(April 1832)
_Memoirs of the Life and Administration of the Right Honourable William
Cecil Lord Burghley, Secretary of State in the Reign of King Edward
the Sixth, and Lord High Treasurer, of England in the Reign of Queen
Elizabeth. Containing an historical View of the Times in which he
lived, and of the many eminent and illustrious Persons with whom he was
connected; with Extracts from his Private and Official Correspondence
and other Papers, now first published from the Originals. By the
Reverend EDWARD NARES, D.D., Regius Professor of Modern History in the
University of Oxford. 3 vols. 4to. London: 1828, 1832._
THE work of Dr. Nares has filled us with astonishment similar to that
which Captain Lemuel Gulliver felt when first he landed in Brobdingnag,
and saw corn as high as the oaks in the New Forest, thimbles as large
as buckets, and wrens of the bulk of turkeys. The whole book, and every
component part of it, is on a gigantic scale. The title is as long as
an ordinary preface: the prefatory matter would furnish out an ordinary
book; and the book contains as much reading as an ordinary library.
We cannot sum up the merits of the stupendous mass of paper which lies
before us better than by saying that it consists of about two thousand
closely printed quarto pages, that it occupies fifteen hundred inches
cubic measure, and that it weighs sixty pounds avoirdupois. Such a book
might, before the deluge, have been considered as light reading by Hilpa
and Shallum. But unhappily the life of man is now three-score years and
ten; and we cannot but think it somewhat unfair in Dr. Nares to demand
from us so large a portion of so short an existence.
Compared with the labour of reading through these volumes, all
other labour, the labour of thieves on the treadmill, of children in
factories, of negroes in sugar plantations, is an agreeable recreation.
There was, it is said, a criminal in Italy, who was suffered to make his
choice between Guicciardini and the galleys. He chose the history. But
the war of Pisa was too much for him. He changed his mind, and went to
the oar. Guicciardini, though certainly not the most amusing of writers,
is a Herodotus or a Froissart, when compared with Dr. Nares, It is not
merely in bulk, but in specific gravity also, that these memoirs exceed
all other human compositions. On every subject which the Professor
discusses, he produces three times as many pages as another man; and one
of his pages is as tedious as another man’s three. His book is swelled
to its vast dimensions by endless repetitions, by episodes which have
nothing to do with the main action, by quotations from books which are
in every circulating library, and by reflections which, when they happen
to be just, are so obvious that they must necessarily occur to the mind
of every reader. He employs more words in expounding and defending a
truism than any other writer would employ in supporting a paradox. Of
the rules of historical perspective, he has not the faintest notion.
There is neither foreground nor background in his delineation. The wars
of Charles the Fifth in Germany are detailed at almost as much length as
in Robertson’s life of that prince. The troubles of Scotland are related
as fully as in M’Crie’s Life of John Knox. It would be most unjust to
deny that Dr. Nares is a man of great industry and research; but he is
so utterly incompetent to arrange the materials which he has collected
that he might as well have left them in their original repositories.
Neither the facts which Dr. Nares has discovered, nor the arguments
which he urges, will, we apprehend, materially alter the opinion
generally entertained by judicious readers of history concerning his
hero. Lord Burleigh can hardly be called a great man. He was not one
of those whose genius and energy change the fate of empires. He was by
nature and habit one of those who follow, not one of those who lead.
Nothing that is recorded, either of his words or of his actions,
indicates intellectual or moral elevation. But his talents, though not
brilliant, were of an eminently useful kind; and his principles, though
not inflexible, were not more relaxed than those of his associates and
competitors. He had a cool temper, a sound judgement, great powers of
application, and a constant eye to the main chance. In his youth he was,
it seems, fond of practical jokes. Yet even out of these he contrived
to extract some pecuniary profit. When he was studying the law at Gray’s
Inn, he lost all his furniture and books at the gaming table to one of
his friends. He accordingly bored a hole in the wall which separated his
chambers from those of his associate, and at midnight bellowed through
this passage threats of damnation and calls to repentance in the ears
of the victorious gambler, who lay sweating with fear all night, and
refunded his winnings on his knees next day. “Many other the like merry
jest,” says his old biographer, “I have heard him tell, too long to be
here noted.” To the last, Burleigh was somewhat jocose; and some of
his sportive sayings have been recorded by Bacon. They show much more
shrewdness than generosity, and are, indeed, neatly expressed reasons
for exacting money rigorously, and for keeping it carefully. It must,
however, be acknowledged that he was rigorous and careful for the public
advantage as well as for his own. To extol his moral character as Dr.
