[Sidenote: Henry VIII., 1509-1517]
When in the year 1509 a handsome youth of eighteen came to the throne,
the hopes of England ran high. His intelligence, his frank, genial
manners, his sympathy with the "new learning," won all classes. Erasmus
in his hopes of purifying the Church, and Sir Thomas More in his
"Utopian" dreams for politics and society, felt that a friend had come
to the throne in the young Henry VIII.
Spain had become great through a union of the rival Kingdoms Castile
and Aragon; so a marriage with the Princess Katharine, daughter of
Ferdinand and Isabella, had been arranged for the young Prince Henry,
who had quietly accepted for his Queen his brother's widow, six years
his senior.
France under Francis I. had risen into a state no less imposing than
Spain, and Henry began to be stirred with an ambition to take part in
the drama of events going on upon the greater stage, across the
Channel. The old dream of French conquest returned. Francis I. and
Charles V. of Germany had commenced their struggle for supremacy in
Europe. Henry's ambition was fostered by their vying with each other to
secure his friendship. He was soon launched in a deep game of
diplomacy, in which three intriguing Sovereigns were striving each to
outwit the others.
What Henry lacked in experience and craft was supplied by his
Chancellor Wolsey, whose private and personal ambition to reach the
Papal Chair was dexterously mingled with the royal game. The game was
dazzling and absorbing, but it was unexpectedly interrupted; and the
golden dreams of Erasmus and More, of a slow and orderly development in
England through an expanding intelligence, were rudely shaken.
Martin Luther audaciously nailed on the door of the Church at
Wittenberg a protest against the selling of papal indulgences, and the
pent-up hopes, griefs and despair of centuries burst into a storm which
shook Europe to its centre.
[Sidenote: Reformation, 1517]
Since England had joined in the great game of European politics, she
had advanced from being a third-rate power to the front rank among
nations; so it was with great satisfaction that Catholic Europe heard
Henry VIII. denounce the new Reformation, which had swiftly assumed
alarming proportions.
[Sidenote: Marriage with Anne Boleyn, 1533.]
But a woman's eyes were to change all this. As Henry looked into the
fair face of Anne Boleyn, his conscience began to be stirred over his
marriage with his brother's widow, Katharine. He confided his scruples
to Wolsey, who promised to use his efforts with the Pope to secure a
divorce from Katharine. But this lady was niece to Charles V., the
great Champion of the Church in its fight with Protestantism. It would
never do to alienate him. So the divorce was refused.
Henry VIII. was not as flexible and amiable now as the youth of
eighteen had been. He defied the Pope, married Anne (1533), and sent
his Minister into disgrace for not serving him more effectually. "There
was the weight which pulled me down," said Wolsey of Anne, and death
from a broken heart mercifully saved the old man from the scaffold he
would certainly have reached.
The legion of demons which had been slumbering in the King were
awakened. He would break no law, but he would bend the law to his will.
He commanded a trembling Parliament to pass an act sustaining his
marriage with Anne. Another permitting him to name his successor, and
then another--making him _supreme head of the Church in England_. The
Pope was forever dethroned in his Kingdom, and Protestantism had
achieved a bloodstained victory.
[Sidenote: His Supremacy. Henry a Protestant. Anne Boleyn's Death, 1536.]
Henry alone could judge what was orthodoxy and what heresy; but to
disagree with _him_, was death. Traitor and heretic went to the
scaffold in the same hurdle; the Catholic who denied the King's
supremacy riding side by side with the Protestant who denied
transubstantiation. The Protestantism of this great convert was
political, not religious; he despised the doctrines of Lutheranism, and
it was dangerous to believe too much and equally dangerous to believe
too little. Heads dropped like leaves in the forest, and in three years
the Queen who had overturned England and almost Europe, was herself
carried to the scaffold (1536).
