1536 TO 1542.
Vague notions of hereditary succession to the English throne.--Henry's
jealousy of the royal family.--Imprisonment of lord T. Howard and lady
M. Douglas.--After-fortunes of this lady.--Princess Mary reconciled with
her father.--Dissolution of monasteries proceeds.--Insurrections in
Lincolnshire and Yorkshire.--Remarkable trait of the power of the
nobles.--Rebellion of T. Fitzgerald.--Romantic adventures of Gerald
Fitzgerald.--Birth of prince Edward.--Death of the queen.--Rise of the
two Seymours.--Henry's views in their advancement.--His enmity to
cardinal Pole.--Causes of it.--Geffrey Pole discloses a plot.--Trial and
death of lord Montacute, the marquis of Exeter, sir Edward Nevil, and
sir N. Carew.--Particulars of these persons.--Attainder of the
marchioness of Exeter and countess of Salisbury.--Application of these
circumstances to the history of Elizabeth.--Decline of the protestant
party.--Its causes.--Cromwel proposes the king's marriage with Anne of
Cleves.--Accomplishments of this lady.--Royal marriage.--Cromwel made
earl of Essex.--Anger of the Bourchier family.--Justs at
Westminster.--The king determines to dissolve his marriage.--Permits the
fall of Cromwel.--Is divorced.--Behaviour of the queen.--Marriage of the
king to Catherine Howard.--Ascendency of the papists.--Execution of the
countess of Salisbury--of lord Leonard Grey.--Discovery of the queen's
ill-conduct.--Attainders passed against her and several others.
Nothing could be more opposite to the strict principles of hereditary
succession than the ideas entertained, even by the first lawyers of the
time of Henry VIII., concerning the manner in which a title to the crown
was to be established and recognised.
When Rich, the king's solicitor, was sent by his master to argue with
sir Thomas More on the lawfulness of acknowledging the royal supremacy;
he inquired in the course of his argument, whether sir Thomas would not
own for king any person whatever,--himself for example,--who should have
been declared so by parliament? He answered, that he would. Rich then
demanded, why he refused to acknowledge a head of the church so
appointed? "Because," replied More, "a parliament can make a king and
depose him, and that every parliament-man may give his consent
thereunto, but a subject cannot be bound so in case of supremacy[3]."
Bold as such doctrine respecting the power of parliaments would now be
thought, it could not well be controverted at a time when examples were
still recent of kings of the line of York or Lancaster alternately
elevated or degraded by a vote of the two houses, and when the father of
the reigning sovereign had occupied the throne in virtue of such a
nomination more than by right of birth.
[Note 3: See Herbert's Henry VIII.]
But the obvious inconveniences and dangers attending the exercise of
this power of choice, had induced the parliaments of Henry VIII. to join
with him in various acts for the regulation of the succession. It was
probably with the concurrence of this body, that in 1532 he had declared
his cousin, the marquis of Exeter, heir to the crown; yet this very
act, by which the king excluded not only his daughter Mary, but his two
sisters and their children, every one of whom had a prior right
according to the rules at present received, must have caused the
sovereignty to be regarded rather as elective in the royal family than
properly hereditary--a fatal idea, which converted every member of that
family possessed of wealth, talents, or popularity, into a formidable
rival, if not to the sovereign on the throne, at least to his next heir,
if a woman or a minor, and which may be regarded as the immediate
occasion of those cruel proscriptions which stained with kindred blood
the closing years of the reign of Henry, and have stamped upon him to
all posterity the odious character of a tyrant.
The first sufferer by the suspicions of the king was lord Thomas Howard,
half-brother to the duke of Norfolk, who was attainted of high treason
in the parliament of 1536, for having secretly entered into a contract
of marriage with lady Margaret Douglas, the king's niece, through which
alliance he was accused of aiming at the crown. For this offence he was
confined in the Tower till his death; but on what evidence of traitorous
designs, or by what law, except the arbitrary mandate of the monarch
confirmed by a subservient parliament, it would be difficult to say.
That his marriage was forbidden by no law, is evident from the passing
of an act immediately afterwards, making it penal to marry any female
standing in the first degree of relationship to the king, without his
knowledge and consent.
The lady Margaret was daughter to Henry's eldest sister, the
queen-dowager of Scotland, by her second husband the earl of Angus. She
was born in England, whither her mother had been compelled to fly for
refuge by the turbulent state of her son's kingdom, and the ill success
of her own and her husband's struggles for the acquisition of political
power. In the English court the lady Margaret had likewise been
educated, and had formed connexions of friendship; whilst her brother
James V. laboured under the antipathy with which the English then
regarded those northern neighbours, with whom they were involved in
almost perpetual hostilities. It might easily therefore have happened,
in case of the king's death without male heirs, that in spite of the
power recently bestowed on him by parliament of disposing of the crown
by will, which it is very uncertain how he would have employed, a
connexion with the potent house of Howard might have given the title of
lady Margaret a preference over that of any other competitor. Henry was
struck with this danger, however distant and contingent: he caused his
niece, as well as her spouse, to be imprisoned; and though he restored
her to liberty in a few months, and the death of Howard, not long
afterwards, set her free from this ill-starred engagement, she ventured
not to form another, till the king himself, at the end of several years,
gave her in marriage to the earl of Lenox; by whom she became the mother
of lord Darnley, and through him the progenitrix of a line of princes
destined to unite another crown to the ancient inheritance of the
Plantagenets and the Tudors.
