Part 5 (1/2)

[Sidenote: Death of Henry VIII.]

By nature, he was amiable, generous, and munificent. But his temper was spoiled by self-indulgence and incessant flattery. The moroseness he exhibited in his latter days was partly the effect of physical disease, brought about, indeed, by intemperance and gluttony. He was faithful to his wives, so long as he lived with them; and, while he doted on them, listened to their advice. But few of his advisers dared tell him the truth; and Cranmer himself can never be exculpated from flattering his perverted conscience. No one had the courage to tell him he was dying but one of the n.o.bles of the court. He died, in great agony, June, 1547, in the thirty-eighth year of his reign, and the fifty-sixth of his age, and was buried, with great pomp, in St. George Chapel, Windsor Castle.

REFERENCES.--The best English histories of the reign of Henry VIII. are the standard ones of Hume and Lingard. The Pictorial History, in spite of its pictures, is also excellent. Burnet should be consulted in reference to ecclesiastical matters, and Hallam, in reference to the const.i.tution. See also the lives of Wolsey, Sir Thomas More, and Cranmer. The lives of Henry's queens have been best narrated by Agnes Strickland.

CHAPTER V.

EDWARD VI. AND MARY.

[Sidenote: War with Scotland.]

Henry VIII. was succeeded by his son, Edward VI., a boy of nine years of age, learned, pious, and precocious. Still he was a boy; and, as such, was a king but in name. The history of his reign is the history of the acts of his ministers.

The late king left a will, appointing sixteen persons, mostly members of his council, to be guardians of his son, and rulers of the nation during his minority. The Earl of Hertford, being uncle of the king, was unanimously named protector.

The first thing the council did was to look after themselves, that is, to give themselves t.i.tles and revenues. Hertford became Duke of Somerset; Ess.e.x, Marquis of Northampton; Lisle, Earl of Warwick; the Chancellor Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton. At the head of these n.o.bles was Somerset. He was a Protestant, and therefore prosecuted those reforms which Cranmer had before projected. Cranmer, as member of the council, archbishop of Canterbury, and friend of Somerset, had ample scope to prosecute his measures.

The history of this reign is not important in a political point of view, and relates chiefly to the completion of the reformation, and to the squabbles and jealousies of the great lords who formed the council of regency.

The most important event, of a political character, was a war with Scotland, growing out of the attempts of the late king to unite both nations under one government. In consequence, Scotland was invaded by the Duke of Somerset, at the head of eighteen thousand men. A great battle was fought, in which ten thousand of the Scots were slain. But the protector was compelled to return to England, without following up the fruits of victory, in consequence of cabals at court. His brother, Lord Seymour, a man of reckless ambition, had married the queen dowager, and openly aspired to the government of the kingdom. He endeavored to seduce the youthful king, and he had provided arms for ten thousand men.

The protector sought to win his brother from his treasonable designs by kindness and favors; but, all his measures proving ineffectual, he was arrested, tried, and executed, for high treason.

[Sidenote: Rebellions and Discontents.]

But Somerset had a more dangerous enemy than his brother; and this was the Earl of Warwick, who obtained great popularity by his suppression of a dangerous insurrection, the greatest the country had witnessed since Jack Cade's rebellion, one hundred years before. The discontent of the people appears to have arisen from their actual suffering. Coin had depreciated, without a corresponding rise of wages, and labor was cheap, because tillage lands were converted to pasturage. The popular discontent was aggravated by the changes which the reformers introduced, and which the peasantry were the last to appreciate. The priests and ejected monks increased the discontent, until it broke out into a flame.

The protector made himself unpopular with the council by a law which he caused to be pa.s.sed against enclosures; and, as he lost influence, his great rival, Warwick, gained power. Somerset, at last, was obliged to resign his protectors.h.i.+p; and Warwick, who had suppressed the rebellion, formed the chief of a new council of regency. He was a man of greater talents than Somerset, and equal ambition, and more fitted for stormy times.

