VIII. must be placed in the unimpassioned class. It may be noted too in
passing that all the portraits of Henry show us a feeble growth of hair on
the face and signs of a convex back--convex vertically and convex
transversely. We do not see the back it is true, but we see both the head
and the shoulders carried forwards and the chin held down towards the
chest--held indeed so far downward that the neck seems greatly shortened.
It is interesting to observe the pose of the head and neck and shoulders
in the portraits of noted personages. The forward head and shoulders, the
downward chin (the products of a certain spinal configuration) are seen in
undoubtedly different characters but characters which nevertheless have
much in common: they are seen in all the portraits of Napoleon I. and,
although not quite so markedly, in those of our own General Gordon.
Napoleon and Gordon were unlike in many ways, and the gigantic
self-importance and self-seeking of Napoleon were absent in the simpler
and finer character. In other ways they were much alike. Both were brave
active busy men; but both were fitful, petulant, censorius, difficult to
please, and--which is very characteristic--both although changeable were
nevertheless self-willed and self-confident. Both were devoid of the
deeper passions.
THE WIVES QUESTION.
NOTE IV.
It is affirmed that no one save a monster of lust would marry six wives--a
monster of lust being of course a man of over-mastering passion. It might
be asked, in passing, seeing that six wives is the sign of a perfect
"monster" if three wives make a semi-monster? Pompey had five wives, was
he five-sixths of a monster. To be serious however in this wife question,
it will probably never be possible to say with exactness how much in
Henry's conduct was due to religious scruples; how much to the urgent
importunity (state-born importunity) of advisers and subjects; how much to
the then existing confusion of the marriage laws; how much to misfortune
and coincidence; how much to folly and caprice; how much to colossal
self-importance, and how much to "unbounded license."
History broadly hints that great delusions, like great revolutions, may
overcome--especially if the overcoming be not too sudden--both peoples and
persons without their special wonder. In such delusions and such
revolutions the actors and the victims are alike often unconscious actors
and unconscious victims. Neither Henry nor his people dreamt that the
great marriage question of the sixteenth century would excite the ridicule
of all succeeding centuries. Luther did not imagine that his efforts would
help to divide religious Europe into two permanently hostile camps.
Robespierre did not suspect that his name would live as an enduring
synonym for blood. But to marry six wives, solely on licentious grounds,
is a proceeding so striking and so uncomplicated that no delusion could
possibly come over the performer and certainly not over a watchful people.
Yet something akin to delusion there certainly was; its causes however
were several and complex, and lust was the least potent of them. The
statement may seem strange, but there was little of desire in Henry's
composition. A monster he possibly was of some sort of folly; but strange
as it may seem he was a monster of folly precisely because he was the
opposite of a monster of passion. Unhappily unbounded lust is now and then
a feature of the impassioned temperament. It is never seen however in the
less impassioned, and Henry was one of the less impassioned. The want of
dignity is itself a striking feature in the character of passionless and
active men, and want of dignity was the one conspicuous defect in Henry's
conduct in his marriage affairs. Perhaps too, dignity--personal or
national--is, like quietness and like kindliness, among the later growths
of civilisation.
No incident or series of incidents illustrative of character in any of its
phases, no matter how striking the incidents, or how strong the character
or phase of character, have ever happened once only. If libertinism, for
example, had ever shown itself in the selection and destruction of
numerous wives, history would assuredly give information pertinent
thereto: it gives none. Nothing happens once only. Even the French
Revolution, so frequently regarded as a unique event, was only one of
several examples of the inherent and peculiar cruelty of the French
celt.[1] The massacre of Bartholomew was more revolting in its numbers
and in its character. The massacre of the commune, French military
massacres and various massacres in French history deprive the "great"
Revolution of its exceptional character. But to return. There were
licentious kings and princes before Henry, granting he was licentious, and
there have been notably licentious kings and princes since: their methods
are well known and they were wholly unlike his.
[1] From historic comparison we may feel sure that no such cruelty was
found in the Gothic and Frankish and Norman blood of France.
