Transcriber's note: Obvious printer's errors have been corrected, all other inconsistencies are as in the original. The author's spelling has been maintained.

Each page of the original book had a side note stating the time span treated on that page. Those side notes have been deleted.

A STUDENT'S
HISTORY OF ENGLAND

VOL. II.

WORKS
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HISTORY OF ENGLAND, from the Accession of James I. to the Outbreak of the Civil War, 1603-1642. With Maps. 10 vols. crown 8vo. 5s. net each.

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A STUDENT'S
HISTORY OF ENGLAND

FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE DEATH OF KING EDWARD VII

BY

SAMUEL R. GARDINER, D.C.L., LL.D.
LATE FELLOW OF MERTON COLLEGE, OXFORD
ETC.

NEW EDITION (1902)
VOL. II.
A.D. 1509–1689

NEW IMPRESSION (1912)
REISSUE

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1914

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CONTENTS
OF
THE SECOND VOLUME

PART V
THE RENASCENCE AND THE REFORMATION
1509-1603

[CHAPTER XXIV]
HENRY VIII. AND WOLSEY. 1509-1527

• PAGE

• The New King. 1509 [361]
• Continental Troubles. 1508-1511 [363]
• The Rise of Wolsey. 1512 [363]
• The War with France. 1512-1513 [364]
• Peace with France. 1514 [364]
• Wolsey's Policy of Peace. 1514-1518 [364]
• Wolsey and the Renascence [366]
• The Renascence in England [367]
• The Oxford Reformers [367]
• 'The Utopia.' 1515-1516 [367]
• More and Henry VIII. [368]
• The Contest for the Empire. 1519 [369]
• The Field of the Cloth of Gold. 1520 [369]
• The Execution of the Duke of Buckingham. 1521 [369]
• Another French War. 1522-1523 [369]
• The Amicable Loan. 1525 [372]
• Closing Years of Wolsey's Greatness. 1525-1527 [372]

[CHAPTER XXV]
THE BREACH WITH THE PAPACY. 1527-1534

• The Papacy and the Renascence [374]
• Wolsey and the Papacy [375]
• Wolsey's Legatine Powers [375]
• Henry VIII. and the Clergy [377]
• German Lutheranism [377]
• Henry's Controversy with Luther [379]
• Queen Catharine and Anne Boleyn [379]
• Henry's Demand for a Divorce. 1527-1528 [382]
• The Legatine Court. 1529 [382]
• The Fall of Wolsey. 1529-1530 [383]
• The House of Commons and the Clergy. 1529 [385]
• The Universities Consulted. 1530 [385]
• The Clergy under a Præmunire. 1530-1531 [385]
• The King's Supreme Headship acknowledged by the Clergy. 1531 [386]
• The Submission of the Clergy. 1532 [386]
• Sir Thomas More and the Protestants. 1529-1532 [386]
• Resignation of Sir Thomas More. 1532 [388]
• The First Act of Annates. 1532 [388]
• The King's Marriage and the Act of Appeals. 1533 [388]
• Archbishop Cranmer and the Court at Dunstable. 1533 [389]
• Frith and Latimer. 1533 [389]
• Completion of the Breach with Rome. 1533-1534 [390]

[CHAPTER XXVI]
THE ROYAL SUPREMACY. 1534-1547

• The Act of Succession. 1534 [392]
• The Acts of Treason and Supremacy. 1534 [392]
• The Monks of the Charterhouse. 1534 [393]
• Execution of Fisher and More. 1535 [394]
• The Dissolution of the Smaller Monasteries. 1536 [394]
• The Execution of Anne Boleyn. 1536 [395]
• The Ten Articles. 1536 [395]
• The Translation of the Bible authorised. 1536 [396]
• The Pilgrimage of Grace. 1536-1537 [396]
• Birth of a Prince. 1537 [397]
• The Beginning of the Attack on the Greater Monasteries. 1537-1538 [397]
• Destruction of Relics and Images. 1538 [398]
• The Trial of Lambert. 1538 [399]
• The Marquis of Exeter and the Poles. 1538 [399]
• The Six Articles. 1539 [399]
• Completion of the Suppression of the Monasteries. 1539-1540 [400]
• Anne of Cleves and the Fall of Cromwell. 1539-1540 [400]
• Catherine Howard and Catherine Parr. 1540-1543 [401]
• Ireland. 1534 [401]
• The Geraldine Rebellion. 1534-1535 [402]
• Lord Leonard Grey. 1536-1539 [402]
• Henry VIII. King of Ireland. 1541 [404]
• Solway Moss. 1542 [404]
• War with Scotland and France. 1542-1546 [405]
• The Litany and the Primer. 1544-1545 [409]
• The Last Days of Henry VIII. 1545-1547 [410]

[CHAPTER XXVII]
EDWARD VI. AND MARY
EDWARD VI., 1547-1553. MARY, 1553-1558.

• Somerset becomes Protector. 1547 [412]
• The Scotch War. 1547-1548 [412]
• Cranmer's Position in the Church of England. 1547 [413]
• Ecclesiastical Reforms. 1547-1548 [414]
• The First Prayer Book of Edward VI. 1549 [415]
• The Insurrection in the West. 1549 [415]
• Ket's Rebellion. 1549 [415]
• The Fall of Somerset. 1549 [416]
• Warwick and the Advanced Reformers. 1549 [416]
• Latimer's Sermons. 1548-1550 [417]
• Warwick and Somerset. 1550-1552 [417]
• The Second Prayer Book of Edward VI. 1552 [418]
• The Forty-two Articles. 1553 [419]
• Northumberland's Conspiracy. 1553 [421]
• Lady Jane Grey. 1553 [421]
• Mary restores the Mass. 1553 [422]
• Mary's First Parliament. 1553 [422]
• Wyatt's Rebellion. 1554 [423]
• The Queen's Marriage [423]
• The Submission to Rome. 1554 [424]
• The Beginning of the Persecution. 1555 [424]
• Death of Cranmer. 1556 [425]
• Continuance of the Persecution. 1556-1558 [426]
• The Queen's Disappointment. 1555-1556 [426]
• War with France and the Loss of Calais. 1557-1558 [427]
• Death of Mary. 1558 [427]

[CHAPTER XXVIII]
THE ELIZABETHAN SETTLEMENT IN CHURCH AND STATE
1558-1570

• Elizabeth's Difficulties. 1558 [428]
• The Act of Uniformity and Supremacy. 1559 [429]
• The new Bishops and the Ceremonies. 1559-1564 [429]
• Calvinism [430]
• Peace with France. 1559 [431]
• The Reformation in Scotland. 1559 [432]
• The Claims of Mary Stuart. 1559 [432]
• The Treaty of Edinburgh. 1560 [433]
• Scottish Presbyterianism. 1561 [434]
• Mary and Elizabeth. 1561 [435]
• The French War. 1562-1564 [436]
• End of the Council of Trent. 1563 [436]
• The Jesuits [436]
• The Danger from Scotland. 1561-1565 [437]
• The Darnley Marriage. 1565 [438]
• The Murder of Rizzio. 1566 [438]
• The Murder of Darnley. 1567 [439]
• The Deposition and Flight of Mary. 1567-1568 [439]
• Mary's Case before English Commissioners. 1568-1569 [440]
• The Rising in the North. 1569 [441]
• The Papal Excommunication. 1570 [441]

[CHAPTER XXIX]
ELIZABETH AND THE EUROPEAN CONFLICT. 1570-1587

• The Continental Powers. 1566-1570 [442]
• The Anjou Marriage Treaty and the Ridolfi Plot. 1570-1571 [443]
• Elizabeth and the Puritans [444]
• Elizabeth and Parliament. 1566 [444]
• A Puritan Parliament. 1571 [445]
• The Duke of Norfolk's Plot and Execution. 1571-1572 [445]
• The Admonition to Parliament. 1572 [446]
• Mariners and Pirates [446]
• Westward Ho! [447]
• Francis Drake's Voyage to Panama. 1572 [448]
• The Seizure of Brill, and the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. 1572 [449]
• The Growth of the Dutch Republic. 1572-1578 [449]
• Quiet Times in England. 1572-1577 [450]
• Drake's Voyage. 1577-1580 [450]
• Ireland and the Reformation. 1547 [451]
• Ireland under Edward VI. and Mary. 1547-1558 [451]
• Elizabeth and Ireland. 1558-1578 [452]
• The Landing at Smerwick, and the Desmond Rising. 1579-1583 [452]
• The Jesuits in England. 1580 [453]
• The Recusancy Laws. 1581 [454]
• Growing Danger of Elizabeth. 1580-1584 [454]
• The Association. 1584-1585 [456]
• Growth of Philip's Power. 1584-1585 [456]
• Babington's Plot, and the Trial of Mary Stuart. 1586 [457]
• Execution of Mary Stuart. 1587 [458]

[CHAPTER XXX]
ELIZABETH'S YEARS OF TRIUMPH. 1587-1603

• The Singeing of the King of Spain's Beard. 1587 [458]
• The Approach of the Armada. 1588 [458]
• The Equipment of the Armada. 1588 [459]
• The Equipment of the English Fleet. 1588 [460]
• The Defeat of the Armada. 1588 [462]
• The Destruction of the Armada. 1588 [462]
• Philip II. and France. 1588-1593 [464]
• Maritime Enterprises. 1589-1596 [464]
• Increasing Prosperity [464]
• Buildings [465]
• Furniture [465]
• Growing Strength of the House of Commons [468]
• Archbishop Whitgift and the Court of High Commission. 1583 [468]
• The House of Commons and Puritanism. 1584 [470]
• The Separatists [470]
• Whitgift and Hooker [472]
• Spenser, Shakspere, and Bacon [473]
• Condition of the Catholics. 1588-1603 [475]
• Irish Difficulties. 1583-1594 [475]
• O'Neill and the Earl of Essex. 1595-1600 [475]
• Essex's Imprisonment and Execution. 1599-1601 [476]
• Mountjoy's Conquest of Ireland. 1600-1603 [478]
• Parliament and the Monopolies. 1601 [478]
• The Last Days of Elizabeth. 1601-1603 [479]

PART VI
THE PURITAN REVOLUTION. 1603-1660

[CHAPTER XXXI]
JAMES I. 1603-1625

• The Peace with Spain. 1603-1604 [481]
• The Hampton Court Conference. 1604 [481]
• James and the House of Commons [482]
• Gunpowder Plot. 1604-1605 [483]
• The Post-nati. 1606-1608 [483]
• Irish Difficulties. 1603-1610 [483]
• Bate's Case and the New Impositions. 1606-1608 [484]
• The Great Contract. 1610-1611 [484]
• Bacon and Somerset. 1612-1613 [486]
• The Addled Parliament. 1614 [486]
• The Spanish Alliance. 1614-1617 [488]
• The Rise of Buckingham. 1615-1618 [488]
• The Voyage and Execution of Raleigh. 1617-1618 [489]
• Colonisation of Virginia and New England. 1607-1620 [489]
• The Beginning of the Thirty Years' War. 1618-1620 [490]
• The Meeting of James's Third Parliament. 1621 [490]
• The Royal Prerogative. 1616-1621 [492]
• Financial Reform. 1619 [492]
• Favouritism and Corruption [494]
• The Monopolies Condemned. 1621 [494]
• The Fall of Bacon. 1621 [495]
• Digby's Mission, and the Dissolution of Parliament. 1621 [496]
• The Loss of the Palatinate. 1622 [497]
• Charles's Journey to Madrid. 1623 [497]
• The Prince's Return. 1623 [498]
• The Last Parliament of James I. 1624 [500]
• The French Alliance [501]
• Mansfeld's Expedition, and the Death of James I. 1624-1625 [501]

[CHAPTER XXXII]
THE GROWTH OF THE PERSONAL GOVERNMENT OF CHARLES I.
1625-1634

• Charles I. and Buckingham. 1625 [502]
• Charles's First Parliament. 1625 [502]
• The Expedition to Cadiz. 1625 [502]
• Charles's Second Parliament. 1626 [503]
• The Forced Loan. 1626 [505]
• The Expedition to Ré. 1627 [506]
• The Five Knights' Case. 1627 [506]
• Wentworth and Eliot in the Third Parliament of Charles I. 1628 [508]
• The Petition of Right. 1628 [508]
• Tonnage and Poundage. 1628 [509]
• Buckingham's Murder. 1628 [510]
• The Question of Sovereignty. 1628 [510]
• Protestantism of the House of Commons. 1625-1628 [511]
• Religious Differences. 1625-1628 [511]
• The King's Declaration. 1628 [512]
• The Second Session of the Third Parliament of Charles I. 1629 [512]
• Breach between the King and the Commons. 1629 [513]
• The Constitutional Dispute. 1629 [513]
• The Victory of Personal Government. 1629-1632 [514]
• Star Chamber Sentences. 1630-1633 [514]
• Laud's Intellectual Position. 1629-1633 [515]
• Laud as the Upholder of Uniformity [516]
• The Beginning of Laud's Archbishopric. 1633-1634 [517]
• Laud and Prynne. 1633-1634 [519]

