TUDOR TIMES.
JOHN AND SEBASTIAN CABOT.
“_The white man landed;—need the rest be told?_
_The New World stretched its dusk hand to the Old;_
_Each was to each a marvel, and the tie_
_Of wonder warmed to better sympathy._”
NOW the procession halts, while a momentous scene is enacted before our
eyes. We are in the old seaport of Bristol, on a May morning in the year
1497, treading the rough cobbles of the quay whereat the good ship
_Matthew_ and her consort lie. Stout, staunch vessels they are, fitted
out and provisioned for the most adventurous voyage ever undertaken by
Bristol ships. The royal blazon glistens on their mainsails, the flag of
England flies from their mastheads. Some of the boldest and most skilful
mariners in the land are on board, busy making everything ship-shape,
“Bristol fashion,” for the voyage which is to begin to-day. Now you see
a procession approaching. The Lord Mayor in his robes of state, with his
chain of office about his neck, leads the way, and behind him troop the
city fathers; then comes the bishop, with his attendant train of
priests; and behind them, the observed of all observers, you see a
father and his three sons. They are John, Lewis, Sebastian, and Santius
Cabot—the father a citizen of Venice, the sons men of Bristol. The old
city is saying farewell to them to-day, and the lusty cheers that greet
them as they traverse the narrow streets show how deeply every Bristol
man is interested in their enterprise. What is this enterprise? Whither
are they bound?
Any urchin in the streets will tell you. “Why, master, have you not
heard of the Genoese seaman, Christopher Columbus?—he who five years
ago set sail from Palos in three ships, and sailed to the west’ard
across the ocean, seeking a new sea-road to far-off India and Cathay. Do
you not know that he lighted on marvellous new lands, which he seized in
the name of Spain, and then returned home to tell the wondrous news?
There’s gold by the bucketful across the Western Ocean, and we Bristol
folks mean to have our share of it. So we have fitted out the _Matthew_
and the other ship which you see yonder, and this very day John Cabot
and his sons are to set sail. Would that I could sail with them too!”
Many an English lad, in many a seaport, echoes his wish.
“Westward! westward! westward!
The sea sang in his head,
At morn in the busy harbour,
At nightfall on his bed.
“Westward! westward! westward!
Over the line of breakers,
Out of the distance dim,
For ever the foam-white fingers,
Beckoning, beckoning him.”
And now the procession halts on the quay, and the mariners kneel while
the bishop with uplifted hand blesses them and their enterprise. John
Cabot, he with the brown face and the close-cropped white hair, proudly
unfolds the scroll which he carries, and begins to read his royal
commission:——
“Henry, by the grace of God, King of England and France, and
Lord of Ireland, to all to whom these presents shall come,
Greeting:
“Be it knowen that we haue giuen and granted, and by these
presents do giue and grant, for VS and our heires, to our well
beloued Iohn Cabot, citizen of Venice, to Lewis, Sebastian, and
Santius, sonnes of the sayd Iohn, and to the heires of them and
euery of them, and their deputies, full and free authority,
leaue and power, to saile to all parts, countreys, and seas of
the East, of the West, and of the North, under our banners and
ensignes, with fiue ships of what quantity or burden soever they
may be, and as many manners or men as they will haue with them
in the sayd ships, upon their owne proper costs and charges to
seeke out, discouer and finde, whatsoeuer isles, countreys,
regions or prouinces, of the heathens and infidels, whatsoeuer
they be, and in what part of the world soeuer they be, which
before this time haue been unknowen to all Christians.”
So the letters-patent of his gracious Majesty King Henry the Seventh
run. The reading is finished. The last farewells are taken. The wives
and children of the adventurous mariners weep aloud. The Lord Mayor
clasps John Cabot warmly by the hand, and the captain goes on board.
Deafening cheers are raised as the hawsers are cast off and the good
ships are warped out. Now you see them threading the deep gorge of the
Avon. Anon they will be out on the heaving waters of the Bristol
Channel; then sail will be made, and in the golden sunset glow they will
fade away into the unknown.