Nares has extolled it is absurd. It would be equally absurd to represent
him as a corrupt, rapacious, and bad-hearted man. He paid great
attention to the interests of the state, and great attention also to the
interest of his own family. He never deserted his friends till it was
very inconvenient to stand by them, was an excellent Protestant, when it
was not very advantageous to be a Papist, recommended a tolerant policy
to his mistress as strongly as he could recommend it without hazarding
her favour, never put to the rack any person from whom it did not seem
probable that useful information might be derived, and was so moderate
in his desires that he left only three hundred distinct landed estates,
though he might, as his honest servant assures us, have left much more,
“if he would have taken money out of the Exchequer for his own use, as
many Treasurers have done.”
Burleigh, like the old Marquess of Winchester, who preceded him in the
custody of the White Staff, was of the willow, and not of the oak. He
first rose into notice by defending the supremacy of Henry the Eighth.
He was subsequently favoured and promoted by the Duke of Somerset. He
not only contrived to escape unhurt when his patron fell, but became
an important member of the administration of Northumberland. Dr. Nares
assures us over and over again that there could have been nothing base
in Cecil’s conduct on this occasion; for, says he, Cecil continued to
stand well with Cranmer. This, we confess, hardly satisfies us. We are
much of the mind of Falstaff’s tailor. We must have better assurance for
Sir John than Bardolph’s. We like not the security.
Through the whole course of that miserable intrigue which was carried on
round the dying bed of Edward the Sixth, Cecil so demeaned himself as
to avoid, first, the displeasure of Northumberland, and afterwards the
displeasure of Mary. He was prudently unwilling to put his hand to the
instrument which changed the course of the succession. But the furious
Dudley was master of the palace. Cecil, therefore, according to his own
account, excused himself from signing as a party, but consented to sign
as a witness. It is not easy to describe his dexterous conduct at this
most perplexing crisis in language more appropriate than that which is
employed by old Fuller. “His hand wrote it as secretary of state,” says
that quaint writer; “but his heart consented not thereto. Yea, he openly
opposed it; though at last yielding to the greatness of Northumberland,
in an age when it was present drowning not to swim with the stream. But
as the philosopher tells us, that though the planets be whirled about
daily from east to west, by the motion of the primum mobile, yet have
they also a contrary proper motion of their own from west to east, which
they slowly, though surely, move, at their leisure; so Cecil had secret
counter-endeavours against the strain of the court herein, and privately
advanced his rightful intentions, against the foresaid duke’s ambition.”
This was undoubtedly the most perilous conjuncture of Cecil’s life.
Wherever there was a safe course, he was safe. But here every course
was full of danger. His situation rendered it impossible for him to be
neutral. If he acted on either side, if he refused to act at all, he ran
a fearful risk. He saw all the difficulties of his position. He sent
his money and plate out of London, made over his estates to his son, and
carried arms about his person. His best arms, however, were his sagacity
and his self-command. The plot in which he had been an unwilling
accomplice ended, as it was natural that so odious and absurd a plot
should end, in the ruin of its contrivers. In the meantime, Cecil
quietly extricated himself and, having been successively patronised by
Henry, by Somerset, and by Northumberland, continued to flourish under
the protection of Mary.
He had no aspirations after the crown of martyrdom. He confessed
himself, therefore, with great decorum, heard mass in Wimbledon Church
at Easter, and, for the better ordering of his spiritual concerns, took
a priest into his house. Dr. Nares, whose simplicity passes that of any
casuist with whom we are acquainted, vindicates his hero by assuring us
that this was not superstition, but pure unmixed hypocrisy. “That he did
in some manner conform, we shall not be able, in the face of existing
documents, to deny; while we feel in our own minds abundantly satisfied,
that, during this very trying reign, he never abandoned the prospect of
another revolution in favour of Protestantism.” In another place, the
Doctor tells us, that Cecil went to mass “with no idolatrous intention.”
Nobody, we believe, ever accused him of idolatrous intentions. The
very ground of the charge against him is that he had no idolatrous
intentions. We never should have blamed him if he had really gone to
Wimbledon Church, with the feelings of a good Catholic, to worship
the host. Dr. Nares speaks in several places with just severity of the
sophistry of the Jesuits, and with just admiration of the incomparable
letters of Pascal. It is somewhat strange, therefore, that he should
adopt, to the full extent, the jesuitical doctrine of the direction of
intentions.