[CHAPTER XXXIII]
THE OVERTHROW OF THE PERSONAL GOVERNMENT
OF CHARLES I. 1634-1641

• The Metropolitical Visitation. 1634-1637 [520]
• Prynne, Bastwick, and Burton. 1637 [521]
• Financial Pressure. 1635-1637 [521]
• Ship-money. 1634-1637 [523]
• Hampden's Case. 1637-1638 [523]
• Scottish Episcopacy. 1572-1612 [524]
• The Scottish Bishops and Clergy. 1612-1637 [525]
• The Riot at Edinburgh and the Covenant. 1637-1638 [525]
• The Assembly of Glasgow, and the Abolition of Episcopacy. 1638 [526]
• The First Bishops' War. 1639 [526]
• Wentworth in Ireland. 1633-1639 [527]
• The Proposed Plantation of Connaught [528]
• The Short Parliament. 1640 [528]
• The Second Bishops' War. 1640 [529]
• The Meeting of the Long Parliament. 1640 [529]
• The Impeachment of Strafford. 1641 [530]
• Strafford's Attainder and Execution [530]
• Constitutional Reforms. 1641 [531]

[CHAPTER XXXIV]
THE FORMATION OF PARLIAMENTARY PARTIES AND THE
FIRST YEARS OF THE CIVIL WAR. 1641-1644

• The King's Visit to Scotland. 1641 [532]
• Parties formed on Church Questions. 1641 [532]
• Irish Parties. 1641 [533]
• The Irish Insurrection. 1641 [533]
• The Grand Remonstrance. 1641 [534]
• The King's Return. 1641 [534]
• The Impeachment of the Bishops. 1641 [535]
• The Impeachment of the Five Members. 1642 [535]
• The Attempt on the Five Members. 1642 [536]
• The Commons in the City. 1642 [536]
• The Struggle for the Militia. 1642 [536]
• Edgehill and Turnham Green. 1642 [537]
• The King's Plan of Campaign. 1643 [537]
• Royalist Successes. 1643 [538]
• The Siege of Gloucester. 1643 [538]
• The First Battle of Newbury. 1643 [539]
• The Eastern Association. 1643 [539]
• Oliver Cromwell. 1642-1643 [539]
• The Assembly of Divines. 1643 [540]
• The Solemn League and Covenant. 1643 [540]
• The Irish War. 1641-1643 [541]
• Winceby and Arundel. 1643-1644 [542]
• The Committee of Both Kingdoms. 1644 [542]
• The Campaign of Marston Moor. 1644 [542]
• Presbyterians and Independents. 1644 [543]
• Essex's Surrender at Lostwithiel. 1644 [544]
• The Second Battle of Newbury. 1644 [544]

[CHAPTER XXXV]
THE NEW MODEL ARMY. 1644-1649

• The Self-denying Ordinance and the New Model. 1645 [545]
• Milton's 'Areopagitica.' 1644 [545]
• The Execution of Laud. 1645 [546]
• Montrose and Argyle. 1644 [546]
• Montrose and the Highlands. 1644-1645 [547]
• The New Model Army in the Field. 1645 [547]
• The Battle of Naseby. 1645 [548]
• The Results of Naseby. 1645 [548]
• Charles's Wanderings. 1645 [549]
• Glamorgan in Ireland. 1645-1646 [549]
• The King's Flight to the Scots. 1646 [550]
• Charles at Newcastle. 1646 [551]
• The Removal of the King to Holmby. 1647 [553]
• Dispute between the Presbyterians and the Army. 1647 [553]
• Cromwell and the Army. 1647 [554]
• The Abduction of the King. 1647 [554]
• The Exclusion of the Eleven Members. 1647 [555]
• The Heads of the Proposals. 1647 [555]
• The King's Flight to the Isle of Wight. 1647 [556]
• The Scottish Engagement, and the Vote of No Addresses. 1647-1648 [556]
• The Second Civil War. 1648 [556]
• Pride's Purge. 1648 [557]
• The High Court of Justice. 1649 [557]
• The King's Trial and Execution. 1649 [559]
• Results of Charles's Execution. 1649 [560]

CHAPTER XXXVI
THE COMMONWEALTH AND THE PROTECTORATE. 1649-1660

• Establishment of the Commonwealth. 1649 [561]
• Parties in Ireland. 1647-1649 [562]
• Cromwell in Ireland. 1649-1650 [562]
• Montrose and Charles II. in Scotland. 1650 [563]
• Dunbar and Worcester. 1650-1651 [563]
• The Navigation Act. 1651 [564]
• The Dutch War. 1652-1653 [565]
• Unpopularity of the Parliament. 1652-1653 [565]
• Vane's Reform Bill. 1653 [566]
• Dissolution of the Long Parliament by Cromwell. 1653 [566]
• The so-called Barebone's Parliament. 1653 [566]
• The Protectorate, and the Instrument of Government. 1653 [568]
• Character of the Instrument of Government [568]
• Oliver's Government. 1653-1654 [569]
• The First Protectorate Parliament. 1654-1655 [570]
• The Major Generals. 1655 [570]
• Oliver's Foreign Policy. 1654-1655 [571]
• The French Alliance. 1655 [572]
• Oliver's Second Parliament, and the Humble Petition and Advice. 1656 [572]
• The Dissolution of the Second Protectorate Parliament. 1658 [573]
• Victory Abroad and Failure at Home. 1657-1658 [573]
• Oliver's Death. 1658 [574]
• Richard Cromwell. 1658-1659 [574]
• The Long Parliament Restored. 1659 [575]
• Military Government. 1659 [575]
• Monk and the Rump. 1660 [575]
• End of the Long Parliament. 1660 [576]
• The Declaration of Breda. 1660 [576]

PART VII
THE POLITICAL REVOLUTION. 1660-1689

[CHAPTER XXXVII]
CHARLES II. AND CLARENDON. 1660-1667

• Return of Charles II. 1660 [578]
• King and Parliament. 1660 [579]
• Formation of the Government. 1660 [580]
• The Political Ideas of the Convention Parliament. 1660 [580]
• Execution of the Political Articles of the Declaration of Breda. 1660 [581]
• Ecclesiastical Debates. 1660 [583]
• Venner's Plot and its Results. 1661 [584]
• The Cavalier Parliament and the Corporation Act. 1661 [585]
• The Savoy Conference, and the Act of Uniformity. 1661-1662 [585]
• The Dissenters. 1662 [585]
• The Parliamentary Presbyterians. 1662 [586]
• Profligacy of the Court. 1662 [586]
• Marriage of Charles II. and Sale of Dunkirk. 1662 [587]
• The Question of Toleration Raised. 1662-1663 [587]
• The Conventicle Act. 1664 [588]
• The Repeal of the Triennial Act. 1664 [588]
• Growing Hostility between England and the Dutch. 1660-1664 [589]
• Outbreak of the First Dutch War of the Restoration. 1664-1665 [589]
• The Plague. 1665 [590]
• The Five Mile Act. 1665 [590]
• Continued Struggle with the Dutch. 1665-1666 [590]
• The Fire of London. 1666 [592]
• Designs of Louis XIV. 1665-1667 [592]
• The Dutch in the Medway, and the Peace of Breda. 1667 [593]
• Clarendon and the House of Commons. 1667 [593]
• The Fall of Clarendon. 1667 [594]
• Scotland and Ireland. 1660 [595]

[CHAPTER XXXVIII]
CHARLES II. AND THE CABAL. 1667-1674

• Milton and Bunyan. [596]
• Butler and the Dramatists. [596]
• Reason and Science. [598]
• Charles II. and Toleration. 1667 [598]
• Buckingham and Arlington. 1667-1669 [599]
• The Triple Alliance. 1668 [599]
• Charles's Negotiations with France. 1669-1670 [600]
• The Treaty of Dover. 1670 [600]
• The Cabal. 1670 [602]
• Ashley's Policy. [602]
• Buckingham's Sham Treaty. 1671 [603]
• The Stop of the Exchequer. 1672 [603]
• The Declaration of Indulgence. 1672 [604]
• The Second Dutch War of the Restoration. 1672 [605]
• 'Delenda est Carthago.' 1673 [606]
• Withdrawal of the Declaration of Indulgence. 1673 [606]
• The Test Act. 1673 [606]
• Results of the Test Act. 1673 [607]
• Continuance of the Dutch War. 1673 [607]
• The Duke of York's Marriage and Shaftesbury's Dismissal. 1673 [608]
• Peace with the Dutch. 1674 [608]

[CHAPTER XXXIX]
DANBY'S ADMINISTRATION AND THE THREE SHORT
PARLIAMENTS. 1675-1681

• Growing Influence of Danby. 1675 [610]
• Parliamentary Parties. 1675 [610]
• The Non-Resistance Bill. 1675 [611]
• Charles a Pensionary of France. 1675-1676 [611]
• Two Foreign Policies. 1677 [612]
• The Marriage of the Prince of Orange. 1677 [613]
• Danby's Position. 1677 [613]
• The Peace of Nymwegen. 1678 [614]
• The Popish Plot. 1678 [615]
• Growing Excitement. 1678 [615]
• Danby's Impeachment and the Dissolution of the Cavalier Parliament. 1678-1679 [616]
• The Meeting of the First Short Parliament. 1679 [616]
• The Exclusion Bill and the Habeas Corpus Act. 1679 [617]
• Shaftesbury and the King. 1679 [617]
• Shaftesbury and Halifax. 1679 [618]
• The Divine Right of Kings. 1679 [619]
• The Highland Host. 1677-1678 [619]
• Drumclog and Bothwell Bridge. 1679 [619]
• Petitioners and Abhorrers. 1680 [620]
• The Second Short Parliament. 1680-1681 [620]
• The Third Short Parliament. 1681 [621]

[CHAPTER XL]
THE LAST YEARS OF CHARLES II. 1681-1685

• Tory Reaction. 1681 [622]
• 'Absolom and Achitophel.' 1681 [623]
• The Scottish Test Act and the Duke of York's Return. 1681-1682 [623]
• The City Elections. 1682 [623]
• Flight and Death of Shaftesbury. 1682-1683 [624]
• The Attack on the City. 1682-1683 [624]
• The Remodelling of the Corporations. 1683-1684 [625]
• The Rye House Plot. 1683 [625]
• The Whig Combination. 1683 [625]
• Trial and Execution of Lord Russell. 1683 [625]
• Execution of Algernon Sidney. 1683 [626]
• Parties at Court. 1684 [626]
• Death of Charles II. 1685 [627]
• Constitutional Progress. 1660-1685 [627]
• Prosperity of the Country. [628]
• The Coffee Houses. [630]
• The Condition of London. [631]
• Painting. [631]
• Architecture. [631]
• Science. [632]
• Difficulties of Communication. [632]
• The Country Gentry and the Country Clergy. [633]
• Alliance between the Gentry and the Church. [633]

[CHAPTER XLI]
JAMES II. 1685-1689

• The Accession of James II. 1685 [634]
• A Tory Parliament. 1685 [636]
• Argyle's Landing. 1685 [636]
• Monmouth's Landing. 1685 [637]
• The Bloody Assizes. 1685 [637]
• The Violation of the Test Act. 1685 [638]
• Breach between Parliament and King. 1685 [638]
• The Dispensing Power. 1686 [638]
• The Ecclesiastical Commission. 1686 [639]
• Scotland and Ireland. 1686-1687 [639]
• The Fall of the Hydes. 1686-1687 [640]
• The Declaration of Indulgence. 1687 [640]
• The Expulsion of the Fellows of Magdalen. 1687 [641]
• An Attempt to pack a Parliament. 1687 [641]
• A Second Declaration of Indulgence. 1688 [642]
• Resistance of the Clergy. 1688 [642]
• The Trial of the Seven Bishops. 1688 [643]
• Invitation to William of Orange. 1688 [643]
• Landing of William. 1688 [644]
• William's March upon London. 1688 [645]
• A Convention Parliament Summoned. 1688 [646]
• The Throne Declared Vacant. 1689 [646]
• William and Mary to be Joint Sovereigns. 1689 [647]
• Character of the Revolution. [647]

