perfect accord as to policy, but not actuated by precisely the same
motive. The thing in Cromwell’s mind is the Royal Supremacy; he is
determined to be rid of conditions which check the activities of the
Crown, and of men whose influence tends to keep alive doubts as to
the Crown’s legitimate powers. Henry’s point of view is the personal
one. He has done a very unpopular thing in divorcing Katharine and
marrying Anne, and is determined to make every one admit that he was
entirely in the right. Now, there was in England no ecclesiastic so
universally esteemed for probity and saintliness as Fisher, the Bishop
of Rochester; there was no layman who could compare for intellectual
eminence and beauty of character with Thomas More. It was known to the
world that both these men held that Katharine’s marriage had been
valid, and that both disapproved the recent anti-Papal developments. So
also it was known that in the Houses of Religion which stood highest
in reputation for sincerity and austerity, and were untouched by the
breath of scandal, the divorce and the revolt were regarded with
horror. To force these recalcitrants openly to declare in favour of the
divorce and the Royal Supremacy, would be a great triumph. On the other
hand, nothing would so terrorise opposition as the smiting down, before
the horrified eyes of the world, of victims so distinguished. Cromwell
therefore drafted the oath of obedience to the Act of Succession in
such terms that the subscriber would have to swear not only loyalty to
the provisions of the Act, but acceptance of the divorce as right, and
of the Royal Supremacy as theoretically sound. More, Fisher, and some
of the monks to whom the oath was administered, refused to desert their
principles. They would swear to maintain the succession as laid down,
since it lay within the function of the State to order the succession;
but they would not take the oath as it stood. Thereupon they were sent
to prison.
It may readily be believed that the minister, as reported, swore a
great oath when he heard More’s refusal. The moral effect of winning
such converts would have been incalculable: preferable certainly to
shocking public sentiment as the alternative course must do. But he was
not in the least afraid of shocking public sentiment, at any rate if he
at the same time inspired terror; if circumstances demanded victims,
the more conspicuous they were, the better.
For once, however, a point had been overlooked: it appeared impossible
lawfully to proceed to extremities on the ground of refusal to take the
oath. The omission was rectified in the next session of Parliament.
In a fresh Act of Succession, the oath as administered was expressly
ratified, and the occasion was seized to pass a new Treasons Act,
inadequately described as drastic. It was made treason to question the
titles of the queen and the heirs apparent, or to impute heresy or
schism to the king; and the lawyers were able so to interpret it that
mere silence might be construed as treason--it was enough to refuse to
affirm the Supremacy and the rest of it. The two new Acts were brought
to bear on the victims, who remained firm and were executed in the
following summer. There is no shadow of a hint anywhere that Cromwell
suffered a single qualm in working out the destruction of either
More or Fisher, but it is hardly necessary to make him responsible
for the equally ruthless attitude of the king. According to Roper’s
circumstantial narrative, Henry was so vindictive towards More when
once he had turned against him, that he could hardly be persuaded to
have him left out of the Bill of Attainder in the affair of the Nun
of Kent, until the Chancellor, Lord Audley, and others succeeded in
convincing him that Parliament could not possibly pass the Bill with
More’s name included. If ever there was a chance of life for Fisher and
More, it was destroyed when Henry’s fury was roused by the new Pope
making Fisher a Cardinal. These facts illustrate the difference between
Henry’s attitude and Cromwell’s. To Cromwell, More and Fisher are
merely obstructions to his policy. They must either cease to obstruct
or be crushed. To spare them for sentimental reasons would be absurd,
but there is no passion or vindictiveness or animosity about their
destruction, as far as he is concerned.
Never had any king of England wielded so deadly an engine of despotism
as was placed in Henry’s hands by this Treasons Act of Cromwell;
whereof, however, the full force depended on its manipulation by
its designer. The country was in a very short time so sown with the
minister’s spies that the moment any one became obnoxious to authority
it was the simplest thing possible to procure an information of a
hasty word spoken or passed by in silence, of a phrase that might have
carried a double meaning; and the victim’s doom was virtually sealed.
