-eight in 1519, and his character was following a normal course
of development.
From the earliest years of his reign Henry had at least two serious
preoccupations, the New Learning and his navy. We learn from Erasmus
that Henry's Court was an example to Christendom for learning and
piety;[337] that the King sought to promote learning among the clergy;
and on one occasion defended "mental and _ex tempore_ prayer" against
those who apparently thought laymen should, in their private (p. 123)
devotions, confine themselves to formularies prescribed by the
clergy.[338] In 1519 there were more men of learning at the English
Court than at any university;[339] it was more like a museum, says the
great humanist, than a Court;[340] and in the same year the King
endeavoured to stop the outcry against Greek, raised by the reactionary
"Trojans" at Oxford. "You would say," continues Erasmus, "that Henry
was a universal genius. He has never neglected his studies; and
whenever he has leisure from his political occupations, he reads, or
disputes--of which he is very fond--with remarkable courtesy and
unruffled temper. He is more of a companion than a king. For these
little trials of wit, he prepares himself by reading schoolmen,
Thomas, Scotus or Gabriel."[341] His theological studies were
encouraged by Wolsey, possibly to divert the King's mind from an
unwelcome interference in politics, and it was at the Cardinal's
instigation that Henry set to work on his famous book against
Luther.[342] He seems to have begun it, or some similar treatise,
which may afterwards have been adapted to Luther's particular case,
before the end of the year in which the German reformer published his
original theses. In September, 1517, Erasmus heard that Henry had
returned to his studies,[343] and, in the following June, Pace writes
to Wolsey that, with respect to the commendations given by the
Cardinal to the King's book, though Henry does not think it worthy
such great praise as it has had from him and from all other "great
learned" men, yet he says he is very glad to have "noted in your (p. 124)
grace's letters that his reasons be called inevitable, considering
that your grace was sometime his adversary herein and of contrary
opinion".[344] It is obvious that this "book," whatever it may have
been, was the fruit of Henry's own mind, and that he adopted a line of
argument not entirely relished by Wolsey. But, if it was the book
against Luther, it was laid aside and rewritten before it was given to
the world in its final form. Nothing more is heard of it for three
years. In April, 1521, Pace explains to Wolsey the delay in sending
him on some news-letters from Germany "which his grace had not read
till this day after his dinner; and thus he commanded me to write unto
your grace, declaring he was otherwise occupied; _i.e., in scribendo
contra Lutherum,_ as I do conjecture".[345] Nine days later Pace found
the King reading a new book of Luther's, "which he dispraised"; and he
took the opportunity to show Henry Leo's bull against the Reformer.
"His grace showed himself well contented with the coming of the same;
howbeit, as touching the publication thereof, he said he would have it
well examined and diligently looked to afore it were published."[346]
Even in the height of his fervour against heresy, Henry was in no mood
to abate one jot or one tittle of his royal authority in
ecclesiastical matters.
[Footnote 337: _L. and P._, ii., 4115.]
[Footnote 338: _L. and P._, iii., 226.]
[Footnote 339: _Ibid._, iii., 251.]
[Footnote 340: _Ibid._, ii., 4340.]
[Footnote 341: _Ibid._, iv., 5412; for the freedom
with which Cranmer in later days debated with Henry
see the present writer's _Cranmer_, p. 169.]
[Footnote 342: _Ibid._, iii., 1659, 1772.]
[Footnote 343: _Ibid._, ii., 3673.]
[Footnote 344: _L. and P._, ii., 4257.]
[Footnote 345: _Ibid._, iii., 1220.]
[Footnote 346: _Ibid._, 1233.]
His book was finished before 21st May, 1521, when the King wrote to
Leo, saying that "ever since he knew Luther's heresy in Germany, he
had made it his study how to extirpate it. He had called the learned
of his kingdom to consider these errors and denounce them, and (p. 125)
exhort others to do the same. He had urged the Emperor and Electors,
since this pestilent fellow would not return to God, to extirpate him
and his heretical books. He thought it right still further to testify
his zeal for the faith by his writings, that all might see he was
ready to defend the Church, not only with his arms, but with the
resources of his mind. He dedicated therefore, to the Pope, the first
offerings of his intellect and his little erudition."[347] The letter
had been preceded, on 12th May, by a holocaust of Luther's books in
St. Paul's Churchyard. Wolsey sat in state on a scaffold at St. Paul's
Cross, with the papal nuncio and the Archbishop of Canterbury at his
feet on the right, and the imperial ambassador and Tunstall, Bishop of
London, at his feet on the left; and while the books were being
devoured by the flames, Fisher preached a sermon denouncing the errors
contained therein.[348] But it was July before the fair copy of
Henry's book was ready for presentation to Leo; possibly the interval
was employed by learned men in polishing Henry's style, but the
substance of the work was undoubtedly of Henry's authorship. Such is
the direct testimony of Erasmus, and there is no evidence to indicate
the collaboration of others.[349] Pace was then the most intimate of
Henry's counsellors, and Pace, by his own confession, was not in the
secret. Nor is the book so remarkable as to preclude the possibility
of Henry's authorship. Its arguments are respectable and give evidence
of an intelligent and fairly extensive acquaintance with the writings
of the fathers and schoolmen; but they reveal no profound depth of
theological learning nor genius for abstract speculation. It does (p. 126)
not rank so high in the realm of theology, as do some of Henry's
compositions in that of music. In August it was sent to Leo, with
verses composed by Wolsey and copied out in the royal hand.[350] In
September the English ambassador at Rome presented Leo his copy, bound
in cloth of gold. The Pope read five leaves without interruption, and
remarked that "he would not have thought such a book should have come
from the King's grace, who hath been occupied, necessarily, in other
feats, seeing that other men which hath occupied themselves in study
all their lives cannot bring forth the like".[351] On 2nd October it
was formally presented in a consistory of cardinals; and, on the 11th,
Leo promulgated his bull conferring on Henry his coveted title, "Fidei
Defensor".
[Footnote 347: _L. and P._, iii., 1297.]
[Footnote 348: _Ibid._, iii., 1273.]
[Footnote 349: F.M. Nichols, _Epistles of Erasmus_,
p. 424; _L. and P._, iv., 5412.]
[Footnote 350: _L. and P._, iii., 1450.]
[Footnote 351: _Ibid._, iii., 1574, 1654, 1655,
1659.]
Proud as he was of his scholastic achievement and its reward at the
hands of the Pope, Henry was doing more for the future of England by
his attention to naval affairs than by his pursuit of high-sounding
titles. His intuitive perception of England's coming needs in this
respect is, perhaps, the most striking illustration of his political
foresight. He has been described as the father of the British navy;
and, had he not laid the foundations of England's naval power, his
daughter's victory over Spain and entrance on the path that led to
empire would have been impossible. Under Henry, the navy was first
organised as a permanent force; he founded the royal dockyards at
Woolwich and Deptford, and the corporation of Trinity House;[352] he
encouraged the planting of timber for shipbuilding, enacted laws (p. 127)
facilitating inland navigation, dotted the coast with fortifications,
and settled the constitution of the naval service upon a plan from
which it has ever since steadily developed. He owed his inspiration to
none of his councillors, least of all to Wolsey, who had not the
faintest glimmering of the importance of securing England's naval
supremacy, and who, during the war of 1522-23, preferred futile
invasions on land to Henry's "secret designs" for destroying the navy
of France.[353] The King's interest in ships and shipbuilding was
strong, even amid the alluring diversions of the first years of his
reign. He watched his fleet sail for Guienne in 1512, and for France
in 1513; he knew the speed, the tonnage and the armament of every ship
in his navy; he supervised the minutest details of their construction.
In 1520 his ambassador at Paris tells him that Francis is building a
ship, "and reasoneth in this mystery of shipman's craft as one which
had understanding in the same. But, sir, he approacheth not your
highness in that science."[354] A French envoy records how, in 1515,
the whole English Court went down to see the launch of the _Princess
Mary_. Henry himself "acted as pilot and wore a sailor's coat and
trousers, made of cloth of gold, and a gold chain with the inscription,
'Dieu _est_ mon droit,' to which was suspended a whistle, which he
blew nearly as loud as a trumpet".[355] The launch of a ship was then
almost a religious ceremony, and the place of the modern bottle of
champagne was taken by a mass, which was said by the Bishop of Durham.
In 1518 Giustinian tells how Henry went to Southampton to see the
Venetian galleys, and caused some new guns to be "fired again and (p. 128)
again, marking their range, as he is very curious about matters of
this kind".[356]
[Footnote 352: _Ibid._, i., 3807. In 1513 an
English consul was appointed at Scio (_ibid._, i.,
3854).]
[Footnote 353: _L. and P._, iii., 1440; _cf.
ibid._, 2421.]
[Footnote 354: _Ibid._, iii., 748.]
[Footnote 355: _Ibid._, ii., 1113.]
[Footnote 356: _L. and P._, ii., 4232.]
It was not long before Henry developed an active participation in
serious matters other than theological disputes and naval affairs. It
is not possible to trace its growth with any clearness because no
record remains of the verbal communications which were sufficient to
indicate his will during the constant attendance of Wolsey upon him.
But, as soon as monarch and minister were for some cause or another
apart, evidence of Henry's activity in political matters becomes more
available. Thus, in 1515, we find Wolsey sending the King, at his own
request, the Act of Apparel, just passed by Parliament, for Henry's
"examination and correction".[357] He also desires Henry's determination
about the visit of the Queen of Scotland, that he may make the
necessary arrangements. In 1518 Henry made a prolonged stay at
Abingdon, partly from fear of the plague, and partly, as he told Pace,
because at Abingdon people were not continually coming to tell him of
deaths, as they did daily in London. During this absence from London,
Henry insisted upon the attendance of sufficient councillors to enable
him to transact business; he established a relay of posts every seven
hours between himself and Wolsey; and we hear of his reading "every
word of all the letters" sent by his minister.[358] Every week Wolsey
despatched an account of such State business as he had transacted; and
on one occasion, "considering the importance of Wolsey's letters,"
Henry paid a secret and flying visit to London.[359] In 1519 there
was a sort of revolution at Court, obscure enough now, but then a (p. 129)
subject of some comment at home and abroad. Half a dozen of Henry's
courtiers were removed from his person and sent into honourable exile,
receiving posts at Calais, at Guisnes, and elsewhere.[360] Giustinian
thought that Henry had been gambling too much and wished to turn over
a new leaf. There were also rumours that these courtiers governed
Henry after their own appetite, to the King's dishonour; and Henry,
annoyed at the report and jealous as ever of royal prestige, promptly
cashiered them, and filled their places with grave and reverend
seniors.
[Footnote 357: _Ibid._, ii., 1223.]
[Footnote 358: _Ibid._, ii., 4060, 4061, 4089.]
[Footnote 359: _L. and P._, ii., 4276.]
[Footnote 360: _Ven. Cal._, ii., 1220, 1230; _L.
and P._, iii., 246, 247, 249, 250. Francis I.
thought they were dismissed as being too favourable
to him, and as a rule the younger courtiers
favoured France and the older Spain.]
Two years later Wolsey was abroad at the conference of Calais, and
again Henry's hand in State affairs becomes apparent. Pace, defending
himself from the Cardinal's complaints, tells him that he had done
everything "by the King's express commandment, who readeth all your
letters with great diligence". One of the letters which angered Wolsey
was the King's, for Pace "had devised it very different"; but the King
would not approve of it; "and commanded me to bring your said letters
into his privy chamber with pen and ink, and there he would declare
unto me what I should write. And when his grace had your said letters,
he read the same three times, and marked such places as it pleased him
to make answer unto, and commanded me to write and rehearse as liked
him, and not further to meddle with that answer; so that I herein
nothing did but obeyed the King's commandment, and especially at (p. 130)
such time _as he would upon good grounds be obeyed, whosoever spake to
the contrary_."[361] Wolsey might say in his pride "I shall do so and
so," and foreign envoys might think that the Cardinal made the King
"go hither and thither, just as he liked"; but Wolsey knew perfectly
well that when he thought fit, Henry "would be obeyed, whosoever spake
to the contrary". He might delegate much of his authority, but men
were under no misapprehension that he could and would revoke it
whenever he chose. For the time being, King and Cardinal worked
together in general harmony, but it was a partnership in which Henry
could always have the last word, though Wolsey did most of the work.
As early as 1518 he had nominated Standish to the bishopric of St.
Asaph, disregarding Wolsey's candidate and the opposition of the
clerical party at Court, who detested Standish for his advocacy of
Henry's authority in ecclesiastical matters, and dreaded his promotion
as an evil omen for the independence of the Church.[362]
[Footnote 361: _L. and P._, iii., 1713.]
[Footnote 362: _Ibid._, ii., 4074, 4083, 4089.]
Even in the details of administration, the King was becoming
increasingly vigilant. In 1519 he drew up a "remembrance of such
things" as he required the Cardinal to "put in effectual
execution".[363] They were twenty-one in number and ranged over every
variety of subject. The household was to be arranged; "views to be
made and books kept"; the ordnance seen to; treasurers were to make
monthly reports of their receipts and payments, and send counterparts
to the King; the surveyor of lands was to make a yearly declaration;
and Wolsey himself and the judges were to make quarterly reports (p. 131)
to Henry in person. There were five points "which the King will debate
with his council," the administration of justice, reform of the
exchequer, Ireland, employment of idle people, and maintenance of the
frontiers. The general plan of Wolsey's negotiations at Calais in 1521
was determined by King and Cardinal in consultation, and every
important detail in them and in the subsequent preparations for war
was submitted to Henry. Not infrequently they differed. Wolsey wanted
Sir William Sandys to command the English contingent; Henry declared
it would be inconsistent with his dignity to send a force out of the
realm under the command of any one of lower rank than an earl. Wolsey
replied that Sandys would be cheaper than an earl,[364] but the
command was entrusted to the Earl of Surrey. Henry thought it unsafe,
considering the imminence of a breach with France, for English wine
ships to resort to Bordeaux; Wolsey thought otherwise, and they
disputed the point for a month. Honours were divided; the question was
settled for the time by twenty ships sailing while the dispute was in
progress.[365] Apparently they returned in safety, but the seizure of
English ships at Bordeaux in the following March justified Henry's
caution.[366] The King was already an adept in statecraft, and there
was at least an element of truth in the praise which Wolsey bestowed
on his pupil. "No man," he wrote, "can more groundly consider the
politic governance of your said realm, nor more assuredly look to the
preservation thereof, than ye yourself." And again, "surely, if all
_your_ whole council had been assembled together, they could not (p. 132)
have more deeply perceived or spoken therein".[367]
[Footnote 363: _Ibid._, iii., 576.]
[Footnote 364: _L. and P._, iii., 1454, 1473,
1474.]
[Footnote 365: _Ibid._, iii., 1629, 1630.]
[Footnote 366: _Ibid._, iii., 2224.]
[Footnote 367: _L. and P._, iii., 1544, 1762.]
The Cardinal "could not express the joy and comfort with which he
noted the King's prudence"; but he can scarcely have viewed Henry's
growing interference without some secret misgivings. For he was
developing not only Wolsey's skill and lack of scruple in politics,
but also a choleric and impatient temper akin to the Cardinal's own.
In 1514 Carroz had complained of Henry's offensive behaviour, and had
urged that it would become impossible to control him, if the "young
colt" were not bridled. In the following year Henry treated a French
envoy with scant civility, and flatly contradicted him twice as he
described the battle of Marignano. Giustinian also records how Henry
went "pale with anger" at unpleasant news.[368] A few years later his
successor describes Henry's "very great rage" when detailing Francis's
injuries; Charles made the same complaints against the French King,
"but not so angrily, in accordance with his gentler nature".[369] On
another occasion Henry turned his back upon a diplomatist and walked
away in the middle of his speech, an incident, we are told, on which
much comment was made in Rome.[370]
[Footnote 368: _Ibid._, ii., 1113, 1653.]
[Footnote 369: _Ven. Cal._, iii., 493.]
[Footnote 370: _Sp. Cal._, ii., 314.]
But these outbursts were rare and they grew rarer; in 1527 Mendoza,
the Spanish ambassador, remarks that it was "quite the reverse of the
King's ordinary manner" to be more violent than Wolsey;[371] and
throughout the period of strained relations with the Emperor, Chapuys
constantly refers to the unfailing courtesy and graciousness with (p. 133)
which Henry received him. He never forgot himself so far as to lay
rude hands on an ambassador, as Wolsey did; and no provocation betrayed
him in his later years, passionate though he was, into a neglect of
the outward amenities of diplomatic and official intercourse. Outbursts
of anger, of course, there were; but they were often like the explosions
of counsel in law courts, and were "to a great extent diplomatically
controlled".[372] Nor can we deny the consideration with which Henry
habitually treated his councillors, the wide discretion he allowed
them in the exercise of their duties, and the toleration he extended
to contrary opinions. He was never impatient of advice even when it
conflicted with his own views. His long arguments with Wolsey, and the
freedom with which the Cardinal justified his recommendations, even
after Henry had made up his mind to an opposite course, are a
sufficient proof of the fact. In 1517, angered by Maximilian's
perfidy, Henry wrote him some very "displeasant" letters. Tunstall
thought they would do harm, kept them back, and received no censure
for his conduct. In 1522-23 Wolsey advised first the siege of Boulogne
and then its abandonment. "The King," wrote More, "is by no means
displeased that you have changed your opinion, as his highness
esteemeth nothing in counsel more perilous than one to persevere in
the maintenance of his advice because he hath once given it. He
therefore commendeth and most affectuously thanketh your faithful
diligence and high wisdom in advertising him of the reasons which have
moved you to change your opinion."[373] No king knew better than Henry
how to get good work from his ministers, and his warning against (p. 134)
persevering in advice, merely because it has once been given, is a
political maxim for all time.
[Footnote 371: _Ibid._, iii., 109.]
[Footnote 372: _L. and P._, xiii., p. xli.]
[Footnote 373: _Ibid._, iii., 2421, 3346.]
A lesson might also be learnt from a story of Henry and Colet told by
Erasmus on Colet's own authority.[374] In 1513 war fever raged in
England. Colet's bishop summoned him "into the King's Court for
asserting, when England was preparing for war against France, that an
unjust peace was preferable to the most just war; but the King threatened
his persecutor with vengeance. After Easter, when the expedition was
ready against France, Colet preached on Whitsunday before the King and
the Court, exhorting men rather to follow the example of Christ their
prince than that of Caesar and Alexander. The King was afraid that this
sermon would have an ill effect upon the soldiers and sent for the
Dean. Colet happened to be dining at the Franciscan monastery near
Greenwich. When the King heard of it, he entered the garden of the
monastery, and on Colet's appearance dismissed his attendants; then
discussed the matter with him, desiring him to explain himself, lest
his audience should suppose that no war was justifiable. After the
conversation was over he dismissed him before them all, drinking to
Colet's health and saying 'Let every man have his own doctor, this is
mine'." The picture is pleasing evidence of Henry's superiority to
some vulgar passions. Another instance of freedom from popular prejudice,
which he shared with his father, was his encouragement of foreign
scholars, diplomatists and merchants; not a few of the ablest of Tudor
agents were of alien birth. He was therefore intensely annoyed at the
rabid fury against them that broke out in the riots of Evil May Day;
yet he pardoned all the ringleaders but one. Tolerance and (p. 135)
clemency were no small part of his character in early manhood;[375]
and together with his other mental and physical graces, his love of
learning and of the society of learned men, his magnificence and
display, his supremacy in all the sports that were then considered the
peculiar adornment of royalty, they contributed scarcely less than
Wolsey's genius for diplomacy and administration to England's renown.
"In short," wrote Chieregati to Isabella d'Este in 1517, "the wealth
and civilisation of the world are here; and those who call the English
barbarians appear to me to render themselves such. I here perceive
very elegant manners, extreme decorum, and very great politeness. And
amongst other things there is this most invincible King, whose
accomplishments and qualities are so many and excellent that I
consider him to surpass all who ever wore a crown; and blessed and
happy may this country call itself in having as its lord so worthy and
eminent a sovereign; whose sway is more bland and gentle than the
greatest liberty under any other."[376]
[Footnote 374: _L. and P._, iii., 303.]
[Footnote 375: For the extraordinary freedom of
speech which Henry permitted, see _L. and P._,
xii., ii., 952, where Sir George Throckmorton
relates how he accused Henry to his face of immoral
relations with Mary Boleyn and her mother.]
[Footnote 376: _Ven. Cal._, ii., 918.]
CHAPTER VI. (p. 136)
FROM CALAIS TO ROME.
The wonderful success that had attended Wolsey's policy during his
seven years' tenure of power, and the influential position to which he
had raised England in the councils of Christendom, might well have
disturbed the mental balance of a more modest and diffident man than
the Cardinal; and it is scarcely surprising that he fancied himself,
and sought to become, arbiter of the destinies of Europe. The condition
of continental politics made his ambition seem less than extravagant.
Power was almost monopolised by two young princes whose rivalry was
keen, whose resources were not altogether unevenly matched, and whose
disputes were so many and serious that war could only be averted by a
pacific determination on both sides which neither possessed. Francis
had claims on Naples, and his dependant, D'Albret, on Navarre. Charles
had suzerain rights over Milan and a title to Burgundy, of which his
great-grandfather Charles the Bold had been despoiled by Louis XI. Yet
the Emperor had not the slightest intention of compromising his
possession of Naples or Navarre, and Francis was quite as resolute to
surrender neither Burgundy nor Milan. They both became eager competitors
for the friendship of England, which, if its resources were inadequate
to support the position of arbiter, was at least a most useful (p. 137)
makeweight. England's choice of policy was, however, strictly limited.
She could not make war upon Charles. It was not merely that Charles
had a staunch ally in his aunt Catherine of Aragon, who is said to
have "made such representations and shown such reasons against" the
alliance with Francis "as one would not have supposed she would have
dared to do, or even to imagine".[377] It was not merely that in this
matter Catherine was backed by the whole council except Wolsey, and by
the real inclinations of the King. It was that the English people were
firmly imperialist in sympathy. The reason was obvious. Charles
controlled the wool-market of the Netherlands, and among English
exports wool was all-important. War with Charles meant the ruin of
England's export trade, the starvation or impoverishment of thousands
of Englishmen; and when war was declared against Charles eight years
later, it more nearly cost Henry his throne than all the fulminations
of the Pope or religious discontents, and after three months it was
brought to a summary end. England remained at peace with Spain so long
as Spain controlled its market for wool; when that market passed into
the hands of the revolted Netherlands, the same motive dictated an
alliance with the Dutch against Philip II. War with Charles in 1520
was out of the question; and for the next two years Wolsey and Henry
were endeavouring to make Francis and the Emperor bid against each
other, in order that England might obtain the maximum of concession
from Charles when it should declare in his favour, as all along (p. 138)
was intended.
