1554, the penal laws against heresy were not yet re-enacted. On the
other hand, to punish Cranmer for treason would be a palpable piece of
pure vindictiveness. His treason, such as it was, had been shared by
several of the men who were now on the Council. But the arrival of Pole
and the formal reconciliation with Rome at the close of the year were
accompanied by the revival of the statute _de heretico comburendo_, and
the great persecution opened in February with the burning of Rogers.
A twelvemonth more passed before the end came for Cranmer himself. It
is perhaps, after all, a sufficient explanation of the delay that the
Primate of England could only be condemned for heresy by the Pope.
Other cases fell within the jurisdiction of the legatine or national
ecclesiastical courts; his did not.
In September 1555, a Papal Commission sat in Oxford to examine the case
of the Archbishop and report to Rome for the Pope to pass judgment.
Cranmer refused to recognise the jurisdiction, but made a declaration
in answer to the questions put to him as coming from the Queen’s
Proctors, who were on the Commission. He maintained his views on the
Sacrament, and on the Royal Supremacy, and on the usurpations of
Rome; and justified his actions on all points in respect of which it
had been impugned. The trial over, he followed up his defence by a
vigorous address to the Queen, asserting the utter incompatibility of
any sovereign authority with the Papal claims. On November 25 the Pope
pronounced his excommunication. In the meantime Ridley and Latimer had
been condemned by a court under the authority of the Legate, Cardinal
Pole, on October 1, and on the 16th they suffered martyrdom--Cranmer,
it is said, witnessing the scene from the roof of his prison.
Cranmer remained in prison, cut off from every sympathiser. It is easy
to forget, but it should not be difficult to realise, the tremendous
strain on a nature like his--sensitive, diffident, imaginative. All his
life he had been surrounded and supported by the personal affection
of friends. Now, every conceivable incentive to doubt whether he had
been in the right after all was set to work on him simultaneously. Yet
month followed month, and he remained steadfast--unless his expression
of a desire to confer with Tunstal or Pole was a sign of weakening.
Before he could be handed over to the secular arm, his ecclesiastical
degradation was necessary. The sentence was carried out with every
circumstance of public ignominy--Bonner, the principal performer,
excelling himself in his coarse brutality. For a man with highstrung
nerves, the thing must have been simply shattering.
At the ceremony (February 14) he had drawn from his sleeve an appeal
from the Pope to a general council; and about this time he signed
in close succession what are called four recantations. Two of them
probably preceded the degradation; the other two Bonner extracted from
him on February 15. None of them are recantations at all. They are
submissions to the authority of the sovereign, to whom he had always
taught that submission is due. He had obeyed his own conscience in
contravention of his own theory hitherto; now, he returned to the
theory, and owned that if the secular sovereign willed to establish
Papal authority, obedience was still due. As to doctrine he recanted
nothing. But this was not nearly enough for Mary and Pole, who were
bent on extracting something which should altogether discredit the
cause of the Reformation.
Within ten days the writ for his burning was issued. Then, before three
more weeks had passed Cranmer broke down under the strain, writing
first a full and complete recantation of every impugned doctrine, and
then one more--dictated to him (March 18). No man ever repudiated his
whole past in terms more ignominious. His enemies had what they wanted;
if they had stopped there and pardoned him, the force of the blow would
have been incalculable. But their thirst for his blood gave him the
chance of salvation, changing their victory to hopeless rout. They did
not pardon. They demanded from the victim the public confirmation from
his own lips of the recantations he had written and signed. That one
disastrous moment of weakness was to be gloriously redeemed.
Three days after his fall, on a morning of foul March weather, Cranmer
was conveyed from his prison to listen himself to his own funeral
discourse and then to play his own allotted part. No suspicion seems
to have crossed the mind of his gaolers that there was anything
for them to fear. The oration over--he had listened with frequent
tears--he was bidden to make public avowal of his recantation. He
arose; he confessed the grievousness of his sin, entreating pardon
before the Throne of Omnipotence. And then he declared the nature of
his sin. Before those about him could realise what was happening, he
had recanted his recantation, declaring the truth of all he had before
upheld, and proclaiming, “As my hand offended in writing contrary to
my heart, therefore my hand shall first be punished. For if I may come
to the fire, it shall first be burned.” Hastily he was silenced, and
hurried to the stake; but of his own will he moved so swiftly that the
confessors could scarce keep pace with him. And when, indeed, he “came
to the fire” he fulfilled his words. Men saw him thrust the offending
right hand into the flame, and hold it there till it was consumed.
* * * * *
So tragically, so triumphantly, closed the drama of Cranmer’s
life--surely a close fitted for “purging the passions through pity and
fear.” A vase of fine porcelain whirled into the eddies in company with
pots of brass and stoneware; a scholar, dragged from academic cloisters
to control a revolution; a man with a receptive mind, when receptivity
was about as dangerous a quality, for himself, as he could possess.
