CHAP. II.

Boulogne, which the Duke of Suffolk was then besieging. The town surrendered September 14th, but on the 18th, the Emperor made a separate treaty with Francis at Cressy, on the ground that Henry's attack upon Boulogne was a departure from the general objects of the alliance, the chief of which was, that he and Henry should march to Paris and take it, and dictate the terms of a peace to Francis from his own capital.

In the following year (1545) Francis meditated a grand invasion of England, the Isle of Wight was seized, and several descents were made upon the coast of Sussex. But no important hostilities took place, and a treaty was at length concluded at Campes (June 7th, 1546), between Ardres and Guisnes, on the Field of the Cloth of Gold.

Henry's

condition

life.

VI. CONCLUSION OF THE REIGN.

:

68. The last days of Henry VIII. We now come to the last days of Henry VIII.'s life, the last six months of his reign, during which he became more violent and tyrannical than ever, and when his court was divided by the secret intrigues of the two miserable religious parties, which continued to cherish an implacable towards the hatred against each other. Lutherans were still persecuted as heretics, and the Papists as traitors; the court no longer presented any of the pageantries and gaieties of earlier days; a dreadful gloom hung over all while in the midst of this terrible state of things, the King himself, distempered in mind and body, was the most wretched being in his court. By a life of unrestrained indulgence, he had become so enormously corpulent that he could neither support the weight of his own body, nor move about without the aid of machinery; and an oppression on his breathing almost prevented him from relieving himself by a recumbent posture. He could not bear even to subscribe his name, and stamps with his initials were therefore affixed in his presence, and by his verbal command, to all the instruments which required the royal signature. An ulcer in one of his swollen limbs, which often subjected him to the most acute paroxysms of pain, rendered him offensive to his meanest attendants; his temper became frightful, and his mind was haunted by the most dismal apprehensions. How his last wife, Catherine Parr, escaped destruction, appears almost miraculous. She was the Catherine widow of Lord Latimer, and had married Henry on the

His marriage with Parr.

1547

10th of July, 1543. Her elevation to the throne compensated the reformers, to whom she was attached, for the loss of the chancellor, Lord Audley, their secret, but steady, friend, who was succeeded by Lord Wriothesley, a patron of the old doctrine (1544). But she was more than once in imminent peril of her life. She had read the Lutheran books which had been prohibited by statute, and, encouraged either by the reformers or the King's helplessness, ventured to dispute with him upon faith and doctrine. The displeasure with which the King listened to her arguments, gave courage to Gardiner and Wriothesley, who had lately tried in vain to degrade Cranmer in the King's estimation, and they obtained orders from Henry to imprison Catherine, and prepare articles of impeachment against her. But she was warned in time; a succession of fits into which she fell on hearing of her danger brought the King to her apartment to console her, and the ground she had lost by her imprudent disputations was adroitly recovered. "Kate, you are a doctor," said the King. "No, Sir," she replied, "I only wished to divert you from your pain by an argument in which you so much shine." "Is it so, sweetheart? said he, "then we are friends again." By this stratagem she saved herself, and when the chancellor came next morning with a guard to take her to the Tower, the King dismissed him with reproaches.*

69. Execution of the Earl of Surrey. The last political event of the reign has become memorable and interesting, from the fame of the illustrious man who was the chief figure in it. This was the execution of the Earl of Surrey, "so justly renowned," -observes Mackintosh, † "by his poetical genius, which was then surpassed in his own country by none but that of Chaucer; by his happy imitations of the Italian masters; by a version of the Eneid, of which the execution is wonderful, and the very undertaking betokens the consciousness of superiority; by the place in which we are accustomed to behold him, at the head of the uninterrupted series of English poets; that we find it difficult to regard him in those inferior points of view, of a gallant knight, a skilful captain, and an active statesman, which, in the eyes of his contemporaries, eclipsed the lustre of his literary renown.'

Between the old house of Howard and the new house of Seymour there had been a bitter rivalry; and in the late war with

* Froude doubts this account, stating that the alleged persecution of Henry's last queen is not alluded to by any contemporary authority; he is inclined, however, to credit the general statement, but disbelieves the details as related by Foxe, who is the authority for the facts given in the text. (See Vol. iv., p. 498.)

† Hist., II., 124.

СНАР. 11.

France, Surrey had accused Hertford of having supplanted him in the command. The two families had become the acknowledged leaders of the rival sects; the Duke of Norfolk, the head of the Howards, was a zealous Papist: the Earl of Hertford, the uncle of Prince Edward, was the secret leader of the Reformers. The latter already aspired to the protectorship of the kingdom during the minority of his nephew, and he felt that the great obstacles to his promotion would be the Duke of Norfolk and his son. Personal pique, therefore, religious dissensions, and political jealousy, all combined to instigate Hertford to destroy his enemies while Henry was still alive, and on the 12th of December, 1546, Norfolk and Surrey were imprisoned in the Tower, each being in ignorance of the other's arrest. The legal ground of proceeding was the sweeping clause of more than one recent statute, which made it high treason "to do anything by word, writing, or deed, to the scandal or peril of the established succession to the crown."* The Earl of Surrey had quartered the royal arms in his escutcheon, because he was descended, through his mother, the daughter of the Duke of Buckingham, from the royal family of Edward III. He had used this escutcheon many years, and with the King's knowledge; but, whether his heraldry was true or false, it was now deemed treason. The parliament, commonly made accessory to these legal murders, passed an act of attainder; Surrey was executed on the 19th of January, 1547; and his father was ordered for execution on the 28th; but the King died in the night before that day, and Norfolk's execution was suspended, though he remained in the Tower till his release by Mary, who restored him in blood.