The excuse, of course, was the one on which a tyranny that seeks to
justify itself invariably falls back--that an unparalleled emergency
demands extraordinary powers. It was not, indeed, quite obvious that
there was an unparalleled emergency in existence, but then it might
arise at any moment. Cromwell was going on to a series of measures
which might prove acceptable, but might on the other hand provoke a
storm of indignation. With the Treasons Act ready to his hand, he could
anticipate conspiracy by striking wherever and whenever it pleased him.
It was an integral part of his political theory that Government--_i.e._
the Despot--should have that power. It was not, of course, aimed
specifically at the Church; it was only incidentally concerned with
More and Fisher. The repression of clericalism was only a part of
the scheme for a legalised Despotism. The climax, the theoretical
coping-stone of the edifice, was not achieved till the Act which in
1539 gave Royal Proclamations the force of law; but for practical
purposes, the Treasons Act made Henry a monarch more absolute than any
other in Christendom.
Cromwell, however, had not as yet fulfilled the promise he is said to
have given of making Henry “the richest king that ever was in England.”
As a matter of fact, whatever riches had come in his way Henry would
never have kept a full treasury, since he always emptied it with both
hands. But Cromwell in his capacity as Vicar-General, or representative
of the Supreme Head with unlimited powers--which office was bestowed
on him early in 1535, a few months after the Treasons Act--was to make
him a record present. It was a matter of principle with him, in his
methods, to make rude display to the higher clergy of the fact that
they must now recognise themselves as mere menials of the Crown, whose
functions might be superseded at the royal pleasure; and on those lines
he acted in striking his next blow, sending out a commission of his own
creatures to “visit” the monasteries, and report upon them. It is only
necessary to recall one of his casual memoranda at a later date--“Item,
the Abbot of Reading, to be sent down to be tried _and executed_”--to
feel properly satisfied that the case of the monasteries was prejudged.
The commission was intended to report evil concerning them, and not
good; and the commissioners acted up to their instructions. It is
quite possible that a perfectly impartial tribunal after complete
investigation would have found the evidence hardly less damning; but
what the commissioners did was to pay a series of hasty visits, collect
all the scandal they could get any one to retail to them, insult or
frighten respectable and responsible inmates till they gave confused or
evasive answers, or none at all, to interrogatories, and so to produce
what passed as evidence of a very abominable and corrupt state of
affairs. Whereupon Parliament passed an Act dissolving between three
and four hundred Houses, in effect handing their property over to the
Crown. Some of this wealth was theoretically appropriated to endowing
new bishoprics and to other corresponding purposes; but in practice a
fraction of it only was so utilised. Some of the lands were given away
to people whom it was convenient for the king--or Cromwell--to placate;
most were sold at low prices--with the effect of establishing a new
landed proprietary which in the years long after was to play a part in
the national politics which their creator can hardly have foreseen. It
was not Cromwell’s way to reach for more than he could grasp; before
he made one stride, he had calculated for the next, but he did not
take it till his own time. So he did not wipe out the monastic system
at a blow. The completion of the business waited--like the Royal
Proclamations Act--till 1539. For the present, Cromwell was content to
impose on the greater monasteries, and such of the lesser ones as still
survived, a disciplinary code which professed to have in view the
enforcement of a becoming austerity, but was felt to be so intolerably
severe as effectually to bring about several voluntary dissolutions or
surrenders.