A man whom men have ventured to call craven, yet who alone of his
contemporaries dared to remonstrate with Cromwell in his policy and
with the eighth Henry in the day of his wrath, and that not once, nor
twice. A man who endured till the eleventh hour, and then--fell.
But a man who, ere the twelfth hour had struck, rose up the Victor.
WILLIAM CECIL, LORD BURGHLEY
I
THE MINISTERS OF QUEEN ELIZABETH
William Cecil was born in 1520. He lived to the age of seventy-eight,
dying in the same year as Philip II. of Spain, who was five years his
junior. His political connexion began before Henry VIII. was in his
grave; and for more than fifty years it continued, except for his
retirement from the public eye during the complete period of the Marian
persecution. Even in his old age, when his son Robert was already
becoming, in his own crafty fashion, the most important person in
Queen Elizabeth’s Council, the father was still the adviser on whom
she leaned in the last resort. For forty years he was, in fact, the
mainstay of her Government. For twenty of those years--roughly from
1569 to 1589--a man of even higher ability, in some respects, than
himself, Francis Walsingham, was his loyal colleague. They served the
cleverest, the most successful, and the most exasperating princess
who ever sat upon a throne. Both of them--especially Walsingham--told
her home-truths on occasion; both of them--especially Walsingham--she
on occasion abused like a Billingsgate fish-wife. But all three were
unfailingly loyal to each other; and among them they raised England to
the forefront of the nations of Christendom.
[Illustration: _WILLIAM CECIL (LORD BURGHLEY)_
_From a Portrait by_ MARC GHEERAEDTS (?) _in the National Portrait
Gallery_]
To establish orderly government at home, to settle a religious _modus
vivendi_, to avoid war, and to prevent the succession of Mary Stewart
or any pronounced Catholic--these were the main aims on which Elizabeth
and her two great ministers were united. Of the three, Walsingham--a
Puritan--was the least devoted to the Peace policy, Elizabeth the
most determined on that policy; yet it was Elizabeth who habitually
endangered it. The Queen’s tortuous methods, pursued in defiance
of her counsellors, more than once seemed to have brought her to a
point where war was inevitable; yet time after time her ingenuity,
or her lucky star, or a return just in time to Cecil’s guidance,
saved the situation. Never has a sovereign been better served; never
has there been a reign in which rulers and ruled worked in more
essential concord. Idealism and common sense were united in the
conduct of affairs with a completeness which has rarely, if ever, been
paralleled--never have the toils of the men of counsel and the men
of action been more effectively combined. And England was peculiarly
fortunate in this--that the great antagonist whom finally she fought
and overthrew could be thoroughly relied on always to miss the
opportunity for which he was always waiting, always to move only when
the moment had passed irrevocably. So England was the victor in the
great duel; and the Stewarts found her might established on a basis so
firm that even they were unable to pull it down.
That result was not due to any one mind--to any single guide.
Elizabeth, her ministers, her seamen, and her people, all contributed
their share; and the work was crowned by the glory of her poets.
Burghley may not have been personally a statesman of the highest rank,
though if he is not included in that category it is a little difficult
to name any Englishman who is entitled to that honour. There is a
certain commonplace, _bourgeois_ touch about him; he stands for the
common sense, not the idealist, side, in the combination which made
England great. His virtues were those of the successful pursuers of the
_via media_. He did not organise revolution: he did not dream of an
empire on which the sun should never set. But he played the political
game with unfailing loyalty to his sovereign and his country, with
level-headed shrewdness, with imperturbable resolution. There are few
men to whom England owes so much; and if there be those to whom she
owes more, their deeds but for him would yet have been impossible.
II
CECIL UNDER EDWARD VI. AND MARY
In the reign of Henry VII., Richard Sitsilt, affirmed by tradition
to be of an ancient Welsh family long established among the gentry
of the Marches, owned broad acres in the counties of Monmouth and
Herefordshire. One of his sons, David, who elected to modify his name
into Cecil, transferred himself to Lincolnshire, where he prospered
greatly. He and his son Richard became very large landed proprietors,
and held a variety of offices connected with the Court under Henry
VIII. So it would appear that the present Marquess of Salisbury is not
unconnected by descent with the “Celtic fringe.” It must be admitted,
however, that the notable qualities of his great ancestor are not those
usually associated with what is supposed to be the Celtic temperament.
Still in that connexion a rather curious point may be touched on. A
critic has recently remarked that there is a type of statesmanship
which we are in the habit of regarding as peculiarly English (_à
propos_ of l’Hôpital), naming in a brief list both Burghley and
Cromwell--Oliver, apparently, not Thomas. Now Oliver was descended from
the sister of Thomas, whose husband was a Welshman, and whose son chose
to adopt the maternal patronymic instead of his father’s name, which
was Williams. So Wales has some title to claim the Tudors, the Cecils,
and the great Oliver among her contributions to “English” celebrities.