Certain incidents concerning Henry's marriages are of great physiological
interest: a fat, bustling, restless, fitful, wilful man approaching
mid-life--a man brim full of activity but deficient in feeling, waited
twenty years before the idea of divorce was seriously entertained; and
several more years of Papal shiftiness were endured, not without petulance
enough, but seemingly without storm or whirlwind. When Jane Seymour died,
three years of single life followed. It is true the three years were not
without marriage projects, but they were entirely state projects, and were
in no way voluptuous overtures. The marriage with Anne of Cleves was a
purely state marriage, and remained, so historians tell us, a merely
nominal and ceremonial marriage during the time the King and the German
princess occupied the same bed--a circumstance not at all indicative of
"monstrous" passion. The very unfaithfulness of Anne Boleyn and Catherine
Howard is not without its significance, for the proceedings of our Divorce
Court show that as a rule (a rule it is true not without exceptions) we do
not find the wives of lustful men to be unfaithful. In the case of a Burns
or a Byron or a King David it is not the wife who is led astray; it is the
wives of the Henrys and the Arthurs, strikingly dissimilar as they were in
so many respects, who are led into temptation.
No _sane_ man is the embodiment of a single passion. Save in the wards of
a lunatic asylum a simple monster of voluptuousness, or monster of anger,
or monster of hate has no existence; and within those wards such monsters
are undoubted examples of nerve ailment. It is true one (very rarely one
only) passion may unduly predominate--one or more may be fostered and
others may be dwarfed; but as a very general rule the deeper passions run
together. One passion, if unequivocally present, denotes the existence of
other passions, palpable or latent--denotes the existence, in fact, of the
impassioned temperament. Henry VIII., startling as the statement may seem,
had no single, deep, unequivocal passion--no deep love, no profound pity,
no overwhelming grief, no implacable hate, no furious anger. The noisy
petulance of a busy, censorious, irritable man and the fretfulness of an
invalid are frequently misunderstood. On no single occasion did Henry
exhibit overmastering anger. Historians note with evident surprise that he
received the conclusion of the most insulting farce in history--the
Campeggio farce--with composure. When the Bishop of Rochester thrust
himself, unbidden, into the Campeggio Court in order to denounce the king
and the divorce, Henry's only answer was a long and learned essay on the
degrees of incestuous marriage which the Pope might or might not permit.
When his own chaplains scolded him, in coarse terms, in his own chapel, he
listened, not always without peevishness, but always without anger.
Turning to other emotions, no hint is given of Henry's grief at the loss
of son after son in his earlier married years. If a husband of even
ordinary affection _could_ ever have felt grief, it would surely show
itself when a young wife and a young mother died in giving birth to a
long-wished-for son and heir. Not a syllable is said of Henry's grief at
Jane Seymour's death; and three weeks after he was intriguing for a
Continental, state, and purely diplomatic marriage. It is true that he
paraded a sort of fussy affection for the young prince Edward--carried him
indeed through the state apartments in his own royal arms; but the less
impassioned temperament is often more openly demonstrative than the
impassioned, especially when the public ear listens and the public eye
watches. Those who caress in public attach as a rule but little meaning to
caresses. If Henry's affections were small we have seen that his
self-importance was colossal; and the very defections--terrible to some
natures--of Anne Boleyn and of Catherine Howard wounded his importance
much more deeply than they wounded his affections.
If we limit our attention for a moment to the question of deep feeling, we
cannot but see how unlike Henry was to the impassioned men of history.
Passionate king David, for example, would not have waited seven years
while a commission decided upon his proposed relationship to Bathsheba;
and the cold Henry could not have flung his soul into a fiery psalm. The
impassioned Burns could not have said a last farewell to the mother of his
helpless babe without moistening the dust with his tears, while Henry
could never have understood why many strong men cannot read the second
verse of "John Anderson my Jo" with an unbroken voice.
THE LESS CHARACTERISTIC FEATURES OF HENRY'S CHARACTER.