[Footnote 377: _L. and P._, iii., 728. Wolsey's
opposition is attributed by the imperial ambassador
to Francis I.'s promise to make him Pope, "which we
might have done much better".]
By the Treaty of London Henry was bound to assist the aggrieved
against the aggressor. But that treaty had been concluded between
England and France in the first instance; Henry's only daughter was
betrothed to the Dauphin; and Francis was anxious to cement his
alliance with Henry by a personal interview.[378] It was Henry's
policy to play the friend for the time; and, as a proof of his desire
for the meeting with Francis, he announced, in August, 1519, his
resolve to wear his beard until the meeting took place.[379] He
reckoned without his wife. On 8th November Louise of Savoy, the
queen-mother of France, taxed Boleyn, the English ambassador, with a
report that Henry had put off his beard. "I said," writes Boleyn,
"that, as I suppose, it hath been by the Queen's desire; for I told my
lady that I have hereafore time known when the King's grace hath worn
long his beard, that the Queen hath daily made him great instance, and
desired him to put it off for her sake."[380] Henry's inconstancy in
the matter of his beard not only caused diplomatic inconvenience, but,
it may be parenthetically remarked, adds to the difficulty of dating
his portraits. Francis, however, considered the Queen's interference a
sufficient excuse, or was not inclined to stick at such trifles; and
on 10th January, 1520, he nominated Wolsey his proctor to make
arrangements for the interview.[381] As Wolsey was also agent for
Henry, the French King saw no further cause for delay.
[Footnote 378: The interview had been agreed upon
as early as October, 1518, when it was proposed
that it should take place before the end of July,
1519 (_L. and P._, ii., 4483).]
[Footnote 379: _Ibid._, iii., 416.]
[Footnote 380: _Ibid._, iii., 514.]
[Footnote 381: _Ibid._, iii., 592.]
The delay came from England; the meeting with Francis would be a (p. 139)
one-sided pronouncement without some corresponding favour to Charles.
Some time before Henry had sent Charles a pressing invitation to visit
England on his way from Spain to Germany; and the Emperor, suspicious
of the meeting between Henry and Francis, was only too anxious to come
and forestall it. The experienced Margaret of Savoy admitted that
Henry's friendship was essential to Charles;[382] but Spaniards were
not to be hurried, and it would be May before the Emperor's convoy was
ready. So Henry endeavoured to postpone his engagement with Francis.
The French King replied that by the end of May his Queen would be in
the eighth month of her pregnancy, and that if the meeting were
further prorogued she must perforce be absent.[383] Henry was nothing
if not gallant, at least on the surface. Francis's argument clinched
the matter. The interview, ungraced by the presence of France's Queen,
would, said Henry, be robbed of most of its charm;[384] and he gave
Charles to understand that, unless he reached England by the middle of
May, his visit would have to be cancelled. This intimation produced an
unwonted despatch in the Emperor's movements; but fate was against
him, and contrary winds rendered his arrival in time a matter of doubt
till the last possible moment. Henry must cross to Calais on the 31st
of May, whether Charles came or not; and it was the 26th before the
Emperor's ships appeared off the cliffs of Dover. Wolsey put out in a
small boat to meet him, and conducted Charles to the castle where he
lodged. During the night Henry arrived. Early next day, which was (p. 140)
Whitsunday, the two sovereigns proceeded to Canterbury, where the
Queen and Court had come on the way to France to spend their Pentecost.
Five days the Emperor remained with his aunt, whom he now saw for the
first time; but the days were devoted to business rather than to
elaborate ceremonial and show, for which there had been little time to
prepare.[385]
[Footnote 382: _L. and P._, iii., 672; _cf._ iii.,
742.]
[Footnote 383: _Ibid._, iii., 681, 725.]
[Footnote 384: _Ibid._, iii., 697.]
On the last day of May Charles took ship at Sandwich for Flanders.
Henry embarked at Dover for France. The painting at Hampton Court
depicting the scene has, like almost every other picture of Henry's
reign, been ascribed to Holbein; but six years were to pass before the
great artist visited England. The King himself is represented as being
on board the four-masted _Henry Grace a Dieu_, commonly called the
_Great Harry_, the finest ship afloat; though the vessel originally
fitted out for his passage was the _Katherine Pleasaunce_.[386] At
eleven o'clock he landed at Calais. On Monday, the 4th of June, Henry
and all his Court proceeded to Guisnes. There a temporary palace of
art had been erected, the splendour of which is inadequately set forth
in pages upon pages of contemporary descriptions. One Italian likened
it to the palaces described in Boiardo's _Orlando Innamorato_ and
Ariosto's _Orlando Furioso_; another declared that it could not have
been better designed by Leonardo da Vinci himself.[387] Everything
was in harmony with this architectural pomp. Wolsey was (p. 141)
accompanied, it was said in Paris, by two hundred gentlemen clad in
crimson velvet, and had a body-guard of two hundred archers. He was
himself clothed in crimson satin from head to foot, his mule was
covered with crimson velvet, and her trappings were all of gold.
Henry, "the most goodliest prince that ever reigned over the realm of
England," appeared even to Frenchmen as a very handsome prince,
"honnete, hault et droit,"[388] in manner gentle and gracious, rather
fat, and--in spite of his Queen--with a red beard, large enough and
very becoming. Another eye-witness adds the curious remark that, while
Francis was the taller of the two, Henry had the handsomer and more
_feminine_ face![389] On the 7th of June the two Kings started
simultaneously from Guisnes and Ardres for their personal meeting in
the valley mid-way between the two towns, already known as the Val
Dore. The obscure but familiar phrase, Field of Cloth of Gold,[390] is
a mistranslation of the French Camp du Drap d'Or. As they came in
sight a temporary suspicion of French designs seized the English, but
it was overcome. Henry and Francis rode forward alone, embraced each
other first on horseback and then again on foot, and made show of
being the closest friends in Christendom. On Sunday the 10th Henry
dined with the French Queen, and Francis with Catherine of Aragon. The
following week was devoted to tourneys, which the two Kings opened by
holding the field against all comers. The official accounts are
naturally silent on the royal wrestling match, recorded in French (p. 142)
memoirs and histories.[391] On the 17th Francis, as a final effort to
win Henry's alliance, paid a surprise visit to him at breakfast with
only four attendants. The jousts were concluded with a solemn mass
said by Wolsey in a chapel built on the field. The Cardinal of Bourbon
presented the Gospel to Francis to kiss; he refused, offering it to
Henry who was too polite to accept the honour. The same respect for
each other's dignity was observed with the _Pax_, and the two Queens
behaved with a similarly courteous punctilio. After a friendly dispute
as to who should kiss the _Pax_ first, they kissed each other
instead.[392] On the 24th Henry and Francis met to interchange gifts,
to make their final professions of friendship, and to bid each other
adieu. Francis set out for Abbeville, and Henry returned to Calais.
[Footnote 385: _Ven. Cal._, iii., 50; _Sp. Cal._,
ii., 274.]
[Footnote 386: _L. and P._, iii., 558, an
account-book headed "expense of making the _Kateryn
Pleasaunce_ for transporting the King to Calais 22
May, 10 Henry VIII.".]
[Footnote 387: _Ven. Cal._, iii., 81, 88; _cf. L.
and P._, iii., 303-14; Hall, _Chronicle_, p. 604,
etc.]
[Footnote 388: _L. and P._, iii., 306.]
[Footnote 389: _Ven. Cal._, iii., 80.]
[Footnote 390: Erroneously called "Field of _the_
Cloth of Gold"; cloth of gold is a material like
velvet, and one does not talk about "a coat of
_the_ velvet".]
[Footnote 391: See Michelet, x., 137-38.]
[Footnote 392: _Ibid._, p. 312.]
The Field of Cloth of Gold was the last and most gorgeous display of
the departing spirit of chivalry; it was also perhaps the most
portentous deception on record. "These sovereigns," wrote a Venetian,
"are not at peace. They adapt themselves to circumstances, but they
hate each other very cordially."[393] Beneath the profusion of friendly
pretences lay rooted suspicions and even deliberate hostile intentions.
Before Henry left England the rumour of ships fitting out in French
ports had stopped preparations for the interview; and they were not
resumed till a promise under the broad seal of France was given that
no French ship should sail before Henry's return.[394] On the eve of
the meeting Henry is said to have discovered that three or four thousand
French troops were concealed in the neighbouring country;[395] (p. 143)
he insisted on their removal, and Francis's unguarded visit to Henry
was probably designed to disarm the English distrust.[396] No sooner
was Henry's back turned than the French began the fortification of
Ardres,[397] while Henry on his part went to Calais to negotiate a
less showy but genuine friendship with Charles. No such magnificence
adorned their meeting as had been displayed at the Field of Cloth of
Gold, but its solid results were far more lasting. On 10th July Henry
rode to Gravelines where the Emperor was waiting. On the 11th they
returned together to Calais, where during a three days' visit the
negotiations begun at Canterbury were completed. The ostensible
purport of the treaty signed on the 14th was to bind Henry to proceed
no further in the marriage between the Princess Mary and the Dauphin,
and Charles no further in that between himself and Francis's daughter,
Charlotte.[398] But more topics were discussed than appeared on the
surface; and among them was a proposal to marry Mary to the Emperor
himself.[399] The design proves that Henry and Wolsey had already made
up their minds to side with Charles, whenever his disputes with
Francis should develop into open hostilities.
[Footnote 393: _Ven. Cal._, iii., 119.]
[Footnote 394: _L. and P._, iii., 836, 842, 843.]
[Footnote 395: _Ven. Cal._, iii., 80.]
[Footnote 396: _Ibid._, iii., 90.]
[Footnote 397: _Ibid._, iii., 121.]
[Footnote 398: _L. and P._, iii., 914.]
[Footnote 399: _Ibid._, iii., 1149, 1150.]
That consummation could not be far off. Charles had scarcely turned
his back upon Spain when murmurs of disaffection were heard through
the length and breadth of the land; and while he was discussing with
Henry at Calais the prospects of a war with France, his commons in
Spain broke out into open revolt.[400] The rising had attained (p. 144)
such dimensions by February, 1521, that Henry thought Charles was
likely to lose his Spanish dominions. The temptation was too great for
France to resist; and in the early spring of 1521 French forces
overran Navarre, and restored to his kingdom the exile D'Albret.
Francis had many plausible excuses, and sought to prove that he was
not really the aggressor. There had been confused fighting between the
imperialist Nassau and Francis's allies, the Duke of Guelders and
Robert de la Marck, which the imperialists may have begun. But Francis
revealed his true motive, when he told Fitzwilliam that he had many
grievances against Charles and could not afford to neglect this
opportunity for taking his revenge.[401]
[Footnote 400: _Ibid._, iii., 883, 891, 964, 976,
988, 994.]
[Footnote 401: _L. and P._, iii., 1303, 1310,
1315.]
* * * * *
War between Emperor and King soon spread from Navarre to the borders
of Flanders and to the plains of Northern Italy. Both sovereigns
claimed the assistance of England in virtue of the Treaty of London.
But Henry would not be prepared for war till the following year at
least; and he proposed that Wolsey should go to Calais to mediate
between the two parties and decide which had been the aggressor.
Charles, either because he was unprepared or was sure of Wolsey's
support, readily agreed; but Francis was more reluctant, and only the
knowledge that, if he refused, Henry would at once side with Charles,
induced him to consent to the conference. So on 2nd August, 1521, the
Cardinal again crossed the Channel.[402] His first interview was with
the imperial envoys.[403] They announced that Charles had given them
no power to treat for a truce. Wolsey refused to proceed without this
authority; and he obtained the consent of the French chancellor, (p. 145)
Du Prat, to his proposal to visit the Emperor at Bruges, and secure
the requisite powers. He was absent more than a fortnight, and not
long after his return fell ill. This served to pass time in September,
and the extravagant demands of both parties still further prolonged
the proceedings. Wolsey was constrained to tell them the story of a
courtier who asked his King for the grant of a forest; when his
relatives denounced his presumption, he replied that he only wanted in
reality eight or nine trees.[404] The French and imperial chancellors
not merely demanded their respective forests, but made the reduction
of each single tree a matter of lengthy dispute; and as soon as a
fresh success in the varying fortune of war was reported, they
returned to their early pretensions. Wolsey was playing his game with
consummate skill; delay was his only desire; his illness had been
diplomatic; his objects were to postpone for a few months the breach
and to secure the pensions from France due at the end of October.[405]
[Footnote 402: See his various and ample
commissions, _ibid._, iii., 1443.]
[Footnote 403: _Ibid._, iii., 1462.]
[Footnote 404: _L. and P._, iii., 1622.]
[Footnote 405: _Ibid._, iii., 1507. "The Cardinal
apologised for not having met them so long on
account of his illness, but said he could not
otherwise have gained so much time without causing
suspicion to the French" (Gattinara to Charles V.,
24th September, 1521, _ibid._, iii., 1605).]
The conference at Calais was in fact a monument of perfidy worthy of
Ferdinand the Catholic. The plan was Wolsey's, but Henry had expressed
full approval. As early as July the King was full of his secret design
for destroying the navy of France, though he did not propose to proceed
with the enterprise till Wolsey had completed the arrangements with
Charles.[406] The subterfuge about Charles refusing his powers (p. 146)
and the Cardinal's journey to Bruges had been arranged between Henry,
Wolsey and Charles before Wolsey left England. The object of that
visit, so far from being to facilitate an agreement, was to conclude
an offensive and defensive alliance against one of the two parties
between whom Wolsey was pretending to mediate. "Henry agrees," wrote
Charles's ambassador on 6th July, "with Wolsey's plan that he should
be sent to Calais under colour of hearing the grievances of both
parties: and when he cannot arrange them, he should withdraw to the
Emperor to treat of the matters aforesaid".[407] The treaty was
concluded at Bruges on 25th August[408] before he returned to Calais;
the Emperor promised Wolsey the Papacy;[409] the details of a joint
invasion were settled. Charles was to marry Mary; and the Pope was to
dispense the two from the disability of their kinship, and from
engagements with others which both had contracted. The Cardinal might
be profuse in his protestations of friendship for France, of devotion
to peace, and of his determination to do justice to the parties before
him. But all his painted words could not long conceal the fact that
behind the mask of the judge were hidden the features of a conspirator.
It was an unpleasant time for Fitzwilliam, the English ambassador at
the French Court. The King's sister, Marguerite de Valois, taxed
Fitzwilliam with Wolsey's proceedings, hinting that deceit was being
practised on Francis. The ambassador grew hot, vowed Henry was (p. 147)
not a dissembler, and that he would prove it on any gentleman who
dared to maintain that he was.[410] But he knew nothing of Wolsey's
intrigues; nor was the Cardinal, to whom Fitzwilliam denounced the
insinuation, likely to blush, though he knew that the charge was true.
[Footnote 406: _Ibid._, iii., 1440.]
[Footnote 407: _L. and P._, iii., 1395, 1433; _cf._
iii., 1574, where Henry VIII.'s envoy tells Leo X.
that the real object of the conference was to gain
time for English preparations.]
[Footnote 408: _Ibid._, iii., 1508; _Cotton MS_.,
Galba, B, vii., 102; see also an account of the
conference in _L. and P._, iii., 1816, 1817.]
[Footnote 409: _Ibid._, iii., 1868, 1876.]
[Footnote 410: _L. and P._, iii., 1581.]
Wolsey returned from Calais at the end of November, having failed to
establish the truce to which the negotiations had latterly been in
appearance directed. But the French half-yearly pensions were paid,
and England had the winter in which to prepare for war. No attempt had
been made to examine impartially the mutual charges of aggression
urged by the litigants, though a determination of that point could
alone justify England's intervention. The dispute was complicated
enough. If, as Charles contended, the Treaty of London guaranteed the
_status quo_, Francis, by invading Navarre, was undoubtedly the
offender. But the French King pleaded the Treaty of Noyon, by which
Charles had bound himself to do justice to the exiled King of Navarre,
to marry the French King's daughter, and to pay tribute for Naples.
That treaty was not abrogated by the one concluded in London, yet
Charles had fulfilled none of his promises. Moreover, the Emperor
himself had, long before the invasion of Navarre, been planning a war
with France, and negotiating with Leo to expel the French from Milan,
and to destroy the predominant French faction in Genoa.[411] His (p. 148)
ministers were making little secret of Charles's warlike intentions,
when the Spanish revolt placed irresistible temptation in Francis's
way, and provoked that attack on Navarre, which enabled Charles to
plead, with some colour, that he was not the aggressor. This was the
ground alleged by Henry for siding with Charles, but it was not his
real reason for going to war. Nearly a year before Navarre was
invaded, he had discussed the rupture of Mary's engagement with the
Dauphin and the transference of her hand to the Emperor.
[Footnote 411: In July, 1521, Gattinara drew out
seven reasons for peace and ten for war; the former
he playfully termed the seven deadly sins, and the
latter the ten commandments (_L. and P._, iii.,
1446; _Sp. Cal._, ii., 337).]
The real motives of England's policy do not appear on the surface.
"The aim of the King of England," said Clement VII. in 1524,[412] "is
as incomprehensible as the causes by which he is moved are futile. He
may, perhaps, wish to revenge himself for the slights he has received
from the King of France and from the Scots, or to punish the King of
France for his disparaging language; or, seduced by the flattery of
the Emperor, he may have nothing else in view than to help the
Emperor; or he may, perhaps, really wish to preserve peace in Italy,
and therefore declares himself an enemy of any one who disturbs it. It
is even not impossible that the King of England expects to be rewarded
by the Emperor after the victory, and hopes, perhaps, to get Normandy."
Clement three years before, when Cardinal de Medici, had admitted that
he knew little of English politics;[413] and his ignorance may explain
his inability to give a more satisfactory reason for Henry's conduct
than these tentative and far-fetched suggestions. But after the
publication of Henry's State papers, it is not easy to arrive at any
more definite conclusion. The only motive Wolsey alleges, besides (p. 149)
the _ex post facto_ excuses of Francis's conduct, is the recovery of
Henry's rights to the crown of France; and if this were the real
object, it reduces both King and Cardinal to the level of political
charlatans. To conquer France was a madcap scheme, when Henry himself
was admitting the impossibility of raising 30,000 foot or 10,000
horse, without hired contingents from Charles's domains;[414] when,
according to Giustinian, it would have been hard to levy 100
men-at-arms or 1000 light cavalry in the whole island;[415] when the
only respectable military force was the archers, already an obsolete
arm. Invading hosts could never be victualled for more than three
months, or stand a winter campaign; English troops were ploughmen by
profession and soldiers only by chance; Henry VII.'s treasure was
exhausted, and efforts to raise money for fitful and futile inroads
nearly produced a revolt. Henry VIII. himself was writing that to
provide for these inroads would prevent him keeping an army in
Ireland; and Wolsey was declaring that for the same reason English
interests in Scotland must take care of themselves, that border
warfare must be confined to the strictest defensive, and that a
"cheap" deputy must be found for Ireland, who would rule it, like
Kildare, without English aid.[416] It is usual to lay the folly of the
pretence to the crown of France at Henry's door. But it is a curious
fact that when Wolsey was gone, and Henry was his own prime minister,
this spirited foreign policy took a very subordinate place, and Henry
turned his attention to the cultivation of his own garden instead of
seeking to annex his neighbour's. It is possible that he was (p. 150)
better employed in wasting his people's blood and treasure in the
futile devastation of France, than in placing his heel on the Church
and sending Fisher and More to the scaffold; but his attempts to
reduce Ireland to order, and to unite England and Scotland, violent
though his methods may have been, were at least more sane than the
quest for the crown of France, or even for the possession of
Normandy.[417]
[Footnote 412: _Sp. Cal._, ii., 626.]
[Footnote 413: _L. and P._, iii., 853.]
[Footnote 414: _L. and P._, iii., 2333, iv.]
[Footnote 415: _Desp._, App. ii., 309.]
[Footnote 416: _L. and P._, iii., 1252, 1646,
1675.]
[Footnote 417: The policy of abstention was often
urged at the council-table and opposed by Wolsey,
who, according to More, used to repeat the fable of
the men who hid in caves to keep out of the rain
which was to make all whom it wetted fools, hoping
thereby to have the rule over the fools (_L. and
P._, vii., 1114; More, _English Works_, p. 1434).
It had cost England, says More, many a fair penny.]
Yet if these were not Wolsey's aims, what were his motives? The
essential thing for England was the maintenance of a fairly even
balance between Francis and Charles; and if Wolsey thought that would
best be secured by throwing the whole of England's weight into the
Emperor's scale, he must have strangely misread the political
situation. He could not foresee, it may be said, the French debacle.
If so, it was from no lack of omens. Even supposing he was ignorant,
or unable to estimate the effects, of the moral corruption of Francis,
the peculations of his mother Louise of Savoy, the hatred of the war,
universal among the French lower classes, there were definite warnings
from more careful observers.[418] As early as 1517 there were bitter
complaints in France of the _gabelle_ and other taxes, and a Cordelier
denounced the French King as worse than Nero.[419] In 1519 an (p. 151)
anonymous Frenchman wrote that Francis had destroyed his own people,
emptied his kingdom of money, and that the Emperor or some other would
soon have a cheap bargain of the kingdom, for he was more unsteady on
his throne than people thought.[420] Even the treason of Bourbon,
which contributed so much to the French King's fall, was rumoured
three years before it occurred, and in 1520 he was known to be
"playing the malcontent".[421] At the Field of Cloth of Gold Henry is
said to have told Francis that, had he a subject like Bourbon, he
would not long leave his head on his shoulders.[422] All these details
were reported to the English Government and placed among English
archives; and, indeed, at the English Court the general anticipation,
justified by the event, was that Charles would carry the day.
[Footnote 418: "To hear how rich and poor lament
the war would grieve any man's heart" (Fitzwilliam
to Wolsey, 18th Jan., 1521-22, _L. and P._, iii.,
1971).]
[Footnote 419: _L. and P._, ii., 3702-3.]
[Footnote 420: _Ibid._, iii., 378.]
[Footnote 421: _Ibid._, iii., 404; _cf._ iii., 2446
_ad fin._]
[Footnote 422: Michelet, x., 131.]
No possible advantage could accrue to England from such a destruction
of the balance of power; her position as mediator was only tenable so
long as neither Francis nor Charles had the complete mastery. War on
the Emperor was, no doubt, out of the question, but that was no reason
for war on France. Prudence counselled England to make herself strong,
to develop her resources, and to hold her strength in reserve, while
the two rivals weakened each other by war. She would then be in a far
better position to make her voice heard in the settlement, and would
probably have been able to extract from it all the benefits she could
with reason or justice demand. So obvious was the advantage of this
policy that for some time acute French statesmen refused to credit
Wolsey with any other. They said, reported an English envoy to (p. 152)
the Cardinal, "that your grace would make your profit with them and
the Emperor both, and proceed between them so that they might continue
in war, and that the one destroy the other, and the King's highness
may remain and be their arbiter and superior".[423] If it is urged
that Henry was bent on the war, and that Wolsey must satisfy the King
or forfeit his power, even the latter would have been the better
alternative. His fall would have been less complete and more
honourable than it actually was. Wolsey's failure to follow this
course suggests that, by involving Henry in dazzling schemes of a
foreign conquest, he was seeking to divert his attention from urgent
matters at home; that he had seen a vision of impending ruin; and that
his actions were the frantic efforts of a man to turn a steed, over
which he has imperfect control, from the gulf he sees yawning ahead.
