CHAPTER VII.

THE LAST EFFORTS OF DIPLOMACY.

I have now to resume the thread of the political history where it was

dropped at the sentence of divorce pronounced by Cranmer, and the

coronation of the new queen. The effect was about to be ascertained of

these bold measures upon Europe; and of what their effect would be, only

so much could be foretold with certainty, that the time for trifling was

past, and the pope and Francis of France would be compelled to declare

their true intentions. If these intentions were honest, the

subordination of England to the papacy might be still preserved in a

modified form. The papal jurisdiction was at end, but the spiritual

supremacy of the Bishop of Rome, with a diminished but considerable

revenue attached to it, remained unaffected; and it was for the pope to

determine whether, by fulfilling at last his original engagements, he

would preserve these remnants of his power and privileges, or boldly

take up the gage, excommunicate his disobedient subjects, and attempt by

force to bring them back to their allegiance.

[Sidenote: April 22.]

[Sidenote: The king's marriage compels Clement to declare himself.]

The news of what had been done did not take him wholly by surprise. It

was known at Brussels at the end of April that the king had married. The

queen regent[147] spoke of it to the ambassador sternly and

significantly, not concealing her expectation of the mortal resentment

which would be felt by her brothers;[148] and the information was

forwarded with the least possible delay to the cardinals of the imperial

faction at Rome. The true purposes which underlay the contradiction of

Clement's language are undiscoverable. Perhaps in the past winter he had

been acting out a deep intrigue--perhaps he was drifting between rival

currents, and yielded in any or all directions as the alternate pressure

varied; yet whatever had been the meaning of his language, whether it

was a scheme to deceive Henry, or was the expression only of weakness

and good-nature desiring to avoid a quarrel to the latest moment, the

decisive step which had been taken in the marriage, even though it was

nominally undivulged, obliged him to choose his course and openly

adhere to it. After the experience of the past, there could be no doubt

what that course would be.

[Sidenote: May 12. The king is cited to appear at Rome.]

[Sidenote: The censures of the church suspended only till the emperor

can execute them.]

[Sidenote: The pope's resolution and the explanation of it.]

On the 12th of May a citation was issued against the King of England,

summoning him to appear by person or proxy at a stated day. It had been

understood that no step of such a kind was to be taken before the

meeting of the pope and Francis; Bennet, therefore, Henry's faithful

secretary, hastily inquired the meaning of this measure. The pope told

him that it could not be avoided, and the language which he used

revealed to the English agent the inevitable future. The king, he said,

had defied the inhibitory brief which had been lately issued, and had

incurred excommunication; the imperialists insisted that he should be

proceeded against for contempt, and that the excommunication should at

once be pronounced. However great might be his own personal reluctance,

it was not possible for him to remain passive; and if he declined to

resort at once to the more extreme exercise of his power, the hesitation

was merely until the emperor was prepared to enforce the censures of the

church with the strong hand. It stood not "with his honour to execute

such censures," he said, "and the same not to be regarded."[149] But

there was no wish to spare Henry; and if Francis could be detached from

his ally, and if the condition of the rest of Christendom became such as

to favour the enterprise, England might evidently look for the worst

which the pope, with the Catholic powers, could execute. If the papal

court was roused into so menacing a mood by the mere intimation of the

secret marriage, it was easy to foresee what would ensue when the news

arrived of the proceedings at Dunstable. Bennet entreated that the

process should be delayed till the interview; but the pope answered

coldly that he had done his best and could do no more; the imperialists

were urgent, and he saw no reason to refuse their petition.[150] This

was Clement's usual language, but there was something peculiar in his

manner. He had been often violent, but he had never shown resolution,

and the English agents were perplexed. The mystery was soon explained.

He had secured himself on the side of France; and Francis, who at Calais

had told Henry that his negotiations with the see of Rome were solely

for the interests of England, that for Henry's sake he was marrying his

son into a family beneath him in rank, that Henry's divorce was to form

the especial subject of his conference with the pope, had consented to

allow these dangerous questions to sink into a secondary place, and had

relinquished his intention, if he had ever seriously entertained it, of

becoming an active party in the English quarrel.

[Sidenote: Delay of the interview between the pope and Francis.]

[Sidenote: The true purposes of that interview.]

The long talked-of interview was still delayed. First it was to have

taken place in the winter, then in the spring; June was the date last

fixed for it, and now Bennet had to inform the king that it would not

take place before September; and that, from the terms of a communication

which had just passed between the parties who were to meet, the subjects

discussed at the conference would not be those which he had been led to

expect. Francis, in answer to a question from the pope, had specified

three things which he proposed particularly to "intreat." The first

concerned the defence of Christendom against the Turks, the second

concerned the general council, and the third concerned "the extinction

of the Lutheran sect."[151] These were the points which the Most

Christian king was anxious to discuss with the pope. For the latter good

object especially, "he would devise and treat for the provision of an

army." In the King of England's cause, he trusted "some means might be

found whereby it might be compounded;"[152] but if persuasion failed,

there was no fear lest he should have recourse to any other method.

It was this which had given back to the pope his courage. It was this

which Bennet had now to report to Henry. The French alliance, it was too

likely, would prove a broken reed, and pierce the hand that leant upon

it.

[Sidenote: Probable isolation of England.]

[Sidenote: Policy of Francis.]

Henry knew the danger; but danger was not a very terrible thing either

to him or to his people. If he had conquered his own reluctance to risk

a schism in the church, he was not likely to yield to the fear of

isolation; and if there was something to alarm in the aspect of affairs,

there was also much to encourage. His parliament was united and

resolute. His queen was pregnant. The Nun of Kent had assigned him but a

month to live after his marriage; six months had passed, and he was

alive and well; the supernatural powers had not declared against him;

and while safe with respect to enmity from above, the earthly powers he

could afford to defy. When he finally divorced Queen Catherine, he must

have foreseen his present position at least as a possibility, and if

not prepared for so swift an apostasy in Francis, and if not yet wholly

believing it, we may satisfy ourselves he had never absolutely trusted a

prince of metal so questionable.

The Duke of Norfolk was waiting at the French court, with a magnificent

embassy, to represent the English king at the interview. The arrival of

the pope had been expected in May. It was now delayed till September;

and if Clement came after all, it would be for objects in which England

had but small concern. It was better for England that there should be no

meeting at all, than a meeting to devise schemes for the massacre of

Lutherans. Henry therefore wrote to the Duke, telling him generally what

he had heard from Rome; he mentioned the three topics which he

understood were to form the matter of discussion; but he skilfully

affected to regard them as having originated with the imperialists, and

not with the French king. In a long paper of instructions, in which

earnestness and irony were strangely blended, he directed the ambassador

to treat his good brother as if he were still exclusively devoted to the

interests of England; and to urge upon him, on the ground of this fresh

delay, that the interview should not take place at all.[153]

[Sidenote: The king's instructions to the Duke of Norfolk to "disappoint

the interview."]

[Sidenote: The "Three Articles" proposed for discussion will be wholly

to the advantage of the Imperialists]

"Our pleasure is," he wrote, "that ye shall say ------ that we be not a

little moved in our heart to see our good brother and us, being such

princes or Christendom, to be so handled with the pope, so much to our

dishonour, and to the pope's and the emperor's advancement; seeming to

be at the pope's commandment to come or tarry as he or his cardinals

shall appoint; and to depend upon his pleasure when to meet--that is to

say, when he list or never. If our good brother and we were either

suitors to make request, the obtaining whereof we did much set by, or

had any particular matter of advantage to entreat with him, these

proceedings might be the better tolerated; but our good brother having

no particular matter of his own, and being ... that [no] more glory nor

surety could happen to the emperour than to obtain the effect of the

three articles moved by the pope and his cardinals, we think it not

convenient to attend the pleasure of the pope, to go or to abyde. We

could have been content to have received and taken at the pope's hand,

jointly with our good brother, pleasure and friendship in our great

cause; [but] on the other part, we cannot esteem the pope's part so

high, as to have our good brother an attendant suitor therefore ...

desiring him, therefore, in anywise to disappoint for his part the said

interview; and if he have already granted thereto--upon some new good

occasion, which he now undoubtedly hath--to depart from the same.

[Sidenote: He has found by experience that the friendship of the pope is

not vital to England.]

[Sidenote: King Henry knows the pope and himself also.]

"For we, ye may say, having the justness of our cause for us, with such

an entire and whole consent of our nobility and commons of our realm and

subjects, and being all matters passed, and in such terms as they now

be, do not find such lack and want of that the pope might do, with us or

against us, as we would for the obtaining thereof be contented to have a

French king our so perfect a friend, to be not only a mediator but a

suitor therein, and a suitor attendant to have audience upon liking and

after the advice of such cardinals as repute it among pastymes to play

and dally with kings and princes; whose honour, ye may say, is above

all things, and more dear to us in the person of our good brother, than

is any piece of our cause at the pope's hands. And therefore, if there

be none other thing but our cause, and the other causes whereof we be

advertised, our advice, counsel, special desire also and request is,

[that our good brother shall] break off the interview, unless the pope

will make suit to him; and [unless] our said good brother hath such

causes of his own as may particularly tend to his own benefit, honour

and profit--wherein he shall do great and singular pleasure unto us;

_giving to understand to the pope, that we know ourselves and him both

and look to be esteemed accordingly_."

Should it appear that on receipt of this communication, Francis was

still resolved to persevere, and that he had other objects in view to

which Henry had not been made privy, the ambassadors were then to remind

him of the remaining obligations into which he had entered; and to

ascertain to what degree his assistance might be calculated upon, should

the pope pronounce Henry deposed, and the emperor attempt to enforce the

sentence.

[Sidenote: Intended appeal to a general council.]

[Sidenote: The advantages of this measure.]

[Sidenote: June 29.]

After forwarding these instructions, the king's next step was to

anticipate the pope by an appeal which would neutralize his judgment

should he venture upon it; and which offered a fresh opportunity of

restoring the peace of Christendom, if there was true anxiety to

preserve that peace. The hinge of the great question, in the form which

at last it assumed, was the validity or invalidity of the dispensation

by which Henry had married his brother's widow. Being a matter which

touched the limit of the pope's power, the pope was himself unable to

determine it in his own favour; and the only authority by which the law

could be ruled, was a general council. In the preceding winter, the pope

had volunteered to submit the question to this tribunal; but Henry

believing that it was on the point of immediate solution in another way,

had then declined, on the ground that it would cause a needless delay.

He was already married, and he had hoped that sentence might be given in

his favour in time to anticipate the publication of the ceremony. But he

was perfectly satisfied that justice was on his side; and was equally

confident of obtaining the verdict of Europe, if it could be fairly

pronounced. Now, therefore, under the altered circumstances, he accepted

the offered alternative. He anticipated with tolerable certainty the

effect which would be produced at Rome, when the news should arrive

there of the Dunstable divorce; and on the 29th of June he appealed

formally, in the presence of the Archbishop of York, from the pope's

impending sentence, to the next general council.[154]

[Sidenote: Terms of the appeal. The king has no intention of derogating

from the lawful privileges of the See of Rome.]