Cromwell’s royal partner, no doubt, in a famous phrase of much later
date, “stood amazed at his own moderation.” But the country hardly
took the same view. The year which saw, in February, the first Act
dissolving the lesser monasteries, saw also in the autumn a rising
in Lincolnshire, very shortly followed by the organised Yorkshire
insurrection known as the Pilgrimage of Grace. As in all the religious
rebellions of the Reformation, the issues were a good deal mixed up
with social discontents; and the last straw was probably a piece of
Cromwell’s handiwork which had nothing to do with ecclesiastical
matters, being a measure known as the Statute of Uses, designed
to get rid of a maze of legal complications which had arisen from
ingenious evasions of the law as to the inheritance of land. The
insurgents, however, put the religious innovations in the forefront
of their schedule of grievances: openly demanding the dismissal of
both Cromwell and Cranmer. The military management of the suppression
of the rebellion was left to the Dukes of Suffolk and Norfolk, but no
collision was allowed till the northern levies had been diplomatically
induced to disperse; after which some sporadic outbreaks were used,
after the turn of the year, as an excuse for an extremely heavy-handed
exaction of retribution. Cromwell, however, turned the whole thing to
account; as certain abbots and priors had been more or less deeply
implicated, whereby the opportunity was given for suppressing several
considerable religious communities, and hanging some highly placed
Churchmen. A further result was the re-organisation of the government
of the counties constituting the Marches--those which were always
living with an eye on Scotland, and enjoyed or suffered a special
system of control--by the establishment of a new Council of the North
which diminished the power of the nobility in those regions; Cromwell
always maintaining the same end persistently in view, the weakening of
all power of organised resistance to the king’s will.
Another year brought another opportunity. In 1538, Cromwell discovered
a conspiracy. The South-west of England, like the North, was ever on
what may be called the Romantic side when developments, political or
religious, were in progress. It was now perturbed over the innovations.
It appeared that the Marquis of Exeter, the king’s first cousin and a
grandson of Edward IV., was engaged in some sort of conspiracy with
the Poles, whose mother was the old Countess of Salisbury, daughter
of “false fleeting perjured Clarence.” Amongst them, they stood for
the relics of the old Yorkist anti-Tudor faction. Cromwell had already
taken occasion to warn Reginald Pole--whose diatribes against Henry,
issued from abroad, had brought him under the royal ban--that his
kinsmen in England might pay the penalty for his audacity. Whether
there was any real body in the conspiracy is open to doubt, but there
was quite enough evidence to go upon under the Treasons Act. The
process by attainder practically suppressed any defence. Exeter,
Montague (the head of the Poles) and others were executed; and there
were sufficient means for involving some more Houses of religion, with
their heads, notably the revered Abbot of Glastonbury, who were hanged
as traitors.
Thus, by the opening of 1539, everything was ready for the two final
measures. The regrettable conduct of the monastic establishments in
associating themselves with treason provided a final justification for
the complete suppression of the system, and incidentally the further
enrichment of the Crown. In the field of constitutional practice,
the Crown had frequently proceeded by Royal Proclamations, but there
was generally some attendant danger of the authority of these being
challenged. Parliament was now called upon formally to concede to such
proclamations the effect of regular Statutes. It may be remarked in
passing that the Parliament called in 1529 had been responsible for the
whole of the legislation down to its last session in the early spring
of 1536, when it passed the Act dissolving the lesser monasteries.
Whether it was subservient or not, Cromwell had nothing to do with
packing it: it was only at the last moment that he was provided with
a seat in it. But there is no doubt that the subsequent Parliaments,
beginning with that summoned in May 1536, were packed by Cromwell and
his agents. That was an inevitable part of the system which was to make
the king absolute, whilst preserving the traditional forms.
VI
CROMWELL AND PROTESTANTISM
The policy of organising a Despotism was necessarily anti-Papal and
also anti-clerical. In the former aspect, it complicated foreign
relations; in the latter, it was involved with the movement towards a
spiritual and dogmatic reformation of religion. Cromwell’s course in
foreign politics was dictated by anti-Papal considerations. So long as
Katharine, the aunt of Charles V., was alive, there was no prospect of
reconciliation between the Emperor and Henry, so that England could
not work on Wolsey’s favourite line of holding the balance between
Charles and the French king, who felt himself perfectly safe from any
risk of a renewed combination between his rivals. Hence, Cromwell
usually hankered for close association with the German Protestant
princes, united in the League of Schmalkad, as an effective counter
to the Emperor. Such an alliance might either coerce Charles into a
reconciliation with Protestantism and England, or might make Francis
think it worth his while to join an anti-Papal league. Having this
idea in his mind, Cromwell’s attitude towards Lutheranism abroad and
the religious progressives in England was always friendly: since he
realised that the course of events must divide Christendom under the
Papal and anti-Papal standards, which came to be called Catholic and
Protestant respectively. If Rome were cast off by some of her children,
while others remained faithful, sooner or later the latter would be
compelled to unite for the purpose of crushing the rebels. Thus the
defiance of Rome and of Charles by the pronouncement of the divorce in
1533, was attended by overtures to the League of Protestant Princes.
