struggle: nobody could tell where it would break forth or where it
would end. And ever and anon Luther's rallying-cry was heard in answer
to the furious denunciations of cardinals and popes. Interests get
parcelled out in so many separate portions that it is impossible
to unravel the state of affairs with any clearness. We shall only
notice that, in 1531, the famous league of Smalcalde first embodied
Protestantism in its national and lay constitution by the banding
together of nine of the sovereign princes of Germany, and eleven free
cities, in armed defence, if needed, of their religious belief. Where
is the fiery Henry of England, with his pen or sword? A very changed
man from what we saw him only thirteen years ago. He has no pen now,
and his sword is kept for his discontented subjects at home. In 1534,
King and Lords and Commons, in Parliament assembled, threw off the
supremacy of Rome, and Henry is at last a king, for his courts hold
cognizance of all causes within the realm, whether ecclesiastical or
civil. Everybody knows the steps by which this embodied selfishness
achieved his emancipation from a dominant Church. It little concerns
us now, except as a question of historic curiosity, what his motives
were. Judging from the analogy of all his other actions, we should
say they were bad; but by some means or other the evil deeds of this
man were generally productive of benefit to his country. He cast off
the Pope that he might be freed from a disagreeable wife; but as the
Pope whom he rejected was the servant of Charles, (the nephew of the
repudiated queen,) he found that he had freed his kingdom at the same
time from its degrading vassalage to the puppet of a rival monarch.
He dissolved the monasteries in England for the purpose of grasping
their wealth; but the country found he had at the same time delivered
it from a swarm of idle and mischievous corporations, which in no long
time would have swallowed up the land. Their revenues were immense,
and the extent of their domains almost incredible. Before people had
recovered from their disgust at the hateful motives of their tyrant's
behaviour, the results of it became apparent in the elevation of the
finest class of the English population; for the "bold peasantry, their
country's pride," began to establish their independent holdings on
the parcelled-out territories of the monks and nuns. Vast tracts of
ground were thrown open to the competition of lay proprietors. Even the
poorest was not without hope of becoming an owner of the soil; nay, the
released estates were so plentiful that in Elizabeth's reign an act was
passed making it illegal for a man to build a cottage "unless he laid
four acres of land thereto." The cottager, therefore, became a small
farmer; and small farmers were the defence of England; and the defence
of England was the safety of freedom and religion throughout the world.
There were some hundred thousands of those landed cottagers and smaller
gentry and great proprietors established by this most respectable
sacrilege of Henry the Eighth, and for the sake of these excellent
consequences we forgive him his pride and cruelty and all his faults.
But Henry's work was done, and in January, 1547, he died. The rivals
with whom he started on the race of life were still alive; but life was
getting dark and dreary with both of them. Francis was no longer the
hero of "The Field of the Cloth-of-Gold," conqueror of Marignano, the
gallant captive of Pavia, or the winner of all hearts. He was worn out
with a life of great vicissitudes, and heard with ominous foreboding
the news of Henry's death. [March 11, 1547.] A fate seemed to unite
them in all those years of revelry and hate and friendship, and in a
few weeks the most chivalrous and generous of the Valois followed the
most tyrannical of the Tudors to the tomb. A year before this, the
Monk of Wittenberg, now the renowned and married Dr. Martin Luther,
had left a place vacant which no man could fill; and now of all those
combatants Charles was the sole survivor. Selfish as Henry, dissolute
as Francis, obstinate as Martin, his race also was drawing to a close.
But the play was played out before these chief performers withdrew. All
Europe had changed its aspect. The England, the France, the Empire, of
five-and-twenty years before had utterly passed away. New objects were
filling men's minds, new principles of policy were regulating states.