Of this curious document the substance was as follows:--It commenced

with a declaration that the king had no intention of acting otherwise

than became a good Catholic prince; or of injuring the church or

attacking the privileges conceded by God to the Holy See. If his words

could be lawfully shown to have such a tendency, he would revoke, emend,

and correct them in a Catholic spirit.

[Sidenote: But Europe having declared in his favour in his great matter,

"by the inspiration of the Most High," he has married another wife.]

[Sidenote: He fears that the pope, who has injured him throughout, may

now pass the censures of the church against him.]

The general features of the case were then recapitulated. His marriage

with his brother's wife had been pronounced illegal by the principal

universities of Europe, by the clergy of the two provinces of the Church

of England, by the most learned theologians and canonists, and finally,

by the public judgment of the church.[155] He therefore had felt himself

free; and, "by the inspiration of the Most High, had lawfully married

another woman." Furthermore, "for the common weal and tranquillity of

the realm of England, and for the wholesome rule and government of the

same, he had caused to be enacted certain statutes and ordinances, by

authority of parliaments lawfully called for that purpose." "Now,

however," he continued, "we fearing that his Holyness the Pope ...

having in our said cause treated us far otherwise than either respect

for our dignity and desert, or the duty of his own office required at

his hands, and having done us many injuries which we now of design do

suppress, but which hereafter we shall be ready, should circumstances so

require, to divulge ... may now proceed to acts of further injustice,

and heaping wrong on wrong, may pronounce the censures and other

penalties of the spiritual sword against ourselves, our realm, and

subjects, seeking thereby to deprive us of the use of the sacraments,

and to cut us off, in the sight of the world, from the unity of the

church, to the no slight hurt and injury of our realm and subjects:

[Sidenote: He appeals from any such censures to the next general

council.]

"Fearing these things, and desiring to preserve from detriment not only

ourselves, our own dignity and estimation, but also our subjects,

committed to us by Almighty God; to keep them in the unity of the

Christian faith, and in the wonted participation in the sacraments;

that, when in truth they be not cut off from the integrity of the

church, nor can nor will be so cut off in any manner, they may not

appear to be so cut off in the estimation of men; [desiring further] to

check and hold back our people whom God has given to us, lest, in the

event of such injury, they refuse utterly to obey any longer the Roman

Pontiff, as a hard and cruel pastor: [for these causes] and believing,

from reasons probable, conjectures likely, and words used to our injury

by his Holiness the Pope, which in divers manners have been brought to

our ears, that some weighty act may be committed by him or others to the

prejudice of ourselves and of our realm;--We, therefore, in behalf of

all and every of our subjects, and of all persons adhering to us in this

our cause, do make our appeal to the next general council, which shall

be lawfully held, in place convenient, with the consent of the Christian

princes, and of such others as it may concern--not in contempt of the

Holy See, but for defence of the truth of the Gospel, and for the other

causes afore rehearsed. And we do trust in God that it shall not be

interpreted as a thing ill done on our part, if preferring the salvation

of our soul and the relief of our conscience to any mundane respects or

favours, we have in this cause regarded more the Divine law than the

laws of man, and have thought it rather meet to obey God than to obey

man."[156]

By the appeal and the causes which were assigned for it, Henry

preoccupied the ground of the conflict; he entrenched himself in the

"debatable land" of legal uncertainty; and until his position had been

pronounced untenable by the general voice of Christendom, any sentence

which the pope could issue would have but a doubtful validity. It was,

perhaps, but a slight advantage; and the niceties of technical fencing

might soon resolve themselves into a question of mere strength; yet, in

the opening of great conflicts, it is well, even when a resort to force

is inevitable, to throw on the opposing party the responsibility of

violence; and Henry had been led, either by a refinement of policy, or

by the plain straightforwardness of his intentions, into a situation

where he could expect without alarm the unrolling of the future.

[Sidenote: The news of the divorce pronounced at Dunstable arrives at

Rome.]

[Sidenote: General indignation in the consistory.]

[Sidenote: Bonner is impertinent. The pope threatens to boil him in

lead. He writes in terror to England.]

[Sidenote: Henry comforts him.]

The character of that future was likely soon to be decided. The appeal

was published on the 29th of June; and as the pope must have heard, by

the middle of the month at latest, of the trial and judgment at

Dunstable, a few days would bring an account of the manner in which he

had received the intelligence. Prior to the arrival of the couriers,

Bennet, with the assistance of Cardinal Tournon, had somewhat soothed

down his exasperation. Francis, also, having heard that immediate

process was threatened, had written earnestly to deprecate such a

measure;[157] and though he took the interference "very

displeasantly,"[158] the pope could not afford to lose, by premature

impatience, the fruit of all his labour and diplomacy, and had yielded

so far as to promise that nothing of moment should be done. To this

state of mind he had been brought one day in the second week of June.

The morning after, Bennet found him "sore altered." The news of "my Lord

of Canterbury's proceedings" had arrived the preceding night; and "his

Holiness said that [such] doings were too sore for him to stand still at

and do nothing."[159] It was "against his duty towards God and the world

to tolerate them." The imperialist cardinals, impatient before,

clamoured that the evil had been caused by the dilatory timidity with

which the case had been handled from the first.[160] The consistory sate

day after day with closed doors;[161] and even such members of it had

before inclined to the English side, joined in the common indignation.

"Some extreme process" was instantly looked for, and the English agents,

in their daily interviews with the pope, were forced to listen to

language which it was hard to bear with equanimity. Bennet's well-bred

courtesy carried him successfully through the difficulty; his companion

Bonner was not so fortunate. Bonner's tongue was insolent, and under bad

control. He replied to menace by impertinence; and on one occasion was

so exasperating, that Clement threatened to burn him alive, or boil him

in a caldron of lead.[162] When fairly roused, the old man was

dangerous; and the future Bishop of London wrote to England in

extremity of alarm. His letter has not been found, but the character of

it may be perceived from the reassuring reply of the king. The agents,

Henry said, were not to allow themselves to be frightened; they were to

go on calmly, with their accustomed diligence and dexterity, disputing

the ground from point to point, and trust to him. Their cause was good,

and, with God's help, he would be able to defend them from the malice of

their adversaries.[163]

[Sidenote: The consistory cools into prudence.]

[Sidenote: July 12. The pope declares the divorce illegal, and commands

Henry to cancel the process. If he fails to obey, he is declared

excommunicated.]

Fortunately for Bonner, the pope's passion was of brief duration, and

the experiment whether Henry's arm could reach to the dungeons of the

Vatican remained untried. The more moderate of the cardinals, also,

something assuaged the storm; and angry as they all were, the majority

still saw the necessity of prudence. In the heat of the irritation,

final sentence was to have been pronounced upon the entire cause, backed

by interdict, excommunication, and the full volume of the papal

thunders. At the close of a month's deliberation they resolved to

reserve judgment on the original question, and to confine themselves for

the present to revenging the insult to the pope by "my Lord of

Canterbury." Both the king and the archbishop had disobeyed a formal

inhibition. On the 12th of July, the pope issued a brief, declaring

Cranmer's judgment to have been illegal, the English process to have

been null and void, and the king, by his disobedience, to have incurred,

_ipso facto_, the threatened penalties of excommunication. Of his

clemency he suspended these censures till the close of the following

September, in order that time might be allowed to restore the respective

parties to their old positions: if within that period the parties were

not so restored, the censures would fall.[164] This brief was sent into

Flanders, and fixed in the usual place against the door of a church in

Dunkirk.

[Sidenote: Henry again urges Francis to decline to meet the pope.]

Henry was prepared for a measure which was no more than natural. He had

been prepared for it as a possibility when he married. Both he and

Francis must have been prepared for it on their meeting at Calais, when

the French king advised him to marry, and promised to support him

through the consequences. His own measures had been arranged beforehand,

and he had secured himself in technical entrenchments by his appeal.

After the issue of the brief, however, he could allow no English embassy

to compliment Clement by its presence on his visit to France. He "knew

the pope," as he said. Long experience had shown him that nothing was to

be gained by yielding in minor points; and the only chance which now

remained of preserving the established order of Christendom, was to

terrify the Vatican court into submission by the firmness of his

attitude. For the present complications, the court of Rome, not he, was

responsible. The pope, with a culpable complacency for the emperor, had

shrunk from discharging a duty which his office imposed upon him; and

the result had been that the duty was discharged by another. Henry

could not blame himself for the consequences of Clement's delinquency.

He rather felt himself wronged in having been driven to so extreme a

measure against his will. He resolved, therefore, to recal the embassy,

and once more, though with no great hope that he would be successful, to

invite Francis to fulfil his promise, and to unite with himself in

expressing his resentment at the pope's conduct.

[Sidenote: August 8.]

His despatch to the Duke of Norfolk on this occasion was the natural

sequel of what he had written a few weeks previously. That letter had

failed wholly of its effect. The interview was resolved upon for quite

other reasons than those which were acknowledged, and therefore was not

to be given up. A promise, however, had been extracted, that it should

be given up, if in the course of the summer the pope "innovated

anything" against the King of England; and Henry now required, formally,

that this engagement should be observed. "A notorious and notable

innovation" had been made, and Francis must either deny his words, or

adhere to them. It would be evident to all the world, if the interview

took place under the present circumstances, that the alliance with

England was no longer of the importance with him which it had been; that

his place in the struggle, when the struggle came, would be found on the

papal side.

[Sidenote: The cause at issue is the independence of princes.]

[Sidenote: He has been required to repeal the Act of Appeals,]

[Sidenote: Which is impossible.]

[Sidenote: He, therefore, and the pope are as far asunder as yea and

nay,]

[Sidenote: And he trusts that Francis will agree with him as to the

pope's conduct.]

[Sidenote: For himself, he is satisfied that he can retract nothing

which he has justly done,]

The language of Henry throughout this paper was very fine and noble. He

reminded Francis that substantially the cause at issue was the cause of

all princes; the pope claiming a right to summon them to plead in the

courts of Rome, and refusing to admit their exemption as sovereign

rulers. He had been required not only to undo his marriage, and cancel

the sentence of divorce, but, as a condition of reconciliation with the

Holy See, to undo also the Act of Appeals, and to restore the papal

jurisdiction. He desired it to be understood, with emphasis, that these

points were all equally sacred, and the repeal of the act was as little

to be thought of as the annulling the marriage. "The pope," he said,

"did inforce us to excogitate some new thing, whereby we might be healed

and relieved of that continual disease, to care for our cause at Rome,

where such defence was taken from us, as by the laws of God, nature, and

man, is due unto us. Hereupon depended the wealth of our realm; hereupon

consisted the surety of our succession, which by no other means could be

well assured." "And therefore," he went on, "you [the Duke] shall say to

our good brother, that the pope persisting in the ways he hath entered,

ye must needs despair in any meeting between the French king and the

pope, to produce any such effect as to cause us to meet in concord with

the pope; but we shall be even as far asunder as is between yea and nay.