For months there will be sad hearts in many a humble Bristol home, and
white-faced women will haunt the quay, eagerly questioning incoming
sailors for news of their husbands and sons who have sailed with the
Cabots. Then one glad day the blazoned sails, torn and worn with
tempestuous winds and the rough usage of the sea, appear again in the
Avon, and all England rings with the story of the marvellous voyage. The
Bristol bells ring out merry peals; the city fathers feast the returning
adventurers in the Council chamber; and every lad in the good old city
holds his head high because of the new fame that Bristowe men have won.
What visits are paid to the _Matthew_ and her consort! The Church of St.
Mary Redcliffe is thronged with eager citizens gaping at the whale’s rib
which Sebastian Cabot has deposited there in memory of his voyage.
Here is one of the heroes of the expedition. Let us buttonhole him and
bid him spin his yarn. Like the true sailor that he is, he readily
consents. “Marry, sirs, ’twas a long and dull voyage outward; but the
winds were fair, and in two moons we reached a sea with monstrous great
lumps of ice floating about like fairy castles. And mark ye, the sun set
not, and there was daylight all the clock round. On the twenty-fourth
day of June we sighted land. _Prima Vista_ the captain called it, that
being the Latin lingo, so I’m told, for ‘first seen.’ ’Twas an island,
thick covered with woods, lying out from the mainland. We went ashore
right speedily, and now there’s a bit of England seven hundred leagues
to the west’ard across the great ocean.
“The men of that land are savages dressed in skins of beasts. They carry
bows and arrows, wooden clubs and slings; and fine hunters they be,
every man of them. Their land is barren, and no fruits grow, but there
are big white bears in plenty and stags that would make two of ours. Off
the island the sea swarms with fish, some as much as an ell long, and
sea-wolves, such as ye may see now and then in Bristol Channel.
“The birds are black-hawks and partridges and eagles. When we left the
isle we coasted a dreary shore for three hundred leagues, and ’tis my
belief, comrades, that we have discovered a rich, new continent, with
mines of copper and wonders untold. We sail again next year, and when we
come back—if God wills—I’ll tell ye more about it. And now come along
with me and see the three savages that the captain has brought home with
him to show the king.”
There will be no lack of adventurers now to dare the Western Ocean. Ship
after ship will push across the “black waters,” and every year will
bring the New World into closer touch with the Old. Pass on, ye great
pilots of Bristowe! Your flag is struck, your sails are furled, your
ship is beached, but your work is done. In centuries to come the vast
continent which ye have revealed shall be peopled by a great race,
largely sprung from British loins, and speaking the brave English
tongue. “Westward the star of Empire takes its way,” and ye are the
first of our seamen to follow the star!
[Illustration: =The Departure of John and Sebastian Cabot on the First
Voyage of Discovery, 1497.=
(_From the picture by Ernest Board. By permission of the Bristol
Corporation and the Artist._)]
[Illustration]
KING AND CARDINAL.
“_I charge thee, fling away ambition;_
_By that sin fell the angels._”
A stately procession now files by, headed by shaven and tonsured priests
carrying silver crosses. Behind them a bareheaded noble carries the
Great Seal of England, and another a cardinal’s hat on a cushion. Now
you hear gentlemen ushers shout, “Make way for my lord’s grace!” and a
splendid figure stalks past you with the air of a king. He wears the
scarlet robe of a cardinal, with a tippet of fine sable and a gold chain
about his neck, while on his feet are shoes of gold studded with jewels.
In his hand he carries an orange-skin with a scented sponge in the
midst. This he sniffs from time to time, lest he should catch some
infection from the crowd that throngs his path. Behind him two great
pillars of silver and a gilt mace are borne, and so he proceeds through
Westminster Hall to the seat of justice. At his coming, suitors kneel to
present their petitions and beg his favour. Anon he will devote himself
diligently to the business of his high office, and will spare neither
high nor low, but will judge all who come before him according to their
merits and deserts.