Protestantism was an established fact, and the Treaty of Passau in 1552
gave liberty and equality to the professors of the new faith. Charles
was sagacious though heartless as a ruler, but an unredeemed bigot as
an individual man. The necessities of his condition, by which he was
forced to give toleration to the enemies of the Church, weighed upon
his heart. A younger hand and bloodier disposition, he thought, were
needed to regain the ground he had been obliged to yield; and in Philip
his son he perceived all these requirements fulfilled. When he looked
round, he saw nothing to give him comfort in his declining years. War
was going on in Hungary against the still advancing Turks; war was
raging in Lorraine between his forces and the French; Italy, the land
of volcanoes, was on the eve of outbreak and anarchy; and, thundering
out defiance of the Imperial power and the Christian Cross, the guns
of the Ottoman fleet were heard around the shores of Sicily and up to
the Bay of Naples. The emperor was faint and weary: his armies were
scattered and dispirited; his fleets were unequal to their enemy: so in
1556 he resigned his pompous title of monarch of Spain and the Indies,
with all their dependencies, to his son, and the empire to his brother
Ferdinand, who was already King of Hungary and Bohemia and hereditary
Duke of Austria; and then, with the appearance of resignation, but his
soul embittered by anger and disappointment, he retired to the Convent
of St. Just, where he gorged himself into insanity with gluttonies
which would have disgraced Vitellius, and amused himself by interfering
in state affairs which he had forsworn, and making watches which
he could not regulate, and going through the revolting farce of a
rehearsal of his funeral, with his body in the coffin and the monks of
the monastery for mourners. Those theatrical lamentations were probably
as sincere as those which followed his real demise in 1558; for when he
surrendered the power which made him respected he gave evidence only
of the qualities which made him disliked.
The Reformation, you remember, is the characteristic of this century.
We have traced it in Germany to its recognition as a separate and
liberated faith. In England we are going to see Protestantism
established and triumphant. But not yet; for we have first to notice
a period when Protestantism seems at its last hour, when Mary, wife
of the bigot Philip, and true and honourable daughter of the Church,
is determined to restore her nation to the Romish chair, or die in
the holy attempt. We are not going into the minutiæ of this dreadful
time, or to excite your feelings with the accounts of the burnings and
torturings of the dissenters from the queen's belief. None of us are
ignorant of the cruelty of those proceedings, or have read unmoved the
sad recital of the martyrdom of the bishops and of such men as the
joyous and innocent Rowland Taylor of Hadleigh. Men's hearts did not
become hardened by these sights. Rather they melted with compassion
towards the dauntless sufferers; and, though the hush of terror
kept the masses of the people silent, great thoughts were rising in
the general mind, and toleration ripened even under the heat of the
Smithfield fires. Attempts have been made to blacken Mary beyond her
demerits and to whiten her beyond her deservings. Protestants have
denied her the virtues she unquestionably possessed,--truthfulness,
firmness, conscientiousness, and unimpeachable morals. Her panegyrists
take higher ground, and claim for her the noblest qualifications
both as queen and woman,--patriotism, love of her people, fulfilment
of all her duties, and exquisite tenderness of disposition. It will
be sufficient for us to look at her actions, and we will leave her
secret sentiments alone. We shall only say that it is very doubtful
whether the plea of conscientiousness is admissible in such a case.
If perverted reasoning or previous education has made a Thug feel it
a point of conscience to put his throttling instrument under a quiet
traveller's throat, the conscientious belief of the performer that his
act is for the good of the sufferer's soul will scarcely save him from
the gallows. On the contrary, a conscientious persistence in what is
manifestly wrong should be an aggravation of the crime, for it gives
an appearance of respectability to atrocity, and, when punishment
overtakes the wrong-doers, makes the Thug an honoured martyr to his
opinions, instead of a convicted felon for his misdeeds. Let us hope
that the rights of conscience will never be pleaded in defence of
cruelty or persecution.
[A.D. 1554.]
The restoration of England to the obedience of the Church, the marriage
of Mary, the warmest partisan of Popery, with Philip, the fanatical
oppressor of the reformed,--these must have raised the hopes of
Rome to an extraordinary pitch. But greater as a support, and more
reliable than queens or kings, was the Society of the Jesuits, which
at this time demonstrated its attachment to the Holy See, and devoted
itself blindly, remorselessly, unquestioning, to the defence of the
old faith. Having sketched the rise of Luther, a companion-picture
is required of the fortunes of Ignatius Loyola. We hinted that a
Biscayan soldier, wounded at the siege of Pampeluna in Spain, divided
the notice of Europe with the poor Austin Friar of Wittenberg.