For to the pope's enterprise to revoke or put back anything that is done

here, either in marriage, statute, sentence, or proclamation[165]--of

which four members is knit and conjoined the surety of our matter, nor

any can be removed from the other, lest thereby the whole edifice should

be destroyed--we will and shall, by all ways and means say nay, and

declare our nay in such sort as the world shall hear, and the pope feel

it. Wherein ye may say our firm trust, perfect hope, and assured

confidence is, that our good brother will agree with us: as well for

that it should be partly dishonourable for him to see decay the thing

that was of his own foundation and planting; as also that it should be

too much dishonourable for us--having travelled so far in this matter,

and brought it to this point, that all the storms of the year passed, it

is now come to harvest, trusting to see shortly the fruit of our

marriage, to the wealth, joy, and comfort of all our realm, and our own

singular consolation--that anything should now be done by us to impair

the same, and to put our issue either in peril of bastardy, or otherwise

disturb that [which] is by the whole agreement of our realm established

for their and our commodity, wealth, and benefit. And in this

determination ye know us to be so fixed, and the contrary hereof to be

so infeasible, either at our hands, or by the consent of the realm, that

ye must needs despair of any order to be taken by the French king with

the pope. For if any were by him taken wherein any of these four pieces

should be touched--that is to say, the marriage of the queen our wife,

the revocation of the Bishop of Canterbury's sentence, the statute of

our realm, or our late proclamation, which be as it were one--and as

walls, covering, and foundation make a house, so they knit together,

establish, and make one matter--ye be well assured, and be so

ascertained from us, that in no wise we will relent, but will, as we

have before written, withstand the same. Whereof ye may say that ye have

thought good to advertise him, to the intent he make no farther promise

to the pope therein than may be performed."

[Sidenote: And the pope must be made to understand his folly.]

The ambassadors were the more emphatically to insist on the king's

resolution, lest Francis, in his desire for conciliation, might hold

out hopes to the pope which could not be realized. They were to say,

however, that the King of England still trusted that the interview would

not take place. The see of Rome was asserting a jurisdiction which, if

conceded, would encourage an unlimited usurpation. If princes might be

cited to the papal courts in a cause of matrimony, they might be cited

equally in other causes at the pope's pleasure; and the free kingdoms of

Europe would be converted into dependent provinces of the see of Rome.

It concerned alike the interest and the honour of all sovereigns to

resist encroachments which pointed to such an issue; and, therefore,

Henry said he hoped that his good brother would use the pope as he had

deserved, "doing him to understand his folly, and [that] unless he had

first made amends, he could not find in his heart to have further amity

with him."

[Sidenote: If the meeting is to go on, and the ambassadors cannot induce

Francis to "break" it, they are to return home.]

If notwithstanding, the instructions concluded, "all these persuasions

cannot have place to let the said meeting, and the French king shall say

it is expedient for him to have in his hands the duchess,[166] under

pretence of marriage for his son, which he cannot obtain but by this

means, ye shall say that ye remember ye heard him say once he would

never conclude that marriage but to do us good, which is now infaisible;

and now in the voice of the world shall do us both more hurt in the

diminution of the reputation of our amity than it should do otherwise

profit. Nevertheless, [if] ye cannot let his precise determination, [ye]

can but lament and bewail your own chance to depart home in this sort;

and that yet of the two inconvenients, it is to you more tolerable to

return to us nothing done, than to be present at the interview and to be

compelled to look patiently upon your master's enemy."

After having entered thus their protest against the French king's

conduct, the embassy was to return to England, leaving a parting

intimation of the single condition under which Henry would consent to

treat. If the pope would declare that "the matrimony with the Lady

Catherine was and is nought, he should do somewhat not to be refused;"

except with this preliminary, no offer whatever could be

entertained.[167]

[Sidenote: The remonstrance fails.]

[Sidenote: The effect upon the world's opinion.]

[Sidenote: Intended Catholic triumvirate--the Pope, the Emperor, and the

King of France.]

This communication, as Henry anticipated, was not more effectual than

the former in respect of its immediate object. At the meeting of Calais

the interests of Francis had united him with England, and in pursuing

the objects of Henry he was then pursuing his own. The pope and the

emperor had dissolved the coalition by concessions on the least

dangerous side. The interests of Francis lay now in the other direction,

and there are few instances in history in which governments have adhered

to obligations against their advantage from a spirit of honour, when the

purposes with which they contracted those obligations have been

otherwise obtained. The English embassy returned as they were ordered;

the French court pursued their way to Marseilles; not quarrelling with

England; intending to abide by the alliance, and to give all proofs of

amity which did not involve inconvenient sacrifices; but producing on

the world at large by their conduct the precise effect which Henry had

foretold. The world at large, looking at acts rather than to words,

regarded the interview as a contrivance to reconcile Francis and the

emperor through the intervention of the pope, as a preliminary for a

packed council, and for a holy war against the Lutherans,[168]--a

combination of ominous augury to Christendom, from the consequences or

which, if Germany was to be the first sufferer, England would be

inevitably the second.

[Sidenote: September 6. Henry, against his will, looks towards Germany.]

[Sidenote: Unfortunate want of union among Protestants.]

[Sidenote: Mission of Stephen Vaughan to the Court of the Elector of

Saxe,]

[Sidenote: Which is not welcome.]

[Sidenote: The Elector had no anxiety to compromise himself with the

Emperor.]

Meanwhile, as the French alliance threatened to fail, the English

government found themselves driven at last to look for a connexion among

those powers from whom they had hitherto most anxiously disconnected

themselves. At such a time Protestant Germany, not Catholic France, was

England's natural friend. The Reformation was essentially a Teutonic

movement; the Germans, English, the Scotch, the Swedes, the Hollanders,

all were struggling on their various roads towards an end essentially

the same. The same dangers threatened them, the same inspiration moved

them; and in the eyes of the orthodox Catholics they were united in a

black communion of heresy. Unhappily, though this identity was obvious

to their enemies, it was far from obvious to themselves. The odium

theologicum is ever hotter between sections of the same party which are

divided by trifling differences, than between the open representatives

of antagonist principles; and Anglicans and Lutherans, instead of

joining hands across the Channel, endeavoured only to secure each a

recognition of themselves at the expense of the other. The English

plumed themselves on their orthodoxy. They were "not as those

publicans," heretics, despisers of the keys disobedient to authority;

they desired only the independence of their national church, and they

proved their zeal for the established faith with all the warmth of

persecution. To the Germans national freedom was of wholly minor moment,

in comparison with the freedom of the soul; the orthodoxy of England was

as distasteful to the disciples of Luther as the orthodoxy of Rome--and

the interests of Europe were sacrificed on both sides to this foolish

and fatal disunion. Circumstances indeed would not permit the division

to remain in its first intensity, and their common danger compelled the

two nations into a partial understanding. Yet the reconciliation,

imperfect to the last, was at the outset all but impossible. Their

relations were already embittered by many reciprocal acts of hostility.

Henry VIII. had won his spurs as a theologian by an attack on Luther.

Luther had replied by a hailstorm of invectives. The Lutheran books had

been proscribed, the Lutherans themselves had been burnt by Henry's

bishops. The Protestant divines in Germany had attempted to conciliate

the emperor by supporting the cause of Catherine; and Luther himself had

spoken loudly in condemnation of the king. The elements of disunion were

so many and so powerful, that there was little hope of contending

against them successfully. Nevertheless, as Henry saw, the coalition of

Francis and the emperor, if the pope succeeded in cementing it, was a

most serious danger, to which an opposite alliance would alone be an

adequate counterpoise; and the experiment might at least be tried

whether such an alliance was possible. At the beginning of August,

therefore, Stephen Vaughan was sent on a tentative mission to the

Elector of Saxe, John Frederick, at Weimar.[169] He was the bearer of

letters containing a proposal for a resident English ambassador; and if

the elector gave his consent, he was to proceed with similar offers to

the courts of the Landgrave of Hesse and the Duke of Lunenberg.[170]

Vaughan arrived in due time at the elector's court, was admitted to

audience, and delivered his letters. The prince read them, and in the

evening of the same day returned for answer a polite but wholly absolute

refusal. Being but a prince elector, he said, he might not aspire to so

high an honour as to be favoured with the presence of an English

ambassador. It was not the custom in Germany, and he feared that if he

consented he should displease the emperor.[171] The meaning of such a

reply delivered in a few hours was not to be mistaken, however disguised

in courteous language. The English emissary saw that he was an unwelcome

visitor, and that he must depart with the utmost celerity. "The

elector," he wrote,[172] "thirsted to have me gone from him, which I

right well perceived by evident tokens which declared unto me the

same." He had no anxiety to expose to hazard the toleration which the

Protestant dukedoms as yet enjoyed from the emperor, by committing

himself to a connexion with a prince with whose present policy he had no

sympathy, and whose conversion to the cause of the Reformation he had as

yet no reason to believe sincere.[173]

The reception which Vaughan met with at Weimar satisfied him that he

need go no further; neither the Landgrave nor the Duke of Lunenberg

would be likely to venture on a course which the elector so obviously

feared. He, therefore, gave up his mission, and returned to England.

[Sidenote: The failure a not unprofitable lesson to England.]

The first overtures in this direction issued in complete failure, nor

was the result wholly to be regretted. It taught Henry (or it was a

first commencement of the lesson) that so long as he pursued a merely

English policy he might not expect that other nations would embroil

themselves in his defence. He must allow the Reformation a wider scope,

he must permit it to comprehend within its possible consequences the

breaking of the chains by which his subjects' minds were bound--not

merely a change of jailors. Then perhaps the German princes might return

some other answer.

[Sidenote: September 7. Birth of the Princess Elizabeth.]

[Sidenote: Exultation in London.]

[Sidenote: Light and shadow.]

The disappointment, however, fell lightly; for before the account of the

failure had reached England, an event had happened, which, poor as the

king might be in foreign alliances, had added most material strength to

his position in England. The full moment of that event he had no means

of knowing. In its immediate bearing it was matter for most abundant

satisfaction. On the seventh of September, between three and four in the

afternoon, at the palace of Greenwich, was born a princess, named three

days later in her baptism, after the king's mother, Elizabeth.[174] A

son had been hoped for. The child was a daughter only; yet at least

Providence had not pronounced against the marriage by a sentence of

barrenness; at least there was now an heir whose legitimacy the nation

had agreed to accept. Te Deums were sung in all the churches; again the

river decked itself in splendour; again all London steeples were musical

with bells. A font of gold was presented for the christening. Francis,

in compensation for his backslidings, had consented to be godfather; and

the infant, who was soon to find her country so rude a stepmother, was

received with all the outward signs of exulting welcome. To Catherine's

friends the offspring of the rival marriage was not welcome, but was an

object rather of bitter hatred; and the black cloud of a sister's

jealousy gathered over the cradle whose innocent occupant had robbed her

of her title and her expectations. To the king, to the parliament, to

the healthy heart of England, she was an object of eager hope and an

occasion for thankful gratitude; but the seeds were sown with her birth

of those misfortunes which were soon to overshadow her, and to form the

school of the great nature which in its maturity would re-mould the

world.

[Sidenote: Preparations for the interview at Marseilles.]

Leaving Elizabeth for the present, we return to the continent, and to

the long-promised interview, which was now at last approaching. Henry

made no further attempt to remonstrate with Francis; and Francis assured

him, and with all sincerity, that he would use his best efforts to move

the pope to make the necessary concessions. The English embassy

meanwhile was withdrawn. The excommunication had been received as an act

of hostility, of which Henry would not even condescend to complain; and

it was to be understood distinctly that in any exertions which might be

made by the French king, the latter was acting without commission on his

own responsibility. The intercession was to be the spontaneous act of a

mutual friend, who, for the interests of Christendom, desired to heal a

dangerous wound; but neither directly nor indirectly was it to be

interpreted as an expression of a desire for a reconciliation on the

English side.