The princess Mary, after the removal of Anne Boleyn, who had exercised
towards her the utmost insolence and harshness, ventured upon some
overtures towards a reconciliation with her father; but he would accept
them on no other conditions than her adopting his religious creed,
acknowledging his supremacy, denying the authority of the pope, and
confessing the unlawfulness of her mother's marriage. It was long before
motives of expediency, and the persuasion of friends, could wring from
Mary a reluctant assent to these cruel articles: her compliance was
rewarded by the return of her father's affection, but not immediately by
her reinstatement in the order of succession. She saw the child of Anne
Boleyn still a distinguished object of the king's paternal tenderness;
the new queen was likely to give another heir to the crown; and whatever
hopes she, with the catholic party in general, had founded on the
disgrace of his late spouse, became frustrated by succeeding events.
The death of Catherine of Arragon seemed to have removed the principal
obstacles to an agreement between the king and the pope; and the holy
father now deigned to make some advances towards a son whom he hoped to
find disposed to penitence: but they were absolutely rejected by Henry,
who had ceased to dread his spiritual thunders. The parliament and the
convocation showed themselves prepared to adopt, without hesitation, the
numerous changes suggested by the king in the ancient ritual; and
Cromwel, with influence not apparently diminished by the fall of the
late patroness of the protestant party, presided in the latter assembly
with the title of vicegerent, and with powers unlimited.
The suppression of monasteries was now carried on with increasing rigor,
and thousands of their unfortunate inhabitants were mercilessly turned
out to beg or starve. These, dispersing themselves over the country, in
which their former hospitalities had rendered them generally popular,
worked strongly on the passions of the many, already discontented at the
imposition of new taxes, which served to convince them that the king and
his courtiers would be the only gainers by the plunder of the church;
and formidable insurrections were in some counties the result. In
Lincolnshire the commotions were speedily suppressed by the
interposition of the earl of Shrewsbury and other loyal noblemen; but it
was necessary to send into Yorkshire a considerable army under the duke
of Norfolk. Through the dexterous management of this leader, who was
judged to favor the cause of the revolters as much as his duty to his
sovereign and a regard to his own safety would permit, little blood was
shed in the field; but much flowed afterwards on the scaffold, where the
lords Darcy and Hussey, sir Thomas Percy, brother to the earl of
Northumberland, and several private gentlemen, suffered as traitors.
The suppression of these risings strengthened, as usual, the hands of
government, but at the expense of converting into an object of dread, a
monarch who in the earlier and brighter period of his reign had been
regarded with sentiments of admiration and love.
In lord Herbert's narrative of this insurrection, we meet with a passage
too remarkable to be omitted. "But the king, who was informed from
divers parts, but chiefly from Yorkshire, that the people began there
also to take arms, and knowing of what great consequence it might be if
the great persons in those parts, though the rumour were false, should
be said to join with him, had commanded George earl of Shrewsbury,
Thomas Manners earl of Rutland, and George Hastings earl of Huntingdon,
to make a proclamation to the Lincolnshire-men, summoning and commanding
them on their allegiance and peril of their lives to return; which, as
it much disheartened them, so many stole away," &c.
In this potency of the hereditary aristocracy of the country, and
comparative feebleness, on some occasions at least, of the authority of
the most despotic sovereign whom England had yet seen on the throne, we
discern at once the excuse which Henry would make to himself for his
severities against the nobility, and the motive of that extreme
popularity of manners by which Elizabeth aimed at attaching to herself
the affections of the middling and lower orders of her subjects.
Soon after these events, Henry confirmed the new impressions which his
subjects had received of his character, by an act of extraordinary, but
not unprovoked, severity, which involved in destruction one of the most
ancient and powerful houses among the peerage of Ireland, that of
Fitzgerald earl of Kildare. The nobleman who now bore this title had
married for his second wife lady Elizabeth Grey, daughter of the first
marquis of Dorset, and first-cousin to the king by his mother; he had
been favored at court, and was at this time lord deputy of Ireland. But
the country being in a very disturbed state, and the deputy accused of
many acts of violence, he had obeyed with great reluctance a summons to
answer for his conduct before the king in council, leaving his eldest
son to exercise his office during his absence. On his arrival, he was
committed to the Tower, and his son, alarmed by the false report of his
having lost his head, broke out immediately into a furious rebellion.
After a temporary success, Thomas Fitzgerald was reduced to great
difficulties: at the same time a promise of pardon was held out to him;
and confiding in it he surrendered himself to lord Leonard Grey, brother
to the countess his step-mother. His five uncles, also implicated in the
guilt of rebellion, were seized by surprise, or deceived into
submission. The whole six were then conveyed to England in the same
ship; and all, in spite of the entreaties and remonstrances of lord
Leonard Grey, who considered his own honor as pledged for the safety of
their lives, were hanged at Tyburn.