NOTE V.
It is well now, after considering the question of Henry's parentage and
organisation, to look again and a little more closely, at certain
significant features in his character--his caprice, his captiousness, his
love of applause, his self-will, self-confidence, and self-importance.
These elements of character frequently run together in equal or unequal
degrees, and they are extremely characteristic of the more markedly
passionless temperament. But before doing this it is well to look, in a
brief note, at some features of Henry's character which are found in the
less impassioned and the more impassioned temperaments alike. Both
temperaments, for example, may be cruel or kindly; both may tend to
conservatism or to innovation; pious persons or worldly may be found in
both. But the cruelty or kindliness, the conservatism or innovation, the
piety or worldliness differ in the different temperaments--they differ in
their motives, in their methods, in their aims.
The cruelty of the unimpassioned man is, for the most part, a reckless
disregard for the happiness or well-being or (in mediaeval times
especially) for the lives of those who stand in his way or thwart his
plans or lessen his self-importance. Such cruelty is more wayward
resentful and transitory than deliberative or implacable or persistent.
The cruelty of the impassioned man is perhaps the darkest of human
passions. It is the cruelty born of hate--cruelty contrived with
deliberation and watched with glee. Happily it is a kind which lessens
with the growth of civilisation. Often it attends on the strong
convictions of strong natures obeying strong commands--commands which are
always strongest when they are believed to have a supernatural origin; for
belief in supernaturalism is the natural enemy of mercy; it demands
obedience and forbids compassion. Cruelty was at its worst when
supernatural beliefs were strongest; for happily natural reason has grown,
and supernatural belief has dwindled. The unimpassioned and the
impassioned temperaments may alike scale the highest or descend to the
lowest levels of character, although probably the most hateful level of
human degredation is reached by the more impassioned nature. It cannot be
denied that, even for his time, Henry had a certain unmistakable dash of
cruelty in his composition. A grandson of Edward IV., who closely
resembled his grandfather, could not well be free from it. But the cruelty
of Henry, like that of Edward, was cruelty of the passionless type. He
swept aside--swept too often out of existence--those who defied his will
or lessened his importance.
How much of Henry's cruelty was due to the resolve to put down opposition,
how much was due to passing resentment and caprice, and how much, if any,
to the delight of inflicting pain, not even Henry's compeers could easily
have said. His cruelty in keeping the solitary Mary apart from her
solitary mother was singularly persistent in so fickle a man; but even
here weak fear and a weak policy were stronger than cruel feeling. It was
Henry's way of meeting persistent obstinacy. It is needless to discuss
the cruelty of the executions on religious grounds during Henry's reign;
they were the order of the day and were sanctioned by the merciful and the
unmerciful alike. But Henry's treatment of high personages was a much
deeper stain--deeper than the stain of his matrimonial affairs. People and
parliament earnestly prayed for a royal son and heir, but no serious or
popular prayer was ever offered up for the heads of Fisher or More or Lady
Salisbury. Henry's cruelty had always practical ends in view. Great
officials who had failed, or who were done with, were officials in the
way, and _their_ heads might be left to the care of those who were at once
their rivals and their enemies. The execution of Lady Salisbury will never
fail to rouse indignation as long as history is history and men are men.
Henry might have learned a noble lesson from his father. Henry VII. put
his own intriguing mother-in-law into a religious house, and the proper
destination of a female Yorkist intriguer--no matter how high or
powerful--was a convent, not a scaffold. In the execution of Elizabeth
Barton meanness was added to cruelty, for the wretched woman confessed her
impostures and exposed the priests who contrived them for her. The cruelty
which shocked Europe most, and has shocked it ever since, was the
execution of Sir Thomas More. More's approval would have greatly consoled
the King, but More's approval fell far short of the King's demands. The
silence of great men does _not_ give consent, and More was silent. More
was, next to Erasmus, the loftiest intellect then living on this planet.