[Sidenote: The pope arrives under the conduct of the Duke of Albany.]

[Sidenote: Oct. 25th. Marriage of Henry Duke of Orleans, and Catherine

de Medici.]

[Sidenote: Amicable differences between the pope and Francis on the

English question.]

[Sidenote: General distrust.]

It was determined further, on the recal of the Duke of Norfolk, that the

opportunity of the meeting should be taken to give a notice to the pope

of the king's appeal to the council; and for this purpose, Bennet and

Bonner were directed to follow the papal court from Rome. Bennet never

accomplished this journey, dying on the route, worn out with much

service.[175] His death delayed Bonner, and the conferences had opened

for many days before his arrival. Clement had reached Marseilles by ship

from Genoa, about the 20th of October. As if pointedly to irritate

Henry, he had placed himself under the conduct of the Duke of

Albany.[176] He was followed two days later by his fair niece, Catherine

de Medici; and the preparations for the marriage were commenced with the

utmost swiftness and secrecy. The conditions of the contract were not

allowed to transpire, but they were concluded in three days; and on the

25th of October the pope bestowed his precious present on the Duke of

Orleans, he himself performing the nuptial ceremony, and accompanying it

with his paternal benediction on the young pair, and on the happy

country which was to possess them for its king and queen. France being

thus securely riveted to Rome, other matters could be talked of more

easily. Francis made all decent overtures to the pope in behalf of

Henry; if the pope was to be believed indeed, he was vehemently

urgent.[177] Clement in turn made suggestions for terms of alliance

between Francis and Charles, "to the advantage of the Most Christian

king;"[178] and thus parried the remonstrances. The only point

positively clear to the observers, was the perfect understanding which

existed between the King of France and his spiritual father.[179]

Unusual activity was remarked in the dockyards; Italian soldiers of

fortune were about the court in unusual numbers, and apparently in

favour.[180] An invasion of Lombardy was talked of among the palace

retinue; and the emperor was said to distrust the intentions of the

conference. Possibly experience had taught all parties to doubt each

other's faith. Possibly they were all in some degree waiting upon

events; and had not yet resolved upon their conduct.

[Sidenote: Bonner at Marseilles.]

[Sidenote: Character of Bonner.]

In the midst of this scene arrived Doctor Bonner, in the beginning of

November, with Henry's appeal. He was a strange figure to appear in such

a society. There was little probity, perhaps, either in the court of

France, or in their Italian visitors: but of refinement, of culture, of

those graces which enable men to dispense with the more austere

excellences of character,--which transform licentiousness into elegant

frailty, and treachery and falsehood into pardonable finesse,--of these

there was very much: and when a rough, coarse, vulgar Englishman was

plunged among these delicate ladies and gentlemen, he formed an element

which contrasted strongly with the general environment. Yet Bonner,

perhaps, was not without qualifications which fitted him for his

mission. He was not, indeed, virtuous; but he had a certain downright

honesty about him, joined with an entire insensibility to those finer

perceptions which would have interfered with plain speaking, where plain

speaking was desirable; he had a broad, not ungenial humour, which

showed him things and persons in their genuine light, and enabled him to

picture them for us with a distinctness for which we owe him lasting

thanks.

[Sidenote: November 7.]

He appeared at Marseilles on the 7th of November, and had much

difficulty in procuring an interview. At length, weary of waiting, and

regardless of the hot lead with which he had been lately threatened, he

forced his way into the room where "the pope was standing, with the

Cardinals De Lorraine and Medici, ready apparelled with his stole to go

to the consistory."

[Sidenote: Bonner's letter to the king.]

"Incontinently upon my coming thither," he wrote to Henry,[181] "the

pope, whose sight is incredulous quick, eyed me, and that divers times;

making a good pause in one place; at which time I desired the datary to

advertise his Holiness that I would speak with him; and albeit the

datary made no little difficulty therein, yet perceiving that upon

refusal I would have gone forthwith to the pope, he advertised the pope

of my said desire. His Holiness dismissing as then the said cardinals,

and letting his vesture fall, went to a window in the said chamber,

calling me unto him. At which time I showed unto his Holiness how that

your Highness had given me express and strait commandment to intimate

unto him how that your Grace had solemnly provoked and appealed unto the

general council; submitting yourself to the tuition and defence thereof;

which provocation and appeal I had under authentic writings then with

me, to show for that purpose. And herewithal I drew out the said

writing, showing his said Holiness that I brought the same in proof of

the premises, and that his Holiness might see and perceive all the same.

The pope having this for a breakfast, only pulled down his head to his

shoulders, after the Italian fashion, and said that because he was as

then fully ready to go into the consistory, he would not tarry to hear

or see the said writings, but willed me to come at afternoon."

[Sidenote: The king's appeal is delivered to the pope.]

The afternoon came, and Bonner returned, and was admitted. There was

some conversation upon indifferent matters; the pope making good-natured

inquiries about Bennet, and speaking warmly and kindly of him.

"Presently," Bonner continues, "falling out of that, he said that he

marvelled your Highness would use his Holiness after such sort as it

appears ye did. I said that your Highness no less did marvel that his

Holiness having found so much benevolence and kindness at your hands in

all times past, would for acquittal show such unkindness as of late he

did. And here we entered in communication upon two points: one was that

his Holiness, having committed in times past, and in most ample form,

the cause into the realm, promising not to revoke the said commission,

and over that, to confirm the process and sentence of the commissaries,

should not at the point of sentence have advoked the cause, retaining it

at Rome--forasmuch as Rome was a place whither your Highness could not,

ne yet ought, personally to come unto, and also was not bound to send

thither your proctor. The second point was, that your Highness's cause

being, in the opinion of the best learned men in Christendom, approved

good and just, and so [in] many ways known unto his Holiness, the same

should not so long have retained it in his hands without judgment.

"His Holiness answering the same, as touching the first point, said that

if the queen (meaning the late wife of Prince Arthur, calling her always

in his conversation the queen) had not given an oath refusing the judges

as suspect, he would not have advoked the matter at all, but been

content that it should have been determined and ended in your realm. But

seeing she gave that oath, appealing also to his court, he might and

ought to hear her, his promise made to your Highness, which was

qualified, notwithstanding. As touching the second point, his Holiness

said that your Highness only was the default thereof, because ye would

not send a proxy to the cause. These matters, however, he said, had been

many times fully talked upon at Rome; and therefore [he] willed me to

omit further communication thereupon, and to proceed to the doing of

such things that I was specially sent for.

[Sidenote: The pope's anger.]

"Whereupon making protestation of your Highness's mind and intent

towards the see apostolic--not intending anything to do in contempt of

the same--I exhibited unto his Holiness the commission which your

Highness had sent unto me; and his Holiness delivering it to the datary,

commanded him to read it; and hearing in the same the words (referring

to the injuries which he had done to your Highness), he began to look up

after a new sort, and said, 'O questo et multo vero! (this is much

true!)' meaning that it was not true indeed. And verily, sure not only

in this, but also in many parts of the said commission, he showed

himself grievously offended; insomuch that, when those words, 'To the

next general council which shall be lawfully held in place convenient,'

were read, he fell in a marvellous great choler and rage, not only

declaring the same by his gesture and manner, but also by words:

speaking with great vehemence, and saying, 'Why did not the king, when I

wrote to my nuncio this year past, to speak unto him for this general

council, give no answer unto my said nuncio, but referred him for answer

to the French king? at what time he might perceive by my doing, that I

was very well disposed, and much spake for it.' 'The thing so standing,

now to speak of a general council! Oh, good Lord! but well! his

commission and all his other writings cannot be but welcome unto me;'

which words methought he spake willing to hide his choler, and make me

believe that he was nothing angry with their doings, when in very deed I

perceived, by many arguments, that it was otherwise. And one among

others was taken here for infallible with them that knoweth the pope's

conditions, that he was continually folding up and unwinding of his

handkerchief, which he never doth but when he is tickled to the very

heart with great choler."

At length the appeal was read through; and at the close of it Francis

entered, and talked to the pope for some time, but in so low a voice

that Bonner could not hear what was passing. When he had gone, his

Holiness said that he would deliberate upon the appeal with the

consistory, and after hearing their judgments would return his answer.

[Sidenote: The appeal is rejected.]

Three days passed, and then the English agent was informed that he might

again present himself. The pope had recovered his calmness. When he had

time to collect himself, Clement could speak well and with dignity; and

if we could forget that his conduct was substantially unjust, and that

in his conscience he knew it to be unjust, he would almost persuade us

to believe him honest. "He said," wrote Bonner, "that his mind towards

your Highness always had been to minister justice, and to do pleasure to

you; albeit it hath not been so taken: and he never unjustly grieved

your Grace that he knoweth, nor intendeth hereafter to do. As concerning

the appeal, he said that, forasmuch as there was a constitution of Pope

Pius, his predecessor, that did condemn and reprove all such appeals, he

did therefore reject your Grace's appeal as frivolous, forbidden, and

unlawful." As touching the council, he said generally, that he would do

his best that it should meet; but it was to be understood that the

calling a general council belonged to him, and not to the King of

England.

The audience ended, and Bonner left the pope convinced that he intended,

on his return to Rome, to execute the censures and continue the process

without delay. That the sentence which he would pronounce would be

against the king appeared equally certain.

[Sidenote: Yet on Bonner's departure Clement assures Francis that the

King of England's cause is just,]

[Sidenote: And if he will only acknowledge the Papal authority, he will

give sentence in his favour.]

It appeared certain, yet after all no certain conclusion is possible.

Francis I., though not choosing to quarrel with the see of Rome to do a

pleasure to Henry, was anxious to please his ally to the extent of his

convenience; at any rate, he would not have gratuitously deceived him;

and still less would he have been party to an act of deliberate

treachery. When Bonner was gone he had a last interview with the pope,

in which he urged upon him the necessity of complying with Henry's

demands; and the pope on this occasion said that he was satisfied that

the King of England was right; that his cause was good; and that he had

only to acknowledge the papal jurisdiction by some formal act, to find

sentence immediately pronounced in his favour. Except for his

precipitation, and his refusal to depute a proxy to plead for him, his

wishes would have been complied with long before. In the existing

posture of affairs, and after the measures which had been passed in

England with respect to the see of Rome, he himself, the pope said,

could not make advances without some kind of submission; but a single

act of acknowledgment was all which he required.[182]

[Sidenote: Was the pope honest? or treacherous? or merely weak.]

[Sidenote: Let us try to judge him charitably.]

Extraordinary as it must seem, the pope certainly bound himself by this

engagement: and who can tell with what intention? To believe him sincere

and to believe him false seems equally impossible. If he was persuaded

that Henry's cause _was_ good, why did he in the following year

pronounce finally for Catherine? why had he imperilled so needlessly the

interests of the papacy in England? why had his conduct from the

beginning pointed steadily to the conclusion at which he at last

arrived? and why throughout Europe were the ultramontane party, to a

man, on Catherine's side? On the other hand, what object at such a time

can be conceived for falsehood? Can we suppose that he designed to dupe

Henry into submission by a promise which he had predetermined to break?