We do not blame Cecil for not choosing to be burned. The deep stain upon
his memory is that, for differences of opinion for which he would risk
nothing himself, he, in the day of his power, took away without scruple
the lives of others. One of the excuses suggested in these Memoirs for
his conforming, during the reign of Mary to the Church of Rome, is that
he may have been of the same mind with those German Protestants who
were called Adiaphorists, and who considered the popish rites as
matters indifferent. Melanchthon was one of these moderate persons,
and “appears,” says Dr. Nares, “to have gone greater lengths than any
imputed to Lord Burleigh.” We should have thought this not only an
excuse, but a complete vindication, if Cecil had been an Adiaphorist for
the benefit of others as well as for his own. If the popish rites
were matters of so little moment that a good Protestant might lawfully
practise them for his safety, how could it be just or humane that a
Papist should be hanged, drawn, and quartered, for practising them from
a sense of duty? Unhappily these non-essentials soon became matters of
life and death just at the very time at which Cecil attained the highest
point of power and favour, an Act of Parliament was passed by which the
penalties of high treason were denounced against persons who should do
in sincerity what he had done from cowardice.
Early in the reign of Mary, Cecil was employed in a mission scarcely
consistent with the character of a zealous Protestant. He was sent to
escort the Papal Legate, Cardinal Pole, from Brussels to London. That
great body of moderate persons who cared more for the quiet of the
realm than for the controverted points which were in issue between the
Churches seem to have placed their chief hope in the wisdom and humanity
of the gentle Cardinal. Cecil, it is clear, cultivated the friendship
of Pole with great assiduity, and received great advantage from the
Legate’s protection.
But the best protection of Cecil, during the gloomy and disastrous reign
of Mary, was that which he derived from his own prudence and from his
own temper, a prudence which could never be lulled into carelessness, a
temper which could never be irritated into rashness. The Papists could
find no occasion against him. Yet he did not lose the esteem even of
those sterner Protestants who had preferred exile to recantation. He
attached himself to the persecuted heiress of the throne, and entitled
himself to her gratitude and confidence. Yet he continued to receive
marks of favour from the Queen. In the House of Commons, he put himself
at the head of the party opposed to the Court. Yet, so guarded was
his language that, even when some of those who acted with him were
imprisoned by the Privy Council, he escaped with impunity.
At length Mary died: Elizabeth succeeded; and Cecil rose at once to
greatness. He was sworn in Privy-councillor and Secretary of State
to the new sovereign before he left her prison of Hatfield; and he
continued to serve her during forty years, without intermission, in the
highest employments. His abilities were precisely those which keep men
long in power. He belonged to the class of the Walpoles, the Pelhams,
and the Liverpools, not to that of the St. Johns, the Carterets, the
Chathams, and the Cannings. If he had been a man of original genius and
of an enterprising spirit, it would have been scarcely possible for him
to keep his power or even his head. There was not room in one government
for an Elizabeth and a Richelieu. What the haughty daughter of Henry
needed, was a moderate, cautious, flexible minister, skilled in the
details of business, competent to advise, but not aspiring to command.
And such a minister she found in Burleigh. No arts could shake the
confidence which she reposed in her old and trusty servant. The courtly
graces of Leicester, the brilliant talents and accomplishments of Essex,
touched the fancy, perhaps the heart, of the woman; but no rival could
deprive the Treasurer of the place which he possessed in the favour of
the Queen. She sometimes chid him sharply; but he was the man whom she
delighted to honour. For Burleigh, she forgot her usual parsimony
both of wealth and of dignities. For Burleigh, she relaxed that severe
etiquette to which she was unreasonably attached. Every other person to
whom she addressed her speech, or on whom the glance of her eagle eye
fell, instantly sank on his knee. For Burleigh alone, a chair was set
in her presence; and there the old minister, by birth only a plain
Lincolnshire esquire, took his ease, while the haughty heirs of the
Fitzalans and the De Veres humbled themselves to the dust around him.
At length, having, survived all his early coadjutors and rivals, he
died full of years and honours. His royal mistress visited him on his
deathbed, and cheered him with assurances of her affection and esteem;
and his power passed, with little diminution, to a son who inherited his
abilities, and whose mind had been formed by his counsels.
The life of Burleigh was commensurate with one of the most important
periods in the history of the world. It exactly measures the time during
which the House of Austria held decided superiority and aspired to
universal dominion. In the year in which Burleigh was born, Charles the
Fifth obtained the imperial crown. In the year in which Burleigh died,
the vast designs which had, during near a century, kept Europe in
constant agitation, were buried in the same grave with the proud and
sullen Philip.