The aged earl had died in the Tower on receiving news of his son's rash
enterprise; and a posthumous attainder being issued against him, his
lands and goods were forfeited. The king however, in pity to the widow,
and as a slight atonement for so cruel an injustice, permitted one of
her daughters to retain some poor remains of the family plate and
valuables; and another of them, coming to England, appears to have
received her education at Hunsdon palace with the princesses Mary and
Elizabeth her relations. Here she was seen by Henry earl of Surry, whose
chaste and elegant muse has handed her down to posterity as the lovely
Geraldine, the object of his fervent but fruitless devotion. She was
married first to sir Anthony Brown, and afterwards became the wife of
the earl of Lincoln, surviving by many years her noble and unfortunate
admirer.
The countess of Kildare, and the younger of her two sons, likewise
remained in England obscure and unmolested; but the merciless rancour of
Henry against the house of Fitzgerald still pursued its destitute and
unoffending heir, who was struggling through a series of adventures the
most perilous and the most romantic.
This boy, named Gerald, then about twelve years old, had been left by
his father at a house in Kildare, under the care and tuition of Leverous
a priest who was his foster-brother. The child was lying ill of the
small-pox, when the news arrived that his brother and uncles had been
sent prisoners to England: but his affectionate guardian, justly
apprehensive of greater danger to his young charge, wrapped him up as
carefully as he could, and conveyed him away with all speed to the house
of one of his sisters, where he remained till he was quite recovered.
Thence his tutor removed him successively into the territories of two or
three different Irish chieftains, who sheltered him for about three
quarters of a year, after which he carried him to his aunt the lady
Elenor, at that time widow of a chief named Maccarty Reagh.
This lady had long been sought in marriage by O'Donnel lord of
Tyrconnel, to whose suit she had been unpropitious: but wrought upon by
the hope of being able to afford effectual protection to her unfortunate
nephew, she now consented to an immediate union; and taking Gerald along
with her to her new home in the county of Donegal, she there hospitably
entertained him for about a year. But the jealous spirit of the
implacable king seemed to know no rest while this devoted youth still
breathed the air of liberty, and he caused a great reward to be offered
for his apprehension, which the base-minded O'Donnel immediately sought
to appropriate by delivering him up. Fortunately the lady Elenor
discovered his intentions in time, and instantly causing her nephew to
disguise his person, and storing him, like a bountiful aunt, with
"sevenscore portugueses," she put him under the charge of Leverous and
an old servant of his father's, and shipped him on board a vessel bound
for St. Malo's.
Having thus secured his escape, she loftily expostulated with her
husband on his villainy in plotting to betray her kinsman, whom she had
stipulated that he should protect to the utmost of his power; and she
bid him know, that as the danger of the youth had alone induced her to
form any connection with him, so the assurance of his safety should
cause her to sequester herself for ever from the society of so base and
mercenary a wretch: and hereupon, collecting all that belonged to her,
she quitted O'Donnel and returned to her own country.
Gerald, in the mean time, arrived without accident in Bretagne, and was
favorably received by the governor of that province, when the king of
France, being informed of his situation, gave him a place about the
dauphin. Sir John Wallop however, the English embassador, soon demanded
him, in virtue of a treaty between the two countries for the delivering
up of offenders and proscribed persons; and while the king demurred to
the requisition, Gerald consulted his safety by making a speedy retreat
into Flanders. Thither his steps were dogged by an Irish servant of the
embassador's; but the governor of Valenciennes protected him by
imprisoning this man, till the youth himself generously begged his
release; and he reached the emperor's court at Brussels, without further
molestation. But here also the English embassador demanded him; the
emperor however excused himself from giving up a fugitive whose youth
sufficiently attested his innocence, and sent him privately to the
bishop of Liege, with a pension of a hundred crowns a month. The bishop
entertained him very honorably, placing him in a monastery, and watching
carefully over the safety of his person, till, at the end of half a
year, his mother's kinsman, cardinal Pole, sent for him into Italy.
Before he would admit the young Irishman to his presence, the cardinal
required him to learn Italian; and allowing him an annuity, placed him
first with the bishop of Verona, then with a cardinal, and afterwards
with the duke of Mantua. At the end of a year and a half he invited him
to Rome, and soon becoming attached to him, took him into his house, and
for three years had him instructed under his own eye in all the
accomplishments of a finished gentleman. At the end of this time, when
Gerald had nearly attained the age of nineteen, his generous patron gave
him the choice either of pursuing his studies or of travelling to seek
his adventures. The youth preferred the latter; and repairing to Naples,
he fell in with some knights of Rhodes, whom he accompanied to Malta,
and thence to Tripoli, a place at that time possessed by the order,
whence they carried on fierce war against the "Turks and miscreants,"
spoiling and sacking their villages and towns, and taking many prisoners
whom they sold to the Christians for slaves. In these proceedings, the
young adventurer took a strenuous and valiant part, much to his profit;
for in less than a year he returned to Rome laden with a rich booty.
"Proud was the cardinal to hear of his prosperous exploits," and
increased his pension to three hundred pounds a year. Shortly after, he
entered into the service of Cosmo duke of Florence, and remained three
years his master of the horse.