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

• FIG. Page

• Henry VIII. [368]
  (From a painting by Holbein about 1536, belonging to Earl Spencer)
• Cardinal Wolsey [365]
  (From an original picture belonging to the Hon. Sir Spencer Ponsonby-Fane, K.C.B.)
• The embarkation of Henry VIII. from Dover, 1520 [370]
  (From the Society of Antiquaries' engraving of the original picture at Hampton Court)
• Silver-gilt cup and cover, made at London in 1523; at Barber Surgeons' Hall, London [371]
  (From Cripps's 'College and Corporation Plate')
• Part of Hampton Court; built by Cardinal Wolsey; finished in 1526 [373]
  (From a photograph)
• Portrait of William Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1503-1532, showing the ordinary episcopal dress, with the mitre and archiepiscopal cross [376]
  (From a painting by Holbein, belonging to Viscount Dillon, F.S.A., dated 1527)
• Tower of Fountains Abbey church; built by Abbot Huby, 1494-1526 [378]
  (From a photograph by Valentine and Sons, Dundee)
• Catharine of Aragon [380]
  (From a painting in the National Portrait Gallery)
• The gatehouse of Coughton Court, Warwickshire; built about 1530 [381]
  (From Niven's 'Illustrations of Old Warwickshire Houses')
• Hall of Christchurch, Oxford; built by Cardinal Wolsey; finished in 1529 [384]
  (From a photograph by W. H. Wheeler, Oxford)
• Sir Thomas More, wearing the collar of SS. [387]
  (From an original portrait painted by Holbein in 1527, belonging to Edward Huth, Esq.)
• John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, 1504-1535 [393]
  (From a drawing by Holbein in the Royal Library, Windsor Castle)
• Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, brother of Jane Seymour, afterwards Duke of Somerset, known as 'the Protector,' at the age of 28, 1507-1552 [395]
  (From a painting at Sudeley Castle)
• Henry VIII. [403]
  (From a painting by Holbein, belonging to the Earl of Warwick)
• Angel of Henry VIII., 1543 [405]
  (From an original example)
• Part of the encampment at Marquison, 1544, showing military equipment in the time of Henry VIII. [406]
• 191. Part of the siege of Boulogne by Henry VIII., 1544, showing military operations [407], [408]
  (From the Society Of Antiquaries' engravings, by Vertue, of the now destroyed paintings formerly at Cowdray House, Sussex)
• Armour as worn in the reign of Henry VIII.; from the brass of John Lymsey, 1545, in Hackney church [409]
• Margaret, wife of John Lymsey; from her brass in Hackney church, showing the costume of a lady circa 1545 [409]
  (From Haines's 'Manual of Monumental Brasses')
• Thomas Howard, third Duke of Norfolk, 1473(?)-1554 [410]
  (From a painting by Holbein at Windsor Castle)
• Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1533-1556 [414]
  (From a painting by Holbein dated 1547, at Jesus College, Cambridge)
• Nicholas Ridley, Bishop of London, 1550-1553 [417]
  (From the National Portrait Gallery)
• King Edward VI. [419]
  (From a picture belonging to H. Hucks Gibbs, Esq.)
• Queen Mary Tudor [422]
  (From a painting by Lucas de Heere, dated 1554, belonging to the Society of Antiquaries)
• Hugh Latimer, Bishop of Worcester, 1535-1539, burnt 1555 [425]
  (From the National Portrait Gallery)
• A milled half-sovereign of Elizabeth, 1562-1568 [435]
  (From an original example)
• Silver-gilt standing cup made in London in 1569-70, and given to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, by Parker [440]
  (From Cripps's 'College and Corporation Plate')
• Sir Francis Drake in his forty-third year [448]
  (From the engraving by Elstracke)
• Armour as worn during the reign of Elizabeth; from the brass of Francis Clopton, 1577, at Long Melford, Suffolk [451]
  (From Haines's 'Manual of Monumental Brasses')
• Hall of Burghley House, Northamptonshire, built about 1580 [455]
  (From Drummond's 'Histories of Noble British Families')
• Sir Martin Frobisher, died 1594 [459]
  (From a picture belonging to the Earl of Carlisle)
• The Spanish Armada. Fight between the English and Spanish fleets off the Isle of Wight, July 25, 1588 [461]
  (From Pine's engravings of the tapestry formerly in the House of Lords)
• Sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618), and his eldest son Walter at the age of eight [463]
  (From a picture dated 1602, belonging to Sir J. F. Lennard, Bart.)
• A mounted soldier at the end of the sixteenth century [465]
  (From a broadside printed in 1596, in the Society of Antiquaries' collection)
• Wollaton Hall, Nottinghamshire; built by Thorpe for Sir Francis Willoughby, about 1580-1588 [466]
  (From a photograph by R. Keene, Derby)
• Hardwick Hall, Derbyshire; built by Elizabeth, Countess of Shrewsbury, about 1597 [467]
  (From a photograph by R. Keene, Derby)
• E-shaped house at Beaudesert, Staffordshire; built by Thomas, Lord Paget, about 1601 [469]
  (From a photograph by R. Keene, Derby)
• Ingestre Hall, Staffordshire; built about 1601 [471]
  (From a photograph by R. Keene, Derby)
• Coaches in the reign of Elizabeth [473]
  (From 'Archæologia,' vol. xx. pl. xviii.)
• William Shakspere [474]
  (From the bust on his tomb at Stratford-on-Avon)
• Robert Devereux, second Earl of Essex, K.G., 1567-1601 [476]
  (From a painting by Van Somer, dated 1599, belonging to the Earl of Essex)
• Queen Elizabeth, 1558-1603 [477]
  (From a painting belonging to the University of Cambridge)
• William Cecil, Lord Burghley, K.G., 1520-1591 [479]
  (From a painting in the Bodleian Library, Oxford)
• Royal arms borne by James I. and succeeding Stuart sovereigns [482]
  (From Boutell's'English Heraldry')
• North-west view of Hatfield House, Herts; built for Robert Cecil, first Earl of Salisbury, between 1605 and 1611 [485]
  (From a photograph by Valentine and Sons, Dundee)
• An unknown gentleman [487]
  (From a painting belonging to T. A. Hope, Esq.)
• King James I. [491]
  (From a painting by P. Van Somer, dated 1621, in the National Portrait Gallery)
• Civil costume, about 1620 [492]
  (From a contemporary broadside in the collection of the Society of Antiquaries)
• The banqueting-hall of the Palace of Whitehall (from the north-east); built from the designs of Inigo Jones, 1619-1621 [493]
  (From a photograph)
• Francis Bacon, Viscount St. Alban, Lord Chancellor [495]
  (From a painting by P. Van Somer in the National Portrait Gallery)
• Costume of a lawyer [497]
  (From a broadside dated 1623 in the collection of the Society of Antiquaries)
• The Upper House of Convocation [498]
• The Lower House of Convocation [499]
  (From a broadside dated 1623, in the collection of the Society of Antiquaries)
• King Charles I. [504]
  (From a painting by Van Dyck)
• Queen Henrietta Maria, wife of Charles I. [505]
  (From a painting by Van Dyck)
• Tents and military equipment in the early part of the reign of Charles I. [507]
  (From the monument of Sir Charles Montague (died in 1625), in the church of Barking, Essex)
• George Villiers, first duke of Buckingham, 1592-1628 [509]
  (From the painting by Gerard Honthorst in the National Portrait Gallery)
• Sir Edward and Lady Filmer; from their brass at East Sutton, Kent, showing armour and dress worn about 1630 [515]
  (From Waller's 'Monumental Brasses')
• Archbishop Laud [517]
  (From a copy in the National Portrait Gallery by Henry Stone, from the Van Dyck at Lambeth)
• Silver-gilt tankard made at London in 1634-5; now belonging to the Corporation of Bristol [518]
  (From Cripps's 'College and Corporation Plate')
• The 'Sovereign of the Seas,' built for the Royal Navy in 1637 [522]
  (From a contemporary engraving by John Payne)
• Soldier armed with a pike [527]
• Soldier with musket and crutch [527]
  (From a broadside printed about 1630, in the collection of the Society of Antiquaries)
• –243. Ordinary civil costume, temp. Charles I., viz:—
  A gentleman and a gentlewoman [550]
  A citizen and a citizen's wife [551]
  A countryman and a countrywoman [552]
  (From Speed's map of 'The Kingdom of England,' 1646)
• View of the west side of the Banqueting-House, Whitehall, dated 1713, showing the window through which Charles I. is said to have passed to the scaffold [558]
  (From an engraving by Terasson)
• Execution of King Charles I., January 30, 1649 [559]
  (From a broadside in the collection of the late Richard Fisher, Esq., F.S.A.)
• A coach in the middle of the seventeenth century [564]
  (From an engraving by John Dunstall)
• Oliver Cromwell [567]
  (From the painting by Samuel Cooper, at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge)
• Charles II. [579]
  (From the portrait by Sir Peter Lely in Christ's Hospital, London)
• Edward Hyde, first Earl of Clarendon, 1608-1674 [581]
  (From an engraving by Loggan)
• A mounted nobleman and his squire [582]
  (From Ogilby's 'Coronation Procession of Charles II.')
• Dress of the Horseguards at the Restoration [583]
  (From Ogilby's 'Coronation Procession of Charles II.')
• Yeoman of the Guard [583]
  (From Ogilby's 'Coronation Procession of Charles II.')
• Shipping in the Thames, circa 1660 [584]
  (From Pricke's 'South Prospect of London')
• Old St. Paul's, from the east, showing its condition just before the Great Fire [591]
  (From an engraving by Hollar)
• John Milton in 1669 [597]
  (From the engraving by Faithorne)
• Temple Bar, London, built by Sir Christopher Wren in 1670 [601]
  (From a photograph)
• Anthony Ashley-Cooper, first Earl of Shaftesbury, 1621-1683 [604]
  (From the painting by John Greenhill in the National Portrait Gallery)
• Ordinary dress of gentlemen in 1675 [611]
  (From Loggan's 'Oxonia Illustrata')
• Cup presented, 1676, by King Charles II. to the Barber Surgeons' Company [612]
  (From Cripps's 'College and Corporation Plate')
• Steeple of the church of St. Mary-le-Bow, London, built by Sir Christopher Wren between 1671 and 1680 [614]
  (From a photograph)
• Dress of ladies of quality [628]
  (From Sandford's 'Coronation Procession of James II.')
• Ordinary attire of women of the lower classes [628]
  (From Sandford's 'Coronation Procession of James II.')
• Coach of the latter half of the seventeenth century [629]
  (From Loggan's 'Oxonia Illustrata')
• Waggon of the second half of the seventeenth century [629]
  (From Loggan's 'Oxonia Illustrata')
• Reaping and harvesting in the second half of the seventeenth century [630]
  (From Loggan's 'Cantabrigia Illustrata')
• Costume of a gentleman [632]
  (From Sandford's 'Coronation Procession of James II.')
• James II. [635]
  (From the painting by Sir Godfrey Kneller in 1684-5 in the National Portrait Gallery)
• Yeomen of the Guard [636]
  (From Sandford's 'Coronation Procession of James II.')
• Dress of a bishop in the second half of the seventeenth century [642]
  (From Sandford's 'Coronation Procession of James II.')

GENEALOGICAL TABLES

I
KINGS AND QUEENS OF ENGLAND (AFTER 1541 OF ENGLAND AND IRELAND) FROM HENRY VII. TO ELIZABETH.

II
KINGS OF SCOTLAND AND GREAT BRITAIN, FROM JAMES IV. OF SCOTLAND TO WILLIAM AND MARY.

III
KINGS OF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND FROM JAMES I. TO GEORGE I.

IV
GENEALOGY OF THE KINGS OF FRANCE FROM LOUIS XII. TO LOUIS XIV., SHOWING THEIR DESCENT FROM LOUIS IX.

V
GENEALOGY OF THE KINGS OF SPAIN FROM FERDINAND AND ISABELLA TO CHARLES II.

VI
GENEALOGY OF THE GERMAN BRANCH OF THE HOUSE OF AUSTRIA FROM FERDINAND I. TO LEOPOLD I.

(The dates given are those during which an archduke was emperor.)

VII
GENEALOGY OF THE PRINCES OF ORANGE FROM WILLIAM I. TO WILLIAM III.

SHORTER AND SOMETIMES MORE DETAILED GENEALOGIES
will be found in the following pages.

• PAGE
• Genealogy of the Poles [399]
• " " children of Henry VIII. [411]
• " " Greys [421]
• " " last Valois kings of France [433]
• " " Guises [435]
• " of Mary and Darnley [438]
• " of the descendants of Charles I. [609]

PART V
THE RENASCENCE AND THE REFORMATION 1509-1603

CHAPTER XXIV
HENRY VIII. AND WOLSEY. 1509-1527

LEADING DATES
Reign of Henry VIII., 1509-1547

• Accession of Henry VIII. 1509
• Henry's first war with France 1512
• Peace with France 1514
• Charles V. elected Emperor 1519
• Henry's second French war 1522
• Francis I. taken captive at Pavia 1525
• The sack of Rome and the alliance between England and France 1527

Henry VIII.; from a painting by Holbein about 1536, belonging to Earl Spencer.

1. The New King. 1509.—Henry VIII. inherited the handsome face, the winning presence, and the love of pleasure which distinguished his mother's father, Edward IV., as well as the strong will of his own father, Henry VII. He could ride better than his grooms, and shoot better than the archers of his guard. Yet, though he had a ready smile and a ready jest for everyone, he knew how to preserve his dignity. Though he seemed to live for amusement alone, and allowed others to toil at the business of administration, he took care to keep his ministers under control. He was no mean judge of character, and the saying which rooted itself amongst his subjects, that 'King Henry knew a man when he saw him,' points to one of the chief secrets of his success. He was well aware that the great nobles were his only possible rivals, and that his main support was to be found in the country gentry and the townsmen. Partly because of his youth, and partly because the result of the political struggle had already been determined when he came to the throne, he thought less than his father had done of the importance of possessing stored up wealth by which armies might be equipped and maintained, and more of securing that popularity which at least for the purposes of internal government, made armies unnecessary. The first act of the new reign was to send Empson and Dudley to the Tower, and it was significant of Henry's policy that they were tried and executed, not on a charge of having extorted money illegally from subjects, but on a trumped up charge of conspiracy against the king. It was for the king to see that offences were not committed against the people, but the people must be taught that the most serious crimes were those committed against the king. Henry's next act was to marry Catharine. Though he was but nineteen, whilst his bride was twenty-five, the marriage was for many years a happy one.

2. Continental Troubles. 1508-1511.—For some time Henry lived as though his only object in life was to squander his father's treasure in festivities. Before long, however, he bethought himself of aiming at distinction in war as well as in sport. Since Louis XII. had been king of France (see p. 354) there had been constant wars in Italy, where Louis was striving for the mastery with Ferdinand of Aragon. In 1508 the two rivals, Ferdinand and Louis, abandoning their hostility for a time, joined the Emperor Maximilian (see pp. 337, 348) and Pope Julius II. in the League of Cambrai, the object of which was to despoil the Republic of Venice. In 1511 Ferdinand allied himself with Julius II. and Venice in the Holy League, the object of which was to drive the French out of Italy. After a while the new league was joined by Maximilian, and every member of it was anxious that Henry should join it too.