Enthusiasm, rising almost into madness, was no bar, in the case of
this wonderful Spaniard, to the possession of faculties for government
and organization which have never been surpassed. Shut out by the
lameness resulting from his wound from the struggles of worldly and
soldierly ambition, he gave full way to the mystic exaltation of his
Southern disposition. He devoted himself as knight and champion to the
Virgin, heard with contempt and horror of the efforts made to deny the
omnipotence of the Chair of Rome, and swore to be its defender. Others
of similar sentiments joined him in his crusade against innovation.
[A.D. 1540.] A company of self-denying, self-sacrificing men began,
and, adding to the previous laws of their order a vow of unqualified
submission to the Pope, they were recognised by a bull, and the Society
of Jesus became the strongest and most remarkable institution of modern
times. Through all varieties of fortune, in exile and imprisonment, and
even in dissolution, their oath of uninquiring, unhesitating obedience
to the papal command has never been broken. With Protean variety of
appearance, but unvarying identity of intention, these soldiers of St.
Peter are as relentless to others, and as regardless of themselves, as
the body-guard of the old Assassins. No degradation is too servile,
no place too distant, no action too revolting, for these unreasoning
instruments of power. Wilfully surrendering the right of judgment and
the feelings of conscience into the hands of their superior, there
is no method by law or argument of regulating their conduct. The one
principle of submission has swallowed up all the rest, and fulfilment
of that duty ennobles the iniquitous deeds by which it is shown. Other
societies put a clause, either by words or implication, in their
promise of obedience, limiting it to things which are just and proper.
This limit is ostentatiously abrogated by the followers of Loyola. The
merit of obeying an order to slay an enemy of the Church more than
compensates for the guilt of the murder. In other orders a homicide is
looked upon with horror; in this, a Jesuit who kills a heretical king
by command of his chiefs is venerated as a saint. Against practices
and feelings like these you can neither reason nor be on your guard.
In all kingdoms, accordingly, at some time or other, the existence of
the order has been found inconsistent with the safety of the State,
and it has been dissolved by the civil power. The moment, however,
the Church regains its hold, the Jesuits are sure to be restored. The
alliance, indeed, is indispensable, and the mutual aid of the Order
and of the Papacy a necessity of their existence. Incorporated in
1540, the brothers of the Company of Jesus considered the defections
of the Reformation in a fair way of being compensated when the death
of our little, cold-hearted, self-willed Edward the Sixth--a Henry
the Eighth in the bud--left the throne in 1553 to Mary, a Henry the
Eighth full blown. [A.D. 1558.] When nearly five years of conscientious
truculence had shown the earnestness of this unhappy woman's belief,
the accession of Elizabeth inaugurated a new system in this country,
from which it has never departed since without a perceptible loss
both of happiness and power. A strictly home and national policy was
immediately established by this most remarkable of our sovereigns, and
pursued through good report and evil report, sometimes at the expense
of her feelings--if she was so little of a Tudor as to have any--of
tenderness and compassion, sometimes at the expense--and here she was
Tudor enough to have very acute sensations indeed--of her personal and
official dignity, but always with the one object of establishing a
great united and irresistible bulwark against foreign oppression and
domestic disunion. It shows how powerful was her impression upon the
course of European history, that her character is as fiercely canvassed
at this day as in the speech of her contemporaries. Nobody feels as
if Elizabeth was a personage removed from us by three hundred years.
We discuss her actions, and even argue about her looks and manners,
as if she had lived in our own time. And this is the reason why such
divergent judgments are pronounced on a person who, more than any other
ruler, united the opinions of her subjects during the whole of her
long and agitated life. Her acts remain, but her judges are different.