70. Settlement of the Succession. Henry's two divorces had created an uncertainty as to the line of succession, which parliament endeavoured to remove by two very extraordinary acts; the first enabling the King, on failure of issue by Jane Seymour or any other lawful wife, to bequeath the kingdom to any persons at his pleasure, not even reserving a preference to the descendants of former sovereigns (28 Hen. VIII., c. 7); the second, nominating the Princesses Mary and Elizabeth in the entail after the King's male issue, subject, however, to such conditions as he should name, and non-compliance with which should destroy their right (35 Hen. VIII., c. 1). The latter act still left the remainder at the King's discretion, and by his will, 30th December, 1546, he devised the crown, on failure of issue from his three children, to • Mackintosh, II., 195.

1547

the heirs of the body of Mary, Duchess of Suffolk, his younger sister; thus setting aside the royal family of Scotland, descended from his elder sister Margaret. In the same document he appointed sixteen executors, most of them the adherents of the Seymours, to form the council of government, till his son should attain the age of eighteen, with full power to choose for him a wife, to govern the kingdom in his name, and appoint to all offices under the

crown.

This transaction marks most forcibly the great difference between the Tudor and Plantagenet governments. On the accession of Henry VI., when the Duke of Gloucester claimed the protectorship of the King and realm, because the deceased King had bequeathed it to him by will, the parliament decisively repelled the notion that the King had any right to leave the government or the crown to any one. But now, parliament had surrendered the regular laws of the monarchy to one man's caprice; it had converted the nation into the private property of the sovereign; Henry's daughters were not to inherit by the fundamental laws of the constitution, but by the conditions and under the authority of his will; and the ill-assorted body of councillors whom he authorised to exercise the functions of a regency were called "executors," to keep up the language of the doctrine, that the people were the King's property, whom he could make over and bequeath to whomsoever he thought proper.*

71. Henry's Character. Contemporary writers do not speak of this reign with that just abhorrence and earnest longing for change which we should imagine. Some mention Henry after his death with eulogy; and if we except the Romanists, who naturally hated his memory, few appear to entertain the notion that "his name would descend to posterity among those of the many tyrants and oppressors of innocence whom the wrath of heaven has raised up, and the servility of man has endured." That Henry was loved by his people is impossible, because of the perfect fear which his acts inspired; but he had a few estimable qualities, and several which are popular in a sovereign. He had not one usual vice of tyrants, dissimulation; his manners were affable, and his temper generous; and though his schemes of foreign policy were not very sagacious, nor his wars productive of material advantage, yet they were uniformly successful, and retrieved the honour of the English But our forefathers cherished his name with reverence, because of the share he took in the Reformation. 66 They saw in

name.

• Mackintosh, II., 128; Hallam's Const, Hist., I., 34,

CHAP. III.

him, not, indeed, the proselyte of their faith, but the subverter of their enemies' power, the avenging minister of heaven, by whose giant arm the chain of superstition had been broken, and the prison gates burst asunder.”*

the majestic lord,

Who broke the bonds of Rome.†

CHAPTER III. THE REFORMATION.

SECTION. I.-BRIEF SURVEY OF THE REFORMATION ON THE CONTINENT.

Insurrec

1. Early attempts at Reformation. The great change emphatically called the Reformation, which first emancipated the human mind from the bondage in which Rome had for ages enslaved it, began in the sixteenth century. The mind of Europe, however, had previously risen up against the domination of Rome: first, during the pontificate of Innocent III., when the tion of the Albigenses rose in insurrection, and were crushed by the Albigenses. furious crusade made against them by De Montfort, and the newly-established orders of the Franciscans and Dominicans; and, secondly, in the fourteenth century, when the doctrines of Wycliffe and the Lollards spread through England, and extended to Bohemia, and were only arrested by the Council of Constance reforming some of the most scandalous abuses in the church, and instituting a merciless persecution against the "heretics."

Wycliffe and the Lollards.

Causes

of their failure.

The failure of these two attempts to shake off the yoke of Rome was, on the whole, beneficial to mankind; for, had the church, corrupt as it was, been then overthrown, it is very probable that a still more corrupt system would have taken its place, and that the power exercised by its clergy would have passed to a far worse class of teachers. The greater part of Europe then lay in ignorance, and the very little knowledge which did exist was confined to the clergy; books were few and costly;

Hallam's Const. Hist., I., 36. ↑ Gray.