not hinder, nay it helped him to believe in the importance of the people
also--it helped him indeed to seek the more diligently their welfare,
seeing that the more prosperous a people is, the more important is its
King. True he always put himself first and the people second. How few
leaders of men or movements do otherwise. Possibly William III. would have
stepped down from his throne if it had been shown that another in his
place could better curb the ambition of France abroad, or better secure
the mutual toleration of religious parties at home. Possibly, nay
probably, George Washington would have retired could he have seen that the
attainment of American independence was more assured in other hands. Lloyd
Garrison would have gladly retired into private life if another more
quickly than he could have given freedom to the slave. John Bright would
have willingly held his tongue if thereby another tongue could have spoken
more powerfully for the good of his fellow-men. Such men can be counted on
the fingers and Henry is not one of them. Henry would have denied (as
would all his compeers in temperament) that he put himself first. He would
have said; "I desire the people's good first and above all things;" but he
would have significantly added; "Their good is safest in my hands."
It is a moot point in history whether Henry was led by his high officials
or was followed by them. Did he, for example, direct Wolsey or did Wolsey
(as is the common view) in reality lead his King while appearing to follow
him. To me the balance of evidence, as well as the natural proclivities
of Henry's character, favour the view that he thought and willed and acted
for himself. Do we not indeed know too well the fate of those whose
thought and will ran counter to his? No man's opinion and conduct are
independent of his surroundings and his time; for every man, especially
every monarch, must see much through other eyes and hear much through
other ears. But if other eyes and other ears are numerous enough they will
also be conflicting enough, and will strengthen rather than diminish the
self-confidence and self-importance of the self-confident and
self-important ruler.
Self-importance, as a rule, is built on a foundation of solid
self-confidence, and Henry's confidence in himself was broad enough and
deep enough to sustain any conceivable edifice. The Romish church was
then, and had been for a thousand years, the strongest influence in
Europe. It touched every event in men's bodily lives and decided also the
fate of their immortal souls. Henry nevertheless had no misgiving as to
his fitness to be the spiritual head of the Church in this country, or the
spiritual head of the great globe itself, if the great globe had had one
Church only.
When I come to speak of the Reformation I shall have to remark that, had
the great European religious movement reached our island in any other
reign than Henry's, religion would not have been exactly what it now is.
Of all our rulers Henry was the only one who was at the same time willing
enough, educated enough (he had been trained to be an Archbishop), able
enough, and pious enough to be at any rate the _first_ head of a great
Church.
Henry was so sagacious that he never forgot the superiority of sagacity
over force. He delighted in reasoning, teaching, exhorting; and he
believed that while any ruler could command, few could argue and very few
could convince. It is true, alas, that when individuals or bodies were not
convinced if he spoke, he became unreasonably petulant. When Scotland did
not accept a long string of unwise proposals he laid Leith in ashes. When
Ireland did not yield to his wishes, he knocked a castle to atoms with
cannon, and thereby so astonished Ireland, be it noted, that it remained
peaceful and prosperous during the remainder of his reign.
Perhaps the happiest moments in Henry's life were those when he presided
over courts of theological inquiry. To confute heresy was his chief
delight; and his vanity was indulged to its utmost when the heretical
Lambert was tried. Clothed in white silk, seated on a throne, surrounded
by peers and bishops and learned doctors, he directed the momentous
matters of this world and the next; he elucidated, expounded, and laid
down the laws of both heaven and earth. It was a high day; one thing only
marred its splendour--he, the first living defender of orthodoxy, had
spoken and heterodoxy remained unconvinced. Heterodoxy must clearly be
left to its just punishment, for bishops, peers, and learned doctors were
astonished at the display of so much eloquence, learning, and piety.
The physiological student of human nature who is much interested in the
question of martyrdom finds, indeed, that the martyr-burner and the martyr
(of whatever temperament) have much in common. Both believe themselves to
possess assured and indisputable truth; both are infallible; both
self-confident; both are prepared, in the interests of truth, to throw
their neighbours into the fire if circumstance is favourable; both are
willing to be themselves thrown into the fire if circumstance is adverse.
One day they burn, the next day they are burnt.
The feature in Henry's character which as we have seen amounted to mania
was his love of popularity; it was a mania which saved him from many
evils. Even unbridled self-will does little harm if it be an unbridled
self-will to stand well with a progressive people. It has been a matter of
surprise to those who contend that Henry, seeing that he possessed--it is
said usurped--a lion's power, did not use it with lion-like licence. His
ingrained love of applause is the physiological explanation. Let it be
noted, too, that not everyone who thirsts for popularity succeeds in
obtaining it, for success demands several factors: behind popular applause
there must be action, behind action must be self-confidence, behind
self-confidence must be large capability. Henry had all these. In such a
chain love of applause is the link least likely to be missing. For,
indeed, what is the use of being active, capable, confident and important
in a closet? The crow sings as sweetly as the nightingale if no one is
listening, and importance is no better than insignificance if there is no
one "there to see."