It is hard to suppose even Clement capable of so elaborate an act of

perfidy; and it is, perhaps, idle to waste conjectures on the motives of

a weak, much-agitated man. He was, probably, but giving a fresh example

of his disposition to say at each moment whatever would be most

agreeable to his hearers. This was his unhappy habit, by which he earned

for himself a character for dishonesty, I labour to think, but half

deserved.

[Sidenote: Proposal that the cause should be referred to a commission,

to sit at Cambray.]

[Sidenote: Francis implores Henry to consent.]

If, however, Clement meant to deceive, he succeeded, undoubtedly, in

deceiving the French king, Francis, in communicating to Henry the

language which the pope had used, entreated him to reconsider his

resolution. The objection to pleading at Rome might be overcome; for

the pope would meet him in a middle course. Judges could be appointed,

who should sit at Cambray, and pass a sentence in condemnation of the

original marriage; with a definite promise that their sentence should

not again be called in question. To this arrangement there could be no

reasonable objection; and Francis implored that a proposal so liberal

should not be rejected. Sufficient danger already threatened

Christendom, from heretics within and from the Turks without; and

although the English parliament were agreed to maintain the second

marriage, it was unwise to provoke the displeasure of foreign princes.

To allow time for the preliminary arrangements, the execution of the

censures had been further postponed; and if Henry would make up the

quarrel, the French monarch was commissioned to offer a league,

offensive and defensive, between England, France, and the Papacy. He

himself only desired to be faithful to his engagements to his good

brother; and as a proof of his good faith, he said that he had been

offered the Duchy of Milan, if he would look on while the emperor and

the pope attacked England.[183]

This language bears all the character of sincerity, and when we remember

that it followed immediately upon a close and intimate communication of

three weeks with Clement, it is not easy to believe that he could have

mistaken the extent of the pope's promises. We may suppose Clement for

the moment to have been honest, or wavering between honesty and

falsehood; we may suppose further that Francis trusted him because it

was undesirable to be suspicious, in the belief that he was discharging

the duty of a friend to Henry and of a friend to the church, in offering

to mediate upon these terms.

[Sidenote: Suspicions of Henry.]

[Sidenote: His disgust with Clement.]

But Henry was far advanced beyond the point at which fair words could

move him. He had trusted many times, and had been many times deceived.

It was not easy to entangle him again. It mattered little whether

Clement was weak or false; the result was the same--he could not be

trusted. To an open English understanding there was something monstrous

in the position of a person professing to be a judge, who admitted that

a cause which lay before him was so clear that he could bind himself to

a sentence upon it, and could yet refuse to pronounce that sentence,

except upon conditions. It was scarcely for the interests of justice to

leave the distribution of it in hands so questionable.

Instead, therefore, of coming forward, as Francis hoped, instead of

consenting to entangle himself again in the meshes of diplomatic

intrigue, the king returned a peremptory refusal.

The Duke of Norfolk, and such of the council as dreaded the completion

of the schism, assured d'Inteville, the French ambassador, that for

themselves they considered Francis was doing the best for England which

could be done, and that they deprecated violent measures as much as

possible; but in all this party there was a secret leaning to Queen

Catherine, a dislike of Queen Anne and the whole Boleyn race, and a

private hope and belief that the pope would after all be firm. Their

tongues were therefore tied. They durst not speak except alone in

whispers to each other, and the French ambassador, who did dare, only

drew from Henry a more determined expression of his resolution.

As to his measures in England, the king said, the pope had begun the

quarrel by issuing censures and by refusing to admit his reasons for

declining to plead at Rome. He was required to send a proctor, and was

told that the cause should be decided in favour of whichever party was

so represented there. For the sake of all other princes as well as

himself, he would send no proctor, nor would he seem to acquiesce in the

pretences of the papal see. The King of France told him that the pope

admitted the justice of his cause. Let the pope do justice, then. The

laws passed in parliament were for the benefit of the commonwealth, and

he would never revoke them. He demanded no reparation, and could make no

reparation. He asked only for his right, and if he could not obtain it,

he had God and truth on his side, and that was enough. In vain

d'Inteville answered feebly, that his master had done all that was in

his power; the king replied that the French council wished to entangle

him with the pope; but for his own part he would never more acknowledge

the pope in his pretended capacity. He might be bishop of Rome, or pope

also, if he preferred the name; but the see of Rome should have no more

jurisdiction in England, and he thought he would be none the worse

Christian on that account, but rather the better. Jesus Christ he would

acknowledge, and him only, as the true Lord of Christian men, and

Christ's word only should be preached in England. The Spaniards might

invade him as they threatened. He did not fear them. They might come,

but they might not find it so easy to return.[184]

The King had taken his position and was prepared for the consequences.

He had foreseen for more than a year the possibility of an attempted

invasion; and since his marriage, he had been aware that the chances of

success in the adventure had been discussed on the Continent by the

papal and imperial party. The pope had spoken of his censures being

enforced, and Francis had revealed to Henry the nature of the dangerous

overtures which had been made to himself. The Lutheran princes had

hurriedly declined to connect themselves in any kind of alliance with

England: and on the 25th of September, Stephen Vaughan had reported that

troops were being raised in Germany, which rumour destined for

Catherine's service.[185] Ireland, too, as we shall hear in the next

chapter, was on the verge of an insurrection, which had been fomented by

papal agents.

[Sidenote: The conditions under which invasion might be dangerous.]

[Sidenote: Apparent tranquillity of England.]

[Sidenote: The Nun of Kent's conspiracy.]

Nevertheless, there was no real danger from an invasion, unless it was

accompanied with an insurrection at home, or with a simultaneous attack

from Scotland; and while of the first there appeared upon the surface no

probability, with Scotland a truce for a year had been concluded on the

1st of October.[186] The king, therefore, had felt himself reasonably

secure. Parliament had seemed unanimous; the clergy were submissive;

the nation acquiescent or openly approving;[187] and as late as the

beginning of November, 1533, no suspicion seems to have been entertained

of the spread of serious disaffection. A great internal revolution had

been accomplished; a conflict of centuries between the civil and

spiritual powers had been terminated without a life lost or a blow

struck. Partial murmurs there had been, but murmurs were inevitable,

and, so far as the government yet knew, were harmless. The Scotch war

had threatened to be dangerous, but it had been extinguished. Impatient

monks had denounced the king from the pulpits, and disloyal language had

been reported from other quarters, which had roused vigilance, but had

not created alarm. The Nun of Kent had forced herself into the royal

presence with menacing prophecies; but she had appeared to be a harmless

dreamer, who could only be made of importance by punishment. The surface

of the nation was in profound repose. Cromwell, like Walsingham after

him, may perhaps have known of the fire which was smouldering below, and

have watched it silently till the moment came at which to trample it

out; but no symptom of uneasiness appears either in the conduct of the

government or in the official correspondence. The organization of the

friars, the secret communication of the Nun with Catherine and the

Princess Mary, with the papal nuncio, or with noble lords and reverend

bishops, was either unknown, or the character of those communications

was not suspected. That a serious political conspiracy should have

shaped itself round the ravings of a seeming lunatic, to all appearance

had not occurred as a possibility to a single member of the council,

except to those whose silence was ensured by their complicity.

[Sidenote: The first occasion of suspicion.]

So far as we are able to trace the story (for the links of the chain

which led to the discovery of the designs which were entertained, are

something imperfect), the suspicions of the government were first roused

in the following manner:

[Sidenote: On the birth of Elizabeth, the Princess Mary is called upon

to surrender her title.]

Queen Catherine, as we have already seen, had been called upon, at the

coronation of Anne Boleyn, to renounce her title, and she had refused.

Mary had been similarly deprived of her rank as princess; but either her

disgrace was held to be involved in that of her mother, or some other

cause, perhaps the absence of immediate necessity, had postponed the

demand for her own personal submission. As, however, on the publication

of the second marriage, it had been urged on Catherine that there could

not be two queens in England, so on the birth of the Princess Elizabeth,

an analogous argument required the disinheritance of Mary. It was a hard

thing; but her mother's conduct obliged the king to be peremptory. She

might have been legitimatized by act of parliament, if Catherine would

have submitted. The consequences of Catherine's refusal might be cruel,

but they were unavoidable.

Mary was not with her mother. It had been held desirable to remove her

from an influence which would encourage her in a useless opposition; and

she was residing at Beaulieu, afterwards New Hall, in Essex, under the

care of Lord Hussey and the Countess of Salisbury. Lord Hussey was a

dangerous guardian, he was subsequently executed for his complicity in

the Pilgrimage of Grace, the avowed object of which was the restoration

of Mary to her place as heir-apparent. We may believe, therefore, that

while under his surveillance she experienced no severe restraint, nor

received that advice with respect to her conduct which prudence would

have dictated. Lord Hussey, however, for the present enjoyed the

confidence of the king, and was directed to inform his charge, that for

the future she was to consider herself not as princess, but as the

king's natural daughter, the Lady Mary Tudor. The message was a painful

one; painful, we will hope, more on her mother's account than on her

own; but her answer implied that, as yet, Henry VIII. was no object of

especial terror to his children.

[Sidenote: She replies haughtily and violently.]

"Her Grace replied," wrote Lord Hussey to the council in communicating

the result of his undertaking,[188] that "she could not a little marvel

that I being alone, and not associate with some other the king's most

honourable council, nor yet sufficiently authorized neither by

commission nor by any other writing from the King's Highness, would

attempt to declare such a high enterprise and matter of no little weight

and importance unto her Grace, in diminishing her said estate and name;

her Grace not doubting that she is the king's true and legitimate

daughter and heir procreate in good and lawful matrimony; [and] further

adding, that unless she were advertised from his Highness by his writing

that his Grace was so minded to diminish her estate, name, and dignity,

which she trusteth his Highness will never do, she would not believe

it."

[Sidenote: She writes to the king in a similar tone.]

Inasmuch as Mary was but sixteen at this time, the resolution which she

displayed in sending such a message was considerable. The early English

held almost Roman notions on the nature of parental authority, and the

tone of a child to a father was usually that of the most submissive

reverence. Nor was she contented with replying indirectly through her

guardian. She wrote herself to the king, saying that she neither could

nor would in her conscience think the contrary, but that she was his

lawful daughter born in true matrimony, and that she thought that he in

his own conscience did judge the same.[189]

[Sidenote: Danger to the nation of Mary's attitude.]

Such an attitude in so young a girl was singular, yet not necessarily

censurable. Henry was not her only parent, and if we suppose her to have

been actuated by affection for her mother, her conduct may appear not

pardonable only, but spirited and creditable. In insisting upon her

legitimacy, nevertheless, she was not only asserting the good name and

fame of Catherine of Arragon, but unhappily her own claim to the

succession to the throne. It was natural that under the circumstances

she should have felt her right to assert that claim; for the injury

which she had suffered was patent not only to herself, but to Europe.