Throughout Europe men were asking what More thought of "the King's
matter." More's head was the only answer. But however indignant we may be,
let us not be unjust; Henry, cruel as he was, was less cruel than any of
his compeers--royal, imperial, or papal, or other. The cruelty of our
Tudor ruler has always been put under a fierce light; the greater cruelty
of distant rulers we are too prone to disregard. We are too prone also to
forget that the one thing new under the sun in _our_ time is greater
kindliness--kindliness to life, to opinion, to pocket. If fate had put a
crown on Luther's head, or Calvin's, or later, on Knox's, their methods
would have been more stringent than Henry's. Henry and his Parliament, it
is true, proposed an Act of Parliament "to abolish diversity of opinion in
matters of religion." But Luther and Calvin and Knox, nay even More
(Erasmus alone stood on a higher level), were each and all confident of
their possession of the _one_ truth and of their infallibility as
interpreters thereof; each and all were ready, had the power been theirs,
to abolish "diversity of religious opinion."
There are two kinds of religion, or at any rate two varieties of religious
character--both are sincere--the religion of the active and passionless
and that of the reflective and impassioned. One is a religion of
inheritance, of training, of habit, of early and vivid perception; with
certain surroundings it is inevitable; if shaken off it returns. George
Eliot acutely remarks of one of her notably passionless characters, "His
first opinions remained unchanged, as they always do with those in whom
perception is stronger than thought and emotion." The other is a religion
(two extremes are spoken of here, but every intermediate gradation exists)
a religion of thought and emotion, of investigation and introspection. It
is marked by deep love of an ideal or real good, and deep hate of what may
also often be called an ideal or real evil. Henry's religion was of the
first sort. It would be deeply interesting to know the sort of religion
of the great names of Henry's time. We lack however the needful light on
their organisation, parentage, and circumstance. But in all the provinces
of life the men who have imprinted their names on history have been for
the most part active, practical, and unimpassioned men. They, in their
turn, have owed much to the impassioned, thinking, and often unpractical
men whose names history has not troubled itself to preserve.
And now, in the light shed by organisation and inheritance, we may gain
further information on the more characteristic features of Henry's
character--his caprice, his captiousness, his uncertainty, and his
peevishness, his resolve never to be hidden or unfelt or forgotten.
THE MORE CHARACTERISTIC FEATURES OF HENRY'S CHARACTER.
NOTE VI.
Henry was always doing something or undoing something. Whether he was
addressing Parliament, admonishing and instructing subordinates, or
exhorting heretics; whether he was restoring order in Northern England, or
(with much wisdom) introducing order into Wales, or (with much folly)
disorder into Scotland; whether he was writing letters to Irish chieftains
or Scottish councillors, or Northern pilgrims; whether he was defending
the Faith or destroying religious houses; whether he was putting together
six articles to the delight of Catholics, or dropping them in a few weeks
to the exultation of Protestants; whether burning those who denied the
miracle of the Real Presence, or hanging those who denied his headship of
the Church; whether he was changing a Minister, a Bishop, or a wife, his
hands were always full. And in Henry's case at least--probably in most
cases--Satan found much mischief for busy hands to do.
The man who is never at rest is usually a fitful man. Constant change,
whether of ministers or of views or of plans, is in itself fitfulness. But
fitfulness is something more than activity: it implies an uncertainty of
thought or conduct which forbids calculation or prediction, and therefore
forbids confidence; it is an inborn proclivity. Happily vigorous reasoning
power often accompanies it and keeps it in check. In poorly endowed
intellects, whether in men or women, fitfulness and its almost constant
associate petulance harass many circles and many hearths.