The only other explanation is that Wolsey sacrificed England's
interests in the hope of securing from Charles the gift of the papal
tiara.[424]
[Footnote 423: _L. and P._, iii, 2026.]
[Footnote 424: For another view see Busch,
_Cardinal Wolsey und die Englisch-Kaiserliche
Allianz_, 1522-25. Bonn, 1886.]
* * * * *
However that may be, it was not for Clement VII. to deride England's
conduct. The keen-sighted Pace had remarked in 1521 that, in the event
of Charles's victory, the Pope would have to look to his affairs in
time.[425] The Emperor's triumph was, indeed, as fatal to the Papacy
as it was to Wolsey. Yet Clement VII., on whom the full force of the
blow was to fall, had, as Cardinal de Medici, been one of the chief
promoters of the war. In August, 1521, the Venetian, Contarini, (p. 153)
reports Charles as saying that Leo rejected both the peace and the truce
speciously urged by Wolsey, and adds, on his own account, that he
believes it the truth.[426] In 1522 Francis asserted that Cardinal de
Medici "was the cause of all this war";[427] and in 1527 Clement VII.
sought to curry favour with Charles by declaring that as Cardinal de
Medici he had in 1521 caused Leo X. to side against France.[428] In
1525 Charles declared that he had been mainly induced to enter on the
war by the persuasions of Leo,[429] over whom his cousin, the
Cardinal, then wielded supreme influence. So complete was his sway
over Leo, that, on Leo's death, a cardinal in the conclave remarked
that they wanted a new Pope, not one who had already been Pope for
years; and the gibe turned the scale against the future Clement VII.
Medici both, Leo and the Cardinal regarded the Papacy mainly as a
means for family aggrandisement. In 1518 Leo had fulminated against
Francis Maria della Rovere, Duke of Urbino, as "the son of iniquity
and child of perdition,"[430] because he desired to bestow the duchy
on his nephew Lorenzo. In the family interest he was withholding
Modena and Reggio from Alfonso d'Este, and casting envious eyes on
Ferrara. In March, 1521, the French marched to seize some Milanese
exiles, who were harboured at Reggio.[431] Leo took the opportunity to
form an alliance with Charles for the expulsion of Francis from Italy.
It was signed at Worms on the 8th of May, the day on which Luther was
outlawed;[432] and a war broke out in Italy, the effects of which (p. 154)
were little foreseen by its principal authors. A veritable Nemesis
attended this policy conceived in perfidy and greed. The battle of
Pavia made Charles more nearly dictator of Europe than any ruler has
since been, except Napoleon Bonaparte. It led to the sack of Rome and
the imprisonment of Clement VII. by Charles's troops. The dependence
of the Pope on the Emperor made it impossible for Clement to grant
Henry's petition for divorce, and his failure to obtain the divorce
precipitated Wolsey's fall.
[Footnote 425: _L. and P._, iii., 1370.]
[Footnote 426: _Ven. Cal._, iii., 312.]
[Footnote 427: _L. and P._, iii., 1947.]
[Footnote 428: _Sp. Cal._, iii., pp. 510-11.]
[Footnote 429: _Ibid._, ii., p. 717.]
[Footnote 430: _L. and P._, ii., 3617.]
[Footnote 431: _Ibid._, iii., 1209, 1400.]
[Footnote 432: Creighton, _Papacy_, ed. 1901, vi.,
184 n. The edict was not issued till 25th May, but
there was an intimate connection between the two
events. It was in the same month that Luther's
books were solemnly burnt in England, the ally of
Pope and Emperor, and the extirpation of heresy was
the first motive alleged for the alliance.]
Leo, meanwhile, had gone to his account on the night of 1st-2nd
December, 1521, singing "Nunc dimittis" for the expulsion of the
French from Milan;[433] and amid the clangour of war the cardinals met
to choose his successor. Their spirit belied their holy profession.
"All here," wrote Manuel, Charles's representative, "is founded on
avarice and lies;"[434] and again "there cannot be so much hatred and
so many devils in hell as among these cardinals". "The Papacy is in
great decay" echoed the English envoy Clerk, "the cardinals brawl and
scold; their malicious, unfaithful and uncharitable demeanour against
each other increases every day."[435] Feeling between the French and
imperial factions ran high, and the only question was whether an
adherent of Francis or Charles would secure election. Francis had
promised Wolsey fourteen French votes; but after the conference of
Calais he would have been forgiving indeed had he wielded his influence
on behalf of the English candidate. Wolsey built more upon the (p. 155)
promise of Charles at Bruges;[436] but, if he really hoped for Charles's
assistance, his sagacity was greatly to seek. The Emperor at no time
made any effort on Wolsey's behalf; he did him the justice to think
that, were Wolsey elected, he would be devoted more to English than to
imperial interests; and he preferred a Pope who would be undividedly
imperialist at heart. Pace was sent to join Clerk at Rome in urging
Wolsey's suit, and they did their best; but English influence at the
Court of Rome was infinitesimal. In spite of Campeggio's flattering
assurance that Wolsey's name appeared in every scrutiny, and that
sometimes he had eight or nine votes, and Clerk's statement that he
had nine at one time, twelve at another, and nineteen at a third,[437]
Wolsey's name only appears in one of the eleven scrutinies, and then
he received but seven out of eighty-one votes.[438] The election was
long and keenly contested. The conclave commenced on the 28th of
December, and it was not till the 9th of January, 1522, that the
cardinals, conscious of each other's defects, agreed to elect an
absentee, about whom they knew little. Their choice fell on Adrian,
Cardinal of Tortosa; and it is significant of the extent of Charles's
influence, that the new Pope had been his tutor, and was proposed as a
candidate by the imperial ambassador on the day that the conclave
opened.[439]
[Footnote 433: _Sp. Cal._, ii., 365; _L. and P._,
ii., 1795.]
[Footnote 434: _Sp. Cal._, ii., 370.]
[Footnote 435: _L. and P._, iii., 1960.]
[Footnote 436: _L. and P._, iii., 1884.]
[Footnote 437: _Ibid._, iii., 1952, 1960.]
[Footnote 438: _Sp. Cal._, ii., 375. It is not
quite clear how these votes were recorded, for
there were not eighty-one cardinals.]
[Footnote 439: _Ibid._, ii., 371.]
Neither the expulsion of the French from Milan, nor the election of
Charles's tutor as Pope, opened Wolsey's eyes to the danger of (p. 156)
further increasing the Emperor's power.[440] He seems rather to have
thrown himself into the not very chivalrous design of completing the
ruin of the weaker side, and picking up what he could from the spoils.
During the winter of 1521-22 he was busily preparing for war, while
endeavouring to delay the actual breach till his plans were complete.
Francis, convinced of England's hostile intentions, let Albany loose
upon Scotland and refused to pay the pensions to Henry and Wolsey.
They made these grievances the excuse for a war on which they had long
been determined. In March Henry announced that he had taken upon
himself the protection of the Netherlands during Charles's impending
visit to Spain. Francis asserted that this was a plain declaration of
war, and seized the English wine-ships at Bordeaux. But he was
determined not to take the formal offensive, and, in May, Clarencieux
herald proceeded to France to bid him defiance.[441] In the following
month Charles passed through England on his way to the south, and
fresh treaties were signed for the invasion of France, for the
marriage of Mary and for the extirpation of heresy. At Windsor[442]
Wolsey constituted his legatine court to bind the contracting parties
by oaths enforced by ecclesiastical censures. He arrogated to himself
a function usually reserved for the Pope, and undertook to arbitrate
between Charles and Henry if disputes arose about the observance (p. 157)
of their engagements. But he obviously found difficulty in raising
either money or men; and one of the suggestions at Windsor was that a
"dissembled peace" or a two years' truce should be made with France,
to give England time for more preparations for war.
[Footnote 440: Francis "begged Henry to consider
what would happen now that a Pope had been elected
entirely at Charles's devotion" (_L. and P._, iii.,
1994); but Adrian's attitude was at first
independent (_Sp. Cal._, ii., 494, 504, 533). In
July, 1522, however, he joined the league against
Francis (_ibid._, ii., 574).]
[Footnote 441: _L. and P._, iii., 2140, 2224,
2290.]
[Footnote 442: _Ibid._, iii., 2322, 2333; _Sp.
Cal._, ii., 430, 435, 561.]
Nothing came of this last nefarious suggestion. In July Surrey captured
and burnt Morlaix;[443] but, as he wrote from on board the _Mary
Rose_, Fitzwilliam's ships were without flesh or fish, and Surrey
himself had only beer for twelve days. Want of victuals prevented
further naval successes, and, in September, Surrey was sent into
Artois, where the same lack of organisation was equally fatal. It did
not, however, prevent him from burning farms and towns wherever he
went; and his conduct evoked from the French commander a just rebuke
of his "foul warfare".[444] Henry himself was responsible; for Wolsey
wrote on his behalf urging the destruction of Dourlens and the
adjacent towns.[445] If Henry really sought to make these territories
his own, it was an odd method of winning the affections and developing
the wealth of the subjects he hoped to acquire. Nothing was really
accomplished except devastation in France. Even this useless warfare
exhausted English energies, and left the Borders defenceless against
one of the largest armies ever collected in Scotland. Wolsey and Henry
were only saved, from what might have been a most serious invasion, by
Dacre's dexterity and Albany's cowardice. Dacre, the warden of the
marches, signed a truce without waiting for instructions, and before
it expired the Scots army disbanded. Henry and Wolsey might reprimand
Dacre for acting on his own responsibility, but they knew well (p. 158)
enough that Dacre had done them magnificent service.[446]
[Footnote 443: _L. and P._, iii., 2362.]
[Footnote 444: _Ibid._, iii., 2541.]
[Footnote 445: _Ibid._, iii., 2551.]
[Footnote 446: _L. and P._, iii., 2537.]
The results of the war from the English point of view had as yet been
contemptible, but great things were hoped for the following year.
Bourbon, Constable of France, and the most powerful peer in the kingdom,
intent on the betrayal of Francis, was negotiating with Henry and
Charles the price of his treason.[447] The commons in France, worn to
misery by the taxes of Francis and the ravages of his enemies, were
eager for anything that might promise some alleviation of their lot.
They would even, it appears, welcome a change of dynasty; everywhere,
Henry was told, they cried "Vive le roi d'Angleterre!"[448] Never,
said Wolsey, would there be a better opportunity for recovering the
King's right to the French crown; and Henry exclaimed that he trusted
to treat Francis as his father did Richard III. "I pray God," wrote
Sir Thomas More to Wolsey, "if it be good for his grace and for this
realm, that then it may prove so, and else in the stead thereof, I
pray God send his grace an honourable and profitable peace."[449] He
could scarcely go further in hinting his preference for peace to the
fantastic design which now occupied the minds of his masters. Probably
his opinion of the war was not far from that of old Bishop Fox, who
declared: "I have determined, and, betwixt God and me, utterly
renounced the meddling with worldly matters, specially concerning war
or anything to it appertaining (whereof, for the many intolerable
enormities that I have seen ensue by the said war in time past, I (p. 159)
have no little remorse in my conscience), thinking that if I did
continual penance for it all the days of my life, though I should live
twenty years longer than I may do, I could not yet make sufficient
recompense therefor. And now, my good lord, to be called to fortifications
of towns and places of war, or to any matter concerning the war, being
of the age of seventy years and above, and looking daily to die, the
which if I did, being in any such meddling of the war, I think I
should die in despair."[450] Protests like this and hints like More's
were little likely to move the militant Cardinal, who hoped to see the
final ruin of France in 1523. Bourbon was to raise the standard of
revolt, Charles was to invade from Spain and Suffolk from Calais. In
Italy French influence seemed irretrievably ruined. The Genoese
revolution, planned before the war, was effected; and the persuasions
of Pace and the threats of Charles at last detached Venice and Ferrara
from the alliance of France.[451]
[Footnote 447: _Sp. Cal._, ii., 584; _L. and P._,
iii., 2450, 2567, 2770, 2772, 2879, 3154. Bourbon
had substantial grievances against Francis I. and
his mother.]
[Footnote 448: _Ibid._, iii., 2770.]
[Footnote 449: _Ibid._, iii., 2555.]
[Footnote 450: Ellis, _Orig. Letters_, 2nd series,
ii., 4; _L. and P._, iii., 2207.]
[Footnote 451: _L. and P._, iii., 3207, 3271, 3291;
_Sp. Cal._, ii., 576, 594.]
The usual delays postponed Suffolk's invasion till late in the year.
They were increased by the emptiness of Henry's treasury. His father's
hoard had melted away, and it was absolutely necessary to obtain
lavish supplies from Parliament. But Parliament proved ominously
intractable. Thomas Cromwell, now rising to notice, in a temperate
speech urged the folly of indulging in impracticable schemes of
foreign conquest, while Scotland remained a thorn in England's
side.[452] It was three months from the meeting of Parliament before
the subsidies were granted, and nearly the end of August before (p. 160)
Suffolk crossed to Calais with an army, "the largest which has passed
out of this realm for a hundred years".[453] Henry and Suffolk wanted
it to besiege Boulogne, which might have been some tangible result in
English hands.[454] But the King was persuaded by Wolsey and his
imperial allies to forgo this scheme, and to order Suffolk to march
into the heart of France. Suffolk was not a great general, but he
conducted the invasion with no little skill, and desired to conduct it
with unwonted humanity. He wished to win the French by abstaining from
pillage and proclaiming liberty, but Henry thought only the hope of
plunder would keep the army together.[455] Waiting for the imperial
contingent under De Buren, Suffolk did not leave Calais till 19th
September. He advanced by Bray, Roye and Montdidier, capturing all the
towns that offered resistance. Early in November, he reached the Oise
at a point less than forty miles from the French capital.[456] But
Bourbon's treason had been discovered; instead of joining Suffolk with
a large force, he was a fugitive from his country. Charles contented
himself with taking Fuentarabia,[457] and made no effort at invasion.
The imperial contingent with Suffolk's army went home; winter set in
with unexampled severity, and Vendome advanced.[458] The English were
compelled to retire; their retreat was effected without loss, and by
the middle of December the army was back at Calais. Suffolk is
represented as being in disgrace for this retreat, and Wolsey as
saving him from the effects of his failure.[459] But even Wolsey (p. 161)
can hardly have thought that an army of twenty-five thousand men could
maintain itself in the heart of France, throughout the winter, without
support and with unguarded communications. The Duke's had been the
most successful invasion of France since the days of Henry V. from a
military point of view. That its results were negative is due to the
policy by which it was directed.
[Footnote 452: Merriman, _Cromwell's Letters_, i.,
30-44; _L. and P._, iii., 2958, 3024; Hall,
_Chronicle_, pp. 656, 657.]
[Footnote 453: _L. and P._, iii., 3281.]
[Footnote 454: _Ibid._, iii., 2360, 3319.]
[Footnote 455: _Ibid._, iii., 3346.]
[Footnote 456: _Ibid._, iii., 3452, 3485, 3505,
3516.]
[Footnote 457: _Ibid._, iii., 2798, 2869.]
[Footnote 458: _Ibid._, iii., 3559, 3580, 3601.]
[Footnote 459: Brewer's Introd. to _L. and P._,
vol. iv., p. ii., etc.]
Meanwhile there was another papal election. Adrian, one of the most
honest and unpopular of Popes, died on 14th September, 1523, and by
order of the cardinals there was inscribed on his tomb: _Hic jacet
Adrianus Sextus cui nihil in vita infelicius contigit quam quod
imperaret._ With equal malice and keener wit the Romans erected to his
physician, Macerata, a statue with the title _Liberatori Patriae_.[460]
Wolsey was again a candidate. He told Henry he would rather continue
in his service than be ten Popes.[461] That did not prevent him
instructing Pace and Clerk to further his claims. They were to
represent to the cardinals Wolsey's "great experience in the causes of
Christendom, his favour with the Emperor, the King, and other princes,
his anxiety for Christendom, his liberality, the great promotions to
be vacated by his election, his frank, pleasant and courteous
inclinations, his freedom from all ties of family or party, and the
hopes of a great expedition against the infidel".[462] Charles was, as
usual, profuse in his promise of aid. He actually wrote a letter in
Wolsey's favour; but he took the precaution to detain the bearer (p. 162)
in Spain till the election was over.[463] He had already instructed
his minister at Rome to procure the election of Cardinal de Medici.
That ambassador mocked at Wolsey's hopes; "as if God," he wrote,
"would perform a miracle every day".[464] The Holy Spirit, by which
the cardinals always professed to be moved, was not likely to inspire
the election of another absentee after their experience of Adrian.
Wolsey had not the remotest chance, and his name does not occur in a
single scrutiny. After the longest conclave on record, the imperial
influence prevailed; on 18th November De Medici was proclaimed Pope,
and he chose as his title Clement VII.[465]
[Footnote 460: _Ibid._, iii., 3464.]
[Footnote 461: _Ibid._, iii., 3372.]
[Footnote 462: _Ibid._, 3389.]
[Footnote 463: _Sp. Cal._, ii., 615.]
[Footnote 464: _Ibid._, ii., 604, 606.]
[Footnote 465: _L. and P._, iii., 3547, 3592; _Sp.
Cal._, ii., 610. He thought of retaining his name
Julius, but was told that Popes who followed that
practice always had short pontificates.]
Suffolk's invasion was the last of England's active participation in
the war. Exhausted by her efforts, discontented with the Emperor's
failure to render assistance in the joint enterprise, or perceiving at
last that she had little to gain, and much to lose, from the overgrown
power of Charles, England, in 1524, abstained from action, and even
began to make overtures to Francis. Wolsey repaid Charles's inactivity
of the previous year by standing idly by, while the imperial forces
with Bourbon's contingent invaded Provence and laid siege to
Marseilles. But Francis still held command of the sea; the spirit of
his people rose with the danger; Marseilles made a stubborn and
successful defence; and, by October, the invading army was in headlong
retreat towards Italy.[466] Had Francis been content with defending
his kingdom, all might have been well; but ambition lured him on (p. 163)
to destruction. He thought he had passed the worst of the trouble, and
that the prize of Milan might yet be his. So, before the imperialists
were well out of France, he crossed the Alps and sat down to besiege
Pavia. It was brilliantly defended by Antonio de Leyva. In November
Francis's ruin was thought to be certain; astrologers predicted his
death or imprisonment.[467] Slowly and surely Pescara, the most
consummate general of his age, was pressing north with imperial troops
to succour Pavia. Francis would not raise the siege. On 24th February,
1525, he was attacked in front by Pescara and in the rear by De Leyva.
"The victory is complete," wrote the Abbot of Najera to Charles from
the field of battle, "the King of France is made prisoner.... The
whole French army is annihilated.... To-day is feast of the Apostle
St. Mathias, on which, five and twenty years ago, your Majesty is said
to have been born. Five and twenty thousand times thanks and praise to
God for His mercy! Your Majesty is, from this day, in a position to
prescribe laws to Christians and Turks, according to your
pleasure."[468]
[Footnote 466: _Sp. Cal._, ii., 686; _L. and P._,
iv., 751, 753, 773, 774, 776.]
[Footnote 467: _Sp. Cal._, ii., 692-94, 711.]
[Footnote 468: _Ibid._, ii., 722; _cf._ Hall's
_Chron._, p. 693, which professes to give the "very
words" of Francis I.'s much misquoted letter to his
mother (_L. and P._, iv., 1120-24).]
Such was the result of Wolsey's policy since 1521, Francis a prisoner,
Charles a dictator, and Henry vainly hoping that he might be allowed
some share in the victor's spoils. But what claim had he? By the most
extraordinary misfortune or fatuity, England had not merely helped
Charles to a threatening supremacy, but had retired from the (p. 164)
struggle just in time to deprive herself of all claim to benefit by
her mistaken policy. She had looked on while Bourbon invaded France,
fearing to aid lest Charles would reap all the fruits of success. She
had sent no force across the channel to threaten Francis's rear. Not a
single French soldier had been diverted from attacking Charles in
Italy through England's interference. One hundred thousand crowns had
been promised the imperial troops, but the money was not paid; and
secret negotiations had been going on with France. In spite of all,
Charles had won, and he was naturally not disposed to divide the
spoils. England's policy since 1521 had been disastrous to herself, to
Wolsey, to the Papacy, and even to Christendom. For the falling out of
Christian princes seemed to the Turk to afford an excellent opportunity
for the faithful to come by his own. After an heroic defence by the
knights of St. John, Rhodes, the bulwark of Christendom, had
surrendered to Selim. Belgrade, the strongest citadel in Eastern
Europe, followed. In August, 1526, the King and the flower of
Hungarian nobility perished at the battle of Mohacz; and the
internecine strife of Christians seemed doomed to be sated only by
their common subjugation to the Turk.
* * * * *
Henry and Wolsey began to pay the price of their policy at home as
well as abroad. War was no less costly for being ineffective, and it
necessitated demands on the purses of Englishmen, to which they had
long been unused. In the autumn of 1522 Wolsey was compelled to have
recourse to a loan from both spiritualty and temporalty.[469] It seems
to have met with a response which, compared with later receptions, (p. 165)
may be described as almost cheerful. But the loan did not go far, and
before another six months had elapsed it was found necessary to summon
Parliament to make further provision.[470] The Speaker was Sir Thomas
More, who did all he could to secure a favourable reception of
Wolsey's demands. An unwonted spirit of independence animated the
members; the debates were long and stormy; and the Cardinal felt
called upon to go down to the House of Commons, and hector it in such
fashion that even More was compelled to plead its privileges.
Eventually, some money was reluctantly granted; but it too was soon
swallowed up, and in 1525 Wolsey devised fresh expedients. He was
afraid to summon Parliament again, so he proposed what he called an
Amicable Grant. It was necessary, he said, for Henry to invade France
in person; if he went, he must go as a prince; and he could not go as
a prince without lavish supplies. So he required what was practically
a graduated income-tax. The Londoners resisted till they were told
that resistance might cost them their heads. In Suffolk and elsewhere
open insurrection broke out. It was then proposed to withdraw the
fixed ratio, and allow each individual to pay what he chose as a
benevolence. A common councillor of London promptly retorted that
benevolences were illegal by statute of Richard III. Wolsey cared
little for the constitution, and was astonished that any one should
quote the laws of a wicked usurper; but the common councillor was a
sound constitutionalist, if Wolsey was not. "An it please your grace,"
he replied, "although King Richard did evil, yet in his time were (p. 166)
many good acts made, not by him only, but by the consent of the body
of the whole realm, which is Parliament."[471] There was no answer;
the demand was withdrawn. Never had Henry suffered such a rebuff, and
he never suffered the like again. Nor was this all; the whole of
London, Wolsey is reported to have said, were traitors to Henry.[472]
Informations of "treasonable words"--that ominous phrase--became
frequent.[473] Here, indeed, was a contrast to the exuberant loyalty
of the early years of Henry's reign. The change may not have been
entirely due to Wolsey, but he had been minister, with a power which
few have equalled, during the whole period in which it was effected,
and Henry may well have begun to think that it was time for his
removal.
