Volume III Part 1 (1/2)
History of England from the fall of Wolsey to the death of Elizabeth.
Vol. III.
by James Anthony Froude.
CHAPTER XII.
FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC ASPECTS OF THE REFORMATION IN ENGLAND.
In the sensitive condition of Europe the effect of events was felt beyond their natural consequence. The death of Catherine of Arragon led to the renewal of the war between France and the Empire. Paul III., in real or pretended reluctance to proceed to the last extremity, had for a time suspended the Bull of Deposition which he had drawn against the King of England.[1] It was idle to menace while he was unable to strike; and the two great Catholic powers had declined, when his intention was first made known to them, to furnish him with the necessary support.
Francis I., who trifled, as it suited his convenience, with the court of London, the see of Rome, the Smalcaldic League, and the Divan at Constantinople, had protested against a step which would have compelled him to a definite course of action. The Emperor, so long as Solyman was unchecked upon the Danube, and Moorish corsairs swept the Mediterranean and ravaged the coasts of Italy, had shrunk from the cost and peril of a new contest.
[Sidenote: Animosity of the Spaniards against the King of England]
[Sidenote: Fostered by English and Irish refugees,]
[Sidenote: And shared by the Emperor.]
A declaration of war, in revenge for the injuries of the divorced queen, would indeed have been welcomed with enthusiasm by the gentlemen of Spain. A London merchant, residing at Cadiz, furnished his government with unwelcome evidence of the spirit which was abroad in the Peninsula: ”I have perceived,” he wrote to Cromwell, ”the views and manners of these countries, and favour that these Spaniards do bear towards the King's Grace and his subjects, which is very tedious in their hearts both in word and deed, with their great Popish naughty slanderous words in all parts. And truly the King's Grace hath little or no favour now.
We be all taken in derision and hated as Turks, and called heretics, and Luterians, and other spiteful words; and they say here plainly they trust shortly to have war with England, and to set in the Bishop of Rome with all his disciples again in England.”[2] The affront to a Castilian princess had wounded the national honour; the bigotry of a people to whom alone in Europe their creed remained a pa.s.sion, was shocked by the religious revolution with which that affront had been attended; and the English and Irish refugees, who flocked to their harbours, found willing listeners when they presented themselves as the missionaries of a crusade.[3] Charles himself was withheld only by prudence from indulging the inclination of his subjects. He shared to the full their haughty sensitiveness; again and again in his private consultations with the Pope he had spoken of the revenge which he would one day exact against his uncle; and one of the best informed statesmen of the age, whose memoirs have descended to us, declares that every person who understood anything of the condition of Europe, believed a.s.suredly that he would at last execute his threat.[4]
[Sidenote: The Emperor returns from his successes in Africa,]
But as yet no favourable opportunity had offered itself. His arms were occupied with other enemies; the Irish rebellion had collapsed; the disaffection in England seemed unable to coalesce with sufficient firmness to encourage an invasion in its support. It was not till the close of the year 1535, when Charles returned to Naples covered with glory from his first expedition into Africa, that means and leisure for his larger object at length offered themselves. His power and his fame were now at their zenith. He had destroyed the Moslem fleet; he had wrested Tunis from the dreaded Barbarossa; he had earned the grat.i.tude of the Catholic world by the delivery of twenty thousand Christian slaves. The last ornament might now be added to his wreath of glory, if he would hush down the tumults of heresy as he had restored peace to the waters of the Mediterranean.
[Sidenote: And meditates a crusade against heresy.]
With this intention Charles remained in Italy for the winter. The Pope again meditated the publication of the Bull of Deposition;[5] a circular was issued from the Vatican, copies of which were sent even to the Lutheran princes, inviting a crusade against England,[6] and Cardinal Granvelle was instructed to sound the disposition of Francis, and persuade his cooperation. The Emperor would be moderate in his demands; an active partic.i.p.ation would not be required of him;[7] it would be sufficient if he would forget his engagement with an excommunicated sovereign to whom promises were no longer binding, and would remain pa.s.sive.
[Sidenote: Dubious disposition of Francis.]
[Sidenote: Persecution of Protestants in Paris.]