The tidings of Henry's death at length put an end to his exile, and he
hastened to London in the company of some foreign embassadors, and still
attended by his faithful guardian Leverous. Appearing at king Edward's
court in a mask, or ball, he had the good fortune to make a deep
impression on the heart of a young lady, daughter to sir Anthony Brown,
whom he married; and through the intercession of her friends was
restored to a part of his inheritance by the young monarch, who also
knighted him. In the next reign, the interest of cardinal Pole procured
his reinstatement in all the titles and honors of his ancestors. He was
a faithful and affectionate subject to queen Elizabeth, in whose reign
he turned protestant; was by her greatly favored, and finally died in
peace in 1585.[4]
That ill-directed restlessness which formed so striking a feature in the
character of Henry VIII. had already prompted him to interfere, as we
have seen, on more than one occasion, with the order of succession; and
the dangerous consequences of these capricious acts with respect to the
several branches of the royal family have already been observed. To the
people at large also, his instability on so momentous a point was
harassing and alarming, and they became as much at a loss to conjecture
what successor, as what religion, he would at last bequeath them.
Under such circumstances, great indeed must have been the joy in the
court and in the nation on the occurrence of an event calculated to end
all doubts and remove all difficulties--the birth of a prince of Wales.
This auspicious infant seemed to strangle in his cradle the serpents of
civil discord. Every lip hastened to proffer him its homage; every heart
united, or seemed at least to unite, in the general burst of
thankfulness and congratulation.
[Note 4: See Chron. of Ireland in Holinshed, _pass_. Collins's
Peerage, by sir E. Brydges, article _Viscount Leinster_.]
The zealous papists formed the party most to be suspected of insincerity
in their professions of satisfaction; but the princess Mary set them an
excellent example of graceful submission to what was inevitable, by
soliciting the office of godmother. Her sister was happily too young to
be infected with court-jealousies, or to behold in a brother an
unwelcome intruder, who came to snatch from her the inheritance of a
crown: between Elizabeth and Edward an attachment truly fraternal sprung
up with the first dawnings of reason; and notwithstanding the fatal blow
given to her interests by the act of settlement extorted from his dying
hand, this princess never ceased to cherish his memory, and to mention
him in terms of affectionate regret.
The conjugal felicities of Henry were destined to be of short duration,
and before he could receive the felicitations of his subjects on the
birth of his son, the mother was snatched away by death. The queen died
deeply regretted, not only by her husband, but by the whole court, whom
she had attached by the uncommon sweetness of her disposition. To the
princess Mary her behaviour had been the reverse of that by which her
predecessor had disgraced herself; and the little Elizabeth had received
from her marks of a maternal tenderness. Jane Seymour was accounted a
favourer of the protestant cause; but as she was apparently free from
the ambition of interfering in state affairs, her death had no further
political influence than what resulted from the king's marriage thus
becoming once more an object of speculation and court intrigue. It did
not even give a check to the advancement of her two brothers, destined
to act and to suffer so conspicuously in the fierce contentions of the
ensuing minority; for the king seemed to regard it as a point of policy
to elevate those maternal relations of his son, on whose care he relied
to watch over the safety of his person in case of his own demise, to a
dignity and importance which the proudest nobles of the land might view
with respect or fear. Sir Edward Seymour, who had been created lord
Beauchamp the year before, was now made earl of Hertford; and high
places at court and commands in the army attested the favor of his royal
brother-in-law. Thomas Seymour, afterwards lord high-admiral, attained
during this reign no higher dignity than that of knighthood; but
considerable pecuniary grants were bestowed upon him; and whilst he saw
his wealth increase, he was secretly extending his influence, and
feeding his aspiring spirit with fond anticipations of future greatness.
All now seemed tranquil: but a discerning eye might already have beheld
fresh tempests gathering in the changeful atmosphere of the English
court. The jealousies of the king, become too habitual to be discarded,
had in fact only received a new direction from the birth of his son: his
mind was perpetually haunted with the dread of leaving him, a
defenceless minor, in the hands of contending parties in religion, and
of a formidable and factious nobility; and for the sake of obviating the
distant and contingent evils which he apprehended from this source, he
showed himself ready to pour forth whole rivers of the best blood of
England.
The person beyond all comparison most dreaded and detested by Henry at
this juncture was his cousin Reginald Pole, for whom when a youth he had
conceived a warm affection, whose studies he had encouraged by the gift
of a deanery and the hope of further church-preferment, and of whose
ingratitude he always believed himself entitled to complain. It was the
long-contested point of the lawfulness of Henry's marriage with his
brother's widow, which set the kinsmen at variance. Pole had from the
first refused to concur with the university of Paris, in which he was
then residing, in its condemnation of this union: afterwards, alarmed
probably at the king's importunities on the subject, he had obtained the
permission then necessary for leaving England, to which he had returned,
and travelled into Italy. Here he formed friendships with the most
eminent defenders of the papal authority, now incensed to the highest
degree against Henry, on account of his having declared himself head of
the English church; and both his convictions and his passions becoming
still more strongly engaged on the side which he had already espoused,
he published a work on the unity of the church, in which the conduct of
his sovereign and benefactor became the topic of his vehement invective.
The offended king, probably with treacherous intentions, invited Pole to
come to England, and explain to him in person certain difficult passages
of his book: but his kinsman was too wary to trust himself in such
hands; and his refusal to obey this summons, which implied a final
renunciation of his country and all his early prospects, was
immediately rewarded by the pope, through the emperor's concurrence,
with a cardinal's hat and the appointment of legate to Flanders. But
alarmed, as well as enraged, at seeing the man whom he regarded as his
bitterest personal enemy placed in a situation so convenient for
carrying on intrigues with the disaffected papists in England, Henry
addressed so strong a remonstrance to the governess of the Netherlands,
as caused her to send the cardinal out of the country before he had
begun to exercise the functions of his legantine office.