If we could throw ourselves with the reality of circumstance as well
as the vividness of feeling into the period in which she moved and
governed, we should come to truer decisions on the points submitted to
our view. But if we look with the refinements of the present time, and
the speculative niceties permissible in questions which have no direct
bearing on our prosperity and safety, we shall see much to disapprove
of, which escaped the notice, or even excited the admiration, of the
people who saw what tremendous arbitraments were on the scale. If we
were told that a cold-blooded individual had placed on one occasion
some murderous weapons on a height, and then requested a number of his
friends to stand before them, while some unsuspecting persons came
up in that direction, and then, suddenly telling his companions to
stand on one side, had sent bullets hissing and crashing through the
gentlemen advancing to him, you would shudder with disgust at such
atrocious cruelty, till you were told that the cold-blooded individual
was the Duke of Wellington, and the advancing gentlemen the French
Old Guard at Waterloo. And in the same way, if we read of Elizabeth
interfering in Scotland, domineering at home, and bellicose abroad,
let us inquire, before we condemn, whether she was in her duty during
those operations,--whether, in fact, she was resisting an assault, or
capriciously and unjustifiably opening her batteries on the innocent
and unprepared. Fiery-hearted, strong-handed Scotchmen are ready to
fight at this time for the immaculate purity and sinless martyrdom of
their beautiful Mary, and sturdy Englishmen start up with as bold a
countenance in defence of good Queen Bess. It is not to be doubted
that a roll-call as numerous as that of Bannockburn or Flodden could
be mustered on this quarrel of three centuries ago; but the fight is
needless. The points of view are so different that a verdict can never
be given on the merits of the two personages principally engaged; but
we think an unprejudiced examination of the course of Elizabeth's
policy in Scotland, and her treatment of her rival, will establish
certain facts which neither party can gainsay.
1st. From this it will result, that, to keep reformed England secure,
it was indispensable to have reformed Scotland on her side.
2d. That, in order to have Scotland either reformed or on her side, it
was indispensable to render powerless a popish queen,--a queen who was
supported as legitimate inheritor of England by the Pope and Philip of
Spain, and the King and princes of France.
3d. That Elizabeth had a right, by all the laws of self-preservation,
to sustain by every legal and peaceable means that party in Scotland
which was _de facto_ the government of the country, and which promised
to be most useful to the objects she had in view. Those objects have
already been named,--peace and security for the Protestant religion,
and the honour and independence of the whole British realm.
To gain these ends, who denies that she bribed and bullied and
deceived?--that she degraded the Scottish nobles by alternate promises
and threats, and weakened the Scottish crown by encouraging its
enemies, both ecclesiastical and civil? In prudishly finding fault
with these proceedings, we forget the Scotch, French, Spanish, popish,
emissaries who were let loose upon England; the plots at home, the
scowling messages from abroad; the excommunications uttered from Rome;
the massacre of the Protestants gloried in in France, and the vast
navies and immense armies gathering against the devoted Isle from all
the coasts and provinces of Spain.
In 1568, after the defeat of the queen's party at Langside, Mary
threw herself on the pity and protection of Elizabeth, and was kept
in honourable safety for many years. She did not allow her to collect
partisans for the recovery of her kingdom, nor to cabal against the
government which had expelled her. To do so would not have been to
shelter a fugitive, but to declare war on Scotland. In 1848, Louis
Philippe, chased by the revolutionists of Paris, came over to England.
He was kept in honourable retirement. He was not allowed to cabal
against his former subjects, nor to threaten their policy. To do so
would not have been to shelter a fugitive, but to declare war on
France. Even in the case of the earlier Bourbons, we permitted no
gatherings of forces on their behalf, and did not encourage their
followers to molest the settled government,--no, not when the throne of
France was filled by an enemy and we were at deadly war with Napoleon.
But Mary was put to death. A sad story, and very melancholy to read in
quiet drawing-rooms with Britannia ruling the waves and keeping all
danger from our coasts. But in 1804, if Louis the Eighteenth or Charles
the Tenth, instead of eating the bread of charity in peace, had been
detected in conspiracy with our enemies, in corresponding with foreign
emissaries, when a thousand flat-bottomed boats were marshalling for
our invasion at Boulogne, and Brest and Cherbourg and Toulon were
crowded with ships and sailors to protect the flotilla, it needs no
great knowledge of character to pronounce that English William Pitt
and Scottish Harry Dundas would have had the royal Bourbon's head on
a block, or his body on Tyburn-tree, in spite of all the romance and
eloquence in the world.
Mary's guilt or innocence of the charges brought against her in
her relations with Darnley and Bothwell has nothing to do with the
treatment she received from Elizabeth. She was not amenable to English
law for any thing she did in Scotland, nor was she condemned for any
thing but treasonable practices which it was impossible to deny.