[Footnote 469: _L. and P._, iii., 2483.]
[Footnote 470: _L. and P._, iii., 2956, 2958,
3249.]
[Footnote 471: Hall, _Chronicle_, ed. 1809, p.
698.]
[Footnote 472: _L. and P._, iii., 3076.]
[Footnote 473: _Ibid._, iii., 3082.]
Whether Wolsey was now anxious to repair his blunder by siding with
Francis against Charles, or to snatch some profit from the Emperor's
victory by completing the ruin of France, the refusal of Englishmen to
find more money for the war left him no option but peace. In April,
1525, Tunstall and Sir Richard Wingfield were sent to Spain with
proposals for the exclusion of Francis and his children from the
French throne and the dismemberment of his kingdom.[474] It is
doubtful if Wolsey himself desired the fulfilment of so preposterous
and iniquitous a scheme. It is certain that Charles was in no mood to
abet it. He had no wish to extract profit for England out of the
abasement of Francis, to see Henry King of France, or lord of any
French provinces. He had no intention of even performing his part (p. 167)
of the Treaty of Windsor. He had pledged himself to marry the Princess
Mary, and the splendour of that match may have contributed to Henry's
desire for an alliance with Charles. But another matrimonial project
offered the Emperor more substantial advantages. Ever since 1517 his
Spanish subjects had been pressing him to marry the daughter of
Emmanuel, King of Portugal. The Portuguese royal family had claims to
the throne of Castile which would be quieted by Charles's marriage
with a Portuguese princess. Her dowry of a million crowns was, also,
an argument not to be lightly disregarded in Charles's financial
embarrassments; and in March, 1526, the Emperor's wedding with
Isabella of Portugal was solemnised.
[Footnote 474: _Ibid._, iv., 1212, 1249, 1255,
1264, 1296; _Stowe MS._, 147, ff. 67, 86 (Brit.
Mus.).]
Wolsey, on his part, was secretly negotiating with Louise of Savoy
during her son's imprisonment in Spain. In August, 1525, a treaty of
amity was signed, by which England gave up all its claims to French
territory in return for the promise of large sums of money to Henry
and his minister.[475] The impracticability of enforcing Henry's
pretensions to the French crown or to French provinces, which had been
urged as excuses for squandering English blood and treasure, was
admitted, even when the French King was in prison and his kingdom
defenceless. But what good could the treaty do Henry or Francis?
Charles had complete control over his captive, and could dictate his
own terms. Neither the English nor the French King was in a position
to continue the war; and the English alliance with France could abate
no iota of the concessions which Charles extorted from Francis (p. 168)
in January, 1526, by the Treaty of Madrid.[476] Francis surrendered
Burgundy; gave up his claims to Milan, Genoa and Naples; abandoned his
allies, the King of Navarre, the Duke of Guelders and Robert de la
Marck; engaged to marry Charles's sister Eleanor, the widowed Queen of
Portugal; and handed over his two sons to the Emperor as hostages for
the fulfilment of the treaty. But he had no intention of keeping his
promises. No sooner was he free than he protested that the treaty had
been extracted by force, and that his oath to keep it was not binding.
The Estates of France readily refused their assent, and the Pope was,
as usual, willing, for political reasons, to absolve Francis from his
oath. For the time being, consideration for the safety of his sons and
the hope of obtaining their release prevented him from openly breaking
with Charles, or listening to the proposals for a marriage with the
Princess Mary, held out as a bait by Wolsey.[477] The Cardinal's
object was merely to injure the Emperor as much as he could without
involving England in war; and by negotiations for Mary's marriage,
first with Francis, and then with his second son, the Duke of Orleans,
he was endeavouring to draw England and France into a closer alliance.
For similar reasons he was extending his patronage to the Holy League,
formed by Clement VII. between the princes of Italy to liberate that
distressful country from the grip of the Spanish forces.
[Footnote 475: _L. and P._, iv., 1525, 1531, 1600,
1633.]
[Footnote 476: _L. and P._, iv., 1891.]
[Footnote 477: _Ibid._, iv., 2039, 2148, 2320,
2325.]
The policy of Clement, of Venice, and of other Italian States had been
characterised by as much blindness as that of England. Almost without
exception they had united, in 1523, to expel the French from Italy.
The result was to destroy the balance of power south of the Alps, (p. 169)
and to deliver themselves over to a bondage more galling than that
from which they sought to escape. Clement himself had been elected Pope
by imperial influence, and the Duke of Sessa, Charles's representative
in Rome, described him as entirely the Emperor's creature.[478] He
was, wrote Sessa, "very reserved, irresolute, and decides few things
himself. He loves money and prefers persons who know where to find it
to any other kind of men. He likes to give himself the appearance of
being independent, but the result shows that he is generally governed
by others."[479] Clement, however, after his election, tried to assume
an attitude more becoming the head of Christendom than slavish dependence
on Charles. His love for the Emperor, he told Charles, had not
diminished, but his hatred for others had disappeared;[480] and
throughout 1524 he was seeking to promote concord between Christian
princes. His methods were unfortunate; the failure of the imperial
invasion of Provence and Francis's passage of the Alps, convinced the
Pope that Charles's star was waning, and that of France was in the
ascendant. "The Pope," wrote Sessa to Charles V., "is at the disposal
of the conqueror."[481] So, on 19th January, 1525, a Holy League
between Clement and Francis was publicly proclaimed at Rome, and
joined by most of the Italian States.[482] It was almost the eve of
Pavia.
[Footnote 478: _Sp. Cal._, ii., 610.]
[Footnote 479: _Ibid._, ii., 619.]
[Footnote 480: _Ibid._, ii., 707.]
[Footnote 481: _Ibid._, ii., 699, 30th Nov., 1524.]
[Footnote 482: _Ibid._, ii., 702-11.]
Charles received the news of that victory with astonishing humility.
But he was not likely to forget that at the critical moment he had
been deserted by most of his Italian allies; and it was with fear and
trembling that the Venetian ambassador besought him to use his (p. 170)
victory with moderation.[483] Their conduct could hardly lead them
to expect much from the Emperor's clemency. Distrust of his intentions
induced the Holy League to carry on desultory war with the imperial
troops; but mutual jealousies, the absence of effective aid from
England or France, and vacillation caused by the feeling that after
all it might be safer to accept the best terms they could obtain,
prevented the war from being waged with any effect. In September,
1526, Hugo de Moncada, the imperial commander, concerted with
Clement's bitter foes, the Colonnas, a means of overawing the Pope. A
truce was concluded, wrote Moncada, "that the Pope, having laid down
his arms, may be taken unawares".[484] On the 19th he marched on Rome.
Clement, taken unawares, fled to the castle of St. Angelo; his palace
was sacked, St. Peter's rifled, and the host profaned. "Never," says
Casale, "was so much cruelty and sacrilege."[485]
[Footnote 483: _Ven. Cal._, iii, 413.]
[Footnote 484: _Sp. Cal._, ii., 898.]
[Footnote 485: _L. and P._, iv., 2510.]
It was soon thrown into the shade by an outrage at which the whole
world stood aghast. Charles's object was merely to render the Pope his
obedient slave; neither God nor man, said Moncada, could resist with
impunity the Emperor's victorious arms.[486] But he had little control
over his own irresistible forces. With no enemy to check them, with no
pay to content them, the imperial troops were ravaging, pillaging,
sacking cities and churches throughout Northern Italy without let or
hindrance. At length a sudden frenzy seized them to march upon (p. 171)
Rome. Moncada had shown them the way, and on 6th May, 1527, the
Holy City was taken by storm. Bourbon was killed at the first assault;
and the richest city in Christendom was given over to a motley,
leaderless horde of German, Spanish and Italian soldiery. The Pope
again fled to the castle of St. Angelo; and for weeks Rome endured an
orgy of sacrilege, blasphemy, robbery, murder and lust, the horrors of
which no brush could depict nor tongue recite. "All the churches and
the monasteries," says a cardinal who was present, "both of friars and
nuns, were sacked. Many friars were beheaded, even priests at the
altar; many old nuns beaten with sticks; many young ones violated,
robbed and made prisoners; all the vestments, chalices, silver, were
taken from the churches.... Cardinals, bishops, friars, priests, old
nuns, infants, pages and servants--the very poorest--were tormented
with unheard-of cruelties--the son in the presence of his father, the
babe in the sight of its mother. All the registers and documents of
the Camera Apostolica were sacked, torn in pieces, and partly
burnt."[487] "Having entered," writes an imperialist to Charles, "our
men sacked the whole Borgo and killed almost every one they found...
All the monasteries were rifled, and the ladies who had taken refuge
in them carried off. Every person was compelled by torture to pay a
ransom.... The ornaments of all the churches were pillaged and the
relics and other things thrown into the sinks and cesspools. Even the
holy places were sacked. The Church of St. Peter and the papal palace,
from the basement to the top, were turned into stables for horses....
Every one considers that it has taken place by the just judgment (p. 172)
of God, because the Court of Rome was so ill-ruled.... We are
expecting to hear from your Majesty how the city is to be governed and
whether the Holy See is to be retained or not. Some are of opinion it
should not continue in Rome, _lest the French King should make a
patriarch in his kingdom, and deny obedience to the said See, and the
King of England find all other Christian princes do the same_."[488]
[Footnote 486: Buonaparte's _Narrative_, ed.
Buchon, p. 190, ed. Milanesi, p. 279; _cf._
Gregorovius, _Gesch. der Stadt Rom._, viii., 568
_n._, and Alberini's _Diary_, ed. Drano 1901
(extracts are printed in Creighton, _Papacy_, ed.
1901, vi., 419-37).]
[Footnote 487: Cardinal Como in _Il Sacco di Roma_,
ed. C. Milanesi, 1867, p. 471.]
[Footnote 488: _Il Sacco di Roma_, ed. Milanesi,
pp. 499, 517.]
So low was brought the proud city of the Seven Hills, the holy place,
watered with the blood of the martyrs and hallowed by the steps of the
saints, the goal of the earthly pilgrim, the seat of the throne of the
Vicar of God. No Jew saw the abomination of desolation standing where
it ought not with keener anguish than the devout sons of the Church
heard of the desecration of Rome. If a Roman Catholic and an
imperialist could term it the just judgment of God, heretics and
schismatics, preparing to burst the bonds of Rome and "deny obedience
to the said See," saw in it the fulfilment of the woes pronounced by
St. John the Divine on the Rome of Nero, and by Daniel the Prophet on
Belshazzar's Babylon. Babylon the great was fallen, and become the
habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit; her ruler was
weighed in the balances and found wanting; his kingdom was divided and
given to kings and peoples who came, like the Medes and the Persians,
from the hardier realms of the North.
CHAPTER VII. (p. 173)
THE ORIGIN OF THE DIVORCE.[489]
[Footnote 489: It is impossible to avoid the term
"divorce," although neither from Henry VIII.'s nor
from the Pope's point of view was there any such
thing (see the present writer's _Cranmer_, p. 24
_n._).]
Matrimonial discords have, from the days of Helen of Troy, been the
fruitful source of public calamities; and one of the most decisive
events in English history, the breach with the Church of Rome, found
its occasion in the divorce of Catherine of Aragon. Its origin has
been traced to various circumstances. On one hand, it is attributed to
Henry's passion for Anne Boleyn, on the other, to doubts of the
validity of Henry's marriage, raised by the Bishop of Tarbes in 1527,
while negotiating a matrimonial alliance between the Princess Mary and
Francis I. These are the two most popular theories, and both are
demonstrably false.[490] Doubts of the legality of Henry's marriage
had existed long before the Bishop of Tarbes paid his visit to
England, and even before Anne Boleyn was born. They were urged, not
only on the eve of the completion of the marriage, but when it was
first suggested. In 1503, when Henry VII. applied to Julius II. for a
dispensation to enable his second son to marry his brother's (p. 174)
widow, the Pope replied that "the dispensation was a great matter; nor
did he well know, _prima facie_, if it were competent for the Pope to
dispense in such a case".[491] He granted the dispensation, but the
doubts were not entirely removed. Catherine's confessor instilled them
into her mind, and was recalled by Ferdinand on that account. The
Spanish King himself felt it necessary to dispel certain "scruples of
conscience" Henry might entertain as to the "sin" of marrying his
brother's widow.[492] Warham and Fox debated the matter, and Warham
apparently opposed the marriage.[493] A general council had pronounced
against the Pope's dispensing power;[494] and, though the Popes had,
in effect, established their superiority over general councils, those
who still maintained the contrary view can hardly have failed to doubt
the legality of Henry's marriage.
[Footnote 490: See, besides the original
authorities cited in this chapter, Busch, _Der
Ursprung der Ehescheidung Koenig Heinrichs VIII._
(Hist. Taschenbuch, Leipzig, VI., viii., 271-327).]
[Footnote 491: _L. and P._, iv., 5773; Pocock,
_Records of the Reformation_, i., 1.]
[Footnote 492: _Sp. Cal._, vol. ii., Pref., p.
xiv., No. 8.]
[Footnote 493: _L. and P._, iv., 5774 [6].]
[Footnote 494: _Ibid._, iv., 5376.]
So good a papalist as the young King, however, would hardly allow
theoretical doubts of the general powers of the Pope to outweigh the
practical advantages of a marriage in his own particular case; and it
is safe to assume that his confidence in its validity would have
remained unshaken, but for extraneous circumstances of a definite and
urgent nature. On the 31st of January, 1510, seven months after his
marriage with Catherine, she gave birth to her first child; it was a
daughter, and was still-born.[495] On the 27th of May following (p. 175)
she told her father that the event was considered in England to be of
evil omen, but that Henry took it cheerfully, and she thanked God for
having given her such a husband. "The King," wrote Catherine's
confessor, "adores her, and her highness him." Less than eight months
later, on the 1st of January, 1511, she was delivered of her first-born
son.[496] A tourney was held to celebrate the joyous event, and the
heralds received a handsome largess at the christening. The child was
named Henry, styled Prince of Wales, and given a serjeant-at-arms on
the 14th, and a clerk of the signet on the 19th of February. Three
days later he was dead; he was buried at the cost of some ten thousand
pounds in Westminster Abbey. The rejoicings were turned to grief,
which, aggravated by successive disappointments, bore with cumulative
force on the mind of the King and his people. In September, 1513, the
Venetian ambassador announced the birth of another son,[497] who was
either still-born, or died immediately afterwards. In June, 1514,
there is again a reference to the christening of the "King's new
son,"[498] but he, too, was no sooner christened than dead.
[Footnote 495: _D.N.B._, ix., 292, gives this date.
Catherine herself, writing on 27th May, 1510, says
that "some _days_ before she had been delivered of
a still-born daughter" (_Sp. Cal._, ii., 43). On
1st November, 1509, Henry informed Ferdinand that
Catherine was pregnant, and the child had quickened
(_ibid._, ii., 23).]
[Footnote 496: _Ven. Cal._, ii., 95-96; _L. and
P._, vol. i., 1491, 1495, 1513, Pref., p. lxxiii.;
ii., 4692.]
[Footnote 497: _Ven. Cal._, ii., 329.]
[Footnote 498: _L. and P._, i., 5192.]
Domestic griefs were now embittered by political resentments. Ferdinand
valued his daughter mainly as a political emissary; he had formally
accredited her as his ambassador at Henry's Court, and she naturally
used her influence to maintain the political union between her father
and her husband. The arrangement had serious drawbacks; when relations
between sovereigns grew strained, their ambassadors could be (p. 176)
recalled, but Catherine had to stay. In 1514 Henry was boiling over
with indignation at his double betrayal by the Catholic king; and it
is not surprising that he vented some of his rage on the wife who was
Ferdinand's representative. He reproached her, writes Peter Martyr
from Ferdinand's Court, with her father's ill-faith, and taunted her
with his own conquests. To this brutality Martyr attributes the
premature birth of Catherine's fourth son towards the end of 1514.[499]
Henry, in fact, was preparing to cast off, not merely the Spanish
alliance, but his Spanish wife. He was negotiating for a joint attack
on Castile with Louis XII. and threatening the divorce of Catherine.[500]
"It is said," writes a Venetian from Rome in August, 1514, "that the
King of England means to repudiate his present wife, the daughter of
the King of Spain and his brother's widow, because he is unable to
have children by her, and intends to marry a daughter of the French
Duke of Bourbon.... He intends to annul his own marriage, and will
obtain what he wants from the Pope as France did from Pope Julius
II."[501]
[Footnote 499: _L. and P._, i., 5718.]
[Footnote 500: See above p. 76.]
[Footnote 501: _Ven. Cal._, ii., 479. The Pope was
really Alexander VI.]
But the death of Louis XII. (January, 1515) and the consequent
loosening of the Anglo-French alliance made Henry and Ferdinand again
political allies; while, as the year wore on, Catherine was known to
be once more pregnant, and Henry's hopes of issue revived. This time
they were not disappointed; the Princess Mary was born on the 18th of
February, 1516.[502] Ferdinand had died on the 23rd of January, but
the news was kept from Catherine, lest it might add to the risks (p. 177)
of her confinement.[503] The young princess seemed likely to live, and
Henry was delighted. When Giustinian, amid his congratulations, said
he would have been better pleased had it been a son, the King replied:
"We are both young; if it was a daughter this time, by the grace of
God the sons will follow".[504] All thoughts of a divorce passed away
for the time, but the desired sons did not arrive. In August, 1517,
Catherine was reported to be again expecting issue, but nothing more
is heard of the matter, and it is probable that about this time the
Queen had various miscarriages. In July, 1518, Henry wrote to Wolsey
from Woodstock that Catherine was once more pregnant, and that he
could not move the Court to London, as it was one of the Queen's
"dangerous times".[505] His precautions were unavailing, and, on the
10th of November, his child arrived still-born. Giustinian notes the
great vexation with which the people heard the news, and expresses the
opinion that, had it occurred a month or two earlier, the Princess
Mary would not have been betrothed to the French dauphin, "as the one
fear of England was lest it should pass into subjection to France
through that marriage".[506]
[Footnote 502: _L. and P._, ii., 1505, 1573.]
[Footnote 503: _L. and P._, ii., 1563, 1610.]
[Footnote 504: _Ven. Cal._, ii., 691.]
[Footnote 505: _Cotton MS._, Vespasian, F, iii.,
fol. 34, _b_; _cf. L. and P._, ii., 4074, 4288.]
[Footnote 506: _Ven. Cal._, ii., 1103.]
The child was the last born of Catherine. For some years Henry went on
hoping against every probability that he might still have male issue
by his Queen; and in 1519 he undertook to lead a crusade against the
Turk in person if he should have an heir.[507] But physicians summoned
from Spain were no more successful than their English colleagues. (p. 178)
By 1525 the last ray of hope had flickered out. Catherine was then
forty years old; and Henry at the age of thirty-four, in the full
vigour of youthful manhood, seemed doomed by the irony of fate and by
his union with Catherine to leave a disputed inheritance. Never did
England's interests more imperatively demand a secure and peaceful
succession. Never before had there been such mortality among the
children of an English king; never before had an English king married
his brother's widow. So striking a coincidence could be only explained
by the relation of cause and effect. Men who saw the judgment of God
in the sack of Rome, might surely discern in the fatality that
attended the children of Henry VIII. a fulfilment of the doom of
childlessness pronounced in the Book of the Law against him who should
marry his brother's wife. "God," wrote the French ambassador in 1528,
"has long ago Himself passed sentence on it;"[508] and there is no
reason to doubt Henry's assertion, that he had come to regard the
death of his children as a Divine judgment, and that he was impelled
to question his marriage by the dictates of conscience. The "scruples
of conscience," which Henry VII. had urged as an excuse for delaying
the marriage, were merely a cloak for political reasons; but scruples
of conscience are dangerous playthings, and the pretence of Henry VII.
became, through the death of his children, a terrible reality to Henry
VIII.
[Footnote 507: _L. and P._, iii., 432.]
[Footnote 508: Du Bellay to Montmorenci, 1st Nov.,
1528, _L. and P._, iv., 4899.]
Queen Catherine, too, had scruples of conscience about the marriage,
though of a different sort. When she first heard of Henry's intention
to seek a divorce, she is reported to have said that "she had (p. 179)
not offended, but it was a judgment of God, for that her former marriage
was made in blood"; the price of it had been the head of the innocent
Earl of Warwick, demanded by Ferdinand of Aragon.[509] Nor was she
alone in this feeling. "He had heard," witnessed Buckingham's chancellor
in 1521, "the Duke grudge that the Earl of Warwick was put to death,
and say that God would punish it, by not suffering the King's issue to
prosper, as appeared by the death of his sons; and that his daughters
prosper not, and that he had no issue male."[510]
[Footnote 509: _Sp. Cal._, i., 249; _L. and P. of
Richard III. and Henry VII._, vol. i., pp. xxxiii.,
113; Hall, _Chron_., p. 491; Bacon, _Henry VII._,
ed. 1870, p. 376; _Transactions of the Royal Hist.
Soc._, N.S., xviii., 187.]
[Footnote 510: _L. and P._, iii., 1284.]
Conscience, however, often moves men in directions indicated by other
than conscientious motives, and, of the other motives which influenced
Henry's mind, some were respectable and some the reverse. The most
legitimate was his desire to provide for the succession to the throne.
It was obvious to him and his council that, if he died with no
children but Mary, England ran the risk of being plunged into an
anarchy worse than that of the civil wars. "By English law," wrote
Falier, the Venetian ambassador, in 1531, "females are excluded from
the throne;"[511] that was not true, but it was undoubtedly a
widespread impression, based upon the past history of England. No
Queen-Regnant had asserted a right to the English throne but one, and
that one precedent provided the most effective argument for avoiding a
repetition of the experiment. Matilda was never crowned, though she
had the same claim to the throne as Mary, and her attempt to (p. 180)
enforce her title involved England in nineteen years of anarchy and
civil war. Stephen stood to Matilda in precisely the same relation as
James V. of Scotland stood to the Princess Mary; and in 1532, as soon
as he came of age, James was urged to style himself "Prince of England"
and Duke of York, in manifest derogation of Mary's title.[512] At that
time Charles V. was discussing alternative plans for deposing Henry
VIII. One was to set up James V., the other to marry Mary to some
great English noble and proclaim them King and Queen;[513] Mary by
herself was thought to have no chance of success. John of Gaunt had
maintained in Parliament that the succession descended only through
males;[514] the Lancastrian case was that Henry IV., the son of Edward
III.'s fourth son, had a better title to the throne than Philippa, the
daughter of the third; an Act limiting the succession to the male line
was passed in 1406;[515] and Henry VII. himself only reigned through a
tacit denial of the right of women to sit on the English throne.