The Lutherans, however, looked askance. They feared the Greeks _et
dona ferentes_; had not Henry taken the field conspicuously against
their leader? German Lutheranism was deep-rooted in a genuine religious
feeling; it could feel no confidence in the king of England as a
convert to the Augsburg confession. Therefore the princes and the
divines of Protestant Germany went warily. On the other hand, the
isolation of England made Francis more than careless of an English
alliance unless on terms extremely profitable to himself. The death
of Katharine, however, in January 1536, changed the situation. It was
no longer necessary for the emperor to range himself against England.
It is noteworthy that the immediate effect on Cromwell was to make
him desire an Imperial (which meant the old Burgundian) alliance, but
he was promptly pulled up by the king, who had learnt once before
that Wolsey had been right in his policy of holding the balance, and
that he himself had erred in forcing an alliance with Charles. The
emperor and Francis fell to fighting again, and for a while England was
approximately in the old position of having each of the great Powers
intriguing for her alliance, while she held aloof and coquetted with
both. Then the combatants grew tired, and, with the improved prospect
of their reconciliation, their ardour for English friendship cooled.
Just before this time, Henry’s third wife died. Neither his first nor
his second spouse had provided him with a male heir; he had divorced
the one, and cut off the head of the other. Jane Seymour did what was
expected of her, but died in the execution of her duty. One not too
sturdy baby boy, and two daughters who had been judicially pronounced
illegitimate, gave room for uneasiness as to the succession. A
fourth matrimonial venture was thus rendered advisable: providing
opportunities for diplomatic intrigue. The royal ladies of Europe,
however, do not seem to have coveted the position: “If I had two heads,
one should be at the King of England’s disposal,” is said to have been
the caustic comment of a suggested bride. Neither Francis nor Charles
would be inveigled. On the contrary, they patched up a peace in the
summer of 1538, and Henry’s policy of keeping them at odds with each
other, while dangling an English alliance before both, broke down, as
Cromwell’s previous attempt to join decisively with Charles had been
frustrated. Cromwell fell back on the line which in his heart he would
probably have preferred throughout, of alliance with the Lutherans: and
at last he hoped--by finding a Lutheran bride for Henry--to attach his
master decisively to that policy. Henry gave a half-hearted assent; the
minister made his final throw. In the moment of seeming victory, his
knell was sounded. Before we come to this, the last act in Cromwell’s
drama, we may revert to his relations with the religious movement in
England.
In the whole of his record, so far as we have at present reviewed
it, there is not a scintilla of evidence to suggest that Henry’s
Vicar-General ever cared a straw about any properly religious question
at all. We can be tolerably sure, no doubt, as to some of the things
he did _not_ believe in. He did not believe that the Pope was the
holder of the keys to heaven. He did not believe that the clergy
were the divinely appointed channel through whom alone salvation
must be obtained. He did not believe in the effectual sanctity of
relics. Such beliefs would at least have been impossible to reconcile
with his anti-Papal and anti-clerical campaigns. But it would be
exceedingly difficult to find any positive dogma to which it would be
possible to point as an article of faith with him. On the other hand,
every circumstance of his life before 1529, known or surmised, was
calculated to produce and to foster scepticism on the intellectual and
carelessness on the emotional side of religion, generating a hardened
materialism. The resulting attitude towards men who were actuated by
strong religious convictions would be regulated entirely by policy.