3. The Rise of Wolsey. 1512.—England had nothing to gain by an attack on France, but Henry was young, and the English nation was, in a certain sense, also young. It was conscious of the strength brought to it by restored order, and was quite ready to use this strength in an attack on its neighbours. In the new court it was ignorantly thought that there was no reason why Henry VIII. should not take up that work of conquering France which had fallen to pieces in the feeble hands of Henry VI. To carry on his new policy Henry needed a new minister. The best of the old ones were Fox, the Bishop of Winchester, and Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, who, great nobleman as he was, had been contented to merge his greatness in the greatness of the king. The whole military organisation of the country, however, had to be created afresh, and neither Fox nor Surrey was equal to such a task. The work was assigned to Thomas Wolsey, the king's almoner, who, though not, as his enemies said, the son of a butcher, was of no exalted origin. Wolsey's genius for administration at once manifested itself. He was equally at home in sketching out a plan of campaign, in diplomatic contests with the wariest and most experienced statesmen, and in providing for the minutest details of military preparation.

4. The War with France. 1512-1513.—It was not Wolsey's fault that his first enterprise ended in failure. A force sent to attack France on the Spanish side failed, not because it was ill-equipped, but because the soldiers mutinied, and Ferdinand, who had promised to support it, abandoned it to its fate. In 1513 Henry himself landed at Calais, and, with the Emperor Maximilian serving under him, defeated the French at Guinegatte in an engagement known, from the rapidity of the flight of the French, as the Battle of the Spurs. Before the end of the autumn he had taken Terouenne and Tournai. War with France, as usual, led to a war with Scotland. James IV., during Henry's absence, invaded Northumberland, but his army was destroyed by the Earl of Surrey at Flodden, where he himself was slain.

5. Peace with France. 1514.—Henry soon found that his allies were thinking exclusively of their own interests. In 1512 the French were driven out of Italy, and Ferdinand made himself master of Navarre. In 1513 the warlike Pope, Julius II., died, and a fresh attempt of Louis to gain ground in Italy was decisively foiled. Henry's allies had got what they wanted, and in 1514 Henry discovered that to conquer France was beyond his power. Louis was ready to come to terms. He was now a widower. Old in constitution, though not in years, he was foolish enough to want a young wife. Henry was ready to gratify him with the hand of his younger sister Mary. The poor girl had fallen in love with Henry's favourite, Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, a man of sturdy limbs and weak brain, and pleaded hard against the marriage. Love counted for little in those days, and all that she could obtain from her brother was a promise that if she married this time to please him, she should marry next time to please herself. Louis soon relieved her by dying on January 1, 1515, after a few weeks of wedlock, and his widow took care, by marrying Suffolk before she left France, to make sure that her brother should keep his promise.

Cardinal Wolsey: from an original picture belonging to the Hon. Sir Spencer Ponsonby-Fane, K.C.B.

6. Wolsey's Policy of Peace. 1514-1518.—In 1514 the king made Wolsey Archbishop of York. In 1515 the Pope made him a Cardinal. Before the end of the year he was Henry's Chancellor. The whole of the business of the government passed through his hands. The magnificence of his state was extraordinary. To all observers he seemed to be more a king than the king himself. Behind him was Henry, trusting him with all his power, but self-willed and uncontrollable, quite ready to sacrifice his dearest friend to satisfy his least desire. As yet the only conflict in Henry's mind was the conflict about peace or war with France. Henry's love of display and renown had led him to wish to rival the exploits of Edward III. and Henry V. Wolsey preferred the old policy of Richard II. and Henry VI., but he knew that he could only make it palatable to the king and the nation by connecting the idea of peace with the idea of national greatness. He aspired to be the peacemaker of Europe, and to make England's interest in peace the law of the world. In 1515 the new king of France, Francis I., needed peace with England because he was in pursuit of glory in Italy, where he won a brilliant victory at Marignano. In 1516 Ferdinand's death gave Spain to his grandson, Charles, the son of Philip and Juana (see p. 358), and from that time Francis and Charles stood forth as the rivals for supremacy on the Continent. Wolsey tried his best to maintain a balance between the two, and it was owing to his ability that England, thinly populated and without a standing army, was eagerly courted by the rulers of states far more powerful than herself. In 1518 a league was struck between England and France, in which Pope Leo X., the Emperor Maximilian, and Charles, king of Spain, agreed to join, thus converting it into a league of universal peace. Yet Wolsey was no cosmopolitan philanthropist. He believed that England would be more influential in peace than she could be in war.

7. Wolsey and the Renascence.—In scheming for the elevation of his own country by peace instead of by conquest, Wolsey reflected the higher aspirations of his time. No sooner had internal order been secured, than the best men began to crave for some object to which they could devote themselves, larger and nobler than that of their own preservation. Wolsey gave them the contemplation of the political importance of England on the Continent. The noblest minds, however, would not be content with this, and an outburst of intellectual vigour told that the times of internal strife had passed away. This intellectual movement was not of native growth. The Renascence, or new birth of letters, sprung up in Italy in the fourteenth century, and received a further impulse through the taking of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453, when the dispersal of Greek teachers from the East revived the study of the Greek language. It was not merely because new teachers landed in Italy that the literature of the ancient world was studied with avidity. Men were weary of the mediæval system, and craved for other ideals than those of the devotees of the Church. Whilst they learnt to admire the works of the Greek and Latin authors as models of literary form, they caught something of the spirit of the ancient world. They ceased to look on man as living only for God and a future world, and regarded him as devoting himself to the service of his fellow-men, or even—in lower minds the temptation lay perilously near—as living for himself alone. Great artists and poets arose who gave expression to the new feeling of admiration for human action and human beauty, whilst the prevailing revolt against the religion of the middle ages gave rise to a spirit of criticism which refused belief to popular legends.

8. The Renascence in England.—The spirit of the Renascence was slow in reaching England. In the days of Richard II. Chaucer visited Italy, and Italian influence is to be traced in his Canterbury Tales. In the days of Henry VI. the selfish politician, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, purchased books, and gave to Oxford a collection which was the foundation of what was afterwards known as the Bodleian Library. Even in the Wars of the Roses the brutal John Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester, and the gentle Earl Rivers, the brother of Elizabeth Woodville, were known as patrons of letters. The invention of printing brought literature within reach of those to whom it had hitherto been strange. Edward IV. patronised Caxton, the first English printer. In the peaceful reign of Henry VII. the seed thus sown sprang into a crop. There was, however, a great difference between the followers of the new learning in England and in Italy. In Italy, for the most part, scholars mocked at Christianity, or treated it with tacit contempt. In England there was no such breach with the religion of the past. Those who studied in England sought to permeate their old faith with the new thoughts.

9. The Oxford Reformers.—Especially was this the case with a group of Oxford Reformers, Grocyn, Linacre, and Colet, who were fighting hard to introduce the study of Greek into the University. Among these Colet specially addicted himself to the explanation of the epistles of St. Paul, insisting on following their plain meaning instead of the mystical interpretations then in vogue. In 1510 he founded St. Paul's School, that boys might be there taught without being subjected to the brutal flogging which was in those days the lot even of the most diligent of schoolboys. The most remarkable member of this group of scholars was Thomas More. Young More, who had hoped much from the accession of Henry VIII., had been disappointed to find him engaging in a war with France instead of cultivating the arts of peace. He meditated deeply over the miseries of his fellow-men, and longed for a time when governments would think it to be their highest duty to labour for those who are too weak to help themselves.

10. 'The Utopia.' 1515-1516.—In 1515 and 1516 More produced a book which he called Utopia, or Nowhere, intending it to serve as a satire on the defects of the government of England, by praising the results of a very different government in his imaginary country. The Utopians, he declared, fought against invaders of their own land or the land of their allies, or to deliver other peoples from tyranny, but they made no wars of aggression. In peace no one was allowed either to be idle or overworked. Everyone must work six hours a day, and then he might listen to lectures for the improvement of his mind. As for the religion of Utopia, no one was to be persecuted for his religious opinions, as long as he treated respectfully those who differed from him. If, however, he used scornful and angry words towards them, he was to be banished, not as a despiser of the established religion, but as a stirrer up of dissension. Men of all varieties of opinion met together in a common temple, the worship in which was so arranged that all could take part in it. Amongst their priests were women as well as men. More practical was the author's attack on the special abuses of the times. England swarmed with vagrants, who easily passed into robbers, or even murderers. The author of Utopia traced the evil to its roots. Soldiers, he said, were discharged on their return home, and, being used to roving and dissolute habits, naturally took to vagrancy. Robbery was their only resource, and the law tempted a robber to murder. Hanging was the penalty both for robbing and murder, and the robber, therefore, knowing that he would be hanged if he were detected, usually killed the victim whom he had plundered in order to silence evidence against himself; and More consequently argued that the best way of checking murder would be to abolish the penalty of death for robbery. Another great complaint of More's was against the ever-growing increase of inclosures for pasturage. "Sheep," he said, "be become so great devourers and so wild that they eat up and swallow down the very men themselves. They consume, destroy, and devour whole fields, houses, and cities." More saw the evil, but he did not see that the best remedy lay in the establishment of manufactures, to give employment in towns to those who lost it in the country. He wished to enforce by law the reversion of all the new pasturage into arable land.

11. More and Henry VIII.—Henry VIII. was intolerant of those who resisted his will, but he was strangely tolerant of those who privately contradicted his opinions. He took pleasure in the society of intelligent and witty men, and he urged More to take office under him. More refused for a long time, but in 1518—the year of the league of universal peace—believing that Henry was now a convert to his ideas, he consented, and became Sir Thomas More and a Privy Councillor. Henry was so pleased with his conversation that he tried to keep him always with him, and it was only by occasionally pretending to be dull that More obtained leave to visit his home.

12. The Contest for the Empire. 1519.—In January 1519 the Emperor Maximilian died. His grandson Charles was now possessed of more extensive lands than any other European sovereign. He ruled in Spain, in Austria, in Naples and Sicily, in the Netherlands, and in the County of Burgundy, usually known as Franche Comté. Between him and Francis I. a struggle was inevitable. The chances were apparently, on the whole, on the side of Charles. His dominions, indeed, were scattered, and devoid of the strength given by national feeling, whilst the smaller dominions of Francis were compact and united by a strong national bond. In character, however, Charles had the superiority. He was cool and wary, whilst Francis was impetuous and uncalculating. Both sovereigns were now candidates for the Empire. The seven electors who had it in their gift were open to bribery. Charles bribed highest, and being chosen became the Emperor Charles V.

13. The Field of the Cloth of Gold. 1520.—Wolsey tried hard to keep the peace. In 1520 Henry met Francis on the border of the territory of Calais, and the magnificence of the display on both sides gave to the scene the name of the Field of the Cloth of Gold. In the same year Henry had interviews with Charles. Peace was for a time maintained, because both Charles and Francis were still too much occupied at home to quarrel, but it could hardly be maintained long.

The embarkation of Henry VIII. from Dover, 1520: from the original painting at Hampton Court.

14. The Execution of the Duke of Buckingham. 1521.—Henry was entirely master in England. In 1521 the Duke of Buckingham, son of the Buckingham who had been beheaded by Richard III., was tried and executed as a traitor. His fault was that he had great wealth, and that, being descended from the Duke of Gloucester, the youngest son of Edward III., he had not only cherished some idea of claiming the throne after Henry's death, but had chattered about his prospects. In former days justice was not to be had by those who offended the great lords. Now, one despot had stepped into the place of many, and justice was not to be had by those who offended the king. The legal forms of trial were now as before observed. Buckingham was indeed tried before the court of the Lord High Steward, which consisted of a select number of peers, and which had jurisdiction over peers when Parliament was not sitting. These, however, were no more than forms. It was probably a mingled feeling of gratitude and fear which made peers as well as ordinary juries ready to take Henry's word for the guilt of any offender.

Cup and Cover, 1523,
at Barber Surgeons' Hall,
London.

15. Another French War. 1522-1523.—The diplomacy of those days was a mere tissue of trickery and lies. Behind the falsehood, however, Wolsey had a purpose of his own, the maintenance of peace on the Continent. Yet, in 1521 war broke out between Charles and Francis, both of whom laid claim to the Duchy of Milan, and it was evident that Wolsey would be unable to keep England out of the struggle. If there was to be fighting Henry preferred to fight France rather than to fight Charles. In 1522, in conjunction with Charles, he invaded France. There was burning and ravaging enough, but nothing of importance was done. Nevertheless in 1523 Henry was in high spirits. A great French noble, the Duke of Bourbon, provoked by ill-treatment, revolted against Francis, and Henry and Charles fancied that he would open a way to them into the heart of France. If Henry was to be crowned at Paris, which was the object on which he was bent, he must have a supply of money from his subjects. Though no Parliament had been summoned for nearly eight years, one was summoned now, of which More was the Speaker. Wolsey asked for an enormous grant of 800,000l., nearly equal to 12,000,000l. at the present day. Finding that the Commons hesitated, he swept into the House in state to argue with them. Expecting a reply, and finding silence, he turned to More, who told him that it was against the privilege of the House to call on it for an immediate answer. He had to depart unsatisfied, and after some days the House granted a considerable sum, but far less than that which had been demanded. Wolsey was now in a position of danger. His own policy was pacific, but his master's policy was warlike, and he had been obliged to make himself the unquestioning mouthpiece of his master in demanding supplies for war. He had long been hated by the nobles for thrusting them aside. He was now beginning to be hated by the people as the supposed author of an expensive war, which he would have done his best to prevent. He had not even the advantage of seeing his master win laurels in the field. The national spirit of France was roused, and the combined attack of Henry and Charles proved as great a failure in 1523 as in 1522. The year 1524 was spent by Wolsey in diplomatic intrigue.