We shall gain further and not uninteresting knowledge of Henry's character
if we look at certain side lights which history throws upon it. We turn
therefore, in another note, to look for a few moments at the men, the
movements, the drift, the institutions of his time, and observe how he
bore himself towards them.
HENRY AND HIS COMPEERS.
NOTE VII.
In Henry's time, and in every time, the art of judging women has been a
very imperfect one. It is an imperfect art still and, as long as it takes
for granted that women are radically unlike men, so long it will remain
imperfect. But Henry was a good judge of one sex at any rate, for he was
helped by the most capable men then living, and in reality he tolerated no
stupidity--except in his wives. In an era of theological change it was
perhaps an unfortunate circumstance that he was better helped in his
politics than in his theology. Wolsey, although a Cardinal and even a
candidate for the Papal chair, was to all intents and purposes a practical
statesman. Had he succeeded in becoming a Pope he would nevertheless have
remained a mere politician. Wolsey, then, and Cromwell and More were all
distinctly abler men than Cranmer or Latimer or Gardiner.
But Henry himself, looking at him in all that he was and in all that he
did, was not unworthy of his helpers. There were then living in Europe
some of the most enduring names in history. More, it is true, was made of
finer clay than the king; Erasmus was not only the loftiest figure of his
time--he is one of the loftiest of any time; but Henry was also a great
personality and easily held his own in the front rank of European
personalities. As a ruler no potentate of his time--royal, imperial or
papal--could for a moment compare with him. Of all known Englishmen he
was the fittest to be King of England. Had it been Henry's fortune to have
had one or two or even three wives only, our school histories would have
contained a chapter entitled "How 'Henry the Good' steered his country
safely through its greatest storm." He played many parts with striking
ability. He was probably as great a statesman as Wolsey or More or
Cromwell. He would certainly have made a better archbishop than Cranmer; a
better bishop than Latimer or Gardiner; he was a better soldier than
Norfolk. What then might he have been had he been a statesman only, or a
diplomatist or an ecclesiastic or a soldier only?
In all the parts he played, save the part of husband, his unimpassioned
temperament stood him in good stead. A man's attitudes to his fellow-men
and to the movements of his time are, on the whole, determined more by his
intellect than by his feeling. The emotions indeed are very disturbing
elements. They have, it is true, made or helped to make a few careers; but
they have destroyed many more. Very curiously, Henry's compeers were, most
of them, like himself--unimpassioned men. Latimer, who was perhaps an
exception, preached sermons at Paul's Cross brimful of a passion which
Henry admired but did not understand. Cranmer too was a man of undoubted
feeling and strong affection. It is said there is sometimes a magnetic
charm between the unlike in temperament; strong friendships certainly
exist between them; and it is to Henry's credit that to the last he kept
near to him a man so unlike himself. Cranmer was a kindly, sympathetic,
helpful, good soul, but not a saint. He was not one of those to whom
Gracian refers as becoming bad out of pure goodness. Cranmer was a
capable and a strong man, but he was not supremely capable or supremely
strong. He was free from the worst of human evils--'cocksureness.' The
acute Spaniard just named says that "every blockhead is thoroughly
persuaded that he is in the right;" Cranmer was less of a blockhead than
most of his compeers. Left to his own instincts, he preferred to live and
let others live. Cranmer had not the loftiness (nor the hardness and
inflexibility) of a More; not the genius and grace and scholarship of an
Erasmus; not the definite purpose and iron will of a Cromwell; not the
fire of a Latimer; not the clear sight and grasp of a Gardiner; not the
sagacity and varied gifts of a Henry; but for my part I would have chosen
him before all his fellows (certainly his English fellows) to advise with
and to confide in. Of all the tables and the roofs of that time I should
have preferred to sit at his table and sleep under his roof. The great
luminaries who guide in revolutions are rare, and the smaller lights of
smaller circumstance are not rare; but--the question is not easy to
answer--which could we best spare, if we were compelled to choose, the
towering lighthouse of exceptional storm or the cheery lamp of daily life?
One figure of Henry's times which never fails to interest us is that of
Sir Thomas More. More was clearly one of the unimpassioned class; but his
commanding intellect, his quick response to high influences, his
capability of forming noble friendships, and his lofty ideals seemed to
dispense with the need of deep emotions. More and Henry, indeed, were much
alike in many ways. Both were precocious in early life; both were quick,
alert, practical; both were able; both, to the outside world at least,
were genial, affable, attractive; both also, alas, were fitful,
censorious, difficult to please; both were self-confident--one confident
enough to kill, the other confident enough to be killed. Had they changed
places in the greatest crisis of their lives Henry would have rejected
More's headship of the Church and More would have sent Henry to the block.