There was reason to believe that Granvelle's mission would be successful. The year preceding, Charles had played off a hope of Milan as a bribe to disunite the French from England; he was ready now to make a definite promise. With the first slight inducement Francis had wavered; while again, in point of religion, his conduct was more satisfactory than had been expected. He adhered in appearance to the English alliance, but he had deceived Henry's hopes that he would unite in a rupture with Rome; he had resisted all entreaties to declare the independence of the Gallican church; he had laboured to win back the Germans out of schism, partly to consolidate the French influence in Europe as opposed to the Imperial, but partly also, as he had taken pains to prove, that no doubt might be entertained of the position of France in the great question of the Reformation. He had allowed himself, indeed, as a convenience, to open negotiations for a treaty with Solyman; but the Turks, in the eyes of devout Catholics, were less obnoxious than heretics;[8] and the scandal was obscured by an open repentance for past shortcomings, and a declaration that for the future he would eschew the crime of toleration, and show no mercy to any Protestant who might fall within his grasp. An English stranger saw Francis of France march through the streets of Paris with the princes of the blood, the queen, the princesses, the bishops, cardinals, dukes, lords, counts, the ”blue blood” of the n.o.bility. They had torches, and banners, and relics of the saints, the whole machinery of the faith: and in the presence of the august a.s.semblage six heretics were burnt at a single fire; the king gave thanks to G.o.d that he had learnt his obligations as a Christian sovereign; and, imploring the Divine forgiveness because in past years he had spared the lives of some few of these wretches whom it was his duty to have destroyed, he swore that thenceforward they should go all, as many as he could discover, to the flames.[9]
[Sidenote: The Emperor offers Milan to the Duke of Orleans.]
[Sidenote: Francis consents to the formation of a league against England.]
Thus, therefore, good hopes were entertained of Francis; but inasmuch it was known with what a pa.s.sion he had set his heart on Milan, Charles resolved not to trust too entirely to his zeal for orthodoxy; and, either through Granvelle or through his amba.s.sadors, he signified his consent to an arrangement which would have consigned Italy conclusively to a Gallican supremacy. Sforza, the last reigning duke, whose claims had hitherto been supported by the Imperialists, had died childless in the previous October. The settlement which had been made in the treaty of Cambray had thus been rendered nugatory; and Francis desired the duchy for his second son, the Duke of Orleans, who, in right of his wife, Catherine de' Medici, would inherit also the dukedoms of Florence and Urbino. If the Emperor was acting in good faith, if he had no intention of escaping from his agreement when the observance of it should no longer be necessary, he was making no common sacrifice in acquiescing in a disposition the consequence of which to the House of Austria he so clearly foresaw.[10] He, however, seemed for the present to have surrendered himself to the interests of the Church;[11] and, in return for the concession, Francis, who had himself advised Henry VIII.
to marry Anne Boleyn,--Francis, who had declared that Henry's resistance to the Papacy was in the common interest of all Christian princes,--Francis, who had promised to make Henry's cause his own, and, three years previously, had signed a treaty, offensive and defensive, for the protection of France and England against Imperial and Papal usurpations,--sank before the temptation. He professed his willingness to join hand and heart with the Emperor in restoring unity to Christendom and crus.h.i.+ng the Reformation. Antic.i.p.ating and exceeding the requests which had been proposed to him, he volunteered his services to urge in his own person on Henry the necessity of submitting to the universal opinion of Christendom; and, to excuse or soften the effrontery of the demand, he suggested, that, in addition to the censures, a formal notice should be served upon all Christian princes and potentates, summoning them to the a.s.sistance of the Papacy to compel the King of England with the strong hand to obey the sentence of the See of Rome.[12] A Catholic league was now on the point of completion. The good understanding so much dreaded by English ministers, between France, the Empire, and the Papacy, seemed to be achieved. A council, the decision of which could not be doubtful, would be immediately convoked by Paul, under the protectorate of the two powers; and the Reformation would become a question no longer of argument, but of strength.
[Sidenote: January. The death of Queen Catherine is known in Italy.]
[Sidenote: New hopes are formed of a reconciliation.]
[Sidenote: March. The Emperor withdraws his offer of Milan.]
[Sidenote: Advances of the Pope and the Catholic powers to Henry]
Happily, the triple cord was not yet too secure to be broken by an accident. The confederacy promised favourably till the new year. At the end of January it became known in Italy that the original cause of the English quarrel existed no longer--that Queen Catherine was no more. On the first arrival of the news there was an outburst of indignation.