The life of Burleigh was commensurate also with the period during which
a great moral revolution was effected, a revolution the consequences of
which were felt, not only in the cabinets of princes, but at half the
firesides in Christendom. He was born when the great religious schism
was just commencing. He lived to see that schism complete, and to see
a line of demarcation, which, since his death, has been very little
altered, strongly drawn between Protestant and Catholic Europe.
The only event of modern times which can be properly compared with the
Reformation is the French Revolution, or, to speak more accurately, that
great revolution of political feeling which took place in almost every
part of the civilised world during the eighteenth century, and which
obtained in France its most terrible and signal triumph. Each of these
memorable events may be described as a rising up of the human reason
against a Caste. The one was a struggle of the laity against the clergy
for intellectual liberty; the other was a struggle of the people against
princes and nobles for political liberty. In both cases, the spirit of
innovation was at first encouraged by the class to which it was likely
to be most prejudicial. It was under the patronage of Frederic, of
Catherine, of Joseph, and of the grandees of France, that the philosophy
which afterwards threatened all the thrones and aristocracies of Europe
with destruction first became formidable. The ardour with which men
betook themselves to liberal studies, at the close of the fifteenth and
the beginning of the sixteenth century, was zealously encouraged by the
heads of that very church to which liberal studies were destined to be
fatal. In both cases, when the explosion came, it came with a violence
which appalled and disgusted many of those who had previously been
distinguished by the freedom of their opinions. The violence of the
democratic party in France made Burke a Tory and Alfieri a courtier. The
violence of the chiefs of the German schism made Erasmus a defender
of abuses, and turned the author of Utopia into a persecutor. In both
cases, the convulsion which had overthrown deeply seated errors, shook
all the principles on which society rests to their very foundations.
The minds of men were unsettled. It seemed for a time that all order and
morality were about to perish with the prejudices with which they had
been long and intimately associated. Frightful cruelties were committed.
Immense masses of property were confiscated. Every part of Europe
swarmed with exiles. In moody and turbulent spirits zeal soured into
malignity, or foamed into madness. From the political agitation of the
eighteenth century sprang the Jacobins. From the religious agitation
of the sixteenth century sprang the Anabaptists. The partisans of
Robespierre robbed and murdered in the name of fraternity and equality.
The followers of Kniperdoling robbed and murdered in the name of
Christian liberty. The feeling of patriotism was in many parts of
Europe, almost wholly extinguished. All the old maxims of foreign policy
were changed. Physical boundaries were superseded by moral boundaries.
Nations made war on each other with new arms, with arms which no
fortifications, however strong by nature or by art, could resist, with
arms before which rivers parted like the Jordan, and ramparts fell down
like the walls of Jericho. The great masters of fleets and armies were
often reduced to confess, like Milton’s warlike angel, how hard they
found it
”--To exclude Spiritual substance with corporeal bar.”
Europe was divided, as Greece had been divided during the period
concerning which Thucydides wrote. The conflict was not, as it is in
ordinary times, between state and state, but between two omnipresent
factions, each of which was in some places dominant and in other places
oppressed, but which, openly or covertly, carried on their strife in
the bosom of every society. No man asked whether another belonged to
the same country with himself, but whether he belonged to the same sect.
Party-spirit seemed to justify and consecrate acts which, in any other
times, would have been considered as the foulest of treasons. The French
emigrant saw nothing disgraceful in bringing Austrian and Prussian
hussars to Paris. The Irish or Italian democrat saw no impropriety in
serving the French Directory against his own native government. So, in
the sixteenth century, the fury of theological factions suspended all
national animosities and jealousies. The Spaniards were invited into
France by the League; the English were invited into France by the
Huguenots.
We by no means intend to underrate or to palliate the crimes and
excesses which, during the last generation, were produced by the spirit
of democracy. But, when we hear men zealous for the Protestant religion,
constantly represent the French Revolution as radically and essentially
evil on account of those crimes and excesses, we cannot but remember
that the deliverance of our ancestors from the house of their spiritual
bondage was effected “by plagues and by signs, by wonders and by war.”
We cannot but remember that, as in the case of the French Revolution, so
also in the case of the Reformation, those who rose up against tyranny
were themselves deeply tainted with the vices which tyranny engenders.