From this time, to maintain any intercourse or correspondence with Pole
was treated by the king as either in itself an act of treason, or at
least as conclusive evidence of traitorous intentions. He believed that
the darkest designs were in agitation against his own government and his
son's succession; and the circumstance of the cardinal's still declining
to take any but deacon's orders, notwithstanding his high dignity in the
church, suggested to him the suspicion that his kinsman aimed at the
crown itself, through a marriage with the princess Mary, of whose
legitimacy he had shown himself so strenuous a champion. What foundation
there might be for such an idea it is difficult to determine.
There is an author who relates that the lady Mary was educated with the
cardinal under his mother, and hints that an early attachment had thus
been formed between them[5]: A statement manifestly inaccurate, since
Pole was sixteen years older than the princess; though it is not
improbable that Mary, during some period of her youth, might be placed
under the care of the countess of Salisbury, and permitted to associate
with her son on easy and affectionate terms. It is well known that after
Mary's accession, Charles V. impeded the journey of Pole into England
till her marriage with his son Philip had been actually solemnized; but
this was probably rather from a persuasion of the inexpediency of the
cardinal's sooner opening his legantine commission in England, than from
any fear of his supplanting in Mary's affections his younger rival,
though some have ascribed to the emperor the latter motive.
[Note 5: See Lloyd's Worthies, article _Pole_.]
When however it is recollected, that in consequence of Henry's having
caused a posthumous judgement of treason to be pronounced against the
papal martyr Becket, his shrine to be destroyed, his bones burned, and
his ashes scattered, the pope had at length, in 1538, fulminated against
him the long-suspended sentence of excommunication, and made a donation
of his kingdom to the king of Scots, and thus impressed the sanction of
religion on any rebellious attempts of his Roman-catholic subjects,--it
would be too much to pronounce the apprehensions of the monarch to have
been altogether chimerical. But his suspicion appears, as usual, to have
gone beyond the truth, and his anger to have availed itself of slight
pretexts to ruin where he feared and hated.
Such was the state of his mind when the treachery or weakness of Geffrey
Pole furnished him with intelligence of a traitorous correspondence
carried on with his brother the cardinal by several persons of
distinction attached to the papal interest, and in which he had himself
been a sharer. On his information, the marquis of Exeter, viscount
Montacute, sir Edward Nevil, and sir Nicholas Carew, were apprehended,
tried and found guilty of high treason. Public opinion was at this time
nothing; and notwithstanding the rank, consequence and popularity of the
men whose lives were sacrificed on this occasion; notwithstanding that
secret consciousness of his own ill-will towards them, which ought to
have rendered Henry more than usually cautious in his proceedings,--not
even an attempt was made to render their guilt clear and notorious to
the nation at large; and posterity scarcely even knows of what designs
they were accused; to overt acts it is quite certain that they had not
proceeded.
Henry lord Montacute was obnoxious on more than one account: he was the
brother of cardinal Pole; and as eldest son of Margaret, sole surviving
child of the duke of Clarence and heiress to her brother the earl of
Warwick, he might be regarded as succeeding to those claims on the crown
which under Henry VII. had proved fatal to the last-mentioned
unfortunate and ill-treated nobleman. During the early part of this
reign, however, he, in common with other members of the family of Pole,
had received marks of the friendship of Henry. In 1514, his mother was
authorized to assume the title of countess of Salisbury, and he that of
viscount Montacute, notwithstanding the attainder formerly passed
against the great house of Nevil, from whom these honors were derived.
In 1521 lord Montacute had been indicted for concealing the treasons,
real or pretended, of the duke of Buckingham; but immediately on his
acquittal he was restored to the good graces of his sovereign, and, two
years after, attended him on an expedition to France.
It is probable that lord Montacute was popular; he was at least a
partisan of the old religion, and heir to the vast possessions which his
mother derived from the king-making earl of Warwick her maternal
grandfather; sufficient motives with Henry for now wishing his removal.
If the plot in which he was charged by his perfidious brother with
participating, had in view the elevation of the cardinal to a
matrimonial crown by his union with the princess Mary, which seems to
have been insinuated, lord Montacute must at least stand acquitted of
all design of asserting his own title; yet it may justly be suspected
that his character of representative of the house of Clarence, was by
Henry placed foremost in the catalogue of his offences.
A similar remark applies still more forcibly to the marquis of Exeter.
Son of Catherine, youngest daughter of Edward IV., and so lately
declared his heir by Henry himself, it is scarcely credible that any
inducement could have drawn this nobleman into a plot for disturbing the
succession in favour of a claim worse founded than his own; and that the
blood which he inherited was the true object of Henry's apprehensions
from him, evidently appeared to all the world by his causing the son of
the unhappy marquis, a child at this period, to be detained a state
prisoner in the Tower during the remainder of his reign.