16. The Amicable Loan. 1525.—Early in 1525 Europe was startled by the news that Francis had been signally defeated by the Imperialists at Pavia, and had been carried prisoner to Spain. Wolsey knew that Charles's influence was now likely to predominate in Europe, and that unless England was to be overshadowed by it, Henry's alliance must be transferred to Francis. Henry, however, saw in the imprisonment of Francis only a fine opportunity for conquering France. Wolsey had again to carry out his master's wishes as though they were his own. Raking up old precedents, he suggested that the people should be asked for what was called an Amicable Loan, on the plea that Henry was about to invade France in person. He obtained the consent of the citizens of London by telling them that, if they did not pay, it might 'fortune to cost some their heads.' All over England Wolsey was cursed as the originator of the loan. There were even signs that a rebellion was imminent. In Norfolk when the Duke of Norfolk demanded payment there was a general resistance. On his demanding the name of the captain of the multitude which refused to pay, a man told him that their captain's 'name was Poverty,' and 'he and his cousin Necessity' had brought them to this. Wolsey, seeing that it was impossible to collect the money, took all the unpopularity of advising the loan upon himself. 'Because,' he wrote, 'every man layeth the burden from him, I am content to take it on me, and to endure the fame and noise of the people, for my goodwill towards the king ... but the eternal God knoweth all.' Henry had no such nobility of character as to refuse to accept the sacrifice. He liked to make his ministers scapegoats, to heap on their heads the indignation of the people that he might himself retain his popularity. For three centuries and a half it was fully believed that the Amicable Loan had originated with Wolsey.

Hampton Court; built by Cardinal Wolsey, finished in 1526.

17. Closing Years of Wolsey's Greatness. 1525-1527.—All idea of continuing the war being now abandoned, Wolsey cautiously negotiated for an alliance with France, and in the autumn of 1525 peace was signed between France and England. In February 1526 Charles set Francis at liberty on his promising to abandon to him large tracts of French territory. As soon as he was out of Spain Francis declared that, without the consent of his subjects, such promises were not binding on him. An Italian league, jealous of Charles's power, gathered round the Pope, Clement VII., to oppose him. In May 1527 the exiled Duke of Bourbon, who was now one of Charles's generals, took Rome by assault. He was himself slain as he mounted the wall, but his followers took prisoner the Pope, and sacked Rome with horrible barbarity. Wolsey was too worldly-minded to be shocked at the Pope's misfortunes; but he had much to fear from the enormous extension of the Emperor's power. For some weeks he had been negotiating a close alliance with France on the basis of a marriage between Henry's only surviving child, Mary, and the worn-out voluptuary Francis. Suddenly the scheme was changed to a proposal for a marriage between Mary, who was ten years old, and the second son of Francis, who was but six. The bargain was concluded, and for a time there was some thought of carrying it out. At all events when the news of the sack of Rome arrived, England and France were already in close alliance. Wolsey's position was, to all outward appearance, secure.

CHAPTER XXV
THE BREACH WITH THE PAPACY. 1527-1534

LEADING DATES
Reign of Henry VIII., 1509-1547

• Henry seeks for a divorce 1527
• His suit before a Legatine Court 1529
• Fall of Wolsey 1529
• The clergy acknowledge Henry to be Supreme Head of the Church of England 1531
• The first Act of Annates 1532
• The king's marriage to Anne Boleyn and the Act of Appeals 1533
• Cranmer's sentence of divorce 1533
• The final separation from Rome 1534

1. The Papacy and the Renascence.—The Renascence alone could not make the world better, and in many respects it made it worse. The respect which it paid to humanity, which was its leading characteristic, allied itself in More with a reverence for God, which led him to strive to mellow the religious teaching of the Middle Ages, by fitting it for the needs of the existing world. Too many threw off all religious restraints, and made it their first thought to seek their own enjoyment, or the triumphs of their own intellectual skill. Sensual delights were pursued with less brutal directness, but became more seductive and more truly debasing by the splendour and gracefulness of the life of which they formed a part. In Italy the Popes swam with the current. Alexander VI. (1492-1503) gave himself up to the most degrading vices. Julius II. (1503-1513) was a passionate warrior struggling for the extension of his temporal possessions. Leo X. (1513-1521) was a polished lover of art, perfectly indifferent to religious duty. "Let us enjoy the Papacy," he said when he was elected, "since God has given it to us." Amidst the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, the Popes became as other Italian princes, no better and no worse. Spiritual guidance was no longer to be expected of them.

2. Wolsey and the Papacy.—By Wolsey and his master the Papacy was respected as a venerable and useful institution, the centre of a religious organisation which they believed to be of divine origin, though when it came in conflict with their own projects they were quite ready to thwart it. In 1521 Leo X. died, and Wolsey, having some hopes of being himself elected, asked Charles V. to send troops to compel the cardinals to choose him, promising to pay the expenses of the armament. Charles, though, in the previous year, he had offered to support Wolsey's candidature at the next vacancy, now deserted him, and the new Pope was Adrian VI., who in 1523 was succeeded by Clement VII. (see p. [374]).

Portrait of William Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1503-1532 showing the ordinary episcopal dress, with the mitre and archiepiscopal cross: from a painting belonging to Viscount Dillon, dated 1527.

3. Wolsey's Legatine Powers.—It is unlikely that Wolsey was much disappointed. His chief sphere of action was England, where since 1518 he had held unwonted authority, as in that year he had been appointed Legate a latere[1] by Leo X. at Henry's request, and the powers of a Legate a latere were superior even to those of Warham, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Wolsey was therefore clothed with all the authority of king and Pope combined. His own life was, indeed, like those of many churchmen in his day, very far from the ideal of Christianity; but for all that he had that respect for religious order which often lingers in the hearts of men who break away from the precepts of religion, and he was too great a statesman to be blind to the danger impending over the Church. The old order was changing, and Wolsey was as anxious as More, though from more worldly motives, that the change should be effected without violence. He knew that the Church was wealthy, and that wealth tempted plunderers, and he also knew that, with some bright exceptions, the clergy were ignorant, and even when not absolutely dissolute were remiss and easy-going in their lives. He was, therefore, anxious to make them more worthy of respect, and, with the consent of king and Pope, he began in 1524 to dissolve several small monasteries, and to apply their revenues to two great colleges, the one founded by him at Oxford and the other at Ipswich. He hoped that without any change of doctrine or organisation the Church would gradually be purified by improved education, and would thus once more command the respect of the laity.

4. Henry VIII. and the Clergy.—With Wolsey's object Henry, being himself well educated and well read, fully sympathised. For many years there had been a tacit understanding between the king and the Pope, and now that both the king and the Pope supported Wolsey's action there seemed to be less danger than ever of any disturbance of the friendly relations between Church and State. Yet though Henry was on good terms with the Pope, he had made up his mind that whenever there was a conflict of jurisdiction in ecclesiastical matters his own will, and not that of the clergy, was to be predominant. As early as in 1515, when a question of this kind was moved, Wolsey asked on behalf of the clergy that it might be referred to the Pope. "We," said Henry proudly, "are by God's grace king of England, and have no superior but God; we will maintain the rights of the crown like our predecessors; your decrees you break and interpret at your pleasure, but we will not consent to your interpretation of them any more than our predecessors have done." Henry VIII., in short, took up the position which Henry II. had assumed towards the clergy of his day, and he was far more powerful to give effect to his views than Henry II. had ever been. Such an act of self-assertion would probably have caused a breach with the great Popes of the middle ages, such as Gregory VII. or Innocent III. Leo X. was far too much a man of the world to trouble himself about such matters.

Tower of Fountains Abbey church; built by Abbot Huby. 1494-1526.

5. German Lutheranism.—Before many years had passed the beginnings of a great religious revolution which appeared in Germany served to bind Henry and Leo more closely together. Martin Luther, a Saxon friar, had been disgusted by the proceedings of a hawker of indulgences, who extracted small sums from the ignorant by the sale of the remission of the pains of purgatory. What gave world-wide importance to Luther's resistance was that he was not only an eloquent preacher of morality, but the convinced maintainer of a doctrine which, though not a new one, had long been laid aside. He preached justification by faith, and the acceptance of his teaching implied even more than the acceptance of a new doctrine. For centuries it had been understood that each Christian held intercourse with God through the sacraments and ordinances of the Church. His individuality was, as it were, swallowed up in the vast community to which he belonged. Luther taught each of his hearers that the important thing was his faith, that is to say his immediate personal relation with God, and that the intervention of human beings might, indeed, be helpful to him, but could be no more. Such a doctrine touched all human activity. The man who in religion counted his own individual faith as the one thing necessary was likely to count his own individual convictions in social or political matters as worth more to him than his obedience to the authority of any government. In Luther's teaching was to be found the spirit of political as well as of religious liberty. This side of it, however, was not likely to reveal itself at once. After a time Luther shook off entirely the claims of the Papacy upon his obedience, but he magnified the duty of obeying the princes who gave him their support in his struggle with the Pope.

6. Henry's Controversy with Luther.—Luther, when once he was engaged in controversy with the Papacy, assailed other doctrines than those relating to justification. In 1521 Henry, vain of his theological learning, wrote a book against him in defence of the seven sacraments. Luther, despising a royal antagonist, replied with scurrilous invective. Pope Leo was delighted to have found so influential a champion, and conferred on Henry the title of Defender of the Faith. If Henry had not been moved by stronger motives than controversial vanity he might have remained the Pope's ally till the end of his life.

Catharine of Aragon: from a painting in the National Portrait Gallery.

7. Queen Catharine and Anne Boleyn.—It was a great disappointment to Henry that he had no surviving male children. England had never been ruled by a queen, and it was uncertain whether Henry's daughter, Mary, would be allowed to reign. Henry had already begun to ask himself whether he might not get rid of his wife, on the plea that a marriage with his brother's wife was unlawful, and this consideration had the greater weight with him because Catharine was five years older than himself and was growing distasteful to him. When in 1521, in his book against Luther, he assigned a divine origin to the Papacy, he told More of a secret reason for this exaltation of the Pope's power, and it is possible that this reason was his desire to obtain from the Pope a divorce under the pretext that it would secure a peaceful succession. At all events his scruples regarding his marriage with Catharine were quickened in 1522 by the appearance at court of Anne Boleyn, a sprightly black-eyed flirt in her sixteenth year, who took his fancy as she grew into womanhood. Flirt as she was, she knew her power, and refused to give herself to him except in marriage. The king, on his part, being anxious for a legitimate son, set his heart on a divorce which would enable him to marry Anne. Wolsey, knowing the obstacles in the way, urged him to abandon the project; but it was never possible to turn Henry from his course, and Wolsey set himself, in this as in all things else, to carry out his master's wishes, though he did so very reluctantly. Moral scruples had little weight with Wolsey, but in 1525, when he learnt the king's design, there were strong political reasons against its execution, as England was in alliance with Catharine's nephew, the Emperor, Charles V., and a divorce would be certain to endanger the alliance.

The Gatehouse of Coughton Court, Warwickshire; built about 1530.

8. Henry's Demand for a Divorce. 1527-1528.—Two years later, in 1527, as Henry was veering round towards a French alliance (see p. [374]), he had no longer much reason to consider the feelings of the Emperor. On the other hand, the strong position which Charles occupied in Italy after the sack of Rome made it improbable that Clement VII. who was then Pope, and who thought more of his political than of his ecclesiastical position, would do anything to thwart the Emperor. An attempt made by Henry in 1527 to draw Clement to consent to the divorce failed, and in 1528 Wolsey sent to Rome his secretary, Stephen Gardiner, an adroit man of business, to induce Clement to appoint legates to decide the question in Henry's favour. Clement, anxious to please all parties, appointed Wolsey and another cardinal, Campeggio, as his legates, but took care to add that nothing done by them should be valid until it had received his own approval.

9. The Legatine Court. 1529.—The court of the two legates was opened at Blackfriars in 1529. Before proceeding to business they tried hard to induce either Henry to abstain from asking for a divorce or Catharine to abstain from resisting his demand. In such a matter Catharine was as firm as the self-willed Henry. Even if she could consent to leave the throne, she could not, if she retained any sense of womanly dignity, acknowledge that she had never been a wife to Henry, or suffer her daughter to be branded with illegitimacy. When king and queen were at last cited to appear Catharine knelt before her husband. She had, she said been his true and obedient wife for twenty years, and had done nothing to deserve being put to open shame. As it was, she appealed to Rome. The queen's cause was popular with the masses, who went straight to the mark, and saw in the whole affair a mere attempt to give a legal covering to Henry's lust. The legates refused to consider the queen's appeal, but when they came to hear arguments on the merits of the case they were somewhat startled by the appearance of the aged Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, one of the holiest and most learned prelates of the day, who now came voluntarily, though he knew that Henry's wrath was deadly, to support the cause of Catharine. Campeggio took advantage of the strong feeling which was growing against the king to interpose delays which he knew to be well-pleasing to Clement, and before these delays were at an end Clement annulled all the proceedings in England and revoked the cause to Rome. Most probably he was alarmed at the threats of the Emperor, but he had also reasons of his own for the course which he took. Henry did not ask for a divorce on any of the usual grounds, but for a declaration that his marriage had been null from the beginning. As, however, his marriage had been solemnised with a Papal dispensation, Clement was asked to set aside the dispensation of one of his predecessors, a proceeding to which no Pope with any respect for his office could reasonably be expected to consent.