We cannot but remember that libels scarcely less scandalous than those
of Hebert, mummeries scarcely less absurd than those of Clootz, and
crimes scarcely less atrocious than those of Marat, disgrace the early
history of Protestantism. The Reformation is an event long past. That
volcano has spent its rage. The wide waste produced by its outbreak is
forgotten. The landmarks which were swept away have been replaced. The
ruined edifices have been repaired. The lava has covered with a rich
incrustation the fields which it once devastated, and, after having
turned a beautiful and fruitful garden into a desert, has again turned
the desert into a still more beautiful and fruitful garden. The second
great eruption is not yet over. The marks of its ravages are still all
around us. The ashes are still hot beneath our feet. In some directions
the deluge of fire still continues to spread. Yet experience surely
entitles us to believe that this explosion, like that which preceded it,
will fertilise the soil which it has devastated. Already, in those parts
which have suffered most severely, rich cultivation and secure dwellings
have begun to appear amidst the waste. The more we read of the history
of past ages, the more we observe the signs of our own times, the more
do we feel our hearts filled and swelled up by a good hope for the
future destinies of the human race.
The history of the Reformation in England is full of strange problems.
The most prominent and extraordinary phaenomenon which it presents to
us is the gigantic strength of the government contrasted with the
feebleness of the religious parties. During the twelve or thirteen years
which followed the death of Henry the Eighth, the religion of the
state was thrice changed. Protestantism was established by Edward;
the Catholic Church was restored by Mary; Protestantism was again
established by Elizabeth. The faith of the nation seemed to depend
on the personal inclinations of the sovereign. Nor was this all. An
established church was then, as a matter of course, a persecuting
church. Edward persecuted Catholics. Mary persecuted Protestants.
Elizabeth persecuted Catholics again. The father of those three
sovereigns had enjoyed the pleasure of persecuting both sects at once,
and had sent to death, on the same hurdle, the heretic who denied the
real presence, and the traitor who denied the royal supremacy. There
was nothing in England like that fierce and bloody opposition which,
in France, each of the religious factions in its turn offered to the
government. We had neither a Coligny nor a Mayenne, neither a Moncontour
nor an Ivry. No English city braved sword and famine for the reformed
doctrines with the spirit of Rochelle, or for the Catholic doctrines
with the spirit of Paris. Neither sect in England formed a League.
Neither sect extorted a recantation from the sovereign. Neither sect
could obtain from an adverse sovereign even a toleration. The English
Protestants, after several years of domination, sank down with scarcely
a struggle under the tyranny of Mary. The Catholics, after having
regained and abused their old ascendency submitted patiently to the
severe rule of Elizabeth. Neither Protestants nor Catholics engaged
in any great and well-organized scheme of resistance. A few wild and
tumultuous risings, suppressed as soon as they appeared, a few dark
conspiracies in which only a small number of desperate men engaged, such
were the utmost efforts made by these two parties to assert the most
sacred of human rights, attacked by the most odious tyranny.
The explanation of these circumstances which has generally been given is
very simple but by no means satisfactory. The power of the crown, it is
said, was then at its height, and was in fact despotic. This solution,
we own, seems to us to be no solution at all. It has long been the
fashion, a fashion introduced by Mr. Hume, to describe the English
monarchy in the sixteenth century as an absolute monarchy. And such
undoubtedly it appears to a superficial observer. Elizabeth, it is true,
often spoke to her parliaments in language as haughty and imperious
as that which the Great Turk would use to his divan. She punished with
great severity members of the House of Commons who, in her opinion,
carried the freedom of debate too far. She assumed the power of
legislating by means of proclamations. She imprisoned her subjects
without bringing them to a legal trial. Torture was often employed,
in defiance of the laws of England, for the purpose of extorting
confessions from those who were shut up in her dungeons. The authority
of the Star-Chamber and of the Ecclesiastical Commission was at its
highest point. Severe restraints were imposed on political and religious
discussion. The number of presses was at one time limited. No man could
print without a licence; and every work had to undergo the scrutiny
of the Primate, or the Bishop of London. Persons whose writings were
displeasing to the Court, were cruelly mutilated, like Stubbs, or put
to death, like Penry. Nonconformity was severely punished. The Queen
prescribed the exact rule of religious faith and discipline; and whoever
departed from that rule, either to the right or to the left, was in
danger of severe penalties.
Such was this government. Yet we know that it was loved by the great
body of those who lived under it. We know that, during the fierce
contests of the seventeenth century, both the hostile parties spoke of
the time of Elizabeth as of a golden age. That great Queen has now been
lying two hundred and thirty years in Henry the Seventh’s chapel. Yet
her memory is still dear to the hearts of a free people.