Sir Edward Nevil was brother to lord Abergavenny and to the wife of lord
Montacute--a connection likely to bring him into suspicion, and perhaps
to involve him in real guilt; but it must not be forgotten that he was a
lineal descendant of the house of Lancaster by Joan daughter of John of
Gaunt. The only person not of royal extraction who suffered on this
occasion was sir Nicholas Carew, master of the horse, and lately a
distinguished favourite of the king; of whom it is traditionally
related, that though accused as an accomplice in the designs of the
other noble delinquents, the real offence for which he died, was the
having retorted, with more spirit than prudence, some opprobrious
language with which his royal master had insulted him as they were
playing at bowls together[6]. The family of Carew was however allied in
blood to that of Courtney, of which the marquis of Exeter was the head.
[Note 6: See Fuller's Worthies in Surry.]
But the attempt to extirpate all who under any future circumstances
might be supposed capable of advancing claims formidable to the house of
Tudor, must have appeared to Henry himself a task almost as hopeless as
cruel. Sons and daughters of the Plantagenet princes had in every
generation freely intermarried with the ancient nobles of the land; and
as fast as those were cut off whose connection with the royal blood was
nearest and most recent, the pedigrees of families pointed out others,
and others still, whose relationship grew into nearness by the removal
of such as had stood before them, and presented to the affrighted eyes
of their persecutor, a hydra with still renewed and multiplying heads.
Not content with these inflictions,--sufficiently severe it might be
thought to intimidate the papal faction,--Henry gratified still further
his stern disposition by the attainder of the marchioness of Exeter and
the aged countess of Salisbury. The marchioness he soon after released;
but the countess was still detained prisoner under a sentence of death,
which a parliament, atrocious in its subserviency, had passed upon her
without form of trial, but which the king did not think proper at
present to carry into execution, either because he chose to keep her as
a kind of hostage for the good behaviour of her son the cardinal, or
because, tyrant as he had become, he had not yet been able to divest
himself of all reverence or pity for the hoary head of a female, a
kinswoman, and the last who was born to the name of Plantagenet.
It is melancholy, it is even disgusting, to dwell upon these acts of
legalized atrocity, but let it be allowed that it is important and
instructive. They form unhappily a leading feature of the administration
of Henry VIII. during the latter years of his reign; they exhibit in the
most striking point of view the sentiments and practices of the age; and
may assist us to form a juster estimate of the character and conduct of
Elizabeth, whose infant mind was formed to the contemplation of these
domestic tragedies, and whose fame has often suffered by inconsiderate
comparisons which have placed her in parallel with the enlightened and
humanized sovereigns of more modern days, rather than with the stern and
arbitrary Tudors, her barbarous predecessors.
It is remarkable that the protestant party at the court of Henry, so far
from gaining strength and influence by the severities exercised against
the adherents of cardinal Pole and the ancient religion, was evidently
in a declining state. The feeble efforts of its two leaders Cromwel and
Cranmer, of whom the first was deficient in zeal, the last in courage,
now experienced irresistible counteraction from the influence of
Gardiner, whose uncommon talents for business, joined to his extreme
obsequiousness, had rendered him at once necessary and acceptable to his
royal master. The law of the Six Articles, which forbade under the
highest penalties the denial of several doctrines of the Romish church
peculiarly obnoxious to the reformers, was probably drawn up by this
minister. It was enacted in the parliament of 1539: a vast number of
persons were soon after imprisoned for transgressing it; and Cranmer
himself was compelled, by the clause which ordained the celibacy of the
clergy, to send away his wife.
Under these circumstances Cromwel began to look on all sides for
support; and recollecting with regret the powerful influence exerted by
Anne Boleyn in favor of the good cause, and even the gentler and more
private aid lent to it by the late queen, he planned a new marriage for
his sovereign, with a lady educated in the very bosom of the protestant
communion. Political considerations favored the design; since a treaty
lately concluded between the emperor and the king of France rendered it
highly expedient that Henry, by way of counterpoise, should strengthen
his alliance with the Smalcaldic league. In short, Cromwel prevailed.
Holbein, whom the king had appointed his painter on the recommendation
of sir Thomas More, and still retained in that capacity, was sent over
to take the portrait of Anne sister of the duke of Cleves; and rashly
trusting in the fidelity of the likeness, Henry soon after solicited her
hand in marriage.
"The lady Anne," says a historian, "understood no language but Dutch, so
that all communication of speech between her and our king was
intercluded. Yet our embassador, Nicholas Wotton doctor of law, employed
in the business, hath it, that she could both read and write in her own
language, and sew very well; only for music, he said, it was not the
manner of the country to learn it[7]." It must be confessed that for a
princess this list of accomplishments appears somewhat scanty; and
Henry, unfortunately for the lady Anne, was a great admirer of learning,
wit and talents, in the female sex, and a passionate lover of music,
which he well understood. What was still worse, he piqued himself
extremely on his taste in beauty, and was much more solicitous
respecting the personal charms of his consorts than is usual with
sovereigns; and when, on the arrival of his destined bride in England,
he hastened to Rochester to gratify his impatience by snatching a
private view of her, he found that in this capital article he had been
grievously imposed upon. The uncourteous comparison by which he
expressed his dislike of her large and clumsy person is well known.
Bitterly did he lament to Cromwel the hard fortune which had allotted
him so unlovely a partner, and he returned to London very melancholy.