No man in the kingdom, not even the king, lives in such splendour and
magnificence. His palace is always filled with noblemen, gentlemen, and
ambassadors from foreign countries, and his banquets and entertainments
are the wonder of the age. Bluff King Hal and he are boon companions,
and ofttimes you may see the monarch lean lovingly on the shoulder of
his splendid chancellor. Sometimes he will visit his palace, and the
cardinal will spare neither money nor ingenuity to divert the king.
A writer of the time tells us that “the banquets were set forth, with
masks and mummeries, in so gorgeous a sort and costly manner that it was
a heaven to behold. I have seen the king suddenly come in thither in a
mask, with a dozen of other maskers, all in garments like shepherds,
having sixteen torch-bearers, besides their drums. Ye shall understand
what joy and delight the cardinal had to see his prince and sovereign
lord in his house so nobly entertained and pleased.”
Who is this favoured mortal? He is Thomas Wolsey, the son of a wealthy
wool-merchant of Ipswich. By his great ability and his zeal in the
king’s service, he has raised himself from a comparatively humble
position to be the envy of the greatest nobles in the land. “He is the
person,” writes the Venetian ambassador, “who rules both the king and
the kingdom. He is very handsome, learned, extremely eloquent, of vast
ability, and indefatigable. He alone transacts all the business that
occupies all the magistrates, offices, and councils of Venice. He has
the reputation of being extremely just. He favours the people
exceedingly, and especially the poor, hearing their suits and making the
lawyers plead gratis for them.” But if he has friends among the poor,
his pomp and pride have made him hosts of enemies among the proud and
rich. The old nobles hate him, and would fain bring his haughty head to
the dust. Nevertheless, even his enemies are forced to admit that he is
the ablest statesman of his time, and the chief prop of the kingdom.
Truly, he treads all the ways of glory, and sounds all the depths and
shoals of honour; but the knell of his greatness is soon to toll. The
sun will no longer usher forth his honours, or gild again the noble
troops that wait upon his smiles. Even now a woman’s bright eyes are
weaning Henry from him, and soon he will be fain to say—
“The king has gone beyond me; all my glories
In that one woman I have lost for ever.”
Listen to the story of his fall.
Never king came to his throne more blessed by nature, fortune, and
circumstance than the eighth Henry. Nature had fashioned him as the
handsomest and ablest monarch in Christendom. “He was tall and well
proportioned . . . his complexion very fair and bright, with auburn hair
combed straight and short in the French fashion, and a round face that
would become a pretty woman.” But there was no effeminacy about him. He
was devoted to tennis and extremely fond of jousting and hunting—“never
taking his diversion without tiring eight or ten horses.” Nor was there
a more accomplished king living. He spoke good French, Latin, and
Spanish; he was a musician and an author, and even as a boy his ability
and address most favourably impressed the great scholar Erasmus. With
all these gifts and graces, Henry began his reign with the highest
promise; but as the years went by he steadily changed for the worse. His
unbridled self-will grew upon him until he became a cold-hearted despot,
who made his whim the law of the land, and ruthlessly sent to the
scaffold all on whom his displeasure fell. From the first he was
absolute master of the realm, and could say, _L’état, c’est moi!_
Nevertheless, he was always careful to make his acts legal by getting
Parliament to endorse them. He greatly valued his popularity with the
people, and his ministers had to bear the blame of all his unpopular
acts.
During the later years of Henry the Seventh’s reign, Arthur, the heir to
the throne, had been married to Catherine, the daughter of Ferdinand and
Isabella of Spain. Arthur died young, and the miserly old king,
unwilling to part with Catherine’s rich dowry, proposed to marry her to
her brother-in-law, Henry, who was six years her junior. Such an
alliance was against the law of the Church, but a dispensation was
readily obtained, and shortly after his accession Henry married her. For
many years they lived happily together. “The king adores her, and her
Highness him,” wrote her confessor, and never had any man a more
faithful helpmeet. She was a fair-haired, gentle, pious woman, of a
lively and gracious disposition, but not beautiful. As she grew older
her health failed, and she became prematurely old and lost much of her
attraction. All her children died except one—the Princess Mary. After
eighteen years of married life Henry fell violently in love with Anne
Boleyn, one of the queen’s maids of honour.