William Cecil was born in 1520, and when in due course he went to
Cambridge, he became a member of a distinguished group of scholars
which included Roger Ascham, afterwards tutor of Lady Jane Grey and
of Elizabeth; John Cheke, who became the tutor of Edward VI., and
whose sister was Cecil’s first wife; and Nicholas Bacon, who married
the sister of Cecil’s second wife. William Cecil married Mary Cheke
in 1541: she died in less than two years, after bearing him one son,
Thomas, afterwards Lord Exeter. Nearly three years later he married
Mildred, daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke, the “governor” of Prince
Edward--a young lady of portentous learning, whose name Roger Ascham
coupled with that of Jane Grey. Thus Cecil himself was not only well
versed in the most progressive learning of his time, but his chosen
associates, including both the first and the second wife, were all
distinguished for erudition--and all, it may be remarked, tinged with
the “New Learning” in the specific ecclesiastical sense of the term.
Before the death of Henry VIII. the young man was already the recipient
of Court favour, and in the good graces of the Earl of Hertford,
to whose personal service we find him definitely attached in the
early days of the Protectorship. He accompanied the Protector on his
Scottish invasion, was present at Pinkie, and was made Somerset’s
secretary about a year later. His assiduity and his immense capacity
for mastering laborious detail must have been of infinite value to his
chief, whose woeful lack of practicality must, on the other hand, have
intensified his secretary’s inborn tendency to rate common sense in
method a long way higher than visionary idealism of aim. All his life
long, nothing ever induced Cecil to deviate from safe precedent and
respectable courses--bold enough, when his foresight satisfied him that
boldness was the better part of prudence, but never rash. Every step
was always carefully calculated, and a path for retreat kept open if
there was the remotest risk of retreat being necessary. In the service
of the most impulsive and sentimental of statesmen, he learnt--if he
needed to learn--never to act upon sentiment or impulse.
When Somerset fell in 1549 Cecil was still some way short of thirty;
but he had an old head on his young shoulders--and he had every
intention of keeping it there. He had no personal devotion to Somerset
or to his policy, and had carefully avoided quarrelling with anybody.
When he perceived that the ship was scuttled, he had no compunction
about making sure of leaving it in a decent and orderly manner before
it sank. He did not quite desert; he remained with the Protector in the
discharge of his duties, while very nearly every one else was making a
parade of sympathy with the cabal who obviously held the winning cards;
but he remained there in careful obscurity--the personal secretary,
not the partisan. He did not escape a brief imprisonment in the Tower;
no doubt he had counted on that. But Warwick was perfectly aware of
his power of making himself useful, and saw no possible reason why he
should not avail himself thereof--nor did Cecil. Competent officials
were few, and of these some had already put themselves out of court,
in Warwick’s eyes, either by having supported Somerset too boldly or
by displaying doubtful religious leanings. The former secretary of
Somerset had not made himself obnoxious in any quarter; and in the
following September (1550) he emerged again into public life in a more
responsible position than before, as Secretary of State.
The political waters were, to say the least, unquiet; there was no
telling when squalls might be coming. Personal intrigues were rife.
Cecil had no ambition to grasp the tiller under these conditions. He
was ready to give advice to the best of his ability; he was ready to
carry out instructions, whether they accorded with his advice or not;
but he was not disposed to give orders on his own account--his ambition
was not of the vaulting sort. His business was to keep his own footing,
whether others did so or no; he would take no risks unless his own
life were endangered by refusing them--every man must take care of
himself. If Warwick chose to insist on a policy which the secretary
disapproved--alliance with France abroad, or debasement of coinage at
home--that was Warwick’s business, not the secretary’s: what he had
to do was to carry out the policy imposed on him, with the maximum of
efficiency and the minimum of friction, without allowing himself to be
identified with the policy or with antagonism to it.
So when Warwick made up his mind that Somerset must be finally removed,
it was Cecil’s cue to avoid, so far as he could, taking an active
part in so ungracious a business as his old patron’s destruction--but
certainly not to invite destruction for himself by injudicious
partisanship. He did not scruple even to give Warwick information
injurious to Somerset; though it was probably only because he knew it
would reach that cunning schemer’s ears sooner or later--and when it
came to a choice between profiting or suffering by the inevitable,
he had no qualms about profiting. Still, he managed to be too much
occupied with foreign negotiations to have much to do with the
Somerset affair. As for the foreign negotiations themselves, he did
not make any attempt to counteract the policy which, against his own
judgment, he was called upon to carry out, but he was very seriously
and not unsuccessfully engaged in minimising the untoward consequences
which he foresaw.