But the evil appeared to be now past remedy; it was contrary to all
policy to affront the German princes by sending back their countrywoman
after matters had gone so far, and Henry magnanimously resolved to
sacrifice his own feelings, once in his life, for the good of his
country. Accordingly, he received the princess with great magnificence
and with every outward demonstration of satisfaction, and was married to
her at Greenwich in January 1540.
[Note 7: Herbert.]
Two or three months afterwards, the king, notwithstanding his secret
dissatisfaction, rewarded Cromwel for his pains in concluding this union
by conferring on him the vacant title of earl of Essex;--a fatal gift,
which exasperated to rage the mingled jealousy and disdain which this
low-born and aspiring minister had already provoked from the ancient
nobility, by intruding himself into the order of the garter, and which
served to heap upon his devoted head fresh coals of wrath against the
day of retribution which was fast approaching. The act of transferring
this title to a new family, could in fact be no otherwise regarded by
the great house of Bourchier, which had long enjoyed it, than either as
a marked indignity to itself, or as a fresh result of the general Tudor
system of depressing and discountenancing the blood of the Plantagenets,
from which the Bourchiers, through a daughter of Thomas of Woodstock,
were descended. The late earl had left a married daughter, to whom,
according to the customary courtesy of English sovereigns in similar
circumstances, the title ought to have been continued; and as this lady
had no children, the earl of Bath, as head of the house, felt himself
also aggrieved by the alienation of family honors which he hoped to have
seen continued to himself and his posterity.
In honor, probably, of the recent marriage of the king, unusually
splendid justs were opened at Westminster on May-day; in which the
challengers were headed by sir John Dudley, and the defenders by the
earl of Surry. This entertainment was continued for several successive
days, during which the challengers, according to the costly fashion of
ancient hospitality, kept open house at their common charge, and feasted
the king and queen, the members of both houses, and the lord-mayor and
aldermen with their wives.
But scenes of pomp and festivity had no power to divert the thoughts of
the king from his domestic grievance,--a wife whom he regarded with
disgust: on the contrary, it is probable that this season of courtly
revelry encreased his disquiet, by giving him opportunities of beholding
under the most attractive circumstances the charms of a youthful beauty
whom he was soon seized with the most violent desire of placing beside
him on the throne which he judged her worthy to adorn.
No considerations of rectitude or of policy could longer restrain the
impetuous monarch from casting off the yoke of a detested marriage: and
as a first step towards emancipation, he determined to permit the ruin
of its original adviser, that unpopular minister, but vigorous and
serviceable instrument of arbitrary power, whom he had hitherto defended
with pertinacity against all attacks.
No sooner was the decline of his favor perceived, and what so quickly
perceived at courts? than the ill-fated Cromwel found himself assailed
on every side. His active agency in the suppression of monasteries had
brought upon him, with the imputation of sacrilege, the hatred of all
the papists;--a certain coldness, or timidity, which he had manifested
in the cause of religious reformation in other respects, and
particularly the enactment of the Six Articles during his
administration, had rendered him an object of suspicion or dislike to
the protestants;--in his new and undefined office of royal vicegerent
for the exercise of the supremacy, he had offended the whole body of the
clergy;--and he had just filled up the measure of his offences against
the nobility by procuring a grant of the place of lord high-steward,
long hereditary in the great house of the Veres earls of Oxford. The
only voice raised in his favor was that of Cranmer, who interceded with
Henry in his behalf in a letter eloquent, touching, and even courageous,
times and persons considered. Gardiner and the duke of Norfolk urged on
his accusation; the parliament, with its accustomed subserviency,
proceeded against him by attainder; and having voted him guilty of
heresy and treason, left it in the choice of the king to bring him
either to the block or the stake for whichever he pleased of these
offences; neither of which was proved by evidence, or even supported by
reasonable probabilities. But against this violation in his person of
the chartered rights of Englishmen, however flagrant, the unfortunate
earl of Essex had forfeited all right to appeal, since it was himself
who had first advised the same arbitrary mode of proceeding in the cases
of the marchioness of Exeter, of the countess of Salisbury, and of
several persons of inferior rank connected with them; on whom capital
punishment had already been inflicted.
With many private virtues, Essex, like his great master Wolsey, and like
the disgraced ministers of despotic princes in general, perished
unpitied; and the king and the faction of Gardiner and of the Howards
seemed equally to rejoice in the free course opened by his removal to
their further projects. The parliament was immediately ordered to find
valid a certain frivolous pretext of a prior contract, on which its
master was pleased to demand a divorce from Ann of Cleves; and the
marriage was unanimously declared null, without any opportunity afforded
to the queen of bringing evidence in its support.
The fortitude, or rather phlegm, with which her unmerited degradation
was supported by the lady Anne, has in it something at once
extraordinary and amusing. There is indeed a tradition that she fainted
on first receiving the information that her marriage was likely to be
set aside; but the shock once over, she gave to the divorce, without
hesitation or visible reluctance, that assent which was required of her.