“Madame Anne,” wrote an eye-witness, “is not one of the handsomest women
in the world. She is of middling stature and swarthy complexion, and has
nothing but the king’s great love, and her eyes, which are black and
beautiful.” She was, however, bright and lively, and had “wonderful long
hair.” Soon Henry pretended to have scruples about the lawfulness of his
marriage with his brother’s widow, and he persuaded himself that the
death of his children was a visitation of God for his sin. Further, he
argued that a son was necessary in the interests of his kingdom, for
hitherto the rule of women had always provoked civil war. The real fact
of the matter was that the selfish, self-willed king wanted to cast off
Catherine in favour of a new, young wife. Before long Henry asked Pope
Clement to declare that his marriage was null and void from the
beginning.
Wolsey, as the Pope’s legate in England, was the natural channel of
communication between the king and the Pope. Wolsey could not believe
that Henry desired a dissolution of his marriage tie in order to
contract an alliance with a giddy, insignificant lady of the court.
Rather, he assumed, Henry was contemplating a union with some lady of
the royal house of France, and this fell in with his pet scheme for
securing the friendship of that powerful state. Believing this, he used
his influence with the Pope. But the wearer of the triple crown was then
in a parlous state. He was in the power of Charles the Fifth, nephew of
Queen Catherine, and that monarch was determined that his aunt should
not be divorced. At the same time, Clement was an ally of Henry’s, and
was naturally anxious to assist him. In his dilemma the Pope sought to
gain time, and therefore appointed Wolsey and the Italian Cardinal
Campeggio to inquire into the case. In June 1529 the two cardinals
opened their court in the great hall of the Black Friars’ Monastery in
London. Catherine refused to plead, but knelt at the feet of her husband
and made a touching appeal to him to spare her the indignity and
injustice of divorce.
“Heaven witness,
I have been to you a true and humble wife,
At all times to your will conformable;
Ever in fear to kindle your dislike,
Yea, subject to your countenance, glad or sorry
As I saw it inclined.”
She appealed to the Pope himself; then rising, bowed to the king, and
refused to face the court again. The trial dragged on, and Henry became
impatient and demanded speedy judgment.
Meanwhile Clement had made a treaty with the Emperor, and was no longer
solicitous to retain the goodwill of the English king. He therefore
revoked the commission, and ordered the cause to be transferred to Rome
for a new trial. Henry, baffled and beaten, was furious, and Anne Boleyn
skilfully fanned the flame of his wrath. She suggested that Wolsey had
bungled the matter, and forthwith his doom was sealed. He was dismissed
from his office as chancellor, and brought to trial for breaking an old
law which forbade appeals to Rome. Wolsey said truthfully that he had
only appealed to the Pope at the king’s request. Henry, however, denied
that he had sanctioned the proceeding, and Wolsey, to the joy of his
enemies, was found guilty. All his property was seized, and after he had
made an abject submission, he was ordered to withdraw to his diocese of
York.
Here he flung himself with all his old energy into his work as
archbishop, and soon won the affection of the north-country folk. But he
hungered and thirsted for his former greatness, and made the serious
error of communicating with the ambassadors of the French king and the
Emperor. When Henry heard of it his anger blazed forth once more. This
was treason and nothing less, and Wolsey’s arrest was immediately
ordered. Early in November he began his journey southward under an armed
guard. Sick and heart-broken, with his health undermined, he travelled
as far as Leicester, where at his coming the abbot of the place met him
with the light of many torches and received him with great reverence.
“Father abbot,” said he, “I am come to lay my bones among you.” Truer
words were never spoken. A few days later he died, lamenting with his
failing breath—
“Had I but served my God with half the zeal
I served my king, He would not in my age
Have left me naked to mine enemies.”
So died the victim of a headstrong, selfish sovereign, who remorselessly
flung away even the most devoted of his servants as soon as they had
ceased to be useful to him.