[Footnote 511: _Ven. Cal._, iv., 300.]
[Footnote 512: _L. and P._, v., 609, 817.]
[Footnote 513: _Ibid._, vi., 446.]
[Footnote 514: _Chronicon Angliae_, Rolls Ser., p.
92, _s.a._, 1376; _D.N.B._, xxix., 421. This became
the orthodox Lancastrian theory (_cf._ Fortescue,
_Governance of England_, ed. Plummer, pp. 352-55).]
[Footnote 515: Stubbs, _Const. Hist._, iii., 58.
This Act was, however, repealed before the end of
the same year.]
The objection to female sovereigns was grounded not so much on male
disbelief in their personal qualifications, as upon the inevitable
consequence of matrimonial and dynastic problems.[516] If the Princess
Mary succeeded, was she to marry? If not, her death would leave (p. 181)
the kingdom no better provided with heirs than before; and in her weak
state of health, her death seemed no distant prospect. If, on the
other hand, she married, her husband must be either a subject or a
foreign prince. To marry a subject would at once create discords like
those from which the Wars of the Roses had sprung; to marry a foreign
prince was to threaten Englishmen, then more jealous than ever of
foreign influence, with the fear of alien domination. They had before
their eyes numerous instances in which matrimonial alliances had
involved the union of states so heterogeneous as Spain and the
Netherlands; and they had no mind to see England absorbed in some
continental empire. In the matrimonial schemes arranged for the
princess, it was generally stipulated that she should, in default of
male heirs, succeed to the throne of England; her succession was
obviously a matter of doubt, and it is quite certain that her marriage
in France or in Spain would have proved a bar in the way of her
succession to the English throne, or at least have given rise to
conflicting claims.
[Footnote 516: Professor Maitland has spoken of the
"Byzantinism" of Henry's reign, and possibly the
objection to female sovereigns was strengthened by
the prevalent respect for Roman imperial and
Byzantine custom (_cf._ Hodgkin, _Charles the
Great_, p. 180).]
These rival pretensions began to be heard as soon as it became evident
that Henry VIII. would have no male heirs by Catherine of Aragon. In
1519, a year after the birth of the Queen's last child, Giustinian
reported to the Venetian signiory on the various nobles who had hopes
of the crown. The Duke of Norfolk had expectations in right of his
wife, a daughter of Edward IV., and the Duke of Suffolk in right of
his Duchess, the sister of Henry VIII. But the Duke of Buckingham was
the most formidable: "It was thought that, were the King to die
without male heirs, that Duke might easily obtain the crown".[517] (p. 182)
His claims had been canvassed in 1503, when the issue of Henry VII.
seemed likely to fail,[518] and now that the issue of Henry VIII. was
in even worse plight, Buckingham's claims to the crown became again a
matter of comment. His hopes of the crown cost him his head; he had
always been discontented with Tudor rule, especially under Wolsey; he
allowed himself to be encouraged with hopes of succeeding the King,
and possibly spoke of asserting his claim in case of Henry's death.
This was to touch Henry on his tenderest spot, and, in 1521, the Duke
was tried by his peers, found guilty of high treason, and sent to the
block.[519] In this, as in all the great trials of Henry's reign, and
indeed in most state trials of all ages, considerations of justice
were subordinated to the real or supposed dictates of political
expediency. Buckingham was executed, not because he was a criminal,
but because he was, or might become, dangerous; his crime was not
treason, but descent from Edward III. Henry VIII., like Henry VII.,
showed his grasp of the truth that nothing makes a government so
secure as the absence of all alternatives.
[Footnote 517: _Ven. Cal._, ii., 1287. Buckingham's
end was undoubtedly hastened by Wolsey's jealousy;
before the end of 1518 the Cardinal had been
instilling into Henry's ear suspicions of
Buckingham (_L. and P._, iii., 1; _cf. ibid._, ii.,
3973, 4057). Brewer regards the hostility of Wolsey
to Buckingham as one of Polydore Vergil's
"calumnies" (_ibid._, vol. iii., Introd., p.
lxvi.).]
[Footnote 518: _L. and P. of Richard III. and Henry
VII._, i., 233.]
[Footnote 519: See detailed accounts in _L. and
P._, iii., 1284, 1356. Shakespeare's account in
"Henry VIII." is remarkably accurate, except in
matters of date.]
Buckingham's execution is one of the symptoms that, as early as 1521,
the failure of his issue had made Henry nervous and susceptible about
the succession. Even in 1519, when Charles V.'s minister, (p. 183)
Chievres, was proposing to marry his niece to the Earl of Devonshire,
a grandson of Edward IV., Henry was suspicious, and Wolsey inquired
whether Chievres was "looking to any chance of the Earl's succession
to the throne of England."[520] If further proof were needed that
Henry's anxiety about the succession was not, as has been represented,
a mere afterthought intended to justify his divorce from Catherine, it
might be found in the extraordinary measures taken with regard to his
one and only illegitimate son. The boy was born in 1519. His mother
was Elizabeth Blount, sister of Erasmus's friend, Lord Mountjoy; and
she is noticed as taking part in the Court revels during the early
years of Henry's reign.[521] Outwardly, at any rate, Henry's Court was
long a model of decorum; there was no parade of vice as in the days of
Charles II., and the existence of this royal bastard was so effectually
concealed that no reference to him occurs in the correspondence of the
time until 1525, when it was thought expedient to give him a position
of public importance. The necessity of providing some male successor
to Henry was considered so urgent that, two years before the divorce
is said to have occurred to him, he and his council were meditating a
scheme for entailing the succession on the King's illegitimate son. In
1525 the child was created Duke of Richmond and Somerset. These titles
were significant; Earl of Richmond had been Henry VII.'s title before
he came to the throne; Duke of Somerset had been that of his grandfather
and of his youngest son. Shortly afterwards the boy was made Lord (p. 184)
High Admiral of England, Lord Warden of the Marches, and Lord
Lieutenant of Ireland,[522] the two latter being offices which Henry
VIII. himself had held in his early youth. In January, 1527, the
Spanish ambassador reported that there was a scheme on foot to make
the Duke King of Ireland;[523] it was obviously a design to prepare
the way for his succession to the kingdom of England. The English
envoys in Spain were directed to tell the Emperor that Henry proposed
to demand some noble princess of near blood to the Emperor as a wife
for the Duke of Richmond. The Duke, they were to say, "is near of the
King's blood and of excellent qualities, and is already furnished to
keep the state of a great prince, and yet may be easily, by the King's
means, exalted to higher things".[524] The lady suggested was Charles's
niece, a daughter of the Queen of Portugal; she was already promised
to the Dauphin of France, but the envoys remarked that, if that match
were broken off, she might find "another dauphin" in the Duke of
Richmond. Another plan for settling the succession was that the Duke
should, by papal dispensation, marry his half-sister Mary! Cardinal
Campeggio saw no moral objection to this. "At first I myself," he
writes on his arrival in England in October, 1528, "had thought of
this as a means of establishing the succession, but I do not believe
that this design would suffice to satisfy the King's desires."[525]
The Pope was equally willing to facilitate the scheme, on (p. 185)
condition that Henry abandoned his divorce from Catherine.[526] Possibly
Henry saw more objections than Pope or Cardinal to a marriage between
brother and sister. At all events Mary was soon betrothed to the
French prince, and the Emperor recorded his impression that the French
marriage was designed to remove the Princess from the Duke of
Richmond's path to the throne.[527]
[Footnote 520: _L. and P._, iii., 386.]
[Footnote 521: _Ibid._, ii., p. 1461.]
[Footnote 522: See G.E. C[okayne]'s and Doyle's
_Peerages_, _s.v._ "Richmond".]
[Footnote 523: _Sp. Cal._, iii., 109; _L. and P._,
iv., 2988, 3028, 3140.]
[Footnote 524: _L. and P._, iv., 3051. In _ibid._,
iv., 3135, Richmond is styled "The Prince".]
[Footnote 525: Laemmer, _Monumenta Vaticana_, p.
29; _L. and P._, iv., 4881. It was claimed that the
Pope's dispensing power was unlimited, extending
even to marriages between brothers and sisters
(_ibid._, v., 468). Campeggio told Du Bellay in
1528 that the Pope's power was "infinite" (_ibid._,
iv., 4942).]
[Footnote 526: _L. and P._, iv., 5072.]
[Footnote 527: _Sp. Cal._, iii., 482.]
The conception of this violent expedient is mainly of interest as
illustrating the supreme importance attached to the question of
providing for a male successor to Henry. He wanted an heir to the
throne, and he wanted a fresh wife for that reason. A mistress would
not satisfy him, because his children by a mistress would hardly
succeed without dispute to the throne, not because he laboured under
any moral scruples on the point. He had already had two mistresses,
Elizabeth Blount, the mother of the Duke of Richmond, and Anne's
sister, Mary Boleyn. Possibly, even probably, there were other lapses
from conjugal fidelity, for, in 1533, the Duke of Norfolk told Chapuys
that Henry was always inclined to amours;[528] but none are capable of
definite proof, and if Henry had other illegitimate children besides
the Duke of Richmond it is difficult to understand why their existence
should have been so effectually concealed when such publicity was
given their brother. The King is said to have had ten mistresses in
1528, but the statement is based on a misrepresentation of the only
document adduced in its support.[529] It is a list of New Year's (p. 186)
presents,[530] which runs "To thirty-three noble ladies" such and such
gifts, then "to ten mistresses" other gifts; it is doubtful if the
word then bore its modern sinister signification; in this particular
instance it merely means "gentlewomen," and differentiates them from
the noble ladies. Henry's morals, indeed, compare not unfavourably
with those of other sovereigns. His standard was neither higher nor
lower than that of Charles V., who was at this time negotiating a
marriage between his natural daughter and the Pope's nephew; it was
not lower than those of James II., of William III., or of the first
two Georges; it was infinitely higher than the standard of Francis I.,
of Charles II., or even of Henry of Navarre and Louis XIV.
[Footnote 528: _L. and P._, vi., 241.]
[Footnote 529: E.L. Taunton, _Wolsey_, 1902, p.
173, where the words are erroneously given as "To
the King's ten mistresses"; "the King's" is an
interpolation.]
[Footnote 530: _L. and P._, iv., 3748.]
The gross immorality so freely imputed to Henry seems to have as
little foundation as the theory that his sole object in seeking the
divorce from Catherine and separation from Rome was the gratification
of his passion for Anne Boleyn. If that had been the case, there would
be no adequate explanation of the persistence with which he pursued
the divorce. He was "studying the matter so diligently," Campeggio
says, "that I believe in this case he knows more than a great
theologian and jurist"; he was so convinced of the justice of his
cause "that an angel descending from heaven would be unable to
persuade him otherwise".[531] He sent embassy after embassy to Rome;
he risked the enmity of Catholic Europe; he defied the authority of
the vicar of Christ; and lavished vast sums to obtain verdicts in his
favour from most of the universities in Christendom. It is not (p. 187)
credible that all this energy was expended merely to satisfy a sensual
passion, which could be satisfied without a murmur from Pope or Emperor,
if he was content with Anne Boleyn as a mistress, and is believed to
have been already satisfied in 1529, four years before the divorce was
obtained.[532] So, too, the actual sentence of divorce in 1533 was
precipitated not by Henry's passion for Anne, but by the desire that
her child should be legitimate. She was pregnant before Henry was
married to her or divorced from Catherine. But, though the representation
of Henry's passion for Anne Boleyn as the sole _fons et origo_ of the
divorce is far from convincing, that passion introduced various
complications into the question; it was not merely an additional
incentive to Henry's desires; it also brought Wolsey and Henry into
conflict; and the unpopularity of the divorce was increased by the
feeling that Henry was losing caste by seeking to marry a lady of the
rank and character of Anne Boleyn.
[Footnote 531: _Ibid._, iv., 4858.]
[Footnote 532: No conclusive evidence on this point
is possible; the French ambassador, Clement VII.
and others believed that Henry VIII. and Anne
Boleyn had been cohabiting since 1529. On the other
hand, if such was the case, it is singular that no
child should have been born before 1533; for after
that date Anne seems to have had a miscarriage
nearly every year. Ortiz, indeed, reports from Rome
that she had a miscarriage in 1531 (_L. and P._,
v., 594), but the evidence is not good.]
* * * * *
The Boleyns were wealthy merchants of London, of which one of them had
been Lord-Mayor, but Anne's mother was of noble blood, being daughter
and co-heir of the Earl of Ormonde,[533] and it is a curious fact that
all of Henry's wives could trace their descent from Edward I.[534]
Anne's age is uncertain, but she is generally believed to have (p. 188)
been born in 1507.[535] Attempts have been made to date her influence
over the King by the royal favours bestowed on her father, Sir Thomas,
afterwards Viscount Rochford and Earl of Wiltshire, but, as these
favours flowed in a fairly regular stream from the beginning of the
reign, as Sir Thomas's services were at least a colourable excuse for
them, and as his other daughter Mary was Henry's mistress before he
fell in love with Anne, these grants are not a very substantial ground
upon which to build. Of Anne herself little is known except that,
about 1519, she was sent as maid of honour to the French Queen,
Claude; five years before, her sister Mary had accompanied Mary Tudor
in a similar capacity on her marriage with Louis XII.[536] In 1522,
when war with France was on the eve of breaking out, Anne was recalled
to the English Court,[537] where she took part in revels and
love-intrigues. Sir Thomas Wyatt, the poet, although a married man,
sued for her favours;[538] Henry, Lord Percy made her more honest
proposals, but was compelled to desist by the King himself, who (p. 189)
had arranged for her marriage with Piers Butler, son of the Earl
of Ormond, as a means to end the feud between the Butler and the
Boleyn families.
[Footnote 533: See Friedmann's _Anne Boleyn_, 2
vols., 1884, and articles on the Boleyn family in
_D.N.B._, vol. v.]
[Footnote 534: See George Fisher, _Key to the
History of England_, Table xvii.; _Gentleman's
Magazine_, May, 1829.]
[Footnote 535: Henry would then be fifteen, yet a
fable was invented and often repeated that Henry
VIII. was Anne Boleyn's father. Nicholas Sanders,
whose _De Origine ac Progressu Schismatis
Anglicani_ became the basis of Roman Catholic
histories of the English Reformation, gave currency
to the story; and some modern writers prefer
Sanders' veracity to Foxe's.]
[Footnote 536: The error that it was Anne who
accompanied Mary Tudor in 1514 was exposed by
Brewer more than forty years ago, but it still
lingers and was repeated with innumerable others in
the Catalogue of the New Gallery Portrait
Exhibition of 1902.]
[Footnote 537: _L. and P._, iii., 1994.]
[Footnote 538: In Harpsfield's _Pretended Divorce_
there is a very improbable story that Wyatt told
Henry VIII. his relations with Anne were far from
innocent and warned the King against marrying a
woman of Anne's character.]
None of these projects advanced any farther, possibly because they
conflicted with the relations developing between Anne and the King
himself. As Wyatt complained in a sonnet,[539]
There is written her fair neck round about
_Noli me tangere_; for Caesar's I am
And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.
But, for any definite documentary evidence to the contrary, it might
be urged that Henry's passion for Anne was subsequent to the
commencement of his proceedings for a divorce from Catherine. Those
proceedings began at least as early as March, 1527, while the first
allusion to the connection between the King and Anne Boleyn occurs in
the instructions to Dr. William Knight, sent in the following autumn
to procure a dispensation for her marriage with Henry.[540] The King's
famous love-letters, the earliest of which are conjecturally assigned
to July, 1527,[541] are without date and with but slight internal
indications of the time at which they were written; they may be earlier
than 1527, they may be as late as the following winter. It is unlikely
that Henry would have sought for the Pope's dispensation to marry (p. 190)
Anne until he was assured of her consent, of which in some of the
letters he appears to be doubtful; on the other hand, it is difficult
to see how a lady of the Court could refuse an offer of marriage made
by her sovereign. Her reluctance was to fill a less honourable
position, into which Henry was not so wicked as to think of forcing
her. "I trust," he writes in one of his letters, "your absence is not
wilful on your part; for if so, I can but lament my ill-fortune, and
by degrees abate my great folly."[542] His love for Anne Boleyn was
certainly his "great folly," the one overmastering passion of his
life. There is, however, nothing very extraordinary in the letters
themselves; in one he says he has for more than a year been "wounded
with the dart of love," and is uncertain whether Anne returns his
affection. In others he bewails her briefest absence as though it were
an eternity; desires her father to hasten his return to Court; is torn
with anxiety lest Anne should take the plague, comforts her with the
assurance that few women have had it, and sends her a hart killed by
his own hand, making the inevitable play on the word. Later on, he
alludes to the progress of the divorce case; excuses the shortness of
a letter on the ground that he has spent four hours over the book he
was writing in his own defence[543] and has a pain in his head. The
series ends with an announcement that he has been fitting up apartments
for her, and with congratulations to himself and to her that the
"well-wishing" Legate, Campeggio, who has been sent from Rome to (p. 191)
try the case, has told him he was not so "imperial" in his sympathies
as had been alleged.
[Footnote 539: Wyatt, _Works_, ed. G.F. Nott, 1816,
p. 143.]
[Footnote 540: _L. and P._, iv., 3422.]
[Footnote 541: _Ibid._, iv., 3218-20, 3325-26,
3990, 4383, 4403, 4410, 4477, 4537, 4539, 4597,
4648, 4742, 4894. They have also been printed by
Hearne at the end of his edition of _Robert of
Avesbury_, in the _Pamphleteer_, vol. xxi., and in
the _Harleian Miscellany_, vol. iii. The originals
in Henry's hand are in the Vatican Library; one of
them was reproduced in facsimile for the
illustrated edition of this book.]
[Footnote 542: _L. and P._, iv., 3326.]
[Footnote 543: In 1531 he was said to have written
"many books" on the divorce question (_ibid._, v.,
251).]
The secret of her fascination over Henry was a puzzle to observers.
"Madame Anne," wrote a Venetian, "is not one of the handsomest women
in the world. She is of middling stature, swarthy complexion, long
neck, wide mouth, bosom not much raised, and in fact has nothing but
the King's great appetite, and her eyes, which are black and
beautiful".[544] She had probably learnt in France the art of using
her beautiful eyes to the best advantage; her hair, which was long and
black, she wore loose, and on her way to her coronation Cranmer
describes her as "sitting _in_ her hair".[545] Possibly this was one
of the French customs, which somewhat scandalised the staider ladies
of the English Court. She is said to have had a slight defect on one
of her nails, which she endeavoured to conceal behind her other
fingers.[546] Of her mental accomplishments there is not much evidence;
she naturally, after some years' residence at the Court of France,
spoke French, though she wrote it in an orthography that was quite her
own. Her devotion to the Gospel is the one great virtue with which
Foxe and other Elizabethans strove to invest the mother of the Good
Queen Bess. But it had no nobler foundation than the facts that Anne's
position drove her into hostility to the Roman jurisdiction, and that
her family shared the envy of church goods, common to the nobility and
the gentry of the time.[547] Her place in English history is due (p. 192)
solely to the circumstance that she appealed to the less refined part
of Henry's nature; she was pre-eminent neither in beauty nor in
intellect, and her virtue was not of a character to command or deserve
the respect of her own or subsequent ages.
[Footnote 544: _Ven. Cal._, iv., 365.]
[Footnote 545: Cranmer, _Works_ (Parker Soc.), ii.,
245; _cf. Ven. Cal._, iv., 351, 418.]
[Footnote 546: _L. and P._, iv., Introd., p.
ccxxxvii.]
[Footnote 547: There is not much historical truth
in Gray's phrase about "the Gospel light which
dawned from Bullen's eyes"; but Brewer goes too far
in minimising the "Lutheran" proclivities of the
Boleyns. In 1531 Chapuys described Anne and her
father as being "more Lutheran than Luther himself"
(_L. and P._, v., 148), in 1532 as "true apostles
of the new sect" (_ibid._, v., 850), and in 1533 as
"perfect Lutherans" (_ibid._, vi., 142).]
It is otherwise with her rival, Queen Catherine, the third of the
principal characters involved in the divorce. If Henry's motives were
not so entirely bad as they have often been represented, neither they
nor Anne Boleyn's can stand a moment's comparison with the unsullied
purity of Catherine's life or the lofty courage with which she defended
the cause she believed to be right. There is no more pathetic figure
in English history, nor one condemned to a crueller fate. No breath of
scandal touched her fair name, or impugned her devotion to Henry. If
she had the misfortune to be identified with a particular policy, the
alliance with the House of Burgundy, the fault was not hers; she had
been married to Henry in consideration of the advantages which that
alliance was supposed to confer; and, if she used her influence to
further Spanish interest, it was a natural feeling as near akin to
virtue as to vice, and Carroz at least complained, in 1514, that she
had completely identified herself with her husband and her husband's
subjects.[548] If her miscarriages and the death of her children (p. 193)
were a grief to Henry, the pain and the sorrow were hers in far
greater measure; if they had made her old and deformed, as Francis
brutally described her in 1519,[549] the fact must have been far more
bitter to her than it was unpleasant to Henry. There may have been
some hardship to Henry in the circumstance that, for political
motives, he had been induced by his council to marry a wife who was
six years his senior; but to Catherine herself a divorce was the
height of injustice. The question was in fact one of justice against a
real or supposed political necessity, and in such cases justice
commonly goes to the wall. In politics, men seek to colour with
justice actions based upon considerations of expediency. They first
convince themselves, and then they endeavour with less success to
persuade mankind.
[Footnote 548: _Sp. Cal._, ii., 201.]
[Footnote 549: _Ven. Cal._, ii., 1230.]
So Henry VIII. convinced himself that the dispensation granted by
Julius II. was null and void, that he had never been married to
Catherine, and that to continue to live with his brother's wife was
sin. "The King," he instructed his ambassador to tell Charles V. in
1533, "taketh himself to be in the right, not because so many say it,
but because he, being learned, knoweth the matter to be right.... The
justice of our cause is so rooted in our breast that nothing can
remove it, and even the canons say that a man should rather endure all
the censures of the Church than offend his conscience."[550] No man
was less tolerant of heresy than Henry, but no man set greater (p. 194)
store on his own private judgment. To that extent he was a Protestant;
"though," he instructed Paget in 1534 to tell the Lutheran princes,
"the law of every man's conscience be but a private court, yet it is
the highest and supreme court for judgment or justice". God and his
conscience, he told Chapuys in 1533, were on very good terms.[551] On
another occasion he wrote to Charles _Ubi Spiritus Domini, ibi
libertas_,[552] with the obvious implication that he possessed the
spirit of the Lord, and therefore he might do as he liked. To him, as
to St. Paul, all things were lawful; and Henry's appeals to the Pope,
to learned divines, to universities at home and abroad, were not for
his own satisfaction, but were merely concessions to the profane herd,
unskilled in royal learning and unblessed with a kingly conscience.