10. The Fall of Wolsey. 1529-1530.—Henry was very angry and made Wolsey his victim. Wolsey's active endeavours to procure the divorce counted as nothing. It was enough that he had failed. He was no longer needed to conduct foreign affairs, as Henry cared now only for the divorce, and raised no objection when Charles and Francis made peace at Cambrai without consulting his interests. The old nobility, headed by the Duke of Norfolk, the son of the victor of Flodden, had long hated Wolsey bitterly, and the profligate courtiers, together with the friends and relatives of Anne, hated him no less bitterly now. Before the end of the year proceedings under the Statute of Præmunire (see pp. 258, [382]) were taken against him on the ground that he had usurped legatine powers. It was notorious that he had exercised them at the king's wish, and he could have produced evidence to show that this had been the case. In those days, however, it was held to be a subject's duty not to contest the king's will, and Wolsey contented himself with an abject supplication for forgiveness. He was driven from his offices, and all his goods and estates seized. The college which he had founded at Ipswich was sold for the king's use, and his college at Oxford, then known as Cardinal College, was also seized, though it was afterwards refounded under the name of Christchurch by the robber king. Wolsey was reduced to extreme poverty. In 1530 he was allowed to return to the possession of the archbishopric of York; but he imprudently opened communications with the French ambassador, and harmless as they were, they gave a handle to his enemies. Henry ordered him to be charged with treason. The sufferings of his mind affected his body, and on his way to London he knew that he was a dying man. "Father Abbot," he said, in taking shelter in Leicester Abbey, "I am come hither to leave my bones among you." "If I had served my God," he acknowledged as he was passing away, "as diligently as I have done my king, He would not have given me over in my grey hairs."

Hall of Christchurch, Oxford; built by Cardinal Wolsey, and finished in 1529.

11. The House of Commons and the Clergy. 1529.—No king ever felt the importance of popularity like Henry, and the compassion which had been freely given to Catharine by the crowd, on her appearance in the Legatine Court, made it necessary for him to find support elsewhere. It had been Wolsey's policy to summon Parliament as seldom as possible. It was to be Henry's policy to summon it as frequently as possible. He no longer feared the House of Lords, and either he or Wolsey's late servant, Thomas Cromwell, an able and unscrupulous man, who rose rapidly in Henry's favour, perceived the use which might be made of the House of Commons. By his influence the king could carry the elections as he pleased, and when Parliament met in 1529 it contained a packed House of Commons ready to do the king's bidding. The members were either lawyers or country gentlemen, the main supports of the Tudor monarchy, and Henry strengthened his hold upon them by letting them loose on the special abuses which had grown up in the ecclesiastical courts. Lawyers and country gentlemen were very much what they had been in the fifteenth century, without large political ideas or fine spiritual perceptions; but now that they were relieved of the oppression of the great nobles they turned upon the clergy, who claimed fees and dues which they disliked paying, and who used the powers of the ecclesiastical tribunals to exact heavy payments for moral and spiritual offences.

12. The Universities Consulted. 1530.—Henry had as yet no thought of breaking with the Pope. He wanted to put pressure on him to make him do what he had come to regard as right. In 1530 he sent to the universities of Europe to ask their opinion on the question whether a marriage with a brother's widow was contrary to the law of God. The whole inquiry was a farce. Wherever Henry or his allies could bribe or bully the learned doctors, an answer was usually given in the affirmative. Wherever the Emperor could bribe or bully, then the answer was usually given in the negative. That the experiment should have been tried, however, was a proof of the strength of the spirit of the Renascence. A question of morals which the Pope hesitated to decide was submitted to the learning of the learned.

13. The Clergy under a Præmunire. 1530-1531.—Towards the end of 1530 Henry charged the whole clergy of England with a breach of the Statute of Præmunire by their submission to Wolsey's legatine authority. A more monstrous charge was never brought, as when that authority was exercised not a priest in England dared to offend the king by resisting it. When the Convocation of Canterbury met in 1531, it offered to buy the pardon of the clergy by a grant of 100,000l., to which was afterwards added 18,000l. by the Convocation of York. Henry refused to issue the pardon unless the clergy would acknowledge him to be supreme head of the Church of England.

14. The King's Supreme Headship acknowledged by the Clergy. 1531.—The title demanded by Henry was conceded by the clergy, with the qualification that he was Supreme Head of the English Church and clergy so far as was allowed by the law of Christ. The title thus given was vague, and did not bar the acknowledgment of the Papal authority as it had been before exercised, but its interpretation would depend on the will of the stronger of the two parties. As far as the Pope was concerned, Henry's claim was no direct invasion of his rights. The Pope had exercised authority and jurisdiction in England, but he had never declared himself to be Supreme Head of the Church either in England or anywhere else. Henry indeed alleged that he asked for nothing new. He merely wanted to be known as the supreme authority in the relations between the clergy and the laity. Nevertheless it was a threat to the Pope, who might well fear lest the clergy, after giving way to the assumption of a title which implied authority over themselves, might give way to the widening of that same authority over matters on which the Pope's claims had hitherto been undoubted.

15. The Submission of the Clergy. 1532.—Everything done by Henry at this crisis was done with a view to the securing of his purposed divorce. In the Parliament which sat in 1532 the Commons were again let loose upon the clergy, and Henry, taking their side, forced Convocation[2] to sign a document known as the submission of the clergy. In this the clergy engaged in the first place neither to meet in Convocation nor to enact or execute new canons without the king's authority, and, secondly, to submit all past ecclesiastical legislation to examination with a view to the removal of everything prejudicial to the royal prerogative. The second article was never carried into effect, as the first was enough for Henry. He was now secure against any attempt of the clergy in Convocation to protest against any step that he might take about the divorce, and he was none the less pleased because he had incidentally settled the question of the relations between the clerical legislature and the Crown.

Sir Thomas More, wearing the collar of SS: from an original portrait painted by Holbein in 1527, belonging to Edward Huth, Esq.

16. Sir Thomas More and the Protestants. 1529-1532.—The submission of the clergy cost Henry the services of the best and wisest of his statesmen. Sir Thomas More had been appointed Chancellor on Wolsey's fall in 1529. When More wrote the Utopia, Luther had not yet broken away from the Papacy, and the tolerant principles of the author of that book had not been put to the test. Even in the Utopia More had confined his tolerance to those who argued in opposition to the received religion without anger or spite, and when he came to be in office he learnt by practical experience that opposition is seldom carried on in the spirit of meekness. Protestantism, as the Lutheran tenets began to be called in 1529, spread into England, though as yet it gained a hold only on a few scattered individuals. Here and there thoughtful men, dissatisfied with the teaching given to them and with the lives of many of their teachers, embraced the Lutheran doctrine of justification by faith. Even the best of them could hardly be expected to treat with philosophic calm the doctrines which they had forsaken; whilst some of their converts took a pleasure in reviling the clergy and the common creed of the vast majority of Englishmen. With many again the doctrine of justification by faith slipped into the condemnation of the merit of good works, and even into a light estimation of good works themselves. For this bitterness of speech and mind More had no tolerance, and while he pursued his antagonists with argument and ridicule, he also used his authority to support the clergy in putting down what they termed heresy by the process of burning the obstinate heretic.

17. Resignation of Sir Thomas More. 1532.—More had no ground for fearing that the increase of the king's authority over the clergy would at once encourage revolt against the Church. Henry was a representative Englishman, and neither he nor the House of Commons had the least sympathy with heresy. They wanted to believe and act as their fathers had done. More, however, was sufficiently prescient to foresee that a lay authority could not for ever maintain this attitude. Laymen were certain to be moved by the current of thought which prevailed in their age, and it was only, he believed, the great Papal organisation which could keep them steady. Though Henry had not yet directly attacked that organisation, he might be expected to attack it soon, and, in 1532, More retired from all connection with Henry's government rather than take part in that attack.

18. The First Act of Annates. 1532.—Having secured himself, as it were, in the rear by the submission of the clergy, Henry proceeded to deal with the Pope. He still wished if possible to win him to his side, and before the end of 1532 he obtained from Parliament an Act of Annates. Annates were the first-fruits or first year's income of ecclesiastical benefices, and by this Act the first-fruits of bishoprics, which had hitherto been paid to the Pope, were to be kept back. The Act was not, however, to come into force till the king had ratified it, and Henry refused for a time to ratify it hoping to reduce Clement to submission by suspending over his head a threat upon his purse.

19. The King's Marriage and the Act of Appeals. 1533.—Henry, however, found that Clement was not to be moved, and his patience coming at last to an end, he was secretly married to Anne Boleyn on January 25, 1533. Now that he had reluctantly given up hope of obtaining a favourable decision from the Pope, he resolved to put an end to the Papal jurisdiction in England. Otherwise if he obtained a sentence in an English ecclesiastical court declaring his marriage with Catharine to be null from the beginning, his injured wife might appeal to the superior court of the Pope. He accordingly obtained from Parliament the Act of Appeals, declaring that the king held the supreme authority in England, and that as under him all temporal matters were to be decided by temporal judges, and all spiritual matters by spiritual judges, no appeals should hereafter be suffered to any authority outside the realm. Henry was capable of any meanness to serve his ends, but he also knew how to gain more than his immediate ends by connecting them with a large national policy. He almost made men forget the low design which prompted the Act of Appeals by fixing their eyes on the great object of national independence.

20. Archbishop Cranmer and the Court at Dunstable. 1533.—Henry found a convenient instrument for his personal as well as for his national policy in Thomas Cranmer, whom he appointed Archbishop of Canterbury in the spring of 1533. Cranmer was intellectually acute, and took a worthy part in the further development of the English Church; but he was morally weak, and inclined to carry out orders whatever they might be, especially if they came from a king as strong-willed as Henry. He had already thrown himself as an active agent into the cause of Henry's divorce, and he was now prepared as archbishop to give effect to his arguments. In March Convocation was half persuaded, half driven to declare Catharine's marriage to be void, and in May Cranmer, sitting at Dunstable in his archiepiscopal court, pronounced sentence against her. In accordance with the Act of Appeals the sentence was final, but both Henry and Cranmer feared lest Catharine should send her counsel to make an appeal to Rome, and they were therefore mean enough to conceal from her the day on which sentence was to be given. The temporal benefits which the Pope derived from England were now to come to an end as well as his spiritual jurisdiction, and in July the king ratified the Act of Annates.

21. Frith and Latimer. 1533.—When a man of special intellectual acquirements like Cranmer could descend to the trick which he had played at Dunstable, it was time that some one should be found who, in the steadfastness of his faith, would refuse to truckle to the king, and would maintain the rights of individual conscience as well as those of national independence. The teaching of Zwingli, a Swiss reformer, who held that the bread and wine in the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper was a mere sign of the Body and Blood of the Redeemer, was beginning to influence the English Protestants, and its reception was one more reason for the mass of Englishmen to send to prison or the stake those who maintained what was, in their eyes, so monstrous a heresy. Amongst the noblest of the persecuted was John Frith, who whilst he stoutly held to the belief that the doctrine of transubstantiation was untrue, begged that men should be left 'to think thereon as God shall instil in any man's mind, and that neither part condemn other for this matter, but receive each other in brotherly love, reserving each other's infirmity to God.' Frith was in advance of his time as the advocate of religious liberty as well as of a special creed, and he was burnt alive. Henry meant it to be understood that his supreme headship made it easier, and not harder, to suppress heresy. He might have succeeded if he had had merely to deal with a few heroes like Frith. That which was beyond his control was the sapping process of the spirit of the Renascence, leading his bishops, and even himself, to examine and explain received doctrines, and thus to transform them without knowing what they were doing. Hugh Latimer, for instance, a favourite chaplain of the king, was, indeed, a preacher of righteousness, testing all things rather by their moral worth than by their conformity to an intellectual standard. The received doctrines about Purgatory, the worship of the saints, and pilgrimages to their images seemed to him to be immoral; but as yet he wished to purify opinion, not to change it altogether, and in this he had the support of the king, who, in 1535, made him Bishop of Worcester.

22. Completion of the Breach with Rome. 1533-1534.—Before 1533 was over Henry appealed from the Pope to a General Council. Clement not only paid no heed to his appeal, but gave sentence in favour of Catharine. When Parliament met in 1534, therefore, Henry was obliged to strengthen his position of hostility to the Pope. He procured from it three Acts. The first of these was a second Act of Annates, which conferred on him absolutely not only the first-fruits of bishoprics which had been the subject of the conditional Act of Annates in 1532 (see p. [388]), but also the first-fruits of all the beneficed clergy, as well as a tenth of each year's income of both bishops and beneficed clergy, all of which payments had been hitherto made to the Pope. Incidentally this Act also regulated the appointment of bishops, by ordering that the king should issue a congé d'élire to the chapter of the vacant see, together with a letter missive compelling the choice of his nominee. The second was an Act concerning Peter's pence, abolishing all minor payments to the Pope, and cutting away all interference of the Pope by transferring his right to issue licences and dispensations to the Archbishop of Canterbury. The third confirmed the submission of the clergy and enacted that appeals from the courts of the Archbishop should be heard by commissioners appointed by the King, and known as the delegates of Appeals. It was by these Acts that the separation between the Churches of England and Rome was finally effected. They merely completed the work which had been done by the great Act of Appeals in 1533. The Church of England had indeed always been a national Church with its own ecclesiastical assemblies, and with ties to the Crown which were stretched more tightly or more loosely at various times. It had, however, maintained its connection with the Continental Churches by its subordination to the Pope, and this subordination had been made real by the subjection of its courts to appeals to Rome, and by the necessity of recurring to Rome for permission to do certain things prohibited by English ecclesiastical law. All this was now at an end. The old supremacy of the king was sharpened and defined. The jurisdiction of the Pope was abolished. Nominally the English ecclesiastical authorities became more independent; more capable of doing what seemed to them to be best for the Church of the nation. Such at least was the state of the law. In practice the English ecclesiastical authorities were entirely at Henry's bidding. In theory and in sentiment the Church of England was still a branch of the Catholic Church, one in doctrine and in discipline with the Continental Churches. Practically it was now, in a far more unqualified sense than before, a national Church, ready to drift from its moorings and to accept new counsels whenever the tide of opinion should break strongly upon it.