Obviously, then, doctrines which weakened the hold of the Papacy,
the priesthood, and the monks, on the popular imagination, would
recommend themselves to his mind--not as particularly credible or
true, but as deserving encouragement, weakening the spell of the
great organisation whose power he desired, for reasons of policy, to
reduce to the uttermost. Hence, it would be his wish to be at least
on friendly terms with the reformers who were defying the Pope and
setting ecclesiastical conventions at naught. More particularly, he
would find the most dangerous opponents of his political design in
that school of English Churchmen, headed by the Bishop of Winchester,
who were determined to employ every instrument of intrigue to retain
as much power as possible for the clergy, and he would seek as natural
allies the men like Cranmer who were unqualified advocates of the
Royal Supremacy. Further, he foresaw the ultimate necessity of a
political understanding, if not the actual alliance which he would
have preferred, with Continental Protestantism. On the other hand, he
was thoroughly aware that the king plumed himself on his theological
learning and orthodoxy; and it was no part of his scheme to run counter
to the king. Hence, it became his business so far as he could to
influence Henry in favour of the respectable reformers--not, of course,
those who were tainted with Anabaptism or the suspicion thereof. But
there is no hint anywhere in his conduct that he thought of the actual
tenets of any reformers as in themselves worth any sacrifice. The king
took a keen interest in theological controversies on their merits; his
minister did not.
This view of his attitude, or of what we should have expected his
attitude to be, tallies precisely with what we know of his actions.
When called upon to intervene in clerical controversies, he habitually
backed up Cranmer as against Gardiner, working in concert with him,
except when he perceived that Cranmer wanted to go farther than Henry
was willing to accompany him. Cranmer was a useful ally, who never lost
his place in the royal favour: and the archbishop’s greatest enemy was
his own also. But when the Six Articles Act was introduced, and he knew
the king’s mind on the subject, he promptly left his ally in the lurch;
though no doubt his influence was exerted, when it had been passed, to
check its active enforcement. The passing of the Act--the crack of the
“whip with six strings”--sufficiently served Henry’s immediate purpose,
which was to make a display of rigid orthodoxy for the benefit of the
emperor and King Francis. Cromwell, who had just committed himself to
the Lutherans too deeply to retract, must have viewed the Act itself
with painful feelings; but he could not afford to resist. Compliance
offered the one chance of bringing his master round.
VII
CROMWELL’S FALL
The Act of the Six Articles, the Royal Proclamations Act, and that
for the final suppression of the monasteries, were all passed in the
early summer--May or June--of 1539, when Cromwell was already fully
involved in his scheme for creating a matrimonial bond between Henry
and the German Protestants. In 1538, when peace between Charles and
Francis seemed imminent, he had succeeded in persuading Henry to
invite a visit from the Lutherans with a view to arriving at a mutual
understanding on the theological questions: but even the reconciliation
of the French king and the emperor failed to make the English king at
all cordial, and the envoys went back to Germany in the autumn with
nothing accomplished. As the year drew to a close, however, there were
ominous signs of a league being formed to threaten England--which
perhaps was one of Cromwell’s incentives to the destruction of Exeter
and the Poles, by way of a hint to the Continental Powers that the
government was far too strong to be endangered by any domestic
discontents. The warnings from abroad had their effect on Henry, who
began to think that a counter-alliance might be really necessary. Thus,
immediately after the New Year, Cromwell opened negotiations with the
intention of obtaining Anne of Cleves, sister of the young duke, as a
bride for King Henry. Yet even this concession to his policy was only,
so to speak, a half-loaf: since Cleves was not actually in the League
of Schmalkald, or irrevocably bound to Lutheranism, though the duke
happened to have his own quarrel with the emperor.
In April, another embassy from the League was in England; but so also
was an ambassador from France, bent on placating Henry--and about the
same time, intelligence arrived that the emperor and the League had
come to terms. So very cold water was poured on the Lutheran envoys,
to whom the Six Articles Act was virtually a direct snub: as it was to
Cromwell, whose policy it signified that Henry meant to desert.