The truth seems to be that the government of the Tudors was, with a
few occasional deviations, a popular government, under the forms
of despotism. At first sight, it may seem that the prerogatives of
Elizabeth were not less ample than those of Lewis the Fourteenth, and
her parliaments were as obsequious as his parliaments, that her warrant
had as much authority as his lettre de cachet. The extravagance with
which her courtiers eulogized her personal and mental charms went
beyond the adulation of Boileau and Moliere. Lewis would have blushed
to receive from those who composed the gorgeous circles of Marli and
Versailles such outward marks of servitude as the haughty Britoness
exacted of all who approached her. But the authority of Lewis rested on
the support of his army. The authority of Elizabeth rested solely on the
support of her people. Those who say that her power was absolute do not
sufficiently consider in what her power consisted. Her power consisted
in the willing obedience of her subjects, in their attachment to her
person and to her office, in their respect for the old line from which
she sprang, in their sense of the general security which they enjoyed
under her government. These were the means, and the only means, which
she had at her command for carrying her decrees into execution, for
resisting foreign enemies, and for crushing domestic treason. There was
not a ward in the city, there was not a hundred in any shire in England,
which could not have overpowered the handful of armed men who composed
her household. If a hostile sovereign threatened invasion, if an
ambitious noble raised the standard of revolt, she could have recourse
only to the trainbands of her capital and the array of her counties,
to the citizens and yeomen of England, commanded by the merchants and
esquires of England.
Thus, when intelligence arrived of the vast preparations which Philip
was making for the subjugation of the realm, the first person to whom
the government thought of applying for assistance was the Lord Mayor of
London. They sent to ask him what force the city would engage to furnish
for the defence of the kingdom against the Spaniards. The Mayor and
Common Council, in return desired to know what force the Queen’s
Highness wished them to furnish. The answer was, fifteen ships, and five
thousand men. The Londoners deliberated on the matter, and, two days
after, “humbly intreated the council, in sign of their perfect love and
loyalty to prince and country, to accept ten thousand men, and thirty
ships amply furnished.”
People who could give such signs as these of their loyalty were by no
means to be misgoverned with impunity. The English in the sixteenth
century were, beyond all doubt, a free people. They had not, indeed, the
outward show of freedom; but they had the reality. They had not as good
a constitution as we have; but they had that without which the best
constitution is as useless as the king’s proclamation against vice and
immorality, that which, without any constitution, keeps rulers in awe,
force, and the spirit to use it. Parliaments, it is true, were rarely
held, and were not very respectfully treated. The great charter
was often violated. But the people had a security against gross and
systematic misgovernment, far stronger than all the parchment that was
ever marked with the sign-manual, and than all the wax that was ever
pressed by the great seal.
It is a common error in politics to confound means with ends.
Constitutions, charters, petitions of right, declarations of right,
representative assemblies, electoral colleges, are not good government;
nor do they, even when most elaborately constructed, necessarily produce
good government. Laws exist in vain for those who have not the courage
and the means to defend them. Electors meet in vain where want makes
them the slaves of the landlord, or where superstition makes them the
slaves of the priest. Representative assemblies sit in vain unless they
have at their command, in the last resort the physical power which is
necessary to make their deliberations free, and their votes effectual.
The Irish are better represented in parliament than the Scotch, who
indeed are not represented at all. But are the Irish better governed
than the Scotch? Surely not. This circumstance has of late been used as
an argument against reform. It proves nothing against reform. It proves
only this, that laws have no magical, no supernatural, virtue; that
laws do not act like Aladdin’s lamp or Prince Ahmed’s apple; that
priestcraft, that ignorance, that the rage of contending factions, may
make good institutions useless; that intelligence, sobriety, industry,
moral freedom, firm union, may supply in a great measure the defects of
the worst representative system. A people whose education and habits
are such that, in every quarter of the world they rise above the mass of
those with whom they mix, as surely as oil rises to the top of water,
a people of such temper and self-government that the wildest popular
excesses recorded in their history partake of the gravity of judicial
proceedings, and of the solemnity of religious rites, a people whose
national pride and mutual attachment have passed into a proverb, a
people whose high and fierce spirit, so forcibly described in
the haughty motto which encircles their thistle, preserved their
independence, during a struggle of centuries, from the encroachments
of wealthier and more powerful neighbours, such a people cannot be
long oppressed. Any government, however constituted, must respect their
wishes and tremble at their discontents. It is indeed most desirable
that such a people should exercise a direct influence on the conduct
of affairs, and should make their wishes known through constitutional
organs. But some influence, direct or indirect, they will assuredly
possess. Some organ, constitutional or unconstitutional, they will
assuredly find. They will be better governed under a good constitution
than under a bad constitution. But they will be better governed under
the worst constitution than some other nations under the best. In any
general classification of constitutions, the constitution of Scotland
must be reckoned as one of the worst, perhaps as the worst, in Christian
Europe. Yet the Scotch are not ill governed. And the reason is simply
that they will not bear to be ill governed.