CHAPTER XXVI
THE ROYAL SUPREMACY. 1534-1547

LEADING DATES
Reign of Henry VIII., 1509-1547

• The Acts of Succession and Supremacy 1534
• Execution of Fisher and More 1535
• Dissolution of the smaller monasteries and the Pilgrimage of Grace 1536
• Destruction of relics and images 1538
• The Six Articles and the Act granting to the king the greater monasteries 1539
• Fall of Cromwell 1540
• Henry VIII. king of Ireland 1541
• Solway Moss 1542
• Death of Henry VIII. 1547

1. The Act of Succession. 1534.—In September 1533 Anne had given birth to a daughter, who was afterwards Queen Elizabeth. In 1534 Parliament passed an Act of Succession. Not only did it declare Anne's marriage to be lawful and Catharine's unlawful, and consequently Elizabeth and not Mary to be heir to the crown, but it required all subjects to take an oath acknowledging their approval of the contents of the Act. More and Fisher professed themselves ready to swear to any succession which might be authorised by Act of Parliament; but they would not swear to the illegality of Catharine's marriage. It was on this point that Henry was most sensitive, as he knew public opinion to be against him, and he threw both More and Fisher into the Tower. In the year before the language held in the pulpit on the subject of Henry's marriage with Anne in his wife's lifetime had been so strong that Cranmer had forbidden all preaching on the subject of the king's laws or the succession to the throne. Of the clergy, the friars were still the most resolute. Henry now sent commissioners to visit the friaries, and those in which the oath was refused were summarily suppressed.

2. The Acts of Treason and Supremacy. 1534.—In 1534 Parliament also passed a new Act of Treasons which made it high treason to wish or practise harm to the king, the queen, and their heirs, to use words denying their titles, or to call the king a 'heretic, schismatic, tyrant, infidel, or usurper of the crown.' Later in the same year, but in a fresh session, Parliament passed the Act of Supremacy, which confirmed the title of Supreme Head on earth of the Church of England, a title very similar to that to which the king had obtained the qualified assent of the clergy in 1531 (see p. [386]). From that time anyone who denied the king to be the Supreme Head of the Church of England was liable to a traitor's death.

John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, 1504-1535; from a drawing by Holbein in the Royal Library, Windsor Castle.

3. The Monks of the Charterhouse. 1534.—It can hardly be doubted that Henry's chief adviser in these tyrannical measures was the able and unscrupulous Cromwell. It was Cromwell's plan to exalt the royal authority into a despotism by means of a subservient Parliament. He was already Henry's secretary; and in 1535 was appointed the king's Vicar-General in ecclesiastical matters. He was quite ready to push the Acts of Parliament which had recently been passed to their extreme consequences. His first object was to get rid of the Friars Observant, who had shown themselves most hostile to what they called in plainness of speech the king's adultery. All their houses were suppressed, and some of the inmates put to death. Then Cromwell fell on the London Charterhouse,[3] the inmates of which had been imprisoned in the year before simply for a refusal to take the oath of the Act of Succession, though they had not uttered a word against the king's proceedings. They could now be put to death under the new Treason Act, for denying the king's supremacy, and many of them were accordingly executed after the usual barbarous fashion, whilst others perished of starvation or of diseases contracted in the filthy prisons in which they were confined. "I profess," said the Prior, Houghton, "that it is not out of obstinate malice or a mind of rebellion that I do disobey the king, but only for the fear of God, that I offend not the Supreme Majesty; because our Holy Mother the Church hath decreed and appointed otherwise than the king and Parliament hath ordained." Houghton and his fellows were as truly martyrs as Frith had been. They at least had sown no seeds of rebellion, and they died because a tyrannical king insisted on ruling over consciences as well as over bodily acts.

4. Execution of Fisher and More. 1535.—Fisher and More were the next to suffer on the same charge, though their sentences were commuted to death by beheading. More preserved his wit to the last. "I pray you," he said as he mounted the scaffold, "see me safe up, and for my coming down I will shift for myself." After he had knelt to place his head on the block, he raised it again to move his beard aside. "Pity," he muttered, "that should be cut that has not committed treason."

5. The Dissolution of the Smaller Monasteries. 1536.—Money never came amiss to Henry, and Cromwell now rooted himself firmly in his master's favour by pointing out to him fresh booty. The English monasteries were rich and weak, and it was easy to trump up or exaggerate charges against them. Cromwell sent commissioners to inquire into their moral state (1535), and the commissioners, who were as unscrupulous as himself, rushed round the monasteries in such a hurry that they had no time to make any real inquiry, but nevertheless returned with a number of scandalous tales. These tales referred to some of the larger monasteries as well as the smaller, but, when Parliament met in 1536, Henry contented himself with asking that monasteries having property worth less than 200l. a year should be dissolved, and their estates given to himself, on the ground that whilst the smaller ones were dens of vice the larger ones were examples of virtue. Parliament granted his request, and the work of spoliation began. There can be no doubt that vice did exist in the monasteries, though there was not so much of it as the commissioners asserted. It would have been indeed strange if innocence had been preserved in communities living in enforced celibacy, with no stress of work to occupy their thoughts, and with the high ideals of their profession neglected or cast aside. On the other hand, the monks were easy landlords, were hospitable to the stranger and kindly to the poor, whilst neither the king himself nor those to whom he gave or sold the lands which he acquired cared for more than to make money. The real weakness of the monks lay in their failure to conciliate the more active minds of the age, or to meet its moral needs. The attack upon the vast edifice of Henry's despotism in Church and State could only be carried on successfully by the combined effort of men like the scholars of the Renascence, whose thoughts were unfettered, and of those who, like the Protestants, were full of aggressive vigour, and who substituted for the duty of obedience the duty of following their own convictions.

Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, brother of Jane Seymour, afterwards Duke of Somerset, known as 'the Protector', at the age of 28 (1535), 1507-1552: from a painting at Sudeley Castle.

6. The Execution of Anne Boleyn. 1536.—Before the end of 1536 there was a new queen. Henry became tired of Anne, as he had been tired of Catharine, and on a series of monstrous charges, so monstrous as to be hardly credible, he had her tried and executed. Her unpardonable crime was probably that her only living child was a daughter, and not a son. Ten days after Anne's death Henry married a third wife, Jane Seymour. As Catharine was now dead, there could be no doubt of the legitimacy of Jane's offspring, but to make assurance doubly sure, a new Parliament passed an Act settling the succession on Jane's children, and declaring both Mary and Elizabeth illegitimate.

7. The Ten Articles. 1536.—It is probable that when Henry took the title of Supreme Head he intended to maintain the doctrines and practices of the Church exactly as he found them. In 1536 the clergy were crying out not merely against attacks on their faith, but against the ribaldry with which these attacks were often conducted. One assailant, for instance, declared the oil used in extreme unction to be no more than the Bishop of Rome's grease or butter, and another that it was of no more use to invoke a saint than it was to whirl a stone against the wind. Many of the clergy would have been well pleased with mere repression. Henry, however, and the bishops whom he most trusted wished repression to be accompanied with reasonable explanations of the doctrines and practices enforced. The result was seen in the Ten Articles which were drawn up by Convocation, and sent abroad with the authority of the king. There was to be uniformity, to be obtained by the circulation of a written document, in which the old doctrines were stripped of much that had given offence, and their acceptance made easy for educated men. Of the seven sacraments, three only, Baptism, Penance, and the Sacrament of the Altar, were explained, whilst the other four—those of Marriage, Orders, Confirmation, and Extreme Unction—were passed over in silence. On the whole the Ten Articles in some points showed a distinct advance in the direction of Lutheranism, though there was also to be discerned in them an equally distinct effort to explain rather than to reject the creed of the mediæval Church.

8. The Translation of the Bible authorised. 1536.—The same tendency to appeal to educated intelligence showed itself in the sanction given by the king and Cromwell in 1536 to a translation of the Bible which had been completed in 1535 by Miles Coverdale, whose version of the New Testament was founded on an earlier one by Tyndale. It is probable that Henry, in authorising the circulation of this version, thought of the support which he might derive from the silence of the Bible on the Papal claims. The circulation of the Bible was, however, likely to work in a direction very different from that of the Ten Articles. The Ten Articles were intended to promote unity of belief. The Bible, once placed in the hands of everyone who could read, was likely to promote diversity. It would be the storehouse in which Lutherans, Zwinglians, and every divergent sect would find weapons to support their own special ideas. It would help on the growth of those individual opinions which were springing up side by side with the steady forward progress of the clergy of the Renascence. The men who attempted to make the old creed intellectually acceptable and the men who proclaimed a new one, under the belief that they were recurring to one still older, were together laying the foundations of English Protestantism.

9. The Pilgrimage of Grace. 1536-1537.—Slight as these changes were, they were sufficient to rouse suspicion that further change was impending. The masses who could neither read nor write were stirred by the greed and violence with which the dissolution of the smaller monasteries was carried on, and by the cessation of the kindly relief which these monasteries had afforded to the wants of the poor. A rumour spread that when Cromwell had despoiled the monasteries he would proceed to despoil the parish churches. In the autumn of 1536 there was a rising in Lincolnshire, which was easily suppressed, but was followed by a more formidable rising in Yorkshire. The insurgents, headed by Robert Aske, called it the Pilgrimage of Grace, and bore a banner embroidered with the five wounds of Christ. They asked among other things for the restoration of the monasteries, the punishment of Cromwell and his chief supporters, the deprivation of the reforming bishops, the extirpation of heresy, and the restoration of the Papal authority in a modified form. Their force grew so large that the Duke of Norfolk, who was sent to disperse it, did not venture to make the attempt, and the king found himself obliged to issue a general pardon and to promise that a Parliament should meet in the North for the redress of grievances. On this the insurgents returned home. Early in 1537 Henry, who had no intention of keeping his word, took advantage of some new troubles in the North to declare that his engagement was no longer binding, and seized and executed, not merely the leaders, but many of the lesser supporters of the insurrection. Of the Parliament in the North nothing more was heard, but a Council of the North was established to keep the people of those parts in order, and to execute justice in the king's name.

10. Birth of a Prince. 1537.—In 1537 Jane Seymour gave birth to a boy, who was afterwards Edward VI. Henry had at last a male heir of undoubted legitimacy, but in a few days his wife died.

11. The Beginning of the Attack on the Greater Monasteries. 1537-1538.—The failure of the Pilgrimage of Grace brought in fresh booty to Henry. Abbots and priors who had taken part in it, or were accused of doing so, were hanged, and their monasteries confiscated. Where nothing could be proved against the greater monasteries, which had been declared by Parliament to be free from vice, their heads were terrified into an appearance of voluntary submission. Cromwell had his spies and informers everywhere, and it was as easy for them to lie as to speak the truth. In 1537 and 1538 many abbots bowed before the storm, and, confessing that they and their monks had been guilty of the most degrading sins, asked to be allowed to surrender their monasteries to the king. Cromwell's commissioners then took possession, sold the bells, the lead on the roof, and every article which had its price, and left the walls to serve as a quarry for the neighbourhood. The lands went to the king. It not unfrequently happened that Henry promoted to ecclesiastical benefices those monks who had been most ready to confess themselves sinners beyond other men. There is no doubt that the confessions were prepared beforehand to deceive contemporaries, and there is therefore no reason why they should deceive posterity.

12. Destruction of Relics and Images. 1538.—The attack on the monasteries was accompanied by an attack on relics and such images as attracted more than ordinary reverence. The explanation of the zeal with which they were hunted down is in many cases to be found in the gold and jewels with which they were adorned. Some of them were credited with miraculous powers. The figure of the Saviour on the rood at Boxley, in Kent, moved its head and eyes. A phial at Hales, in Worcestershire, contained a substance which had been brought from Germany in the thirteenth century, and was said to be the blood of the Saviour. Pilgrims thronged in numbers to adore, and their offerings brought in no small profit to the monks who owned such treasures. What was fondly believed by the common people was derided by critical spirits, and Henry was well pleased to destroy all reverence for anything which brought credit to the monks. The rood of Boxley was exhibited in London, where the Bishop of Rochester pulled the wires which caused its motions, and the blood in the phial of Hales was declared to be no more than a coloured gum. An ancient wooden figure, worshipped in Wales under the name of Darvel Gathern, served to make a fire which burned Friar Forest, who maintained that in spiritual things obedience was due to the Pope and not to the king. Instead of hanging him under the Treason Act (see p. [392]) Henry had him burnt as a heretic. It was the first and only time when the denial of the royal supremacy was held to be heresy. When war was made against superstition, the shrine of St. Thomas of Canterbury could hardly be allowed to escape. Thomas was a saint who had bearded a king, and his shrine, which had attracted such crowds of pilgrims that the marks which they left as they shuffled forward on their knees towards it are still to be seen on the stone floor, was smashed, and the bones of the saint burnt. Shrines were usually covered with gold and jewels, and all shrines shared the fate of that of St. Thomas.[4] The images in parish churches, not being attractive to the covetous, and being valued by the people for ordinary purposes of devotion, were still left untouched.