Against that conviction, so firmly rooted in the royal breast, appeals
to pity were vain, and attempts to shake it were perilous. It was his
conscience that made Henry so dangerous. Men are tolerant of
differences about things indifferent, but conscience makes bigots of
us all; theological hatreds are proverbially bitter, and religious
wars are cruel. Conscience made Sir Thomas More persecute, and glory
in the persecution of heretics,[553] and conscience earned Mary her
epithet "Bloody". They were moved by conscientious belief in the
Catholic faith, Henry by conscientious belief in himself; and
conscientious scruples are none the less exigent for being reached by
crooked paths.
[Footnote 550: _L. and P._, vi., 775. _Hoc volo,
sic jubeo; stet pro ratione voluntas._ Luther
quoted this line _a propos_ of Henry; see his
preface to Robert Barnes' _Bekenntniss des
Glaubens_, Wittemberg, 1540.]
[Footnote 551: _L. and P._, vi., 351; vii., 148.]
[Footnote 552: _Ibid._, iv., 6111.]
[Footnote 553: It has been denied that More either
persecuted or gloried in the persecution of
heretics; but he admits himself that he recommended
corporal punishment in two cases and "it is clear
that he underestimated his activity" (_D.N.B._,
xxxviii., 436, and instances and authorities there
cited).]
CHAPTER VIII. (p. 195)
THE POPE'S DILEMMA.
In February, 1527, in pursuance of the alliance with France, which
Wolsey, recognising too late the fatal effects of the union with
Charles, was seeking to make the basis of English policy, a French
embassy arrived in England to conclude a marriage between Francis I.
and the Princess Mary. At its head was Gabriel de Grammont, Bishop of
Tarbes; and in the course of his negotiations he is alleged to have
first suggested those doubts of the validity of Henry's marriage,
which ended in the divorce. The allegation was made by Wolsey three
months later, and from that time down to our own day it has done duty
with Henry's apologists as a sufficient vindication of his conduct. It
is now denounced as an impudent fiction, mainly on the ground that no
hint of these doubts occurs in the extant records of the negotiations.
But unfortunately we have only one or two letters relating to this
diplomatic mission.[554] There exists, indeed, a detailed (p. 196)
narrative, drawn up some time afterwards by Claude Dodieu, the French
secretary; but the silence, on so confidential a matter, of a third
party who was not present when the doubts were presumably suggested,
proves little or nothing. Du Bellay, in 1528, reported to the French
Government Henry's public assertion that Tarbes had mentioned these
doubts;[555] the statement was not repudiated; Tarbes himself believed
in the validity of Henry's case and was frequently employed in efforts
to win from the Pope an assent to Henry's divorce. It is rather a
strong assumption to suppose in the entire absence of positive
evidence that Henry and Wolsey were deliberately lying. There is
nothing impossible in the supposition that some such doubts were
expressed; indeed, Francis I. had every reason to encourage doubts of
Henry's marriage as a means of creating a breach between him and
Charles V. In return for Mary's hand, Henry was endeavouring to obtain
various advantages from Francis in the way of pensions, tribute and
territory. Tarbes represented that the French King was so good a match
for the English princess, that there was little need for further
concession; to which Henry replied that Francis was no doubt an
excellent match for his daughter, but was he free to marry? His
precontract with Charles V.'s sister, Eleanor, was a complication
which seriously diminished the value of Francis's offer; and the papal
dispensation, which he hoped to obtain, might not be forthcoming (p. 197)
or valid.[556] As a counter to this stroke, Tarbes may well have
hinted that the Princess Mary was not such a prize as Henry made out.
Was the dispensation for Henry's own marriage beyond cavil? Was Mary's
legitimacy beyond question? Was her succession to the English throne,
a prospect Henry dangled before the Frenchman's eyes, so secure? These
questions were not very new, even at the time of Tarbes's mission. The
divorce had been talked about in 1514, and now, in 1527, the position
of importance given to the Duke of Richmond was a matter of public
comment, and inevitably suggested doubts of Mary's succession. There
is no documentary evidence that this argument was ever employed,
beyond the fact that, within three months of Tarbes's mission, both
Henry and Wolsey asserted that the Bishop had suggested doubts of the
validity of Henry's marriage.[557] Henry, however, does not say that
Tarbes _first_ suggested the doubts, nor does Wolsey. The Cardinal
declares that the Bishop objected to the marriage with the Princess
Mary on the ground of these doubts; and some time later, when Henry
explained his position to the Lord-Mayor and aldermen of London, he
said, according to Du Bellay, that the scruple of conscience, which he
had _long_ entertained, had terribly increased upon him since Tarbes
had spoken of it.[558]
[Footnote 554: Dr. Gairdner (_Engl. Hist. Rev._,
xi., 675) speaks of the "full diplomatic
correspondence which we possess"; the documents are
these: (1) an undated letter (_L. and P._, iv.,
App. 105) announcing the ambassador's arrival in
England; (2) a letter of 21st March (iv., 2974);
(3) a brief note of no importance to Dr. Brienne,
dated 2nd April (_ibid._, 3012); (4) the formal
commission of Francis I., dated 13th April
(_ibid._, 3059); (5) the treaty of 30th April
(3080); and (6) three brief notes from Turenne to
Montmorenci, dated 6th, 7th and 24th April. From
Tarbes himself there are absolutely no letters
relating to his negotiations, and it would almost
seem as though they had been deliberately
destroyed. Our knowledge depends solely upon
Dodieu's narrative.]
[Footnote 555: _L. and P._, iv., 4942.]
[Footnote 556: "There will be great difficulty,"
wrote Clerk, "_circa istud benedictum divortium_."
Brewer interpreted this as the earliest reference
to Henry's divorce; it was really, as Dr. Ehses
shows, in reference to the dissolution of the
precontract between Francis I. and Charles V.'s
sister Eleanor (_Engl. Hist. Rev._, xi., 676).]
[Footnote 557: _L. and P._, iv., 3231.]
[Footnote 558: _Ibid._, iv., 4231, 4942. Henry's
own account of the matter was as follows: "For some
years past he had noticed in reading the Bible the
severe penalty inflicted by God on those who
married the relicts of their brothers"; he at
length "began to be troubled in his conscience, and
to regard the sudden deaths of his male children as
a Divine judgment. The more he studied the matter,
the more clearly it appeared to him that he had
broken a Divine law. He then called to counsel men
learned in pontifical law, to ascertain their
opinion of the dispensation. Some pronounced it
invalid. So far he had proceeded as secretly as
possible that he might do nothing rashly" (_L. and
P._, iv., 5156; _cf._ iv., 3641). Shakespeare,
following Cavendish (p. 221), makes Henry reveal
his doubts first to his confessor, Bishop Longland
of Lincoln: "First I began in private with you, my
Lord of Lincoln" ("Henry VIII.," Act II., sc. iv.);
and there is contemporary authority for this
belief. In 1532 Longland was said to have suggested
a divorce to Henry ten years previously (_L. and
P._, v., 1114), and Chapuys termed him "the
principal promoter of these practices" (_ibid._,
v., 1046); and in 1536 the northern rebels thought
that he was the beginning of all the trouble
(_ibid._, xi., 705); the same assertion is made in
the anonymous "Life and Death of Cranmer" (_Narr.
of the Reformation_, Camden Soc., p. 219). Other
persons to whom the doubtful honour was ascribed
are Wolsey and Stafileo, Dean of the Rota at Rome
(_L. and P._, iv., 3400; _Sp. Cal._, iv., 159).]
However that may be, before the Bishop's negotiations were (p. 198)
completed the first steps had been taken towards the divorce, or, as
Wolsey and Henry pretended, towards satisfying the King's scruples as
to the validity of his marriage. Early in April, 1527, Dr. Richard
Wolman was sent down to Winchester to examine old Bishop Fox on the
subject.[559] The greatest secrecy was observed and none of the
Bishop's councillors were allowed to be present. Other evidence was
doubtless collected from various sources, and, on 17th May, a week
after Tarbes's departure, Wolsey summoned Henry to appear before him
to explain his conduct in living with his brother's widow.[560] Wolman
was appointed promoter of the suit; Henry put in a justification, (p. 199)
and, on 31st May, Wolman replied. With that the proceedings terminated.
In instituting them Henry was following a precedent set by his
brother-in-law, the Duke of Suffolk.[561] In very early days that
nobleman had contracted to marry Sir Anthony Browne's daughter, but
for some reason the match was broken off, and he sought the hand of
one Margaret Mortimer, to whom he was related in the second and third
degrees of consanguinity; he obtained a dispensation, completed the
marriage, and cohabited with Margaret Mortimer. But, like Henry VIII.,
his conscience or other considerations moved him to regard his
marriage as sin, and the dispensation as invalid. He caused a
declaration to that effect to be made by "the official of the
Archdeacon of London, to whom the cognisance of such causes of old
belongs," married Ann Browne, and, after her death, Henry's sister
Mary. A marriage, the validity of which depended, like Henry's, upon a
papal dispensation, and which, like Henry's, had been consummated, was
declared null and void on exactly the same grounds as those upon which
Henry himself sought a divorce, namely, the invalidity of the previous
dispensation. On 12th May, 1528, Clement VII. issued a bull confirming
Suffolk's divorce and pronouncing ecclesiastical censures on all who
called in question the Duke's subsequent marriages. That is precisely
the course Henry wished to be followed. Wolsey was to declare the
marriage invalid on the ground of the insufficiency of the papal
dispensation; Henry might then marry whom he pleased; the Pope was to
confirm the sentence, and censure all who should dispute the second
marriage or the legitimacy of its possible issue.
[Footnote 559: _L. and P._, iv., 5291. This
examination took place on 5th and 6th April.]
[Footnote 560: _Ibid._, iv., 3140.]
[Footnote 561: _L. and P._, iv., 5859; _cf._ iv.,
737.]
Another precedent was also forced on Henry's mind. On 11th March, (p. 200)
1527, two months before Wolsey opened his court, a divorce was granted
at Rome to Henry's sister Margaret, Queen of Scotland.[562] Her
pretexts were infinitely more flimsy than Henry's own. She alleged a
precontract on the part of her husband, Angus, which was never proved.
She professed to believe that James IV. had survived Flodden three
years, and was alive when she married Angus. Angus had been
unfaithful, but that was no ground for divorce by canon law; and she
herself was living in shameless adultery with Henry Stewart, who had
also procured a divorce to be free to marry his Queen. No objection
was found at Rome to either of these divorces; but neither Angus nor
Margaret Mortimer had an Emperor for a nephew; no imperial armies
would march on Rome to vindicate the validity of their marriages, and
Clement could issue his bulls without any fear that their justice
would be challenged by the arms of powerful princes. Not so with
Henry; while the secret proceedings before Wolsey were in progress,
the world was shocked by the sack of Rome, and Clement was a prisoner
in the hands of the Emperor's troops. There was no hope that a Pope in
such a plight would confirm a sentence to the detriment of his
master's aunt. "If the Pope," wrote Wolsey to Henry on receipt of the
news, "be slain or taken, it will hinder the King's affairs not a
little, which have hitherto been going on so well."[563] A little
later he declared that, if Catherine repudiated his authority, it
would be necessary to have the assent of the Pope or of the cardinals
to the divorce. To obtain the former the Pope must be liberated; to
secure the latter the cardinals must be assembled in France.[564] (p. 201)
[Footnote 562: _L. and P._, iv., 4130.]
[Footnote 563: _Ibid._, iv., 3147.]
[Footnote 564: _L. and P._, iv., 3311.]
To effect the Pope's liberation, or rather to call an assembly of
cardinals in France during Clement's captivity, was the real object of
the mission to France, on which Wolsey started in July. Such a body,
acting under Wolsey's presidency and in the territories of the French
King, was as likely to favour an attack upon the Emperor's aunt as the
Pope in the hands of Charles's armies was certain to oppose it. Wolsey
went in unparalleled splendour, not as Henry's ambassador but as his
lieutenant; and projects for his own advancement were, as usual, part
of the programme. Louise of Savoy, the queen-mother of France,
suggested to him that all Christian princes should repudiate the
Pope's authority so long as he remained in captivity, and the Cardinal
replied that, had the overture not been made by her, it would have
been started by himself and by Henry.[565] It was rumoured in Spain
that Wolsey "had gone into France to separate the Church of England
and of France from the Roman, not merely during the captivity of the
Pope and to effect his liberation, but for a perpetual division,"[566]
and that Francis was offering Wolsey the patriarchate of the two
schismatic churches. To win over the Cardinal to the interest of
Spain, it was even suggested that Charles should depose Clement and
offer the Papacy to Wolsey.[567] The project of a schism was not found
feasible; the cardinals at Rome were too numerous, and Wolsey only
succeeded in gaining four, three French and one Italian, to join him
in signing a protest repudiating Clement's authority so long as (p. 202)
he remained in the Emperor's power. It was necessary to fall back
after all on the Pope for assent to Henry's divorce, and the news that
Charles had already got wind of the proceedings against Catherine made
it advisable that no time should be lost. The Emperor, indeed, had
long been aware of Henry's intentions; every care had been taken to
prevent communication between Catherine and her nephew, and a plot had
been laid to kidnap a messenger she was sending in August to convey
her appeal for protection. All was in vain, for the very day after
Wolsey's court had opened in May, Mendoza wrote to Charles that Wolsey
"as the finishing stroke to all his iniquities, had been scheming to
bring about the Queen's divorce"; and on the 29th of July, some days
before Wolsey had any suspicion that a hint was abroad, Charles
informed Mendoza that he had despatched Cardinal Quignon to Rome, to
act on the Queen's behalf and to persuade Clement to revoke Wolsey's
legatine powers.[568]
[Footnote 565: _Ibid._, iv., 3247, 3263.]
[Footnote 566: _Ibid._, iv., 3291.]
[Footnote 567: _Sp. Cal._, iii., 273.]
[Footnote 568: _Sp. Cal._, iii., 193, 276, 300; _L.
and P._, iv., 3312.]
In ignorance of all this, Wolsey urged Henry to send Ghinucci, the
Bishop of Worcester, and others to Rome with certain demands, among
which was a request for Clement's assent to the abortive proposal for
a council in France.[569] But now a divergence became apparent between
the policy of Wolsey and that of his king. Both were working for a
divorce, but Wolsey wanted Henry to marry as his second wife Renee,
the daughter of Louis XII., and thus bind more closely the two kings,
upon whose union the Cardinal's personal and political schemes were
now exclusively based. Henry, however, had determined that his (p. 203)
second wife was to be Anne Boleyn, and of this determination Wolsey
was as yet uninformed. The Cardinal had good reason to dread that
lady's ascendancy over Henry's mind; for she was the hope and the tool
of the anti-clerical party, which had hitherto been kept in check by
Wolsey's supremacy. The Duke of Norfolk was her uncle, and he was
hostile to Wolsey for both private and public reasons; her father,
Viscount Rochford, her cousins, Sir William Fitzwilliam and Sir
Francis Brian, and many more distant connections, were anxious at the
first opportunity to lead an attack on the Church and Cardinal. Before
the divorce case began Wolsey's position had grown precarious; taxes
at home and failure abroad had turned the loyalty of the people to
sullen discontent, and Wolsey was mainly responsible. "Disaffection to
the King," wrote Mendoza in March, 1527, "and hatred of the Legate are
visible everywhere.... The King would soon be obliged to change his
councillors, were only a leader to present himself and head the
malcontents;" and in May he reported a general rumour to the effect
that Henry intended to relieve the Legate of his share in the
administration.[570] The Cardinal had incurred the dislike of nearly
every section of the community; the King was his sole support and the
King was beginning to waver. In May there were high words between
Wolsey and Norfolk in Henry's presence;[571] in July King and Cardinal
were quarrelling over ecclesiastical patronage at Calais,[572] and,
long before the failure of the divorce suit, there were other (p. 204)
indications that Henry and his minister had ceased to work together in
harmony.
[Footnote 569: _Ibid._, iv., 3400.]
[Footnote 570: _Sp. Cal._, iii., 109, 190, 192,
193; _cf._ iv., 3951, Du Bellay to Montmorenci,
"those who desire to catch him tripping are very
glad the people cry out 'Murder'".]
[Footnote 571: _L. and P._, iv., 1411.]
[Footnote 572: _Ibid._, iv., 3304.]
It is, indeed, quite a mistake to represent Wolsey's failure to obtain
a sentence in Henry's favour as the sole or main cause of his fall.
Had he succeeded, he might have deferred for a time his otherwise
unavoidable ruin, but it was his last and only chance. He was driven
to playing a desperate game, in which the dice were loaded against
him. If his plan failed, he told Clement over and over again, it would
mean for him irretrievable ruin, and in his fall he would drag down
the Church. If it succeeded, he would be hardly more secure, for
success meant the predominance of Anne Boleyn and of her
anti-ecclesiastical kin. Under the circumstances, it is possible to
attach too much weight to the opinion of the French and Spanish
ambassadors, and of Charles V. himself, that Wolsey suggested the
divorce as the means of breaking for ever the alliance between England
and the House of Burgundy, and substituting for it a union with
France.[573] The divorce fitted in so well with Wolsey's French
policy, that the suspicion was natural; but the same observers also
recorded the impression that Wolsey was secretly opposing the divorce
from fear of the ascendancy of Anne Boleyn.[574] That suspicion had
been brought to Henry's mind as early as June, 1527. It was probably
due to the facts that Wolsey was not blinded by passion, as Henry was,
to the difficulties in the way, and that it was he who persuaded Henry
to have recourse to the Pope in the first instance,[575] when the
King desired to follow Suffolk's precedent, obtain a sentence (p. 205)
in England, marry again, and trust to the Pope to confirm his
proceedings.
[Footnote 573: _L. and P._, iv., 4112, 4865, 5512.]
[Footnote 574: _Sp. Cal._, iii., 432, 790; _Ven.
Cal._, 1529, 212.]
[Footnote 575: "He showed me," writes Campeggio,
"that in order to maintain and increase here the
authority of the Holy See and the Pope he had done
his utmost to persuade the King to apply for a
legate... although many of these prelates declared
it was possible to do without one" (iv., 4857;
_cf._ iv., 5072, 5177).]
It is not, however, impossible to trace Wolsey's real designs behind
these conflicting reports. He knew that Henry was determined to have a
divorce and that this was one of those occasions upon which "he would
be obeyed, whosoever spoke to the contrary". As minister he must
therefore either resign--a difficult thing in the sixteenth
century--or carry out the King's policy. For his own part he had no
objection to the divorce in itself; he was no more touched by the
pathos of Catherine's fate than was her nephew Charles V., he wished
to see the succession strengthened, he thought that he might restore
his tottering influence by obtaining gratification for the King, and
he was straining every nerve to weaken Charles V., either because the
Emperor's power was really too great, or out of revenge for his
betrayal over the papal election. But he was strenuously hostile to
Henry's marriage with Anne Boleyn for two excellent reasons: firstly
she and her kin belonged to the anti-ecclesiastical party which Wolsey
had dreaded since 1515, and secondly he desired Henry to marry the
French Princess Renee in order to strengthen his anti-imperial policy.
Further, he was anxious that the divorce problem should be solved by
means of the Papacy, because its solution by merely national action
would create a breach between England and Rome, would ruin Wolsey's
chances of election as Pope, would threaten his ecclesiastical
supremacy in England, which was merely a legatine authority (p. 206)
dependent on the Pope,[576] and would throw Clement into the arms of
Charles V., whereas Wolsey desired him to be an effective member of
the anti-imperial alliance. Thus Wolsey was prepared to go part of the
way with Henry VIII., but he clearly saw the point at which their
paths would diverge; and his efforts on Henry's behalf were hampered
by his endeavours to keep the King on the track which he had marked
out.
[Footnote 576: Wolsey "certainly proves himself
very zealous for the preservation of the authority
of the See Apostolic in this kingdom _because all
his grandeur is connected with it_" (Campeggio to
Sanga, 28th Oct., 1528, _L. and P._, iv., 4881).]
Henry's suspicions, and his knowledge that Wolsey would be hostile to
his marriage with Anne Boleyn, induced him to act for the time
independently of the Cardinal; and, while Wolsey was in France hinting
at a marriage between Henry and Renee, the King himself was secretly
endeavouring to remove the obstacles to his union with Anne Boleyn.
Instead of adopting Wolsey's suggestion that Ghinucci should be sent
to Rome as an Italian versed in the ways of the Papal Curia, he
despatched his secretary, Dr. William Knight, with two extraordinary
commissions, the second of which he thought would not be revealed "for
any craft the Cardinal or any other can find".[577] The first was to
obtain from the Pope a dispensation to marry a second wife, without
being divorced from Catherine, the issue from both marriages to be
legitimate. This "licence to commit bigamy" has naturally been the
subject of much righteous indignation. But marriage-laws were lax (p. 207)
in those days, when Popes could play fast and loose with them for
political purposes; and, besides the "great reasons and precedents,
especially in the Old Testament," to which Henry referred,[578] he
might have produced a precedent more pertinent, more recent, and
better calculated to appeal to Clement VII. In 1521 Charles V.'s
Spanish council drew up a memorial on the subject of his marriage, in
which they pointed out that his ancestor, Henry IV. of Castile, had,
in 1437, married Dona Blanca, by whom he had no children; and that the
Pope thereupon granted him a dispensation to marry a second wife on
condition that, if within a fixed time he had no issue by her, he
should return to his first.[579] A licence for bigamy, modelled after
this precedent, would have suited Henry admirably, but apparently he
was unaware of this useful example, and was induced to countermand
Knight's commission before it had been communicated to Clement. The
demand would not, however, have shocked the Pope so much as his modern
defenders, for on 18th September, 1530, Casale writes to Henry: "A few
days since the Pope secretly proposed to me that your Majesty might be
allowed two wives. I told him I could not undertake to make any such
proposition, because I did not know whether it would satisfy your
Majesty's conscience. I made this answer because I know that the
Imperialists have this in view, and are urging it; but why, I know
not."[580] Ghinucci and Benet were equally cautious, and thought the
Pope's suggestion was only a ruse; whether a ruse or not, it is (p. 208)
a curious illustration of the moral influence Popes were then likely
to exert on their flock.