As soon as his power was established, and the country was at peace, and he had gained friends, he began to execute those projects of ambition which he had long formed. The earldom of Northumberland having reverted to the crown, Warwick aspired to the extinct t.i.tle and the estates, and procured for himself a grant of the same, with the t.i.tle of duke. But there still remained a bar to his elevation; and this was the opposition of the Duke of Somerset, who, though disgraced and unpopular, was still powerful. It is unfortunate to be in the way of a great man's career, and Somerset paid the penalty of his opposition--the common fate of unsuccessful rivals in unsettled times.

He was accused of treason, condemned, and executed, (1552.)

[Sidenote: Rivalry of the Great n.o.bles.]

Northumberland, as the new dictator, seemed to have attained the highest elevation to which a subject could aspire. In rank, power, and property, he was second only to the royal family, but his ambition knew no bounds, and he began his intrigues to induce the young king, whose health was rapidly failing, and who was zealously attached to Protestantism, to set aside the succession of his sister Mary to the throne, really in view of the danger to which the reformers would be subjected, but under pretence of her declared illegitimacy, which would also set aside the claims of the Princess Elizabeth. Mary, Queen of Scots, was to be set aside on the ground of the will of the late king, and the succession would therefore devolve on the Lady Jane Grey, granddaughter of the Duke of Suffolk and of the French queen, whom he hoped to unite in marriage with his son. This was a deeply-laid scheme, and came near being successful, since Edward listened to it with pleasure. Northumberland then sought to gain over the judges and other persons of distinction, and succeeded by bribery and intimidation. At this juncture, the young king died, possessed of all the accomplishments which could grace a youth of sixteen, but still a tool in the hands of his ministers.

[Sidenote: Religious Reforms.]

Such were the political movements of this reign--memorable for the rivalries of the great n.o.bles. But it is chiefly distinguished for the changes which were made in the church establishment, and the introduction of the principles of the continental reformers. No changes of importance were ever made beyond what Cranmer and his a.s.sociates effected. Indeed, all that an absolute monarch could do, was done, and done with prudence, sagacity, and moderation. The people quietly--except in some rural districts--acquiesced in the change.

Most of the clergy took the new oath of allegiance to Edward VI., as supreme head of the church; and very few suffered from religious persecution. There is no period in English history when such important changes were made, with so little bloodshed. Cranmer always watched the temper of the nation, and did nothing without great caution. Still a great change was effected--no less than a complete change from Romanism to Protestantism. But it was not so radical a reform as the Puritans subsequently desired, since the hierarchy and a liturgy, and clerical badges and dresses, were retained. It was the fortune of Cranmer, during the six years of Edward's reign, to effect the two great objects of which the English church has ever since been proud--the removal of Roman abuses, and the establishment of the creed of Luther and Calvin; and this without sweeping away the union of church and state, which, indeed, was more intimate than before the reformation. The papal power was completely subverted. Nothing more remained to be done by Cranmer. He had compiled the Book of Common Prayer, abolished the old Latin service, the wors.h.i.+p of images, the ceremony of the ma.s.s, and auricular confessions. He turned the altars into communion tables, set up the singing of psalms in the service, caused the communion to be administered in both kinds to the laity, added the litany to the ritual, prepared a book of homilies for the clergy, invited learned men to settle in England, and magnificently endowed schools and universities.

The Reformation is divested of much interest, since it was the work of _authority_, rather than the result of _popular convictions_. But Cranmer won immortal honor for his skilful management, and for making no more changes than he could sustain. A large part of the English nation still regard his works as perfect, and are sincerely and enthusiastically attached to the form which he gave to his church.

The hopes of his party were suddenly dispelled by the death of the amiable prince whom he controlled, 6th of July, 1553. The succession to the throne fell to the Princess Mary, or, as princesses were then called, the _Lady_ Mary; nor could all the arts of Northumberland exclude her from the enjoyment of her rights. This ambitious n.o.bleman contrived to keep the death of Edward VI. a secret two days, and secure from the Mayor and Alderman of London a promise to respect the will of the late king. In consequence, the Lady Jane Grey was proclaimed Queen of England. ”So far was she from any desire of this advancement, that she began to act her part of royalty with many tears, thus plainly showing to those who had access to her, that she was forced by her relations and friends to this high, but dangerous post.” She was accomplished, beautiful, and amiable, devoted to her young husband, and very fond of Plato, whom she read in the original.

[Sidenote: Execution of Northumberland.]