[Illustration: =Cardinal Wolsey on his Way to Westminster Hall.=
(_From the picture by Sir John Gilbert, R.A. in the Guildhall Art
Gallery, London._)]
[Illustration: =TRIAL OF QUEEN CATHERINE.=
(_From the picture by Henry O’Neill, A.R.A. By permission of the Art
Gallery Committee of the Corporation of Birmingham._)]
[Illustration: =PORTRAIT OF HENRY VIII.=
(_By Hans Holbein the Younger. From the Royal Gallery at Windsor._)]
[Illustration]
THE NEW WORSHIP.
“_The old order changeth, yielding place to new,_
_And God fulfils Himself in many ways._”
There is a pause in our pageantry. While the next scene is preparing,
let the story of the intervening period be briefly told. Twenty-eight
years, long and fateful, have come and gone since Wolsey died of a
broken heart, and in the interval a new England with a new destiny and a
new faith has arisen. The years that have sped have been marked by
religious upheaval, and by an extraordinary outburst of persecuting
zeal. The fires of Smithfield have blazed, and the thumb-screw and the
rack have done their fiendish work “for the glory of the Lord.” Henry in
his rage against the Pope has swept away the monasteries, sent the monks
adrift, and plundered them of their lands and riches. Year by year the
doctrines of Church reformers have gained ground, and ere Henry’s long
reign of terror and crime draws to a close, Protestantism is a powerful
force in England. His son, Edward the Sixth, a precocious, consumptive
lad of ten, succeeds, and then the reformers gain the upper hand. A new
Prayer Book “in the vulgar tongue, understanded of the people at large,”
is issued, and the Reformation is hurried on with undue speed. There is
a ruthless and irreverent destruction of images, pictures, and stained
glass in the churches, and many pious persons, otherwise favourable to
the “new worship,” are shocked into opposition. To secure the triumph of
Protestantism, Edward is persuaded on his deathbed to make a will
excluding his Catholic sister Mary from the throne, and naming Lady Jane
Grey as his successor.
The young king dies in his sixteenth year, and three days later Queen
Jane is proclaimed. Not a hat is tossed in the air, not a cheer is
raised. London declares for Mary; the nobles and gentry flock to her.
The poor “eleven days’ queen”—young, innocent, and beautiful—is
utterly deserted. She vanishes into the Tower, and her head pays the
penalty of her father-in-law’s ambition.
Mary is now queen, and she sets herself immediately to undo the work of
the Reformation and to restore England to the power of the Pope. She
makes the fatal mistake of marrying Philip of Spain, whose horrible
outrages on the Dutch have made him an object of terror and loathing in
England. Soon he deserts her, and the miserable queen, racked by painful
disease, throws her whole heart into a frenzied attempt to stamp out
Protestantism in her realm. Martyrs perish at the stake, and the nation
is horrified at the queen’s cruelty. And yet one cannot but be sorry for
the wretched woman. In feeble health, miserable, and soured by the
desertion of her husband, filled with anxious fears for the future of
her kingdom, and conscious of the hatred of her people, she honestly
believes that she is doing the will of Heaven in burning and torturing
those of her subjects who do not see eye to eye with her in matters of
religion. Every week her people grow more and more discontented; every
week her health and spirits grow worse.
At length the climax is reached. Her husband drags her into war with
France, and in the struggle “the chief jewel of the realm”—Calais—is
lost. For two hundred years it has been in English hands, and its
possession has meant the command of the “narrow seas.” Now England is
without a foot of soil on French ground, and Englishmen grow bitterly
angry at the thought. Mary has enough national spirit to understand the
magnitude of the disaster. “When I am dead,” she cries, “you will find
‘Calais’ written on my heart!”
Ten months later, on the eve of a great national revolt, the miserable
Mary dies, conscious that she has been a hopeless, helpless failure. She
has striven to re-establish Romanism in the land, but has only succeeded
in ringing its death-knell. Protestantism is again in the ascendant.
While Mary’s obsequies are preparing, a great burst of joy sweeps over
the country, for Elizabeth, her Protestant sister, is now queen.
[Illustration]