[Footnote 577: Henry VIII. to Knight in Corpus
Christi College, Oxford, MS., 318, f. 3, printed in
the _Academy_, xv., 239, and _Engl. Hist. Rev._,
xi., 685.]
[Footnote 578: _L. and P._, iv., 4977.]
[Footnote 579: _Sp. Cal._, ii., 379.]
[Footnote 580: _L. and P._, iv., 6627, 6705, App.
261.]
The second commission, with which Knight was entrusted, was hardly
less strange than the first. By his illicit relations with Mary
Boleyn, Henry had already contracted affinity in the first degree with
her sister Anne, in fact precisely the same affinity (except that it
was illicit) as that which Catherine was alleged to have contracted
with him before their marriage. The inconsistency of Henry's conduct,
in seeking to remove by the same method from his second marriage the
disability which was held to invalidate his first, helps us to define
the precise position which Henry took up and the nature of his
peculiar conscience. Obviously he did not at this stage deny the
Pope's dispensing power; for he was invoking its aid to enable him to
marry Anne Boleyn. He asserted, and he denied, no principle whatever,
though it must be remembered that his own dispensation was an almost,
if not quite, unprecedented stretch of papal power. To dispense with
the "divine" law against marrying the brother's wife, and to dispense
with the merely canonical obstacle to his marriage with Anne arising
out of his relations with Mary Boleyn, were very different matters;
and in this light the breach between England and Rome might be
represented as caused by a novel extension of papal claims. Henry,
however, was a casuist concerned exclusively with his own case. He
maintained merely that the particular dispensation, granted for his
marriage with Catherine, was null and void. As a concession to others,
he condescended to give a number of reasons, none of them affecting
any principle, but only the legal technicalities of the case--the
causes for which the dispensation was granted, such as his own (p. 209)
desire, and the political necessity for the marriage were fictitious;
he had himself protested against the marriage, and so forth. For
himself, his own conviction was ample sanction; he knew he was living
in sin with Catherine because his children had all died but one, and
that was a manifest token of the wrath of Providence. The capacity for
convincing himself of his own righteousness is the most effective
weapon in the egotist's armoury, and Henry's egotism touched the
sublime. His conscience was clear, whatever other people might think
of the maze of apparent inconsistencies in which he was involved. In
1528 he was in some fear of death from the plague; fear of death is
fatal to the peace of a guilty conscience, and it might well have made
Henry pause in his pursuit after the divorce and Anne Boleyn. But
Henry never wavered; he went on in serene assurance, writing his love
letters to Anne, as a conscientiously unmarried man might do, making
his will,[581] "confessing every day and receiving his Maker at every
feast,"[582] paying great attention to the morals of monasteries, and
to charges of malversation against Wolsey, and severely lecturing his
sister Margaret on the sinfulness of her life.[583] He hopes she will
turn "to God's word, the vively doctrine of Jesu Christ, the only
ground of salvation--1 COR. 3, etc."; he reminds her of "the divine
ordinance of inseparable matrimony first instituted in Paradise," and
urges her to avoid "the inevitable damnation threatened against (p. 210)
advoutrers". Henry's conscience was convenient and skilful. He
believed in the "ordinance of inseparable matrimony," so, when he
wished to divorce a wife, his conscience warned him that he had never
really been married to her. Hence his nullity suits with Catherine of
Aragon, with Anne Boleyn and with Anne of Cleves. Moreover, if he had
never been married to Catherine, his relations with Mary Boleyn and
Elizabeth Blount were obviously not adultery, and he was free to
denounce that sin in Margaret with a clear conscience.
[Footnote 581: _L. and P._, iv., 4404.]
[Footnote 582: _Ibid._, iv., 4542.]
[Footnote 583: _Ibid._, iv., 4131. Wolsey writes
the letter, but he is only giving Henry's
"message". The letter is undated, but it refers to
the "shameless sentence sent from Rome," _i.e._,
sentence of divorce which is dated 11th March,
1527.]
* * * * *
Dr. Knight had comparatively little difficulty in obtaining the
dispensation for Henry's marriage with Anne Boleyn; but it was only to
be effective after sentence had been given decreeing the nullity of
his marriage with Catherine of Aragon; and, as Wolsey saw, that was
the real crux of the question.[584] Knight had scarcely turned his
steps homeward, when he was met by a courier with fresh instructions
from Wolsey to obtain a further concession from Clement; the Pope was
to empower the Cardinal himself, or some other safe person, to examine
the original dispensation, and, if it were found invalid, to annul
Henry's marriage with Catherine. So Knight returned to the Papal
Court; and then began that struggle between English and Spanish (p. 211)
influence at Rome which ended in the victory of Charles V. and the
repudiation by England of the Roman jurisdiction. Never did two
parties enter upon a contest with a clearer perception of the issues
involved, or carry it on with their eyes more open to the magnitude of
the results. Wolsey himself, Gardiner, Foxe, Casale, and every English
envoy employed in the case, warned and threatened Clement that, if he
refused Henry's demands, he would involve Wolsey and the Papal cause
in England in a common ruin. "He alleged," says Campeggio of Wolsey,
"that if the King's desire were not complied with... there would
follow the speedy and total ruin of the kingdom, of his Lordship and
of the Church's influence in this kingdom."[585] "I cannot reflect
upon it," wrote Wolsey himself, "and close my eyes, for I see ruin,
infamy and subversion of the whole dignity and estimation of the See
Apostolic if this course is persisted in. You see in what dangerous
times we are. If the Pope will consider the gravity of this cause, and
how much the safety of the nation depends upon it, he will see that
the course he now pursues will drive the King to adopt remedies which
are injurious to the Pope, and are frequently instilled into the
King's mind."[586] On one occasion Clement confessed that, though the
Pope was supposed to carry the papal laws locked up in his breast,
Providence had not vouchsafed him the key wherewith to unlock them;
and Gardiner roughly asked in retort whether in that case the papal
laws should not be committed to the flames.[587] He told how the
Lutherans were instigating Henry to do away with the temporal (p. 212)
possessions of the Church.[588] But Clement could only bewail his
misfortune, and protest that, if heresies and schisms arose, it was
not his fault. He could not afford to offend the all-powerful Emperor;
the sack of Rome and Charles's intimation conveyed in plain and set
terms that it was the judgment of God[589] had cowed Clement for the
rest of his life, and made him resolve never again to incur the
Emperor's enmity.
[Footnote 584: For these intricate negotiations see
Stephan Ehses, _Roemische Dokumente zur Geschichte
der Ehescheidung Heinrichs VIII. von England_,
1893; these documents had all, I think, been
previously printed by Laemmer or Theiner, but only
from imperfect copies often incorrectly deciphered.
Ehses has printed the originals with the utmost
care, and thrown much new light on the subject. The
story of the divorce is retold in this new light by
Dr. Gairdner in the _English Historical Review_,
vols. xi. and xii.; the documents in _L. and P._
must be corrected from these sources.]
[Footnote 585: _L. and P._, iv., 4881.]
[Footnote 586: _Ibid._, iv., 4897.]
[Footnote 587: _Ibid._, iv., 4167; _cf._ iv., 5156,
and Ehses, _Roemische Dokumente_, No. 20, where
Cardinal Pucci gives a somewhat different account
of the interviews.]
[Footnote 588: _L. and P._, iv., 5038, 5417, 5476.]
[Footnote 589: _Sp. Cal._, iii., 309.]
From the point of view of justice, the Pope had an excellent case;
even the Lutherans, who denied his dispensing power, denounced the
divorce. _Quod non fieri debuit_, was their just and common-sense
point, _factum valet_. But the Pope's case had been hopelessly
weakened by the evil practice of his predecessors and of himself.
Alexander VI. had divorced Louis XII. from his Queen for no other
reasons than that Louis XII. wanted to unite Brittany with France by
marrying its duchess, and that Alexander, the Borgia Pope, required
Louis' assistance in promoting the interests of the iniquitous Borgia
family.[590] The injustice to Catherine was no greater than that to
Louis' Queen. Henry's sister Margaret, and both the husbands of his
other sister, Mary, had procured divorces from Popes, and why not
Henry himself? Clement was ready enough to grant Margaret's
divorce;[591] he was willing to give a dispensation for a marriage
between the Princess Mary and her half-brother, the Duke of (p. 213)
Richmond; the more insuperable the obstacle, the more its removal
enhanced his power. It was all very well to dispense with canons and
divine laws, but to annul papal dispensations--was that not to cheapen
his own wares? Why, wrote Henry to Clement, could he not dispense with
human laws, if he was able to dispense with divine at pleasure?[592]
Obviously because divine authority could take care of itself, but papal
prerogatives needed a careful shepherd. Even this principle, such as
it was, was not consistently followed, for he had annulled a dispensation
in Suffolk's case. Clement's real anxiety was to avoid responsibility.
More than once he urged Henry to settle the matter himself,[593] as
Suffolk had done, obtain a sentence from the courts in England, and
marry his second wife. The case could then only come before him as a
suit against the validity of the second marriage, and the accomplished
fact was always a powerful argument. Moreover, all this would take
time, and delay was as dear to Clement as irresponsibility. But Henry
was determined to have such a sentence as would preclude all doubts of
the legitimacy of his children by the second marriage, and was as
anxious to shift the responsibility to Clement's shoulders as the Pope
was to avoid it. Clement next urged Catherine to go into a nunnery,
for that would only entail injustice on herself, and would involve the
Church and its head in no temporal perils.[594] When Catherine (p. 214)
refused, he wished her in the grave, and lamented that he seemed
doomed through her to lose the spiritualties of his Church, as he had
lost its temporalties through her nephew, Charles V.[595]
[Footnote 590: _L. and P._, iv., 5152, where
Henry's ambassadors quote this precedent to the
Pope. _Cf. ibid._, v., 45, for other precedents.]
[Footnote 591: The sentence was actually pronounced
by the Cardinal of Ancona, and the date was 11th
March, 1527, just before Henry commenced
proceedings against Catherine. Henry called it a
"shameless sentence"; but it may nevertheless have
suggested to his mind the possibility of obtaining
one like it.]
[Footnote 592: _L. and P._, iv., 5966.]
[Footnote 593: _Ibid._, iv., 3802, 6290.]
[Footnote 594: _Ibid._, iv., 5072. "It would
greatly please the Pope," writes his secretary
Sanga, "if the Queen could be induced to enter some
religion, because, although this course would be
portentous and unusual, he could more readily
entertain the idea, _as it would involve the injury
of only one person_."]
[Footnote 595: _L. and P._, iv., 5518.]
It was thus with the utmost reluctance that he granted the commission
brought by Knight. It was a draft, drawn up by Wolsey, apparently
declaring the law on the matter and empowering Wolsey, if the facts
were found to be such as were alleged, to pronounce the nullity of
Catherine's marriage.[596] Wolsey desired that it should be granted in
the form in which he had drawn it up. But the Pope's advisers declared
that such a commission would disgrace Henry, Wolsey and Clement
himself. The draft was therefore amended so as to be unobjectionable,
or, in other words, useless for practical purposes; and, with this
commission, Knight returned to England, rejoicing in the confidence of
complete success. But, as soon as Wolsey had seen it, he pronounced
the commission "as good as none at all".[597] The discovery did not
improve his or Henry's opinion of the Pope's good faith; but, dissembling
their resentment, they despatched, in February, 1528, Stephen Gardiner
and Edward Foxe to obtain fresh and more effective powers. Eventually,
on 8th June a commission was issued to Wolsey and Campeggio to try the
case and pronounce sentence;[598] even if one was unwilling, the other
might act by himself; and all appeals from their jurisdiction (p. 215)
were forbidden. This was not a decretal commission; it did not bind
the Pope or prevent him from revoking the case. Such a commission was,
however, granted on condition that it should be shown to no one but
the King and Wolsey, and that it should not be used in the procedure.
The Pope also gave a written promise, in spite of a protest lodged on
Catherine's behalf by the Spanish ambassador, Muxetula,[599] that he
would not revoke, or do anything to invalidate, the commission, but
would confirm the cardinals' decision.[600] If, Clement had said in
the previous December, Lautrec, the French commander in Italy, came
nearer Rome, he might excuse himself to the Emperor as having acted
under pressure.[601] He would send the commission as soon as Lautrec
arrived. Lautrec had now arrived; he had marched down through Italy;
he had captured Melfi; the Spanish commander, Moncada, had been
killed; Naples was thought to be on the eve of surrender.[602] The
Spanish dominion in Italy was waning, the Emperor's thunderbolts were
less terrifying, and the justice of the cause of his aunt less
apparent.
[Footnote 596: It was called a "decretal
commission," and it was a legislative as well as an
administrative act; the Pope being an absolute
monarch, his decrees were the laws of the Church;
the difficulties of Clement VII. and indeed the
whole divorce question could never have arisen had
the Church been a constitutional monarchy.]
[Footnote 597: _L. and P._, iv., 3913.]
[Footnote 598: _Ibid._, iv., 4345.]
[Footnote 599: _Engl. Hist. Rev._, xii., 110-14.]
[Footnote 600: Ehses, _Roemische Dok._, No. 23;
_Engl. Hist. Rev._, xii., 8.]
[Footnote 601: _L. and P._, iv., 3682, 3750.]
[Footnote 602: _Ibid._, iv., 3934, 3949, 4224.]
* * * * *
On 25th July Campeggio embarked at Corneto,[603] and proceeded by slow
stages through France towards England. Henry congratulated himself
that his hopes were on the eve of fulfilment. But, unfortunately for
him, the basis, on which they were built, was as unstable as water.
The decision of his case still depended upon Clement, and Clement
wavered with every fluctuation in the success or the failure of (p. 216)
the Spanish arms in Italy. Campeggio had scarcely set out, when
Doria, the famous Genoese admiral, deserted Francis for Charles;[604]
on the 17th of August Lautrec died before Naples;[605] and, on 10th
September, an English agent sent Wolsey news of a French disaster,
which he thought more serious than the battle of Pavia or the sack of
Rome.[606] On the following day Sanga, the Pope's secretary, wrote to
Campeggio that, "as the Emperor is victorious, the Pope must not give
him any pretext for a fresh rupture, lest the Church should be utterly
annihilated.... Proceed on your journey to England, and there do your
utmost to restore mutual affection between the King and Queen. You are
not to pronounce any opinion without a new and express commission
hence."[607] Sanga repeated the injunction a few days later. "Every
day," he wrote, "stronger reasons are discovered;" to satisfy Henry
"involves the certain ruin of the Apostolic See and the Church, owing
to recent events.... If so great an injury be done to the Emperor...
the Church cannot escape utter ruin, as it is entirely in the power of
the Emperor's servants. You will not, therefore, be surprised at my
repeating that you are not to proceed to sentence, under any pretext,
without express commission; but to protract the matter as long as
possible."[608] Clement himself wrote to Charles that nothing would be
done to Catherine's detriment, that Campeggio had gone merely to urge
Henry to do his duty, and that the whole case would eventually be
referred to Rome.[609] Such were the secret instructions with which
Campeggio arrived in England in October.[610] He readily promised (p. 217)
not to proceed to sentence, but protested against the interpretation
which he put upon the Pope's command, namely, that he was not to begin
the trial. The English, he said, "would think that I had come to
hoodwink them, and might resent it. You know how much that would
involve."[611] He did not seem to realise that the refusal to pass
sentence was equally hoodwinking the English, and that the trial would
only defer the moment of their penetrating the deception; a trial was
of no use without sentence.
[Footnote 603: _Ibid._, iv., 4605.]
[Footnote 604: _L. and P._, iv., 4626.]
[Footnote 605: _Ibid._, iv., 4663.]
[Footnote 606: _Ibid._, iv., 4713.]
[Footnote 607: _Ibid._, iv., 4721.]
[Footnote 608: _Ibid._, iv., 4736-37.]
[Footnote 609: _Sp. Cal._, iii., 779.]
[Footnote 610: _L. and P._, iv., 4857.]
[Footnote 611: _Ibid._, iv., 4736.]
In accordance with his instructions, Campeggio first sought to dissuade
Henry from persisting in his suit for the divorce. Finding the King
immovable, he endeavoured to induce Catherine to go into a nunnery, as
the divorced wife of Louis XII. had done, "who still lived in the
greatest honour and reputation with God and all that kingdom".[612] He
represented to her that she had nothing to lose by such a step; she
could never regain Henry's affections or obtain restitution of her
conjugal rights. Her consent might have deferred the separation of the
English Church from Rome; it would certainly have relieved the Supreme
Pontiff from a humiliating and intolerable position. But these
considerations of expediency weighed nothing with Catherine. She was
as immovable as Henry, and deaf to all Campeggio's solicitations. Her
conscience was, perhaps, of a rigid, Spanish type, but it was as clear
as Henry's and a great deal more comprehensible. She was convinced
that her marriage was valid; to admit a doubt of it would imply that
she had been living in sin and imperil her immortal soul. Henry (p. 218)
did not in the least mind admitting that he had lived for twenty years
with a woman who was not his wife; the sin, to his mind, was continuing
to live with her after he had become convinced that she was really not
his wife. Catherine appears, however, to have been willing to take the
monastic vows, if Henry would do the same. Henry was equally willing,
if Clement would immediately dispense with the vows in his case, but
not in Catherine's.[613] But there were objections to this course, and
doubts of Clement's power to authorise Henry's re-marriage, even if
Catherine did go into a nunnery.
[Footnote 612: _Ibid._, iv., 4858.]
[Footnote 613: _L. and P._, iv., 4977.]
Meanwhile, Campeggio found help from an unexpected quarter in his
efforts to waste the time. Quite unknown to Henry, Wolsey, or Clement,
there existed in Spain a brief of Julius II. fuller than the original
bull of dispensation which he had granted for the marriage of Henry
and Catherine, and supplying any defects that might be found in it.
Indeed, so conveniently did the brief meet the criticisms urged
against the bull, that Henry and Wolsey at once pronounced it an
obvious forgery, concocted after the doubts about the bull had been
raised. No copy of the brief could be found in the English archives,
nor could any trace be discovered of its having been registered at
Rome; while Ghinucci and Lee, who examined the original in Spain,
professed to see in it such flagrant inaccuracies as to deprive it of
all claim to be genuine.[614] Still, if it were genuine, it shattered
the whole of Henry's case. That had been built up, not on the (p. 219)
denial of the Pope's power to dispense, but on the technical defects
of a particular dispensation. Now it appeared that the validity of the
marriage did not depend upon this dispensation at all. Nor did it
depend upon the brief, for Catherine was prepared to deny on oath that
the marriage with Arthur had been anything more than a form;[615] in
that case the affinity with Henry had not been contracted, and there
was no need of either dispensation or brief. This assertion seems to
have shaken Henry; certainly he began to shift his position, and,
early in 1529, he was wishing for some noted divine, friar or other,
who would maintain that the Pope could not dispense at all.[616] This
was his first doubt as to the plenitude of papal power; his marriage
with Catherine must be invalid, because his conscience told him so; if
it was not invalid through defects in the dispensation, it must be
invalid because the Pope could not dispense. Wolsey met the objection
with a legal point, perfectly good in itself, but trivial. There were
two canonical disabilities which the dispensation must meet for
Henry's marriage to be valid; first, the consummation of Catherine's
marriage with Arthur; secondly, the marriage, even though it was not
consummated, was yet celebrated _in facie ecclesiae_, and generally
reputed complete. There was thus an _impedimentum publicae honestatis_
to the marriage of Henry and Catherine, and this impediment was not
mentioned in, and therefore not removed by, the dispensation.[617]
[Footnote 614: _Ibid._, iv., 5376-77, 5470-71,
5486-87. For the arguments as to its validity see
Busch, _England under the Tudors_, Eng. trs., i.,
376-8; Friedmann, _Anne Boleyn_, ii., 329; and Lord
Acton in the _Quarterly Rev._, cxliii., 1-51.]
[Footnote 615: She made this statement to Campeggio
in the confessional (_L. and P._, iv., 4875).]
[Footnote 616: _Ibid._, iv., 5377, 5438; _Sp.
Cal._, iii., 276, 327.]
[Footnote 617: _L. and P._, iv., 3217. See this
point discussed in Taunton's _Cardinal Wolsey_,
chap. x.]
But all this legal argument might be invalidated by the brief. (p. 220)
It was useless to proceed with the trial until the promoters of the
suit knew what the brief contained. According to Mendoza, Catherine's
"whole right" depended upon the brief, a statement indicating a
general suspicion that the bull was really insufficient.[618] So the
winter of 1528-29 and the following spring were spent in efforts to
get hold of the original brief, or to induce Clement to declare it a
forgery. The Queen was made to write to Charles that it was absolutely
essential to her case that the brief should be produced before the
legatine Court in England.[619] The Emperor was not likely to be
caught by so transparent an artifice. Moreover, the emissary, sent
with Catherine's letter, wrote, as soon as he got to France, warning
Charles that his aunt's letter was written under compulsion and
expressed the reverse of her real desires.[620] In the spring of 1529
several English envoys, ending with Gardiner, were sent to Rome to
obtain a papal declaration of the falsity of the brief. Clement,
however, naturally refused to declare the brief a forgery, without
hearing the arguments on the other side,[621] and more important
developments soon supervened. Gardiner wrote from Rome, early in May,
that there was imminent danger of the Pope revoking the case, and (p. 221)
the news determined Henry and Wolsey to relinquish their suit about
the brief, and push on the proceedings of the legatine Court, so as to
get some decision before the case was called to Rome. Once the legates
had pronounced in favour of the divorce, Clement was informed, the
English cared little what further fortunes befel it elsewhere.
[Footnote 618: _Sp. Cal._, iii., 882.]
[Footnote 619: _L. and P._, iv., 4841.]
[Footnote 620: _Ibid._, iv., 5154, 5177, 5211
(ii.); _Sp. Cal._, iii., 877, 882.]
[Footnote 621: _L. and P._, iv., 5474. Yet there is
a letter from Clement to Campeggio (_Cotton MS._,
Vitellius, B, xii., 164; _L. and P._, iv., 5181)
authorising him "to reject whatever evidence is
tendered in behalf of this brief as an evident
forgery". Clement was no believer in the maxim _qui
facit per alium facit per se_; he did not mind what
his legates did, so long as he was free to
repudiate their action when convenient.]
So, on the 31st of May, 1529, in the great hall of the Black Friars,
in London, the famous Court was formally opened, and the King and
Queen were cited to appear before it on the 18th of June.[622] Henry
was then represented by two proxies, but Catherine came in person to
protest against the competence of the tribunal.[623] Three days later
both the King and the Queen attended in person to hear the Court's
decision on this point. Catherine threw herself on her knees before
Henry; she begged him to consider her honour, her daughter's and his.