Catherine might have been required to give way that the king might have

a son, and that the succession might be established in a prince; but so

long as the child of the second marriage was a daughter only, it seemed

substantially monstrous to set aside the elder for the younger. Yet the

measure was a harsh necessity; a link in the chain which could not be

broken. The harassed nation insisted above all things that no doubt

should hang over the future, and it was impossible in the existing

complications to recognise the daughter of Catherine without excluding

Elizabeth, and excluding the prince who was expected to follow her. By

asserting her title, Mary was making herself the nucleus of sedition,

which on her father's death would lead to a convulsion in the realm. She

might not mean it, but the result would not be affected by a want of

purpose in herself; and it was possible that her resolution might create

immediate and far more painful complications. The king's excommunication

was imminent, and if the censures were enforced by the emperor, she

would be thrust into the unpermitted position of her father's rival.

[Sidenote: The king treats her as a petulant child.]

The political consequences of her conduct, notwithstanding, although

evident to statesmen, might well be concealed from a headstrong,

passionate girl. There was no suspicion that she herself was encouraging

any of these dangerous thoughts, and Henry looked upon her answer to

Lord Hussey and her letter to himself as expressions of petulant folly.

Lord Oxford, the Earl of Essex, and the Earl of Sussex were directed to

repair to Beaulieu, and explain to her the situation in which she had

placed herself.

[Sidenote: His letter explaining to her the true nature of her

position.]

"Considering," wrote the king to them, "how highly such contempt and

rebellion done by our daughter and her servants doth touch not only us,

and the surety of our honour and person, but also the tranquillity of

our realm; and not minding to suffer the pernicious example hereof to

spread far abroad, but to put remedy to the same in due time, we have

given you commandment to declare to her the great folly, temerity, and

indiscretion that she hath used herein, with the peril she hath

incurred by reason of her so doing. By these her ungodly doings hitherto

she hath most worthily deserved our high indignation and displeasure,

and thereto no less pain and punition than by the order of the laws of

our realm doth appertain in case of high treason, unless our mercy and

clemency should be shewed in that behalf. [If, however, after]

understanding our mind and pleasure, [she will] conform herself humbly

and obediently to the observation of the same, according to the office

and duty of a natural daughter, and of a true and faithful subject, she

may give us cause hereafter to incline our fatherly pity to her

reconciliation, her benefit and advancement."[190]

The reply of Mary to this message is not discoverable; but it is certain

that she persisted in her resolution, and clung either to her mother's

"cause" or to her own rank and privilege, in sturdy defiance of her

father. To punish her insubordination or to tolerate it was equally

difficult; and the government might have been in serious embarrassment

had not a series of discoveries, following rapidly one upon the other,

explained the mystery of these proceedings, and opened a view with

alarming clearness into the undercurrents of the feeling of the country.

[Sidenote: Correspondence between Queen Catherine, the Court of Rome,

and the Emperor.]

Information from time to time had reached Henry from Rome, relating to

the correspondence between Catherine and the pope. Perhaps, too, he knew

how assiduously she had importuned the emperor to force Clement to a

decision.[191] No effort, however, had been hitherto made to interfere

with her hospitalities, or to oblige her visitors to submit to scrutiny

before they could be admitted to her presence. She was the mistress of

her own court and of her own actions; and confidential agents, both from

Rome, Brussels, and Spain, had undoubtedly passed and repassed with

reciprocal instructions and directions.

[Sidenote: Two suspicious friars at Bugden,]

[Sidenote: "Followed" to London; arrested, and probably tortured.]

The crisis which was clearly approaching had obliged Henry, in the

course of this autumn, to be more watchful; and about the end of

October, or the beginning of November,[192] two friars were reported as

having been at Bugden, whose movements attracted suspicion from their

anxiety to escape observation. Secret agents of the government, who had

been "set" for the purpose, followed the friars to London, and

notwithstanding "many wiles and cautells by them invented to escape,"

the suspected persons were arrested and brought before Cromwell.

Cromwell "upon examination, could gather nothing from them of any moment

or great importance;" but, "entering on further communication," he said

"he found one of them a very seditious person, and so committed them to

ward." The king was absent from London, but had left directions that, in

the event of any important occurrence of the kind, Archbishop Cranmer

should be sent for; but Cranmer not being immediately at hand, Cromwell

wrote to Henry for instructions; inasmuch as, he said, "it is undoubted

that they (the monks) have intended, and would confess, some great

matter, if they might be examined as they ought to be--that is to say,

by pains."

[Sidenote: Conspiracy, in which the Princess Mary was implicated, to

dethrone the King.]

The curtain here falls over the two prisoners; we do not know whether

they were tortured, whether they confessed, or what they confessed; but

we may naturally connect this letter, directly or indirectly, with the

events which immediately followed. In the middle of November we find a

commission sitting at Lambeth, composed of Cromwell, Cranmer, and

Latimer, ravelling out the threads of a story, from which, when the

whole was disentangled, it appeared that by Queen Catherine, the

Princess Mary, and a large and formidable party in the country, the

king, on the faith of a pretended revelation, was supposed to have

forfeited the crown; that his death, either by visitation of God or by

visitation of man, was daily expected; and that whether his death took

place or not, a revolution was immediately looked for, which would place

the princess on the throne.

[Sidenote: Prophecies of the Nun of Kent.]

[Sidenote: December.]

The Nun of Kent, as we remember, had declared that if Henry persisted in

his resolution of marrying Anne, she was commissioned by God to tell

him that he should lose his power and authority. She had not specified

the manner in which the sentence would be carried into effect against

him. The form of her threats had been also varied occasionally; she said

that he should die, but whether by the hands of his subjects, or by a

providential judgment, she left to conjecture;[193] and the period

within which his punishment was to fall upon him was stated variously at

one month or at six.[194] She had attempted no secresy with these

prophecies; she had confined herself in appearance to words; and the

publicity which she courted having prevented suspicion of secret

conspiracy, Henry quietly accepted the issue, and left the truth of the

prophecy to be confuted by the event. He married. The one month passed;

the six months passed: eight--nine months. His child was born and was

baptized, and no divine thunder had interposed; only a mere harmless

verbal thunder, from a poor old man at Rome. The illusion, as he

imagined, had been lived down, and had expired of its own vanity.

[Sidenote: The Nun half deceiver, and half herself deceived.]

But the Nun and her friar advisers were counting on other methods of

securing the fulfilment of the prophecy than supernatural assistance. It

is remarkable that, hypocrites and impostors as they knew themselves to

be, they were not without a half belief that some supernatural

intervention was imminent; but the career on which they had entered was

too fascinating to allow them to forsake it when their expectation

failed them. They were swept into the stream which was swelling to

resist the Reformation, and allowed themselves to be hurried forward

either to victory or to destruction.

The first revelation being apparently confuted by facts, a second was

produced as an interpretation of it; which, however, was not published

like the other, but whispered in secret to persons whose dispositions

were known.[195]

[Sidenote: On the failure of the first prophecy, an interpretation is

discovered of a perilous kind. The king is declared to be in the

condition of Saul after his rejection.]

"When the King's Grace," says the report of the commissioners, "had

continued in good health, honour, and prosperity more than a month, Dr.

Bocking shewed the said Nun, that as King Saul, abjected from his

kingdom by God, yet continued king in the sight of the world, so her

said revelations might be taken. And therefore the said Nun, upon this

information, forged another revelation, that her words should be

understanded to mean that the King's Grace should not be king in the

reputation or acceptation of God, not one month or one hour after that

he married the Queen's Grace that now is. The first revelation had moved

a great number of the king's subjects, both high and low, to grudge

against the said marriage before it was concluded and perfected; and

also induced such as were stiffly bent against that marriage, daily to

look for the destruction of the King's Grace within a month after he

married the Queen's Grace that now is. And when they were deluded in

that expectation, the second revelation was devised not only as an

interpretation of the former, but to the intent to induce the king's

subjects to believe that God took the King's Grace for no king of this

realm; and that they should likewise take him for no righteous king, and

themselves not bounden to be his subjects; which might have put the King

and the Queen's Grace in jeopardy of their crown and of their issue, and

the people of this realm in great danger of destruction."[196]

[Sidenote: The prophecies in extensive secret circulation in a written

form.]

[Sidenote: The Friars Mendicant.]

It was no light matter to pronounce the king to be in the position of

Saul after his rejection; and read by the light of the impending

excommunication, the Nun's words could mean nothing but treason. The

speaker herself was in correspondence with the pope; she had attested

her divine commission by miracles, and had been recognised as a saint by

an Archbishop of Canterbury; the regular orders of the clergy throughout

the realm were known to regard her as inspired; and when the commission

recollected that the king was threatened further with dying "a villain's

death"; and that these and similar prophecies were carefully written

out, and were in private circulation through the country, the matter

assumed a dangerous complexion: it became at once essential to ascertain

how far, and among what classes of the state, these things had

penetrated. The Friars Mendicant were discovered to be in league with

her, and these itinerants were ready-made missionaries of sedition. They

had privilege of vagrancy without check or limit; and owing to their

universal distribution and the freemasonry among themselves, the secret

disposition of every family in England was intimately known to them. No

movement, therefore, could be securely overlooked in which these orders

had a share; the country might be undermined in secret; and the

government might only learn their danger at the moment of explosion.

[Sidenote: Arrest of the Nun and five monks.]

[Sidenote: She confesses.]

[Sidenote: A list is obtained of the persons who were implicated with

her.]

No sooner, therefore, were the commissioners in possession of the

general facts, than the principal parties--that is to say, the Nun

herself and five of the monks of Christ Church at Canterbury--with whom

her intercourse was most constant, were sent to the Tower to be

"examined,"--the monks it is likely by "torture," if they could not

otherwise be brought to confession. The Nun was certainly not tortured.

On her first arrest, she was obstinate in maintaining her prophetic

character; and she was detected in sending messages to her friends, "to

animate them to adhere to her and to her prophecies."[197] But her

courage ebbed away under the hard reality of her position. She soon made

a full confession, in which her accomplices joined her; and the

half-completed web of conspiracy was ravelled out. They did not attempt

to conceal that they had intended, if possible, to create an

insurrection. The five monks--Father Bocking, Father Rich, Father Rysby,

Father Dering, and Father Goold--had assisted the Nun in inventing her

"Revelations": and as apostles, they had travelled about the country to

communicate them in whatever quarters they were likely to be welcome.

When we remember that Archbishop Warham had been a dupe of this woman,

and that even Wolsey's experience and ability had not prevented him from

believing in her power, we are not surprised to find high names among

those who were implicated. Vast numbers of abbots and priors, and of

regular and secular clergy, had listened eagerly; country gentlemen

also, and London merchants. The Bishop of Rochester had "wept for joy"

at the first utterances of the inspired prophetess; and Sir Thomas More,

"who at first did little regard the said revelations, afterwards did

greatly rejoice to hear of them."[198] We learn, also, that the Nun had

continued to _communicate with "the Lady Princess Dowager" and "the Lady

Mary, her daughter_."[199]

[Sidenote: The Countess of Salisbury and the Marchioness of Exeter.]

[Sidenote: Danger of a White Rose confederacy under the papal sanction.]

[Sidenote: Arrest of the Nevilles.]