In some of the Oriental monarchies, in Afghanistan for example,
though there exists nothing which an European publicist would call a
Constitution, the sovereign generally governs in conformity with certain
rules established for the public benefit; and the sanction of those
rules is, that every Afghan approves them, and that every Afghan is a
soldier.
The monarchy of England in the sixteenth century was a monarchy of this
kind. It is called an absolute monarchy, because little respect was paid
by the Tudors to those institutions which we have been accustomed to
consider as the sole checks on the power of the sovereign. A modern
Englishman can hardly understand how the people can have had any real
security for good government under kings who levied benevolences, and
chid the House of Commons as they would have chid a pack of dogs. People
do not sufficiently consider that, though the legal cheeks were feeble,
the natural checks were strong. There was one great and effectual
limitation on the royal authority, the knowledge that, if the patience
of the nation were severely tried, the nation would put forth its
strength, and that its strength would be found irresistible. If a large
body of Englishmen became thoroughly discontented, instead of presenting
requisitions, holding large meetings, passing resolutions, signing
petitions, forming associations and unions, they rose up; they
took their halberds and their bows; and, if the sovereign was not
sufficiently popular to find among his subjects other halberds and other
bows to oppose to the rebels, nothing remained for him but a repetition
of the horrible scenes of Berkeley and Pomfret, He had no regular army
which could, by its superior arms and its superior skill, overawe
or vanquish the sturdy Commons of his realm, abounding in the native
hardihood of Englishmen, and trained in the simple discipline of the
militia.
It has been said that the Tudors were as absolute as the Caesars. Never
was parallel so unfortunate. The government of the Tudors was the direct
opposite to the government of Augustus and his successors. The Caesars
ruled despotically, by means of a great standing army, under the decent
forms of a republican constitution. They called themselves citizens.
They mixed unceremoniously with other citizens. In theory they were only
the elective magistrates of a free commonwealth. Instead of arrogating
to themselves despotic power, they acknowledged allegiance to the
senate. They were merely the lieutenants of that venerable body. They
mixed in debate. They even appeared as advocates before the courts of
law. Yet they could safely indulge in the wildest freaks of cruelty
and rapacity, while their legions remained faithful. Our Tudors, on the
other hand, under the titles and forms of monarchical supremacy,
were essentially popular magistrates. They had no means of protecting
themselves against the public hatred; and they were therefore compelled
to court the public favour. To enjoy all the state and all the personal
indulgences of absolute power, to be adored with Oriental prostrations,
to dispose at will of the liberty and even of the life of ministers and
courtiers, this nation granted to the Tudors. But the condition on which
they were suffered to be the tyrants of Whitehall was that they should
be the mild and paternal sovereigns of England. They were under the same
restraints with regard to their people under which a military despot is
placed with regard to his army. They would have found it as dangerous to
grind their subjects with cruel taxation as Nero would have found it to
leave his praetorians unpaid. Those who immediately surrounded the royal
person, and engaged in the hazardous game of ambition, were exposed
to the most fearful dangers. Buckingham, Cromwell, Surrey, Seymour of
Sudeley, Somerset, Northumberland, Suffolk, Norfolk, Essex, perished
on the scaffold. But in general the country gentleman hunted and the
merchant traded in peace. Even Henry, as cruel as Domitian, but far more
politic, contrived, while reeking with the blood of the Lamiae, to be a
favourite with the cobblers.
The Tudors committed very tyrannical acts. But in their ordinary
dealings with the people they were not, and could not safely be,
tyrants. Some excesses were easily pardoned. For the nation was proud
of the high and fiery blood of its magnificent princes, and saw in many
proceedings which a lawyer would even then have condemned, the outbreak
of the same noble spirit which so manfully hurled foul scorn at Parma
and at Spain. But to this endurance there was a limit. If the
government ventured to adopt measures which the people really felt to be
oppressive, it was soon compelled to change its course. When Henry the
Eighth attempted to raise a forced loan of unusual amount by proceedings
of unusual rigour, the opposition which he encountered was such as
appalled even his stubborn and imperious spirit. The people, we are
told, said that, if they were treated thus, “then were it worse than the
taxes Of France; and England should be bond, and not free.” The county
of Suffolk rose in arms. The king prudently yielded to an opposition
which, if he had persisted, would, in all probability, have taken
the form of a general rebellion. Towards the close of the reign of
Elizabeth, the people felt themselves aggrieved by the monopolies. The
Queen, proud and courageous as she was, shrank from a contest with the
nation, and, with admirable sagacity, conceded all that her subjects
had demanded, while it was yet in her power to concede with dignity and
grace.