Twice Henry raised her up; he protested that he desired nothing so
much as that their marriage should be found valid, in spite of the
"perpetual scruple" he had felt about it, and declared that only his
love for her had kept him silent so long; her request for the removal
of the cause to Rome was unreasonable, considering the Emperor's power
there. Again protesting against the jurisdiction of the Court and
appealing to Rome, Catherine withdrew. Touched by her appeal, Henry
burst out in her praise. "She is, my Lords," he said, "as true, as
obedient, and as conformable a wife, as I could, in my phantasy, wish
or desire. She hath all the virtuous qualities that ought to be in a
woman of her dignity, or in any other of baser estate."[624] (p. 222)
But these qualities had nothing to do with the pitiless forms of law.
The legate, overruled her protest, refused her appeal, and summoned
her back. She took no notice, and was declared contumacious.
[Footnote 622: _L. and P._, iv., 5611, 5612.]
[Footnote 623: _Ibid._, iv., 5685, 5694, 5695,
5702.]
[Footnote 624: _L. and P._, iv., Introd., p.
cccclxxv.]
The proceedings then went on without her; Fisher Bishop of Rochester,
made a courageous defence of the validity of the marriage, to which
Henry drew up a bitter reply in the form of a speech addressed to the
legates.[625] The speed with which the procedure was hurried on was
little to Campeggio's taste. He had not prejudged the case; he was
still in doubt as to which way the sentence would go; and he entered a
dignified protest against the orders he received from Rome to give
sentence, if it came to that point, against Henry.[626] He would
pronounce what judgment seemed to him just, but he shrank from the
ordeal, and he did his best to follow out Clement's injunctions to
procrastinate.[627] In this he succeeded completely. It seemed that
judgment could no longer be deferred; it was to be delivered on the
23rd of July.[628] On that day the King himself, and the chief men of
his Court, were present; his proctor demanded sentence. Campeggio
stood up, and instead of giving sentence, adjourned the Court till
October.[629] "By the mass!" burst out Suffolk, giving the table (p. 223)
a great blow with his hand, "now I see that the old-said saw is true,
that there was never a legate nor cardinal that did good in England."
The Court never met again; and except during the transient reaction,
under Mary, it was the last legatine Court ever held in England. They
might assure the Pope, Wolsey had written to the English envoys at
Rome a month before, that if he granted the revocation he would lose
the devotion of the King and of England to the See Apostolic, and
utterly destroy Wolsey for ever.[630]
[Footnote 625: _Ibid._, iv., Introd., p. cccclxxix.]
[Footnote 626: _Ibid._, iv., 5732, 5734.]
[Footnote 627: _Ibid._, iv., 3604.]
[Footnote 628: _Ibid._, iv., 5789.]
[Footnote 629: It was alleged that this adjournment
was only the usual practice of the curia; but it is
worth noting that in 1530 Charles V. asserted that
it was usual to carry on matters so important as
the divorce during vacation (_ibid._, iv., 6452),
and that Clement had repeatedly ordered Campeggio
to prolong the suit as much as possible and above
all to pronounce no sentence.]
[Footnote 630: _L. and P._, iv., 5703, 5715, 5780.]
Long before the vacation was ended, news reached Henry that the case
had been called to Rome; the revocation was, indeed, decreed a week
before Campeggio adjourned his court. Charles's star, once more in the
ascendant, had cast its baleful influence over Henry's fortunes. The
close alliance between England and France had led to a joint
declaration of war on the Emperor in January, 1528, into which the
English ambassadors in Spain had been inveigled by their French
colleagues, against Henry's wishes.[631] It was received with a storm
of opposition in England, and Wolsey had some difficulty in justifying
himself to the King. "You may be sure," wrote Du Bellay, "that he is
playing a terrible game, for I believe he is the only Englishman who
wishes a war with Flanders."[632] If that was his wish, he was doomed
to disappointment. Popular hatred of the war was too strong; a project
was mooted by the clothiers in Kent for seizing the Cardinal and
turning him adrift in a boat, with holes bored in it.[633] The (p. 224)
clothiers in Wiltshire were reported to be rising; in Norfolk
employers dismissed their workmen.[634] War with Flanders meant ruin
to the most prosperous industry in both countries, and the attempt to
divert the Flanders trade to Calais had failed.[635] So Henry and
Charles were soon discussing peace; no hostilities took place; an
agreement, that trade should go on as usual with Flanders,[636] was
followed by a truce in June,[637] and the truce by the Peace of
Cambrai in the following year. That peace affords the measure of
England's decline since 1521. Wolsey was carefully excluded from all
share in the negotiations. England was, indeed, admitted as a
participator, but only after Louise and Margaret of Savoy had
practically settled the terms, and after Du Bellay had told Francis
that, if England were not admitted, it would mean Wolsey's immediate
ruin.[638]
[Footnote 631: _Ibid._, iv., 4564; _Sp. Cal._,
iii., 729.]
[Footnote 632: _L. and P._, iv., 3930.]
[Footnote 633: _L. and P._, iv., 4310.]
[Footnote 634: _Ibid._, iv., 4012, 4040, 4043,
4044, 4239.]
[Footnote 635: _Ibid._, iv., 3262.]
[Footnote 636: _Ibid._, iv., 4147.]
[Footnote 637: _Ibid._, iv., 4376.]
[Footnote 638: _Ibid._, iv., 5679, 5701, 5702,
5713.]
By the Treaty of Cambrai Francis abandoned Italy to Charles. His
affairs beyond the Alps had been going from bad to worse since the
death of Lautrec; and the suggested guard of French and English
soldiers which was to relieve the Pope from fear of Charles was never
formed.[639] That failure was not the only circumstance which made
Clement imperialist. Venice, the ally of England and France, seized
Ravenna and Cervia, two papal towns.[640] "The conduct of the
Venetians," wrote John Casale from Rome, "moves the Pope more than
anything else, and he would use the assistance of any one, except (p. 225)
the Devil, to avenge their injury."[641] "The King and the Cardinal,"
repeated Sanga to Campeggio, "must not expect him to execute his
intentions, until they have used their utmost efforts to compel the
Venetians to restore the Pope's territories."[642] Henry did his best,
but he was not sincerely helped by Francis; his efforts proved vain,
and Clement thought he could get more effective assistance from
Charles. "Every one is persuaded," said one of the Emperor's agents in
Italy on 10th January, 1529, "that the Pope is now sincerely attached
to his Imperial Majesty."[643] "I suspect," wrote Du Bellay from
London, in the same month, "that the Pope has commanded Campeggio to
meddle no further, seeing things are taking quite a different turn
from what he had been assured, and that the Emperor's affairs in
Naples are in such a state that Clement dare not displease him."[644]
The Pope had already informed Charles that his aunt's petition for the
revocation of the suit would be granted.[645] The Italian League was
practically dissolved. "I have quite made up my mind," said Clement to
the Archbishop of Capua on 7th June, "to become an Imperialist, and to
live and die as such... I am only waiting for the return of my
nuncio."[646]
[Footnote 639: _Ibid._, iv., 5179.]
[Footnote 640: _Ibid._, iv., 4680-84.]
[Footnote 641: _L. and P._, iv., 4900.]
[Footnote 642: _Ibid._, iv., 5447.]
[Footnote 643: _Sp. Cal._, iii., 875.]
[Footnote 644: _L. and P._, iv., 5209.]
[Footnote 645: _Sp. Cal._, iii., 890.]
[Footnote 646: _Ibid._, iv., 72.]
That nuncio had gone to Barcelona to negotiate an alliance between the
Pope and the Emperor; and the success of his mission completed
Clement's conversion. The revocation was only delayed, thought
Charles's representative at Rome, to secure better terms for the
Pope.[647] On 21st June, the French commander, St. Pol, was utterly
defeated at Landriano; "not a vestige of the army is left," (p. 226)
reported Casale.[648] A few days later the Treaty of Barcelona between
Clement and Charles was signed.[649] Clement's nephew was to marry the
Emperor's natural daughter; the Medici tyranny was to be re-established
in Florence; Ravenna, Cervia and other towns were to be restored to
the Pope; His Holiness was to crown Charles with the imperial crown,
and to absolve from ecclesiastical censures all those who were present
at, or consented to, the sack of Rome. It was, in effect, a family
compact; and part of it was the quashing of the legates' proceedings
against the Emperor's aunt, with whom the Pope was now to be allied by
family ties. "We found out secretly," write the English envoys at
Rome, on the 16th of July, "that the Pope signed the revocation
yesterday morning, as it would have been dishonourable to have signed
it after the publication of the new treaty with the Emperor, which
will be published here on Sunday."[650] Clement knew that his motives
would not bear scrutiny, and he tried to avoid public odium by a
characteristic subterfuge. Catherine could hope for no justice in
England, Henry could expect no justice at Rome. Political expediency
would dictate a verdict in Henry's favour in England; political
expediency would dictate a verdict for Catherine at Rome. Henry's
ambassadors were instructed to appeal from Clement to the "true Vicar
of Christ," but where was the true Vicar of Christ to be found on (p. 227)
earth?[651] There was no higher tribunal. It was intolerable that
English suits should be decided by the chances and changes of French
or Habsburg influence in Italy, by the hopes and the fears of an
Italian prince for the safety of his temporal power. The natural and
inevitable result was the separation of England from Rome.
[Footnote 647: _Ibid._, iv., 154.]
[Footnote 648: _L. and P._, iv., 5705, 5767; _cf.
Sp. Cal._, iv., 150.]
[Footnote 649: _L. and P._, iv., 5779; _Sp. Cal._,
iv., 117, 161.]
[Footnote 650: _L. and P._, iv., 5780; _Sp. Cal._,
iv., 156. Another detail was the excommunication of
Zapolya, the rival of the Habsburgs in Hungary--a
step which Henry VIII. denounced as "letting the
Turk into Hungary" (_L. and P._, v., 274).]
[Footnote 651: _L. and P._, iv., 5650, 5715.]
CHAPTER IX. (p. 228)
THE CARDINAL'S FALL.[652]
[Footnote 652: See, besides the documents cited,
Busch, _Der Sturz des Cardinals Wolsey_ (Hist.
Taschenbuch, VI., ix., 39-114).]
The loss of their spiritual jurisdiction in England was part of the
price paid by the Popes for their temporal possessions in Italy. The
papal domains were either too great or too small. If the Pope was to
rely on his temporal power, it should have been extensive enough to
protect him from the dictation and resentment of secular princes; and
from this point of view there was no little justification for the aims
of Julius II. Had he succeeded in driving the barbarians across the
Alps or into the sea, he and his successors might in safety have
judged the world, and the breach with Henry might never have taken
place. If the Pope was to rely on his spiritual weapons, there was no
need of temporal states at all. In their existing extent and position,
they were simply the heel of Achilles, the vulnerable spot, through
which secular foes might wound the Vicar of Christ. France threatened
him from the north and Spain from the south; he was ever between the
upper and the nether mill-stone. Italy was the cockpit of Europe in
the sixteenth century, and the eyes of the Popes were perpetually bent
on the worldly fray, seeking to save or extend their dominions.
Through the Pope's temporal power, France and Spain exerted their (p. 229)
pressure. He could only defend himself by playing off one against the
other, and in this game his spiritual powers were his only effective
pieces. More and more the spiritual authority, with which he was
entrusted, was made to serve political ends. Temporal princes were
branded as "sons of iniquity and children of perdition," not because
their beliefs or their morals were worse than other men's, but because
they stood in the way of the family ambitions of various popes. Their
frequent use and abuse brought ecclesiastical censures into public
contempt, and princes soon ceased to be frightened with false fires.
James IV., when excommunicated, said he would appeal to Prester John,
and that he would side with any council against the Pope, even if it
contained only three bishops.[653] The Vicar of Christ was lost in the
petty Italian prince. _Corruptio optimi pessima_. The lower dragged
the higher nature down. If the Papal Court was distinguished from the
courts of other Italian sovereigns, it was not by exceptional purity.
"In this Court as in others," wrote Silvester de Giglis from Rome,
"nothing can be effected without gifts."[654] The election of Leo X.
was said to be free from bribery; a cardinal himself was amazed, and
described the event as _Phoenix et rara avis_.[655] If poison was not
a frequent weapon at Rome, popes and cardinals at least believed it to
be. Alexander VI. was said to have been poisoned; one cardinal was
accused of poisoning his fellow-cardinal, Bainbridge; and others were
charged with an attempt on the life of Leo X.[656] In 1517, Pace (p. 230)
described the state of affairs at Rome as _plane monstra, omni
dedecore et infamia plena; omnis fides, omnis honestas, una cum
religione, a mundo abvolasse videntur_.[657] Ten years later, the
Emperor himself declared that the sack of Rome was the just judgment
of God, and one of his ambassadors said that the Pope ought to be
deprived of his temporal states, as they had been at the bottom of all
the dissensions.[658] Clement himself claimed to have been the
originator of that war which brought upon him so terrible and so just
a punishment.
[Footnote 653: _L. and P._, i., 3838, 3876.]
[Footnote 654: _Ibid._, ii., 3781; _cf._, i., 4283,
"all here have regard only to their own honour and
profit".]
[Footnote 655: _Ibid._, ii., 2362.]
[Footnote 656: _L. and P._, ii., 3277, 3352.]
[Footnote 657: _Ibid._, ii., 3523.]
[Footnote 658: _Sp. Cal._, iii., 209, 210, 309;
_cf._, _L. and P._, iv., 3051, 3352. Clement had
given away Sicily and Naples to one of Charles's
vassals "which dealing may make me not take him as
Pope, no, not for all the excommunications that he
can make; for I stand under appellation to the next
general council". Every one--Charles V., Henry
VIII., Cranmer--played an appeal to the next
general council against the Pope's
excommunication.]
Another result of the merging of the Pope in the Italian prince was
the practical exclusion of the English and other Northern nations from
the supreme council of Christendom. There was no apparent reason why
an Englishman should not be the head of the Christian Church just as
well as an Italian; but there was some incongruity in the idea of an
Englishman ruling over Italian States, and no Englishman had attained
the Papacy for nearly four centuries. The double failure of Wolsey
made it clear that the door of the Papacy was sealed to Englishmen,
whatever their claims might be. The roll of cardinals tells a similar
tale; the Roman curia graciously conceded that there should generally
be one English cardinal in the sacred college, but one in a body (p. 231)
of forty or fifty was thought as much as England could fairly demand.
It is not so very surprising that England repudiated the authority of
a tribunal in which its influence was measured on such a contemptible
scale. The other nations of Europe thought much the same, and it is
only necessary to add up the number of cardinals belonging to each
nationality to arrive at a fairly accurate indication of the peoples
who rejected papal pretensions. The nations most inadequately represented
in the college of cardinals broke away from Rome; those which remained
faithful were the nations which controlled in the present, or might
hope to control in the future, the supreme ecclesiastical power. Spain
and France had little temptation to abolish an authority which they
themselves wielded in turn; for if the Pope was a Spaniard to-day, he
might well be a Frenchman to-morrow. There was no absurdity in
Frenchmen or Spaniards ruling over the papal States; for France and
Spain already held under their sway more Italian territory than
Italian natives themselves. It was the subjection of the Pope to
French and Spanish domination that prejudiced his claims in English
eyes. His authority was tolerable so long as the old ideal of the
unity of Christendom under a single monarch retained its force, or
even so long as the Pope was Italian pure and simple. But when Italy
was either Spanish or French, and the Pope the chaplain of one or the
other monarch, the growing spirit of nationality could bear it no
longer; it responded at once to Henry's appeals against the claims of
a foreign jurisdiction.
It was a mere accident that the breach with Rome grew out of Spanish
control of the Pope. The separation was nearly effected more than (p. 232)
a century earlier, as a result of the Pope's Babylonish captivity in
France; and the wonder is, not that the breach took place when it did,
but that it was deferred for so long. At the beginning of the fifteenth
century all the elements were present but one for the ecclesiastical
revolution which was reserved for Henry VIII. to effect. The Papacy
had been discredited in English eyes by subservience to France, just
as it had in 1529 by subservience to Charles. Lollardy was more
powerful in England in the reign of Henry IV. than heresy was in the
middle of that of Henry VIII. There was as strong a demand for the
secularisation of Church property on the part of the lay peers and
gentry; and Wycliffe himself had anticipated the cardinal point of the
later movement by appealing to the State to reform the Church. But
great revolutions depend on a number of causes working together, and
often fail for the lack of one. The element lacking in the reign of
Henry IV. was the King himself. The Lancastrians were orthodox from
conviction and from the necessities of their position; they needed the
support of the Church to bolster up a weak title to the crown. The
civil wars followed; and Henry VII. was too much absorbed in securing
his throne to pursue any quarrels with Rome. But when his son began to
rule as well as to reign, it was inevitable that not merely questions
of Church property and of the relations with the Papacy should come up
for revision, but also those issues between Church and State which had
remained in abeyance during the fifteenth century. The divorce was the
spark which ignited the flame, but the combustible materials had been
long existent. If the divorce had been all, there would have been no
Reformation in England. After the death of Anne Boleyn, Henry (p. 233)
might have done some trifling penance at his subjects' expense, made
the Pope a present, or waged war on one of Clement's orthodox foes,
and that would have been the end. Much had happened since the days of
Hildebrand, and Popes were no longer able to exact heroic repentance.
The divorce, in fact, was the occasion, and not the cause, of the
Reformation.
* * * * *
That movement, so far as Henry VIII. was concerned, was not in essence
doctrinal; neither was it primarily a schism between the English and
Roman communions. It was rather an episode in the eternal dispute
between Church and State. Throughout the quarrel, Henry and Elizabeth
maintained that they were merely reasserting their ancient royal
prerogative over the Church, which the Pope of Rome had usurped.
English revolutions have always been based on specious conservative
pleas, and the only method of inducing Englishmen to change has been
by persuasions that the change is not a change at all, or is a change
to an older and better order. The Parliaments of the seventeenth
century regarded the Stuart pretensions, as Henry and Elizabeth did
those of the Pope, in the light of usurpations upon their own
imprescriptible rights; and more recently, movements to make the
Church Catholic have been based on the ground that it has never been
anything else. The Tudor contention that the State was always supreme
over the Church has been transformed into a theory that the Church was
always at least semi-independent of Rome. But it is not so clear that
the Church has always been anti-papal, as that the English laity have
always been anti-clerical.
The English people were certainly very anti-sacerdotal from the (p. 234)
the very beginning of Henry VIII.'s reign. In 1512 James IV. complained
to Henry that Englishmen seized Scots merchants, ill-treated them, and
abused them as "the Pope's men".[659] At the end of the same year
Parliament deprived of their benefit of clergy all clerks under the
rank of sub-deacon who committed murder or felony.[660] This measure
at once provoked a cry of "the Church in danger". The Abbot of
Winchcombe preached that the act was contrary to the law of God and to
the liberties of the Church, and that the lords, who consented
thereto, had incurred a liability to spiritual censures. Standish,
warden of the Mendicant Friars of London, defended the action of
Parliament, while the temporal peers requested the bishops to make the
Abbot of Winchcombe recant.[661] They refused, and, at the Convocation
of 1515, Standish was summoned before it to explain his conduct. He
appealed to the King; the judges pronounced that all who had taken
part in the proceedings against Standish had incurred the penalties of
_praemunire_. They also declared that the King could hold a Parliament
without the spiritual lords, who only sat in virtue of their
temporalties. This opinion seems to have nothing to do with (p. 235)
the dispute, but it is remarkable that, in one list of the peers
attending the Parliament of 1515, there is not a single abbot.[662]
[Footnote 659: _L. and P._, i., 3320. In 1516 one
Humphrey Bonner preached a sermon ridiculing the
Holy See (_ibid._, ii., 2692).]
[Footnote 660: In this, as in many other reforms,
the English Parliament only anticipated the action
of the Church; for on 12th February, 1516, Leo X.
issued a bull prohibiting any one from being
admitted, for the next five years, into minor
orders unless he were simultaneously promoted to be
sub-deacon; as many persons, to avoid appearing
before the civil courts and to enjoy immunity,
received the tonsure and minor orders without
proceeding to the superior (_L. and P._, ii.,
1532).]
[Footnote 661: _L. and P._, ii., 1313. Brewer
impugns the authority of Keilway's report of this
incident on the ground that he lived in Elizabeth's
reign; that is true, but according to the _D.N.B._
he was born in 1497, which makes him a strictly
contemporary authority.]
[Footnote 662: _L. and P._, ii., 1131.]
With regard to the Abbot of Winchcombe and Friar Standish, the
prelates claimed the same liberty of speech for Convocation as was
enjoyed by Parliament; so that they could, without offence, have
maintained certain acts of Parliament to be against the laws of the
Church.[663] Wolsey interceded on their behalf, and begged that the
matter might be left to the Pope's decision, while Henry contented
himself with a declaration that he would maintain intact his royal
jurisdiction. This was not all that passed during that session of
Parliament and Convocation. At the end of his summary of the
proceedings, Dr. John Taylor, who was both clerk of Parliament and
prolocutor of Convocation, remarks: "In this Parliament and
Convocation the most dangerous quarrels broke out between the clergy
and the secular power, respecting the Church's liberties";[664] and
there exists a remarkable petition presented to this Parliament
against clerical exactions; it complained that the clergy refused
burial until after the gift of the deceased's best jewel, best garment
or the like, and demanded that every curate should administer the
sacrament when required to do so.[665] It was no wonder that Wolsey
advised "the more speedy dissolution" of this Parliament,[666] and
that, except in 1523, when financial straits compelled him, he did not
call another while he remained in power. His fall was the sign (p. 236)
for the revival of Parliament, and it immediately took up the work
where it was left in 1515.
[Footnote 663: _Ibid._, ii., 1314.]
[Footnote 664: _Ibid._, ii., 1312.]
[Footnote 665: _Ibid._, ii., 1315; _cf._ another
petition to the same effect from the inhabitants of
London (_ibid._, i., 5725 (i.)).]
[Footnote 666: _Ibid._, ii., 1223.]
These significant proceedings did not stand alone. In 1515 the Bishop
of London's chancellor was indicted for the murder of a citizen who
had been found dead in the Bishop's prison.[667] The Bishop interceded
with Wolsey to prevent the trial; any London jury would, he said,
convict any clerk, "be he innocent as Abel; they be so maliciously set
_in favorem haereticae pravitatis_".[668] The heresy was no matter of
belief, but hatred of clerical immunities. The _Epistolae Obscurorum
Virorum_, wrote More to Erasmus in 1516, was "popular everywhere";[669]
and no more bitter a satire had yet been penned on the clergy. In this
matter Henry and his lay subjects were at one. Standish, whom Taylor
describes as the promoter and instigator of all these evils, was a
favourite preacher at Henry's Court. The King, said Pace, had "often
praised his doctrine".[670] But what was it? It was no advocacy of
Henry's loved "new learning," for Standish denounced the Greek
Testament of Erasmus, and is held up to ridicule by the great Dutch
humanist;[671] Standish, too, was afterwards a stout defender of the
Pope's dispensing power, and followed Fisher in his protest against
the divorce before t |