She certainly owed submission and allegiance to the English crown
while she lived under its protection. Let us indulge our chivalrous
generosity, and enjoy delightful poems in defence of an unfortunate and
beautiful sovereign, by believing that the blots upon her fame were
the aspersions of malignity and political baseness: the great fact
remains, that it was an indispensable incident to the security of both
the kingdoms that she should be deprived of authority, and finally, as
the storm darkened, and derived all its perils from her conspiracies
against the State and breaches of the law, that she should be deprived
of life. Far more sweeping measures were pursued and defended by the
enemies of Elizabeth abroad. Present forever, like a skeleton at a
feast, must have been the massacre of St. Bartholomew in the thoughts
of every Protestant in Europe, and most vividly of all in those of the
English queen. That great blow was meant to be a warning to heretics
wherever they were found, and in olden times and more revengeful
dispositions might have been an excuse for similar atrocity on the
other side. The Bartholomew massacre and the Armada are the two great
features of the latter part of this century; and they are both so well
known that it will be sufficient to recall them in a very few words.
This massacre was no chance-sprung event, like an ordinary popular
rising, but had been matured for many years. The Council of Trent,
which met in 1545 and continued its sittings till 1563, had devoted
those eighteen years to codifying the laws of the Catholic Church. A
definite, clear, consistent system was established, and acknowledged
as the religious and ecclesiastical faith of Christendom. Men were not
now left to a painful gathering of the sentiments and rescripts of
popes and doctors out of varying and scattered writings. Here were the
statutes at large, minutely indexed and easy of reference. From these
many texts could be gathered which justified any method of diffusing
the true belief or exterminating the false. And accordingly, a short
time after the close of the Council, an interview took place between
two personages, of very sinister augury for the Protestant cause.
Catherine de Medicis and the Duke of Alva met at Bayonne in 1565. In
this consultation great things were discussed; and it was decided by
the wickedest woman and harshest man in Europe that government could
not be safe nor religion honoured unless by the introduction of the
Inquisition and a general massacre of heretics in every land. A few
months later saw the ferocious Alva beginning his bloodthirsty career
in the Netherlands, in which he boasted he had put eighteen thousand
Hollanders to death on the scaffold in five years. Catherine also
pondered his lessons in her heart, and when seven years had passed, and
the Huguenots were still unsubdued, she persuaded her son Charles the
Ninth that the time was come to establish his kingdom in righteousness
by the indiscriminate murder of all the Protestants. An occasion was
found in 1572, when the marriage of Henry of Navarre, afterwards the
best-loved king of France, with the Princess Margaret de Valois, held
out a prospect of soothing the religious troubles, and also (which
suited her designs better) of attracting all the heads of the Huguenot
cause to Paris. Every thing turned out as she hoped. There had been
feasts and gayeties, and suspicion had been thoroughly disarmed.
Suddenly the tocsin was sounded, and the murderers let loose over all
the town. No plea was received in extenuation of the deadly crime of
favouring the new opinions. Hospitality, friendship, relationship,
youth, sex, all were disregarded. The streets were red with blood, and
the river choked with mutilated bodies. Upwards of seventy thousand
were butchered in Paris alone, and the metropolitan example was
followed in other places. The deed was so awful that for a while it
silenced the whole of Europe. Some doubted, some shuddered; but Rome
sprang up with a shout of joy when the news was confirmed, and uttered
prayers of thanksgiving for so great a victory. If it could have been
possible to put every gainsayer to death everywhere, the triumph would
have been complete; but there were countries where Catherine's dagger
could not reach; and whenever her name was heard, and the terrible
details of the massacre were known, undying hatred of the Church which
encouraged such iniquity mingled with the feelings of pity and alarm.
For no one henceforth could feel safe. The Huguenots were under the
highest protection known to the heart of man. They were guests, and
they were taken unawares in the midst of the rejoicings of a marriage.
Rome lost more by the massacre than the Protestants. People looked
round and saw the butcheries in the Netherlands, the slaughters in
Paris, the tortures in the Inquisition, and over all, rioting in hopes
of recovered dominion, supported by his priests and Dominicans, a Pope
who plainly threatened a repetition of such scenes wherever his power
was acknowledged. Germany, the Netherlands, England, Scotland, and
the Northern nations, were lost to the Church of Rome more surely by
the scaffold and crimes which professed to bring her aid, than by any
other cause. Elizabeth was now the accepted champion and leader of the
Protestants, and on her all the malice of the baffled Romanists was
turned. To weaken, to dethrone or murder the English heretic was the
praiseworthiest of deeds.