It cannot be imagined that a people who had in their own hands the means
of checking their princes would suffer any prince to impose upon them a
religion generally detested. It is absurd to suppose that, if the nation
had been decidedly attached to the Protestant faith, Mary could have
re-established the Papal supremacy. It is equally absurd to suppose
that, if the nation had been zealous for the ancient religion, Elizabeth
could have restored the Protestant Church. The truth is, that the people
were not disposed to engage in a struggle either for the new or for the
old doctrines. Abundance of spirit was shown when it seemed likely that
Mary would resume her father’s grants of church property, or that
she would sacrifice the interests of England to the husband whom she
regarded with unmerited tenderness. That queen found that it would be
madness to attempt the restoration of the abbey lands. She found that
her subjects would never suffer her to make her hereditary kingdom a
fief of Castile. On these points she encountered a steady resistance,
and was compelled to give way. If she was able to establish the Catholic
worship and to persecute those who would not conform to it, it was
evidently because the people cared far less for the Protestant religion
than for the rights of property and for the independence of the English
crown. In plain words, they did not think the difference between
the hostile sects worth a struggle. There was undoubtedly a zealous
Protestant party and a zealous Catholic party. But both these parties
were, we believe, very small. We doubt, whether both together made
up, at the time of Mary’s death, the twentieth part of the nation. The
remaining nineteen twentieths halted between the two opinions, and were
not disposed to risk a revolution in the government, for the purpose of
giving to either of the extreme factions an advantage over the other.
We possess no data which will enable us to compare with exactness the
force of the two sects. Mr. Butler asserts that, even at the accession
of James the First, a majority of the population of England were
Catholics. This is pure assertion; and is not only unsupported by
evidence, but, we think, completely disproved by the strongest evidence.
Dr. Lingard is of opinion that the Catholics were one-half of the
nation in the middle of the reign of Elizabeth. Rushton says that,
when Elizabeth came to the throne, the Catholics were two-thirds of
the nation, and the Protestants only one-third. The most judicious and
impartial of English historians, Mr. Hallam, is, on the contrary, of
opinion, that two-thirds were Protestants and only one-third Catholics.
To us, we must confess, it seems, incredible that, if the Protestants
were really two to one, they should have borne the government of Mary,
or that, if the Catholics were really two to one, they should have
borne the government of Elizabeth. We are at a loss to conceive how a
sovereign who has no standing army, and whose power rests solely on the
loyalty of his subjects, can continue for years to persecute a religion
to which the majority of his subjects are sincerely attached. In fact,
the Protestants did rise up against one sister, and the Catholics
against the other. Those risings clearly showed how small and feeble
both the parties were. Both in the one case and in the other the nation
ranged itself on the side of the government, and the insurgents were
speedily put down and punished. The Kentish gentlemen who took up arms
for the reformed doctrines against Mary, and the great Northern Earls
who displayed the banner of the Five Wounds against Elizabeth, were
alike considered by the great body of their countrymen as wicked
disturbers of the public peace.
The account which Cardinal Bentivoglio gave of the state of religion in
England well deserves consideration. The zealous Catholics he reckoned
at one-thirtieth part of the nation. The people who would without
the least scruple become Catholics, if the Catholic religion were
established, he estimated at four-fifths of the nation. We believe this
account to have been very near the truth. We believe that people,
whose minds were made up on either side, who were inclined to make any
sacrifice or run any risk for either religion, were very few. Each side
had a few enterprising champions, and a few stout-hearted martyrs; but
the nation, undetermined in its opinions and feelings, resigned itself
implicitly to the guidance of the government, and lent to the sovereign
for the time being an equally ready aid against either of the extreme
parties.
We are very far from saying that the English of that generation were
irreligious. They held firmly those doctrines which are common to the
Catholic and to the Protestant theology. But they had no fixed opinion
as to the matters in dispute between the churches. They were in a
situation resembling that of those Borderers whom Sir Walter Scott has
described with so much spirit,
“_Who sought the beeves that made their broth In England and in Scotland
both_.”