It is recorded that when the disgraced Wolsey took his departure from
Court, the King sent after him a hurried messenger with a valuable ring
and comforting words. The incident has excited much perplexity and comment
among historians. What was its meaning? what its object? Probably the
incident had no precise meaning; probably it was merely the involuntary
deed of an irresistible constitutional tendency; possibly, too, there
lurked in the motive which led to it some idea of future change and
exigency. The active, practical, serviceable man sows many seeds and keeps
on sowing them. Time and circumstance mainly decide which seeds shall grow
and which shall not. Caprice is not unfrequently associated with high
faculties. Sometimes it would seem to be due to the gift--not a common
one--of seeing many sides of a question, and of seeing these so vividly
that action is thereby enfeebled or frequently changed. Sometimes it is a
conservative instinct which sees that a given step is too bold and must be
retraced. It certainly is not selfishness: a long-pondered policy is often
dashed to the ground in an instant, or a long-sought friendship is ended
by a moment's insult. At root caprice is an inborn constitutional bias.
Henry was the first powerful personage who declared that the Papal
authority was Divine--declaring this, indeed, with so much fervour that
the good Catholic More expostulated with him. But Henry was also the first
high personage who threw Papal authority to the winds. It is on record
that Henry would have taken Wolsey into favour again had Wolsey lived. Not
Wolsey only but all Henry's Ministers would have been employed and
dismissed time after time could they but have contrived to keep their
heads on their shoulders. Henry might even have re-married his wives had
they lived long enough. One circumstance only would have lessened their
chances--attractive women were more numerous than experts in statecraft:
for one Wolsey there were a thousand fair women.
Habitual fitfulness, it has already been noted, is not often found apart
from habitual petulance, and both these qualities were conspicuous in
Henry's character. There was something almost impish in the spirit which
led him to don gorgeous attire--men had not then got out of barbaric
finery, and women are still in its bondage--on the day of Anne Boleyn's
bloodshed. Nay more, there was undoubtedly a dash of cruelty in it, as
there was in the acerbity which led him to exclaim that the Pope might
send a Cardinal's hat to Fisher, but he would take care that Fisher had no
head to put it on. Now and then his whims were simply puerile; it was so
when he signalised some triumph over a Continental potentate by a dolls'
battle on the Thames. Two galleys, one carrying the Romish and the other
the English decorations, met each other. After due conflict, the royalists
boarded the papal galley and threw figures of the pope and sundry
cardinals into the water--king and court loudly applauding. But again, let
us not forget that those days were more deeply stained than ours with
puerility and cruelty and spite. More, it is true, rose above the
puerility of his time; Erasmus rose above both its cruelty and its
puerility; Henry rose above neither.
No charge is brought against Henry with more unanimity and vehemence than
that of selfishness. And the charge is not altogether a baseless one; but
the selfishness which stained Henry's character is not the selfishness he
is accused of. When Henry is said to have been a monster of selfishness it
is implied that he was a monster of self-indulgence. He was not that--he
was the opposite of that. He was in reality a monster of self-importance,
and extreme personal importance is incompatible with gross personal
indulgence. Self-indulgence is the failing of the impassioned, especially
when the mental gifts are poor; while self-importance is the failing of
the passionless, especially when the mental gifts are rich. Let there be
given three factors, an unimpassioned temperament, a vigorous intellect,
and circumstance favourable to public life--committee life, municipal,
platform, Parliamentary, or pulpit life--and self-importance is rarely
wanting. This price we must sometimes pay for often quite invaluable
service.
When Henry spoke--it is not infrequently so when the passionless and
highly gifted individual speaks--the one unpardonable sin on the part of
the listener was not to be convinced. A sin of a little less magnitude was
to make a proposal to Henry. It implied that he was unable to cope with
the problems which beset him and beset his time. He could not approve of
what he himself did not originate; at any rate he put the alien proposal
aside for the time--in a little time he _might_ approve of it and it might
then seem to be his own. The temperament which censured a matter yesterday
will often applaud it to-day and put it in action to-morrow. The
unimpassioned are prone to imitation, but they first condemn what they
afterwards imitate. When Cromwell made the grave proposal touching the
headship of the Church, Henry hesitated--nay, was probably shocked--at
first. Yet, for Henry's purposes at least, it was Cromwell (and not
Cranmer with his University scheme) who had "caught the right sow by the
ear."