But one great means of distracting England from her onward course was
now removed. In former days Scotland would have been let loose upon
her unguarded flanks; but by this time the genius of Knox, running
parallel with the efforts of the Southern reformers, had raised a
religious feeling which responded to the English call. Scotland, freed
from an oppressive priesthood, did manful battle at the side of her
former enemy. Elizabeth was kept safe by the joint hatred the nations
entertained to Rome, and, as regarded foreigners, the Union had already
taken place. On one sure ground, however, those foreigners could still
build their hopes. Mary, conscientious in her religion, and embittered
in her dislike, was still alive, to be the rallying-point for every
discontented cry and to represent the old causes,--the legitimate
descent and the true faith. The greatest circumspection would have
been required to keep her conduct from suspicion in these embarrassing
circumstances. But she was still as thoughtless as in her happier
days, and exposed herself to legal inquiries by the unguardedness of
her behaviour. The wise counsellors of Elizabeth saw but one way to
put an end to all those fears and expectations; and Mary, after due
trial, was condemned and executed. [A.D. 1587.] Hope was now at an end;
but revenge remained, and the great Colossus of the Papacy bestirred
himself to punish the sacrilegious usurper. Philip the Second was
still the most Catholic of kings. More stern and bigoted than when he
had tried to restrain the burning zeal of Mary of England, he was
resolved to restore by force a revolted people to the Chair of St.
Peter and exact vengeance for the slights and scorns which had rankled
in his heart from the date of his ill-omened visit. He prepared all
his forces for the glorious attempt. Nothing could have been devised
more calculated to bring all English hearts more closely to their
queen. Every report of a fresh squadron joining the fleets already
assembled for the invasion called forth more zeal in behalf of the
reformed Church and the undaunted Elizabeth. Scotland also held some
vessels ready to assist her sister in this great extremity, and lined
her shores with Presbyterian spearmen. Community of danger showed more
clearly than ever that safety lay in combination. Chains, we know, were
brought over in those missionary galleys, and all the apparatus of
torture, with smiths to set them to work. But the smiths and the chains
never made good their landing on British ground. The ships covered all
the narrow sea; but the wind blew, and they were scattered. It was
perhaps better, as a warning and a lesson, that the principal cause of
the Spaniard's disaster was a storm. If it had been fairly inflicted on
them in open battle, the superior seamanship or numbers or discipline
of the enemy might have been pleaded. But there must have mingled
something more depressing than the mere sorrow of defeat when Philip
received his discomfited admiral with the words, "We cannot blame you
for what has happened: we cannot struggle against the will of God."
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.
Kings of France.
A.D.
HENRY IV.--(_cont._)
1610. LOUIS XIII.
1643. LOUIS XIV.
Emperors of Germany.
A.D.
RODOLPH II.--(_cont._)
1612. MATTHIAS.
1619. FERDINAND II.
1637. FERDINAND III.
1658. LEOPOLD I.
Kings of England and Scotland.
A.D.
ELIZABETH.--(_cont._)
(_House of Stuart._)
1603. JAMES I.
1625. CHARLES I.
1649. Commonwealth.
1660. CHARLES II.
1685. JAMES II.
1689. WILLIAM III. and MARY.
Kings of Spain.
A.D.
PHILIP III.--(_cont._)
1621. PHILIP IV.
1665. CHARLES II.
Distinguished Men.
BACON, MILTON, LOCKE, CORNEILLE, RACINE, MOLIÈRE, KEPLER, (1571-1630,)
BOYLE, (1627-1691,) BOSSUET, (1627-1704,) NEWTON, (1642-1727,)
BURNET, (1643-1715,) BAYLE, (1647-1706,) CONDÉ, TURENNE, (1611-1675,)
MARLBOROUGH, (1650-1722.)
THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.
ENGLISH REBELLION AND REVOLUTION--DESPOTISM OF LOUIS THE FOURTEENTH.