As the young king’s death drew manifestly near, the intrigues of
Northumberland, as Warwick had now become, thickened. Sir William--he
had been knighted at the end of 1551--did not like intrigues; but in
spite of seasonable illness, which may have been genuine, he could not
altogether avoid being dragged in, and was obliged--like all the rest
of the Council--to append his signature to the document nominating Lady
Jane Grey heir to the throne. He averred afterwards that he signed
only as a witness--a statement more ingenious than ingenuous. Still,
he took care that there should be evidence from unofficial quarters
that he would have avoided signing if he could, and that so far as he
was formally a participator in Northumberland’s plot it was with no
goodwill to its success--which, indeed, was the attitude of several
other signatories, who did their best to upset the scheme the moment
they felt safe in doing so. Cranmer, however, the most reluctant of any
of them, had no such double-dealing in his mind, and made no attempt
to evade the responsibility when he had once assumed it, though he had
been tricked into acquiescence by a lie.
It is only fair, in judging Cecil’s conduct through these years, to
remember that he was only in his twenty-seventh year when Somerset
became Protector, and in his thirty-third year when Queen Mary
succeeded. Warwick made him Secretary of State eight days before his
thirtieth birthday. Of course, if the errors he committed had been
errors of youth, he would have won easy forgiveness; yet in some
respects his excessive caution may reasonably be attributed to his
youth. He had every excuse for arguing that a real control must be
out of his reach for many years, and that till it came within his
reach he was not called upon to insist on his own views. In those days
the servants of the State did not resign--the remark has been made
before--they carried out the policy imposed on them from above. He was
content, therefore, to bide his time, and for the present to do the
political drudgery for Somerset or Northumberland, while he avoided
committing himself personally to anybody or anything. This course was
not one which permitted the exercise of generosity or magnanimity; it
completely eschewed the idea of self-sacrifice; but it was a course
which he could and did pursue without ever fairly laying himself open
to the charge of treachery, or incurring the faintest suspicion of what
is called corruption. If he was guided by considerations of personal
advantage, it was not in the sense that any one could bid successfully
for his support.
So when Northumberland’s plot collapsed ignominiously, Cecil, although
a Protestant and officially opposed to Gardiner, had no difficulty in
making his peace with the new Government. Only, the political seas
being stormier than ever, he had no inclination either to head an
Opposition or to take a prominent place among the queen’s ministers.
He was too much of a Protestant for that, though not too much so to
conform and “bow himself in the House of Rimmon.” In short, he courted
an obscurity from which the Government had no desire to extract
him--though it is probable that if he had chosen to offer himself as
an instrument for Mary’s use, she would have availed herself of him
readily enough. But it was one thing to pass from Somerset’s employ
to Warwick’s, and another to pass from Northumberland’s to Mary’s.
Besides, by keeping in the background now he could quietly establish
himself in the confidence of the probable successor to the throne,
the Princess Elizabeth. Being a member of the Parliament of 1556, he
therein openly opposed sundry Government measures which were hotly
resisted by the House of Commons, but even then he behaved with
circumspection and did not suffer for his conduct. His real business
was with Elizabeth; and when the crisis came, and Mary died, the
members of the Council who hastened to Hatfield found Cecil already
installed as her Prime Minister elect, with the scheme for carrying on
the Government completely organised.
III
FOREIGN AFFAIRS AT ELIZABETH’S ACCESSION
Sir William had bided his time, and that time had arrived. On the
throne was a young woman of five-and-twenty, who had already shown a
skill akin to Cecil’s own in the avoidance of fatally compromising
words or acts under circumstances when the utmost wariness had been
the constant condition of safety. She had maintained her Protestantism
in precisely the same way and in very much the same degree as he had
done; moreover, she was bound for her own sake to maintain it, since
her personal claim to legitimate birth was bound up with the rejection
of Papal authority. Cecil had received her confidence, it may be, in
part, because she was aware that she could afford to indulge her own
waywardness more freely while she had so eminently safe a counsellor as
a stand-by. He, for his part, was doubtless fully satisfied that she
had intelligence enough to recognise that he was indispensable to her,
and that in the main their views of policy would harmonise. The young
man had held aloof from intrigues and had declined all temptations to
grasp at dangerous power, not from lack of ambition or of patriotism,
but because the power would have been too dearly bought and its
foundations too unstable. Now, while he was still in the prime of life,
yet of ripe experience, power lay ready for him to grasp--power to
guide England in the courses which he believed would serve her best
interests; power to cure the evils from which she had been suffering
for many a year past; power to avert those which menaced her in the
future; power which, once achieved, he was not likely to lose unless
by his own blundering. He knew his own capacity. To refuse power under
such conditions would have been not caution but pusillanimity.