These were names which might have furnished cause for regret, but little

for surprise or alarm. The commissioners must have found occasion for

other feelings, however, when among the persons implicated were found

the Countess of Salisbury and the The Marchioness of Exeter, with their

chaplains, households, and servants; Sir Thomas Arundel, Sir George

Carew, and "many of the nobles of England."[200] A combination headed by

the Countess of Salisbury, if she were supported even by a small section

of the nobility, would under any circumstances have been dangerous; and

if such a combination was formed in support of an invasion, and was

backed by the blessings of the pope and the fanaticism of the clergy,

the result might be serious indeed. So careful a silence is observed in

the official papers on this feature of the Nun's conspiracy, that it is

uncertain how far the countess had committed herself; but she had

listened certainly to avowals of treasonable intentions without

revealing them, which of itself was no slight evidence of disloyalty;

and that the government were really alarmed may be gathered from the

simultaneous arrest of Sir William and Sir George Neville, the brothers

of Lord Latimer. The connexion and significance of these names I shall

explain presently; in the meantime I return to the preparations which

had been made by the Nun.

[Sidenote: The Nun prophesies that the Lady Mary should have help when

the time was come.]

As the final judgment drew near,--which, unless the king submitted,

would be accompanied with excommunication, and a declaration that the

English nation was absolved from allegiance,--"the said false Nun," says

the report, "surmised herself to have made a petition to God to know,

when fearful war should come, whether any man should take my Lady Mary's

part or no; and she feigned herself to have answer by revelation that no

man should fear but that she should have succour and help enough; and

that no man should put her from her right that she was born unto. And

petitioning next to know when it was the pleasure of God that her

revelations should be put forth to the world, she had answer that

knowledge should be given to her ghostly father when it should be

time."[201]

[Sidenote: She communicates with Queen Catherine,]

With this information Father Goold had hastened down to Bugden,

encouraging Catherine to persevere in her resistance;[202] and while

the imperialists at Rome were pressing the pope for sentence (we cannot

doubt at Catherine's instance), the Nun had placed herself in readiness

to seize the opportunity when it offered, and to blow the trumpet of

insurrection in the panic which might be surely looked for when that

sentence should be published.

[Sidenote: And organizes a corps of Friars to preach insurrection.]

For this purpose she had organized, with considerable skill, a corps of

fanatical friars, who, when the signal was given, were simultaneously to

throw themselves into the midst or the people, and call upon them to

rise in the name of God. "To the intent," says the report, "to set forth

this matter, certain spiritual and religious persons were appointed, as

they had been chosen of God, to preach the false revelations of the said

Nun, when the time should require, if warning were given them; and some

of these preachers have confessed openly, and subscribed their names to

their confessions, that if the Nun had so sent them word, they would

have preached to the king's subjects that the pleasure of God was that

they should take him no longer for their king; and some of these

preachers were such as gave themselves to great fasting, watching, long

prayers, wearing of shirts of hair and great chains of iron about their

middle, whereby the people had them in high estimation of their great

holiness,--and this strait life they took on them by the counsel and

exhortation of the said Nun."[203]

[Sidenote: First Catholic treason.]

Here, then, was the explanation of the attitude of Catherine and Mary.

Smarting under injustice, and most naturally blending their private

quarrel with the cause of the church, they had listened to these

disordered visions as to a message from heaven, and they had lent

themselves to the first of those religious conspiracies which held

England in chronic agitation for three quarters of a century. The

innocent Saint at Bugden was the forerunner of the prisoner at

Fotheringay; and the Observant friars, with their chain girdles and

shirts of hair, were the antitypes of Parsons and Campion. How critical

the situation of England really was, appears from the following letter

of the French ambassador. The project for the marriage of the Princess

Mary with the Dauphin had been revived by the Catholic party; and a

private arrangement, of which this marriage was to form the connecting

link, was contemplated between the Ultramontanes in France, the pope,

and the emperor.

_D'Inteville to Cardinal Tournon._[204]

"MY LORD,--You will be so good as to tell the Most Christian king that

the emperor's ambassador has communicated with the old queen. The

emperor sends a message to her and to her daughter, that he will not

return to Spain till he has seen them restored to their rights.

"The people are so much attached to the said ladies that they will rise

in rebellion, and join any prince who will undertake their quarrel. You

probably know from other quarters the intensity of this feeling. It is

shared by all classes, high and low, and penetrates even into the royal

household.

"The nation is in marvellous discontent. Every one but the relations of

the present queen, is indignant on the ladies' account. Some fear the

overthrow of religion; others fear war and injury to trade. Up to this

time, the cloth, hides, wool, lead, and other merchandize of England

have found markets in Flanders, Spain, and Italy; now it is thought

navigation will be so dangerous that English merchants must equip their

ships for war if they trade to foreign countries; and besides the risk

of losing all to the enemy, the expense of the armament will swallow the

profits of the voyage. In like manner, the emperor's subjects and the

pope's subjects will not be able to trade with England. The coasts will

be blockaded by the ships of the emperor and his allies; and at this

moment men's fears are aggravated by the unseasonable weather throughout

the summer, and the failure of the crops. There is not corn enough for

half the ordinary consumption.

"The common people, foreseeing these inconveniences, are so violent

against the queen, that they say a thousand shameful things of her, and

of all who have supported her in her intrigues. On them is cast the

odium of all the calamities anticipated from the war.

"When the war comes, no one doubts that the people will rebel as much

from fear of the dangers which I have mentioned, as from the love which

is felt for the two ladies, and especially for the Princess. She is so

entirely beloved that, notwithstanding the law made at the last

Parliament, and the menace of death contained in it, they persist in

regarding her as Princess. No Parliament, they say, can make her

anything but the king's daughter, born in marriage; and so the king and

every one else regarded her before that Parliament.

"Lately, when she was removed from Greenwich, a vast crowd of women,

wives of citizens and others, walked before her at their husbands'

desire, weeping and crying that notwithstanding all she was Princess.

Some of them were sent to the Tower, but they would not retract.

"Things are now so critical, and the fear of war is so general, that

many of the greatest merchants in London have placed themselves in

communication with the emperor's ambassador, telling him, that if the

emperor will declare war, the English nation will join him for the love

they bear the Lady Mary.

"You, my Lord, will remember that when you were here, it was said you

were come to tell the king that he was excommunicated, and to demand the

hand of the Princess for the Dauphin. The people were so delighted that

they have never ceased to pray for you. We too, when we arrived in

London, were told that the people were praying for us. They thought our

embassy was to the Princess. They imagined her marriage with the Dauphin

had been determined on by the two kings, and the satisfaction was

intense and universal.

"They believe that, except by this marriage, they cannot possibly escape

war; whereas, can it be brought about, they will have peace with the

emperor and all other Christian princes. They are now so disturbed and

so desperate that, although at one time they would have preferred a

husband for her from among themselves, that they might not have a

foreign king, there now is nothing which they desire more. Unless the

Dauphin will take her, they say she will continue disinherited; or, if

she come to her rights, it can only be by battle, to the great

incommodity of the country. The Princess herself says publicly that the

Dauphin is her husband, and that she has no hope but in him. I have been

told this by persons who have heard it from her own lips.

"The emperor's ambassador inquired, after you came, whether we had seen

her. He said he knew she was most anxious to speak with us; she thought

we had permission to visit her, and she looked for good news. He told

us, among other things, that she had been more strictly guarded of late,

by the orders of the queen that now is, who, knowing her feeling for the

Dauphin, feared there might be some practice with her, or some attempt

to carry her off.

"The Princess's ladies say that she calls herself the Dauphin's wife. A

time will come, she says, when God will see that she has suffered pain

and tribulation sufficient; the Dauphin will then demand her of the king

her father, and the king her father will not be able to refuse.

"The lady who was my informant heard, also, from the Princess, that her

governess, and the other attendants whom the queen had set to watch her,

had assured her that the Dauphin was married to the daughter of the

emperor; but she, the Princess, had answered it was not true--the

Dauphin could not have two wives, and they well knew that she was his

wife: they told her that story, she said, to make her despair, and agree

to give up her rights; but she would never part with her hopes.

"You may have heard of the storm that broke out between her and her

governess when we went to visit her little sister. She was carried off

by force to her room, that she might not speak with us; and they could

neither pacify her nor keep her still, till the gentleman who escorted

us told her he had the king's commands that she was not to show herself

while we were in the house. You remember the message the same gentleman

brought to you from her, and the charge which was given by the queen.

"Could the king be brought to consent to the marriage, it would be a

fair union of two realms, and to annex Britain to the crown of France

would be a great honour to our Sovereign; the English party desire

nothing better; the pope will be glad of it; the pope fears that, if war

break out again, France will draw closer to England on the terms which

the King of England desires; and he may thus lose the French tribute as

he has lost the English. He therefore will urge the emperor to agree,

and the emperor will assist gladly for the love which he bears to his

cousin.

"If the emperor be willing, the King of England can then be informed;

and he can be made to feel that, if he will avoid war, he must not

refuse his consent. The king, in fact, has no wish to disown the

Princess, and he knows well that the marriage with the Dauphin was once

agreed on.

"Should he be unwilling, and should his wife's persuasions still have

influence with him, he will hesitate before he will defy, for her sake,

the King of France and the emperor united. His regard for the queen is

less than it was, and diminishes every day. He has a new fancy,[205] as

you are aware."

* * * * *

The actual conspiracy, in the form which it had so far assumed, was

rather an appeal to fanaticism than a plot which could have laid hold of

the deeper mind of the country; but as an indication of the unrest

which was stealing over the minds of men, it assumed an importance which

it would not have received from its intrinsic character.

[Sidenote: The Nun and the five monks brought to trial.]

The guilt of the principal offenders admitted of no doubt. As soon as

the commissioners were satisfied that there was nothing further to be

discovered, the Nun, with the monks, was brought to trial before the

Star Chamber; and conviction followed as a matter of course.[206]

[Sidenote: They make their confessions at St. Paul's.]

The unhappy girl finding herself at this conclusion, after seven years

of vanity, in which she had played with popes, and queens, and

princesses, and archbishops, now, when the dream was thus rudely broken,

in the revulsion of feeling could see nothing in herself but a convicted

impostor. We need not refuse to pity her. The misfortunes of her

sickness had exposed her to temptations far beyond the strength of an

ordinary woman; and the guilt which she passionately claimed for herself

rested far more truly with the knavery of the Christ Church monks and

the incredible folly of Archbishop Warham.[207] But the times were too

stern to admit of nice distinctions. No immediate sentence was

pronounced, but it was thought desirable for the satisfaction of the

people that a confession should be made in public by the Nun and her

companions. The Sunday following their trial they were placed on a

raised platform at Paul's Cross by the side of the pulpit, and when the

sermon was over they one by one delivered their "bills" to the preacher,

which by him were read to the crowd.[208]

After an acknowledgment of their imposture the prisoners were remanded

to the Tower, and their ultimate fate reserved for the consideration of

parliament, which was to meet in the middle of January.

[Sidenote: The household of the Princess Mary is broken up.]

[Sidenote: The inquiry is prosecuted further.]

[Sidenote: The Countess of Salisbury.]

The chief offenders being thus disposed of, the council resolved next

that peremptory measures should be taken with respect to the Princess

Mary.[209] Her establishment was broken up, and she was sent to reside

as the Lady Mary in the household of the Princess Elizabeth--a hard but

not unwholesome discipline.[210] As soon as this was done, being

satisfied that the leading shoot of the conspiracy was broken, and that

no immediate danger was now to be feared, they proceeded leisurely to

follow the clue of the Nun's confession, and to extend their inquiries.