13. The Trial of Lambert. 1538.—Henry's violence against monasticism and superstition made him extremely anxious to show his orthodoxy. The opinion held by Zwingli, the reformer of Zürich, that the Body and Blood of Christ were in no way present in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper was now spreading in England, and those who held it were known as Sacramentaries. One of these, John Lambert, was tried before Henry himself. Henry told Lambert scornfully that the words of Christ, 'This is My Body,' settled the whole question, and Lambert was condemned and burnt.

14. The Marquis of Exeter and the Poles. 1538.—Amongst the descendants of the Duke of Clarence was Reginald Pole.[5] He had been scandalised by the divorce, had left England, had been made a Cardinal in 1536, and had poured out a torrent of invective against the wickedness of Henry. In the end of 1538 Henry, having been informed that some of Pole's kinsfolk had been muttering dissatisfaction, sent them to execution together with his own cousin, the Marquis of Exeter, the son of his mother's sister.

15. The Six Articles. 1539.—Cruel and unscrupulous as Henry was, he was in many respects a representative Englishman, sympathising with the popular disgust at the spread of ideas hitherto unheard of. In a new Parliament which met in 1539 he obtained the willing consent of both Houses to the statute of the Six Articles. This statute declared in favour of: (1) the real presence of 'the natural Body and Blood of Christ' in the Lord's Supper; (2) the sufficiency of communion in one kind; (3) clerical celibacy; (4) the perpetual obligation of vows of chastity; (5) private masses; and (6) auricular confession. Whoever spoke against the first was to be burnt; whoever spoke against the other five was to suffer imprisonment and loss of goods for the first offence, and to be hanged for the second. By those who suffered from the Act it was known as 'The Whip with Six Strings.' Cranmer, who was a married archbishop, was forced to dismiss his wife. Bishops Latimer and Shaxton, whose opinions had gradually advanced beyond the line at which Henry's orthodoxy ended, were driven from their sees; but the number of those put to death under the new Act was not great.

16. Completion of the Suppression of the Monasteries. 1539-1540.—So completely was the statute of the Six Articles in accordance with public opinion, that Henry had no difficulty in obtaining the consent of Parliament to an Act giving to his proclamations the force of law, and to another Act securing to him the whole of the monasteries whether they had been already suppressed or not. Before the end of 1540 not a single monastery was left. Three abbots, those of Glastonbury, Colchester, and Reading, had been hanged the year before after the mere semblance of a trial. The disappearance of the abbots from the House of Lords made the lay peers, for the first time, more numerous than the ecclesiastical members of the House. The lay peers, on the other hand, were reinforced by new creations from amongst Henry's favourites, whom he had enriched by grants of abbey lands. The new peers and the more numerous country gentlemen who had shared in the spoil were interested in maintaining the independence of the English Church, lest the Pope, if his jurisdiction were restored, should insist on their disgorging their prey. Of that which fell into the hands of the king, a small portion was spent on the foundation of five new bishoprics, whilst part of the rest was employed on shipbuilding and the erection of fortifications on the coast, part in meeting the general expenditure of the Crown.

17. Anne of Cleves and the Fall of Cromwell. 1539-1540.—In all that had been done Cromwell had been the leading spirit. It had been his plan to erect an absolute despotism, and thereby to secure his own high position and to enrich himself as well as his master. He was naturally hated by the old nobility and by all who suffered from his extortions and cruelty. In the summer of 1539 he was eager for an alliance with the German Protestants against the Emperor Charles V., and suggested to Henry a fourth marriage with a German princess, Anne of Cleves. Holbein, a great German painter settled in England, was sent to take a portrait of the lady, and Henry was so pleased with it that he sent for her to make her his wife. When she arrived he found her anything but good-looking. In 1540 he went through the marriage ceremony with her, but he divorced her shortly afterwards. Fortunately for herself, Anne made no objection, and was allowed to live in England on a good allowance till her death. For a time Cromwell seemed to be as high as ever in Henry's good opinion, and was created Earl of Essex. Henry, however, was inwardly annoyed, and he had always the habit of dropping ministers as soon as their unpopularity brought discredit on himself. Cromwell was charged with treason by the Duke of Norfolk. A Bill of attainder[6] was rapidly passed, and Cromwell was sent to the scaffold without being even heard in his own defence.

18. Catherine Howard and Catherine Parr. 1540-1543.—In 1540 Henry married a fifth wife, Catherine Howard. Norfolk, who was her uncle, gained the upper hand at court, and was supported by Gardiner (see p. [382]), now Bishop of Winchester, who was strongly opposed to all further ecclesiastical innovations. Those who denied the king's supremacy were sent to the gallows, those who denied the doctrine of transubstantiation to the stake. In 1541 the old Countess of Salisbury, the mother of Cardinal Pole, and the daughter of the brother of Edward IV., was executed in the belief that she had favoured an abortive conspiracy. Before the end of 1540 Henry discovered that his young wife had, before her marriage, been guilty of incontinency, and in 1542 she was beheaded. In 1543 Henry married a sixth wife, Catherine Parr, who actually survived him.

19. Ireland. 1534.—Henry's masterful rule had made him many enemies abroad as well as at home, and he was therefore constantly exposed to the risk of an attack from the Continent. In the face of such danger he could no longer allow Ireland to remain as disorganised as it had been in his father's reign and in the early years of his own, lest Ireland should become the stepping-stone to an invasion of England. In Ireland the Celtic chiefs maintained their independence, carrying on destructive wars with one another, both they and their followers being inspired with a high spirit of tribal patriotism, but without the slightest idea of national union. The Anglo-Norman lords ruling a Celtic population were quite as quarrelsome and even more oppressive than the Celtic chiefs, whilst the inhabitants of the English Pale (see p. 265), ruled over by what was only in name a civilised government, were subjected alike to the oppressive exactions of the authorities at Dublin and to the plundering of the so-called 'Irish enemies,' from whom these authorities were unable to protect them. The most powerful of the Anglo-Norman lords was still the Earl of Kildare (see p. 347), who, whenever he bore the title of Lord Deputy, unblushingly used the king's name in wreaking vengeance on his private enemies.

20. The Geraldine Rebellion. 1534-1535.—In 1534 Henry summoned Kildare to England and threw him into the Tower. On a rumour of Kildare's death his son, Lord Thomas Fitzgerald—Silken Thomas, as he was called in Ireland—rose against the king. The Geraldines, as the Fitzgeralds were sometimes called, had often frightened kings by rebelling, but this time they failed in their object. In 1535 the Lord Deputy Skeffington brought heavy guns and battered down the walls of the great Geraldine castle at Maynooth. One by one all the males of Kildare's family, with the exception of two boys, were captured and put to death.

King Henry VIII.: from a picture belonging to the Earl of Warwick.

21. Lord Leonard Grey. 1536-1539.—Lord Leonard Grey became Lord Deputy in 1536. The Irish Parliament which met in that year was still only a Parliament of the English Pale, but its acts showed that Henry intended, if possible, to rule all Ireland. On the one hand the royal supremacy was declared. On the other hand an Act was passed which showed how little was, in those days, understood of the difficulties standing in the way of the assimilation of two peoples at different stages of civilisation. The native Irish were ordered to be exactly as the English. They were to use the English language, to adopt the English dress, and to cut their hair after the English fashion. It was to be in the Church as it was to be in the State. No one was to receive any ecclesiastical preferment who did not speak English. Such laws naturally could not be put in force, but they served as indications of the spirit of the Government. Even more obnoxious was the conduct of the Archbishop of Dublin, George Browne, a mere creature of Henry and Cromwell. The assertion of the royal supremacy, indeed, if it had stood alone, would have made little difference in the church-life of Ireland. Browne, however, persisted, in obedience to orders from England, in destroying relics and images which were regarded by the whole population with the deepest reverence. The doubting spirit of the Renascence found no echo in Ireland, because that country was far behind England in education and culture. It would have been of less consequence if these unwise proceedings had been confined to the English Pale. Lord Leonard Grey was, however, a stern warrior, and carried his arms successfully amongst the Irish tribes. When he left Ireland in 1539 a large part of the Celtic population had been compelled to submit to Henry, and that population was even less prepared than were the inhabitants of the Pale for violent alterations of religious ceremonial.

22. Henry VIII. King of Ireland. 1541.—In 1541 a Parliament at Dublin acknowledged Henry to be king of Ireland. Hitherto he had been but Lord of Ireland. As that title had been granted by Pope Adrian IV. to Henry II. (see p. 152), Henry VIII. wished to have a new one which should mark his complete independence of Rome. This Parliament was the first attended by the native chiefs, and the assumption of the new title therefore indicated a new stage in Irish history. Unfortunately Henry bent himself to conciliate the chiefs rather than their tribes. He gave to the chiefs English titles—the O'Neill, for instance, becoming Earl of Tyrone, and O'Brien, Earl of Thomond—whilst he hoped to win their support by dissolving the monasteries, and by giving them a share in the plunder. All this Henry did in the hope that the chiefs would use their influence to spread English habits and English law amongst a people who were attached to their own ways. For the time he gained what he wanted. As long as the plunder of the abbeys was to be had the chiefs kept quiet. When that had been absorbed both chiefs and people would revolt against a Government which wanted to bring about, in a few years, a complete change in their mode of life. It is indeed useless to regret that Henry did not content himself with forcing the tribes to keep peace with one another, whilst allowing them gradually to grow in civilisation in their own fashion. There are often things which it would be well to do, but which no government can do. In the first place Henry had not money enough to enforce peace, the whole revenue of Ireland at that time being no more than 5,000l. a year. In the second place he was roused to futile efforts to convert Irishmen into Englishmen because he was in constant dread of the intervention in Ireland of his Continental enemies.

23. Solway Moss. 1542.—Henry was probably the more distrustful of a possibly independent Ireland because an actually independent Scotland gave him so much trouble. In Scotland there had been no Wars of the Roses, and the warlike nobility still resembled petty kings in their own districts. James V., the son of Henry's sister Margaret, strove to depress the nobles by allying himself with the Church and the Commons. Scotland was always ready to come to blows with England, and the clergy urged James to break with a king of England who had broken with the Pope. From 1532 to 1534 there had been actual war between the kingdoms. Even after peace was restored James's attitude was constantly menacing. In 1542 war broke out again, and the Duke of Norfolk crossed the Tweed and wasted the border counties of Scotland. Then James launched an army across the Border into Cumberland. His distrust of the nobles, however, made him place at the head of it a mere court favourite, Oliver Sinclair. The Scottish army was harassed by the horsemen of the English border, and as night was drawing on was suddenly assailed by a small English party. Having no confidence in Sinclair, the whole multitude fled in a panic, to be slain or captured in Solway Moss. James's health broke down under the evil tidings. As he lay sick, news was brought to him that his wife had given birth to a child. Hearing that the child was a girl, and remembering how the heiress of the Bruces had brought the crown to the House of Stuart (see p. 295), he was saddened by the thought that the Stuart name also would come to an end. "It came with a lass," he murmured, "and it will go with a lass." In a few days he died, and his infant daughter, the Queen of Scots, received the name of Mary.[7]

Angel of Henry VIII. 1543.

Part of the encampment at Marquison, 1544, showing military equipment in the time of Henry VIII.: from an engraving made by Vertue for the Society of Antiquaries from the now destroyed painting at Cowdray House.

Part of the siege of Boulogne by Henry VIII., 1544, showing military operations: from an engraving made by Vertue for the Society of Antiquaries from the now destroyed painting at Cowdray House.

Part of the siege of Boulogne by Henry VIII., 1544, showing military operations: from an engraving made by Vertue for the Society of Antiquaries from the now destroyed painting at Cowdray House.

24. War with Scotland and France. 1542-1546.—Henry, anxious to disarm Scottish hostility, proposed a marriage between his son Edward and the young queen. The proposal was rejected, and an alliance formed between Scotland and France. In 1544 Henry, having formed an alliance with Charles V., who was now at war with France, invaded France and took Boulogne after a long siege—thus enlarging the English possessions in the neighbourhood of Calais—whilst Charles concluded a peace with Francis at Crêpy and left his ally in the lurch. In the same year Henry sent Lord Hertford, Jane Seymour's brother, to invade Scotland. Hertford burnt every house and cottage between Berwick and Edinburgh, took Edinburgh itself, and burnt the town. In 1546 peace was made between England and France, in which Scotland was included. The war had been expensive, and in 1544 Parliament had come to Henry's help by enacting that he need not repay a loan which he had gathered, yet even then Henry had had recourse to the desperate remedy of debasing the coinage.

Armour as worn in the reign of Henry VIII.: from the brass of John Lymsey, 1545, in Hackney Church.

Margaret, wife of John Lymsey: from her brass in Hackney Church, showing the costume of a lady circa 1545.

25. The Litany and the Primer. 1544-1545.—In 1544, when Henry was besieging Boulogne, Cranmer ordered prayers to be offered for his success. In the true spirit of the Renascence he wished these prayers to be intelligible, and directed that they should be in English. In the same year he composed the English Litany, intended to be recited by priests and people going in procession. This Litany was the foundation-stone of the future Book of Common Prayer. It was issued in 1544 together with a Primer, or book of private prayer, also in English. In the public services the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments were to be in English, the remainder being left in Latin as before.

Thomas Howard, third Duke of Norfolk, 1473(?)—1554: from the picture by Holbein at Windsor Castle.