Taking in good part the pension of three thousand pounds per annum, and
the title of his _sister_ which her ex-husband was graciously pleased to
offer her, she wrote to her brother the elector to entreat him still to
live in amity with the king of England, against whom she had no ground
of complaint; and she continued, till the day of her death, to make his
country her abode. Through the whole affair she gave no indication of
wounded pride; unless her refusal to return in the character of a
discarded and rejected damsel, to the home which she had so lately
quitted in all the pomp and triumph of a royal bride, is to be regarded
as such. But even for this part of her conduct a different motive is
with great plausibility assigned by a writer, who supposes her to have
been swayed by the prudent consideration, that the regular payment of
her pension would better be secured by her remaining under the eyes and
within the protection of the English nation.
A very few weeks after this apparently formidable business had been thus
readily and amicably arranged, Catherine Howard niece to the duke of
Norfolk, and first cousin to Anne Boleyn, was declared queen. This lady,
beautiful, insinuating, and more fondly beloved by the king than any of
her predecessors, was a catholic, and almost all the members of the
council who now possessed office or influence were attached, more or
less openly, to the same communion. In consequence, the penalties of the
Six Articles were enforced with great cruelty against the reformers; but
this did not exempt from punishment such as, offending on the other
side, ventured to deny the royal supremacy; the only difference was,
that the former class of culprits were burned as heretics, the latter
hanged as traitors.
The king soon after seized the occasion of a trifling insurrection in
Yorkshire, of which sir John Nevil was the leader, to complete his
vengeance against cardinal Pole, by bringing to a cruel and ignominious
end the days of his venerable and sorrow-stricken mother, who had been
unfortunate enough thus long to survive the ruin of her family. The
strange and shocking scene exhibited on the scaffold by the desperation
of this illustrious and injured lady, is detailed by all our historians:
it seems almost incredible that the surrounding crowd were not urged by
an unanimous impulse of horror and compassion to rush in and rescue from
the murderous hands of the executioner the last miserable representative
of such a line of princes. But the eyes of Henry's subjects were
habituated to these scenes of blood; and they were viewed by some with
indifference, and by the rest with emotions of terror which effectually
repressed the generous movements of a just and manly indignation.
In public causes, to be accused and to suffer death were now the same
thing; and another eminent victim of the policy of the English Tiberius
displayed in a novel and truly portentous manner his utter despair of
the justice of the country and the mercy of his sovereign.
Lord Leonard Grey, late deputy of Ireland, was accused of favouring the
escape of that persecuted child his nephew Gerald Fitzgerald, of
corresponding with cardinal Pole, and of various other offences called
treasonable. Being brought before a jury of knights, "he saved them,"
says lord Herbert, "the labour of condemning him, and without more ado
confessed all. Which, whether this lord, who was of great courage, did
out of desperation or guilt, some circumstances make doubtful; and the
rather, that the articles being so many, he neither denied nor
extenuated any of them, though his continual fighting with the king's
enemies, where occasion was, pleaded much on his part. Howsoever, he had
his head cut off[8]."
[Note 8: Many years after, the earl of Kildare solemnly assured the
author of the "Chronicles of Ireland" in Holinshed, that lord Leonard
Grey had no concern whatever in his escape.]
The queen and her party were daily gaining upon the mind of the king;
and Cranmer himself, notwithstanding the high esteem entertained for him
by Henry, had begun to be endangered by their machinations, when an
unexpected discovery put into his hands the means of baffling all their
designs, and producing a total revolution in the face of the court.
It was towards the close of the year 1541 that private information was
conveyed to the primate of such disorders in the conduct of the queen
before her marriage as could not fail to plunge her in infamy and ruin.
Cranmer, if not exceedingly grieved, was at least greatly perplexed by
the incident:--at first sight there appeared to be equal danger in
concealing or discovering circumstances of a nature so delicate, and
the archbishop was timid by nature, and cautious from the experience of
a court. At length, all things well weighed, he judiciously preferred
the hazard of making the communication at once, without reserve, and
directly, to the person most interested; and, forming into a narrative
facts which his tongue dared not utter to the face of a prince whose
anger was deadly, he presented it to him and entreated him to peruse it
in secret.
Love and pride conspired to persuade the king that his Catherine was
incapable of having imposed upon him thus grossly, and he at once
pronounced the whole story a malicious fabrication; but the strict
inquiry which he caused to be instituted for the purpose of punishing
its authors, not only established the truth of the accusations already
brought, but served also to throw the strongest suspicions on the
conjugal fidelity of the queen.
The agonies of Henry on this occasion were such as in any other husband
would have merited the deepest compassion: with him they were quickly
succeeded by the most violent rage; and his cry for vengeance was, as
usual, echoed with alacrity by a loyal and sympathizing parliament.
Party animosity profited by the occasion and gave additional impulse to
their proceedings. After convicting by attainder the queen and her
paramours, who were soon after put to death, the two houses proceeded
also to attaint her uncle, aunt, grandmother, and about ten other
persons, male and female, accused of being accessary or privy to her
disorders before marriage, and of not revealing them to the king when
they became acquainted with his intention of making her his consort; an
offence declared to be misprision of treason by an ex post facto law.
But this was an excess of barbarity of which Henry himself was ashamed:
the infamous lady Rochford was the only confident who suffered
capitally; the rest were released after imprisonments of longer or
shorter duration; yet a reserve of bitterness appears to have remained
stored up in the heart of the king against the whole race of Howard,
which the enemies of that illustrious house well knew how to cherish and
augment against a future day.