It was in truth a "Reign of Terror" by an absolutism standing upon the
ruin of every rival. The power of the Barons had gone; the Clergy were
panic-stricken, and Parliament was a servant, which arose and bowed
humbly to his vacant throne at mention of his name! A member for whom
he had sent knelt trembling one day before him. "Get my bill passed to-
morrow, my little man," said the King, "or to-morrow, this head of
yours will be off." The next day the bill passed, and millions of
Church property was confiscated, to be thrown away in gambling, or to
enrich the adherents of the King.
Thomas Cromwell, who had succeeded to Wolsey's vacant place, was his
efficient instrument. This student of Machiavelli's "Prince," without
passion or hate, pity or regret, marked men for destruction, as a
woodman does tall trees, the highest and proudest names in the Kingdom
being set down in his little notebook under the head of either "Heresy"
or "Treason." Sir Thomas More, one of the wisest and best of men, would
not say he thought the marriage with Katharine had been unlawful, and
paid his head as the price of his fearless honesty.
Jane Seymour, whom Henry married the day after Anne Boleyn's execution,
died within a year at the birth of a son (Edward VI.). In 1540 Cromwell
arranged another union with the plainest woman in Europe, Anne of
Cleves; which proved so distasteful to Henry that he speedily divorced
her, and in resentment at Cromwell's having entrapped him, by a
flattering portrait drawn by Holbein, the Minister came under his
displeasure, which at that time meant death. He was beheaded in 1540,
and in that same year occurred the King's marriage with Katharine
Howard, who one year later met same fate as Anne Boleyn.
[Sidenote: Katherine Howard's Death 1541. Death of Henry VIII., 1547.]
Katharine Parr, the fifth and last wife, and an ardent Protestant and
reformer, also narrowly escaped, and would undoubtedly at last have
gone to the block. But Henry, who at fifty-six was infirm and wrecked
in health, died in the year 1547, the signing of death-warrants being
his occupation to the very end.
Whatever his motive, Henry VIII. had in making her Protestant, placed
England firmly in the line of the world's highest progress; and strange
to say, that Kingdom is most indebted to two of her worst Kings.
[Sidenote: Edward VI 1547-1555. Lady Jane Grey's Death, 1553.]
The crown passed to the son of Jane Seymour, Edward VI., a feeble boy
of sixteen, and upon his death six years later (1553), by the King's
will to Lady Jane Grey, descendant of his sister Mary. This gentle girl
of seventeen, sensitive and thoughtful, a devout reformer, who read
Greek and Hebrew and wrote Latin poetry, is a pathetic figure in
history, where we see her, the unwilling wearer of a crown for ten
days, and then with her young husband hurried to that fatal Tower, and
to death; a brief touching interlude before the crowning of Mary,
daughter of Henry and Katharine of Aragon.
Henry VIII. stoutly adhered to Protestantism, and preferred that the
succession should pass out of his own family, rather than into Catholic
dominion again. Hence his naming of Jane Grey instead of his own
daughter Mary, in case of the death of his delicate son Edward.
But Henry was no longer there to stem the tide of Catholic sentiment.
Lady Jane Grey was hurried to the block, and the Catholic Mary to the
throne.
[Sidenote: Mary 1553-1558. Calais Lost, 1558]
Her marriage with Philip II. of Spain quickly overthrew the work of her
father. Unlike Henry VIII., Mary was impelled by deep conviction. She
persecuted to save from what she believed eternal death. Her cruelty
was prompted by sincere fanaticism, mingled with the desire to please
the Catholic Philip, whose love she craved and could not win.
Disappointed in his aim to reign jointly with her, as he had hoped, he
withdrew to Spain. Unlovely and unloved, she is almost an object of
pity, as with dungeon, rack and fagot she strives to restore the
Religion she loves, and to win the husband she adores. But Philip
remained obdurately in Spain, and while she was lighting up all England
with a blaze of martyrs, Calais, the last English possession in France,
was lost. Mary died amid crushing disappointments public and personal,
after reigning five years (1553-1558).