In order to understand More's character correctly we must recognise the
changing waves of circumstance through which he passed. There were in fact
two Mores, the earlier and the later. The earlier More was an unembittered
and independent thinker; the seeming spirit of independence however was,
in a great degree, merely the spirit of contradiction. He was a friend of
education and the new learning. He advocated reform in religion; but
reform, be it noted, before the Reformation, reform gently and from
within; reform when kings and scholars and popes themselves all asked for
it. History, unhappily, tells of much reform on the lips which doggedly
refused to translate itself into practice. The earlier More was all for
reform in principle, but he invariably disapproved of it in detail. The
later and in some degree embittered More was thrown by temperament, by the
natural bias of increasing years and by the exigencies of combat, into the
ecclesiastical and reactionary camp, and in that camp his conduct was
stained by cruel inquisitorial methods.
The deteriorating effects of conflict (which happily grow less in each
successive century) on individuals as well as on parties and peoples is
seen in another notable though very different character of More's century.
Savonarola, before his bitter fight with Florentine and Roman powers, was
a large, clear-sighted, sane reformer; after the fight he became blind,
fanatical, and insane. Why may we not combine all thankfulness for the
early More and the early Savonarola, and all compassion for the later More
and later Savonarola? Mary Stuart, Francis Bacon, Robert Burns, Napoleon
Buonapart, and Lord Byron were notable personalities; they--some of them
at least--did the world service which others did not and could not do. Yet
how many of us are there who, if admitting to the full their greatness, do
not belittle their follies? or, if freely admitting their follies, do not
belittle their greatness?
Wolsey, holding aloof from religious strife, remained simply the scholar
and the politician--a politician moreover _before_ politics became in
their turn also a matter of hostile camps. Being a politician only, he
continued to be merciful while More drifted from politics and mercy into
ecclesiasticism and cruelty. More's change was in itself evidence of a
fitful and passionless temperament, of such evidence indeed there is no
lack. His first public action was one of petulance and self-importance. He
had been treated with continued and exceptional kindness by Cardinal
Morton and Henry VII.; but when Morton, on behalf of his king, asked
parliament for a subsidy, the newly-elected More, conscious of his powers,
and thinking too, may we not say, much more of a people's applause than of
a people's burdens, successfully urged its reduction to one half.
More was by nature censorious, and never heartily approved of anything.
When Wolsey, on submitting a proposal to him with the usual result, told
him--told him it would seem in the unvarnished language of the time--that
he stood alone in his disapproval, and that he was a fool, More, with
ready wit and affected humility, rejoined that he thanked God that he was
the only fool on the King's Council. More, we may be quite sure, was not
conscious of a spirit of contradiction; he probably felt that his first
duty was to suggest to everybody some improvement in everything. This
spirit of antagonism nevertheless played a leading part in his changeful
life. In his early years he found orthodoxy rampant and defiant,
consequently he inclined to heresy; at a later period heresy became
rampant and defiant, and as inevitably he returned to the older faith and
views. A modern scholar and piquant censor, and--I gather from his own
writings, the only knowledge I have of him--an extreme specimen of the
unimpassioned temperament, Mark Pattison, says that he never saw anything
without suggesting how it might have been better; and that every time he
entered a railway carriage he worked out a better time table than the one
in use. If More had lived in his own Utopia he would have found fault with
it, and drawn in imagination another and a better land. The later More
was, as all unimpassioned and censorious temperaments are, a prophet of
evil; and as much evil did happen--was sure to happen--his wisdom has come
down to us somewhat greater in appearance than it was in reality.
The cruelty of the Tudor epoch has already been spoken of. Catholics and
protestants, kings, popes, cardinals, ministers, Luthers, Calvins, Knoxes
were all stained by it. Henry and More, we know, were no exceptions. But
More's cruelty differed from Henry's in one important respect--there was
nothing appertaining to self in it, except self-confidence. Henry's
cruelty was in the interest of himself--his person, his family, and his
throne; More's cruelty, although less limited perhaps, and more dangerous,
was nevertheless in the interest of religion.
HENRY AND HIS PEOPLE AND PARLIAMENT.
NOTE VIII.