The Countess of Salisbury was mentioned as one of the persons with whom

the woman had been in correspondence. This lady was the daughter of the

Duke of Clarence, brother of Edward IV. Her mother was a Neville, a

child of Richard the King-maker, the famous Earl of Warwick, and her

only brother had been murdered to secure the shaking throne of Henry

VII. Margaret Plantagenet, in recompense for the lost honours of the

house, was made Countess of Salisbury in her own right. The title

descended from her grandfather, who was Earl of Salisbury and Warwick;

but the prouder title had been dropped as suggestive of dangerous

associations. The Earldom of Warwick remained in abeyance, and the

castle and the estates attached to it were forfeited to the Crown. The

countess was married after her brother's death to a Sir Richard Pole, a

supporter and relation[211] of the king; and when left a widow she

received from Henry VIII. the respectful honour which was due to the

most nobly born of his subjects, the only remaining Plantagenet of

unblemished descent. In his kindness to her children the king had

attempted to obliterate the recollection of her brother's wrongs, and

she had been herself selected to preside over the household of the

Princess Mary. During the first twenty years of Henry's reign the

countess seems to have acknowledged his attentions with loyal regard,

and if she had not forgotten her birth and her childhood, she never

connected herself with the attempts which during that time were made to

revive the feuds of the houses. Richard de la Pole, nephew of Edward

IV.,[212] and called while he lived "the White Rose," had more than once

endeavoured to excite an insurrection in the eastern counties; but Lady

Salisbury was never suspected of holding intercourse with him; she

remained aloof from political disputes, and in lofty retirement she was

contented to forget her greatness for the sake of the Princess Mary, to

whom she and her family were deeply attached. Her relations with the

king had thus continued undisturbed until his second marriage. As the

representative of the House of York she was the object of the hopes and

affections of the remnants of their party, but she had betrayed no

disposition to abuse her influence, or to disturb the quiet of the

nation for personal ambition of her own.

[Sidenote: Reginald Pole.]

[Sidenote: The Marquis of Exeter.]

[Sidenote: The Nevilles.]

[Sidenote: The strength of the White Rose faction.]

If it be lawful to interpret symptoms in themselves trifling by the

light of later events, it would seem as if her attitude now underwent a

material change. Her son Reginald had already quarrelled with the king

upon the divorce. He was in suspicious connexion with the pope, and

having been required to return home upon his allegiance, had refused

obedience. His mother, and his mother's attached friend, the Marchioness

of Exeter, we now find among those to whom the Nun of Kent communicated

her prophecies and her plans. It does not seem that the countess thought

at any time of reviving her own pretensions; it does seem that she was

ready to build a throne for the Princess Mary out of the ruined

supporters of her father's family. The power which she could wield might

at any moment become formidable. She had two sons in England, Lord

Montague and Sir Geoffrey Pole. Her cousin, the Marquis of Exeter, a

grandson himself of Edward IV.,[213] was, with the exception of the Duke

of Norfolk, the most powerful nobleman in the realm; and he, to judge by

events, was beginning to look coldly on the king.[214] We find her

surrounded also by the representatives of her mother's family,--Lord

Abergavenny, who had been under suspicion when the Duke of Buckingham

was executed, Sir Edward Neville, afterwards executed, Lord Latimer, Sir

George and Sir William Neville, all of them were her near connexions,

all collateral heirs of the King-maker, inheriting the pride of their

birth, and resentfully conscious of their fallen fortunes. The support

of a party so composed would have added formidable strength to the

preaching friars of the Nun of Kent; and as I cannot doubt that the Nun

was endeavouring to press her intrigues in a quarter where disaffection

if created would be most dangerous, so the lady who ruled this party

with a patriarchal authority had listened to her suggestions; and the

repeated interviews with her which, were sought by the Marchioness of

Exeter were rendered more than suspicious by the secresy with which

these interviews were conducted.[215]

[Sidenote: Examination on suspicion, of Sir William and Sir George

Neville.]

These circumstances explain the arrest, to which I alluded above, of Sir

William and Sir George Neville, brothers of Lord Latimer. They were not

among "the many noblemen" to whom the commissioners referred; for their

confessions remain, and contain no allusion to the Nun; but they were

examined at this particular time on general suspicion; and the arrest,

under such circumstances, of two near relatives of Lady Salisbury,

indicates clearly an alarm in the council, lest she might be

contemplating some serious movements. At any rate, either on her account

or on their own, the Nevilles fell under suspicion, and while they had

no crimes to reveal, their depositions, especially that of Sir William

Neville, furnish singular evidence of the temper of the times.

[Sidenote: Confession of Sir William Neville.]

The confession of the latter begins with an account of the loss of

certain silver spoons, for the recovery of which Sir William sent to a

wizard who resided in Cirencester. The wizard took the opportunity of

telling Sir William's fortune: his wife was to die, and he himself was

to marry an heiress, and be made a baron; with other prospective

splendours. The wizard concluded, however, with recommending him to pay

a visit to another dealer in the dark art more learned than himself,

whose name was Jones, at Oxford.

[Sidenote: Jones, the Oxford conjuror.]

"So after that," said Sir William [Midsummer, 1532], "I went to Oxford,

intending that my brother George and I should kill a buck with Sir Simon

Harcourt, which he had promised me; and there at Oxford, in the said

Jones's chamber, I did see certain stillatories, alembics, and other

instruments of glass, and also a sceptre and other things, which he said

did appertain to the conjuration of the four kings; and also an image of

white metal; and in a box, a serpent's skin, as he said, and divers

books and things, whereof one was a book which he said was my Lord

Cardinal's, having pictures in it like angels. He told me he could make

rings of gold, to obtain favour of great men; and said that my Lord

Cardinal had such; and promised my said brother and me, either of us,

one of them; and also he showed me a round thing like a ball of crystal.

"He said that if the King's Grace went over to France [the Calais visit

of October, 1532], his Grace should marry my Lady Marchioness of

Pembroke before that his Highness returned again; and that it would be

dangerous to his Grace, and to the most part of the noblemen that should

go with him; saying also that he had written to one of the king's

council to advise his Highness not to go over, for if he did, it should

not be for his Grace's profit."

[Sidenote: The Nevilles to recover the Earldom of Warwick.]

The wizard next pretended that he had seen a vision of a certain room in

a tower, in which a spirit had appeared with a coat of arms in his hand,

and had "delivered the same to Sir William Neville." The arms being

described as those of the Warwick family, Sir William, his brother, and

Jones rode down from Oxford to Warwick, where they went over the castle.

The wizard professed to recognise in a turret chamber the room in which

he had seen the spirit, and he prophesied that Sir William should

recover the earldom, the long-coveted prize of all the Neville family.

[Sidenote: Prophecy that none of Cadwallader's blood should reign more

than twenty-four years.]

On their return to Oxford, Jones, continues Sir William, said further,

"That there should be a field in the north about a se'nnight before

Christmas, in which my Lord my brother [Lord Latimer] should be slain;

the realm should be long without a king; and much robbery would be

within the realm, specially of abbeys and religious houses, and of rich

men, as merchants, graziers, and others; so that, if I would, he at that

time would advise me to find the means to enter into the said castle for

mine own safeguard, and divers persons would resort unto me. _None of

Cadwallader's blood_, he told me, _should reign more than twenty-four

years_; and also that Prince Edward [son of Henry VI. and Margaret of

Anjou, killed at Tewkesbury] had issue a son which was conveyed over

sea; and there had issue a son which was yet alive, either in Saxony or

Almayne; and that either he or the King of Scots should reign next after

the King's Grace that now is. To all which I answered," Sir William

concluded, "that there is nothing which the will of God is that a man

shall obtain, but that he of his goodness will put in his mind the way

whereby he shall come by it; and that surely I had no mind to follow any

such fashion; and that, also, the late Duke of Buckingham and others had

cast themselves away by too much trust in prophecies, and other

jeoparding of themselves, and therefore I would in no wise follow any

such way. He answered, if I would not, it would be long ere I obtained

it. Then I said I believed that well, and if it never came, I trusted to

God to live well enough."[216]

Sir George Neville confirmed generally his brother's story, protesting

that they had never intended treason, and that "at no time had he been

of counsel" when any treason was thought of.[217]

[Sidenote: The wizard summoned before the Council.]

[Sidenote: He undertakes to make the philosopher's stone, and will

jeopard his life upon it.]

The wizard himself was next sent for. The prophecies about the king he

denied wholly. He admitted that he had seen an angel in a dream giving

Sir William Neville the shield of the earldom in Warwick Castle, and

that he had accompanied the two brothers to Warwick, to examine the

tower. Beyond that, he said that he knew nothing either of them or of

their intentions. He declared himself a good subject, and he would

"jeopard his life" to make the philosopher's stone for the king in

twelve months if the king pleased to command him. He desired "no longer

space than twelve months upon silver and twelve and a half upon gold ";

to be kept in prison till he had done it; and it would be "better to the

King's Grace than a thousand men."[218]

[Sidenote: Evidence in these confessions of the unrest and agitation of

the country.]

The result of these examinations does not appear, except it be that the

Nevilles were dismissed without punishment; and the story itself may be

thought too trifling to have deserved a grave notice. I see in it,

however, an illustration very noticeworthy of the temper which was

working in the country. The suspicion of treason in the Neville family

may not have been confirmed, although we see them casting longing looks

on the lost inheritance of Warwick; but their confessions betray the

visions of impending change, anarchy, and confusion, which were haunting

the popular imagination. A craving after prophecies, a restless

eagerness to search into the future by abnormal means, had infected all

ranks from the highest to the lowest; and such symptoms, when they

appear, are a sure evidence of approaching disorder, for they are an

evidence of a present madness which has brought down wisdom to a common

level with folly. At such times, the idlest fancy is more potent with

the mind than the soundest arguments of reason. The understanding

abdicates its functions; and men are given over, as if by magic, to the

enchantments of insanity.

Phenomena of this eccentric kind always accompany periods of

intellectual change. Most men live and think by habit; and when habit

fails them, they are like unskilful sailors who have lost the landmarks

of their course, and have no compass and no celestial charts by which to

steer. In the years which preceded the French Revolution, Cagliostro was

the companion of princes,--at the dissolution of paganism the practicers

of curious arts, the witches and the necromancers, were the sole objects

of reverence in the Roman world; and so, before the Reformation,

archbishops and cardinals saw an inspired prophetess in a Kentish

servant-girl; Oxford heads of colleges sought out heretics with the help

of astrology; Anne Boleyn blessed a basin of rings, her royal fingers

pouring such virtue into the metal that no disorder could resist

it;[219] Wolsey had a magic crystal; and Cromwell, while in Wolsey's

household, "did haunt to the company of a wizard."[220] These things

were the counterpart of a religion which taught that slips of paper,

duly paid for, could secure indemnity for sin. It was well for England

that the chief captain at least was proof against the epidemic--no

random scandal seems ever to have whispered that such delusions had

touched the mind of the king.[221]

[Sidenote: The king incurs the censures of the church.]