It is in his attitude to his people and his parliament that we see Henry
at his best. His sagacity did not show itself in any deliberate or deeply
reasoned policy, certainly not, we may allow with Dr. Stubbs, in any great
act of "constructive genius;" it showed itself in seeing clearly the
difficulties of the hour and the day, and in the hourly and daily success
with which they were met. Henry and his father presided over the
introduction of a new order of things, which new order, however, was a
step only, not a cataclysm. They themselves scarcely knew the significance
of the step or how worthily they presided over it. The world, indeed,
knows little--history says little--of great and sudden acts of
constructive genius. These gradually emerge from the growth of peoples;
they do not spring from the brains of individuals royal or otherwise. If
the vision of a ruler is clear and his aims good, he, more than others,
may help on organic and beneficent growth. Full-blown schemes and
policies, even if marked by genius, are rarely helpful and not
infrequently they end in hindrance or even in explosion. The Stuarts had a
large "scheme" touching church and king. It was a scheme of "all in all or
not at all;" for them and their dynasty it ended in "not at all." French
history is brimful of "great acts of constructive genius" and has none of
the products of development. For Celtic history is indeed a sad succession
of fits, and not a process of quiet growth. How a succession of fits will
end, and how growth will end, it is not difficult to foretel.
The government of peoples is for the most part and in the long run that
which they deserve, that which they are best fitted for, and not at all
that which, it may be, they wish for and cry out for. A people
ready--fairly and throughout all strata ready--for that which they demand
will not long demand in vain. Our fathers, under the Tudor Henrys and the
Tudor Elizabeth, had the rule which was best fitted for them, which they
asked for, which they deserved--a significant morsel, by the bye, of
racial circumstance. It by no means follows, let it be noted, that what
people and king together approved of was the ideal or the wisest. It is
with policies as with all things else, the fittest, not the best, continue
to hold the field.
Henry and Elizabeth had not only clearness of sight, but flexibility of
mind also, and would doubtless have ruled over Puritan England with
success; it lay in them to rule well over our modern England also. Charles
I., by organisation and proclivity, would have fared badly at the hands of
a Tudor parliament, and, again as a result of organisation and proclivity,
Henry VIII. and the Long Parliament would have been excellent friends.
Hand to mouth government, if it is also capable, is probably the best
government for a revolutionary time. Conflicting parties are often kept
quiet by mere suspense--by mingled hopes and fears. It has been well said
of Henry of Navarre that he kept France, the home of political whirlwinds,
tranquil for a time because the Protestants believed him to be a
Protestant and the Catholics believed he was about to become a Catholic.
The majority of historians and all the compilers of history tell us that
Henry's parliaments were abject and servile. The statement is politically
misleading and is also improbable on the grounds of organisation and race.
It is one of many illustrations of the vice of purely literary judgments
on men and movements; a vice which takes no account of physiology, of
race, of organisation and proclivity. For we may be well assured that the
grandsons of brave men and the grandfathers of brave men are never
themselves cowards. One and the same people--especially a slow, steadfast,
and growing people--does not put its neck under the foot of one king
to-day and cut off the head of another king to-morrow. It is not difficult
to see how the misconception arose: in a time of great trial the king and
the people were agreed both in politics and in religion. The people held
the king's views; they admired his sagacity; they trusted in his honour.
If a brother is attached to his brother and does not quarrel with him, is
he therefore poor-spirited? If by rare chance a servant sees, possibly on
good grounds, a hero in his master, is he therefore a poltroon? If a
parliament and a king see eye to eye, is it just to label the parliament
throughout history as an abject parliament?
Henry's epoch, moreover, was not one of marked political excitement, and
therefore the hasty observer jumps to the conclusion that it was not one
of political independence. In each individual, in each community, in each
people there is a sum-total of nerve force. In a given amount of brain
substance--one brain or many--in a given amount of brain nutriment of
brain vitality, there is a given quantity of nerve power. This totality of
power will show itself it may be in one way strongly or in several ways
less strongly; it cannot be increased, it cannot be lessened. On purely
physiological grounds it may be affirmed that Bacon could not have thought
and written all his own work and at the same time have also thought and
written the life-work of Shakspere. Shakspere could not have added Bacon's
investigations to his own 'intuitions.' In our own time Carlyle could not
have written "The French Revolution" and "The Descent of Man;" he could
not have gone through the two trainings, gained the two knowledges, and
lived the two lives which led to the two works. So it is with
universities: when scholarship is robust, theology limps; and during the
Tractarian excitement, so a great scholar affirms, learning in Oxford sank
to a lower level. So with peoples: in a literary age religious feeling is
less earnest; in a time of political excitement both religion and
literature suffer. Henry's era was one of abounding theological activity:
Luthers, Calvins, and (later) Knoxes came to the front, and the front
could not, never can, hold many dominant and also differing spirits. In
Elizabeth's time Marlowes and Shaksperes and Spensers were master spirits,
and master spirits are never numerous. No doubt as civilisation goes on
great men and great movements learn to move, never equally perhaps but
more easily, side by side: more leaders come to the front--but is the
front as brilliant? Choice spirits are more numerous--but are the spirits
quite as choice? Another and a less partial generation must decide.