Volume III Part 12 (1/2)

[Sidenote: The king invites Aske,]

These well-considered suggestions were carried at once into effect. By the end of December many of the gentlemen who had been out in the insurrection had been in London; in their interviews with the king they had been won back to an unreserved allegiance, and had returned to do him loyal service. Lord Darcy and Sir Robert Constable had been invited with the rest; they had declined to present themselves: the former pretended to be ill; Constable, when the king's messenger came to him, ”using no reverend behaviour nor making any convenable answer such as might have tended to his Grace's satisfaction,” shut himself up in a remote castle on the Yorks.h.i.+re coast.[202] Of the three leaders who had thrown themselves into the insurrection with a fixed and peremptory purpose, Aske alone, the truest and the bravest, ventured to the king's presence. Henry being especially desirous to see a man who had shaken his throne, paid him the respect of sending his request by the hands of a gentleman of the bedchamber. He took him now, he said, for his faithful subject, he wished to talk with him, and to hear from his own lips the history of the rising.[203]

[Sidenote: Who consents to go, and writes a narrative of the insurrection at the king's request.]

Aske consulted Lord Darcy. Darcy advised him to go, but to place relays of horses along the road, to carry six servants with him, leaving three at Lincoln, Huntingdon, and Ware, and taking three to London, that in case the king broke faith, and made him prisoner, a swift message might be brought down to Templehurst, and Darcy, though too sick to pay his court to Henry, would be well enough to rescue Aske from the Tower.[204]

They would have acted more wisely if they had shown greater confidence.

Aske went, however. He saw the king, and wrote out for him a straightforward and manly statement of his conduct--extenuating nothing--boasting of nothing--relating merely the simple and literal truth. Henry repeated his a.s.surance to him that the parliament should meet at York; and Aske returned, hoping perhaps against hope; at all events, exerting himself to make others hope that the promises which they supposed to have been made to them at Doncaster would eventually be realized. To one person only he ventured to use other language.

Immediately that he reached Yorks.h.i.+re, he wrote to the king describing the agitation which still continued, and his own efforts to appease it.

He dwelt upon the expectations which had been formed; in relating the expressions which were used by others, he indicated not obscurely his own dissatisfaction.

[Sidenote: On his return to the north Aske gives the king notice of the suspicions still entertained by the people.]

”I do perceive,” he said, ”a marvellous conjecture in the hearts of the people, which is, they do think they shall not have the parliament in convenient time; secondly, that your Grace hath by your letters written for the most part of the honourable and wors.h.i.+pful of these s.h.i.+res to come to you, whereby they fear not only danger to them, but also to their own selves; thirdly, they be in doubt of your Grace's pardon by reason of a late book answering their first articles, now in print,[205]

which is a great rumour amongst them; fourthly, they fear the danger of fortifying holds, and especially because it is said that the Duke of Suffolk would be at Hull, and to remain there; fifthly, they think your Grace intendeth not to accomplish their reasonable pet.i.tions by reason now the tenths is in demand; sixthly, they say the report is my lord privy seal[206] is in as great favour with your Grace as ever he was, against whom they most specially do complain;

[Sidenote: Of the wild humour of the midland counties,]

[Sidenote: And of his fear that the end will yet be by battle.]

”Finally, I could not perceive in all the s.h.i.+res, as I came from your Grace homewards, but your Grace's subjects be wildly minded in their hearts towards commotions or a.s.sistance thereof, by whose abetment yet I know not; wherefore, sir, I beseech your Grace to pardon me in this my rude letter and plainness of the same, for I do utter my poor heart to your Grace to the intent your Highness may perceive the danger that may ensue; for on my faith I do greatly fear the end to be only by battle.”[207]

These were the words of a plain, honest man, who was convinced that his conduct had been right, that his demands had been wise, and was ready to return to rebellion when he found his expectations sliding away. Here, as so often in this world, we have to regret that honesty of purpose is no security for soundness of understanding; that high-hearted, sincere men, in these great questions, will bear themselves so perversely in their sincerity, that at last there is no resource but to dismiss them out of a world in which they have lost their way, and will not, or cannot, recover themselves.

But Aske, too, might have found a better fate, if the bad genius of his party had not now, in an evil hour for him and for many more, come forward upon the scene.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE COMMISSION OF CARDINAL POLE.

There were glad hearts at Rome when the news came that the English commons had risen for the Church. The Pope would lose no time in despatching his blessings and his help to his faithful children. His advances had been scorned--his hopes had been blighted--his offers of renewed cordiality had been flung back to him in an insulting act of parliament; the high powers, it seemed, had interfered at last to avenge his quarrel and theirs. Rumour painted the insurgents as in full triumph; but their cause was the cause of the world, and should not be left in their single hands. If France and the Empire were entangled in private quarrels, Scotland was free to act, and to make victory sure.

[Sidenote: A cap and sword are consecrated at St Peter's, as a present for James of Scotland.]

On Christmas eve, at St. Peter's, at the marvellous ma.s.s, when as the clock marked midnight, the church, till then enveloped in darkness, shone out with the brilliance of a thousand tapers, a sword and cap were laid upon the altar: the sword to smite the enemies of the faith, the cap, embroidered with the figure of a dove, to guard the wearer's life in his sacred enterprise. The enchanted offerings were a present of the Holy Father to James the Fifth; they were to be delivered in Scotland with the same ceremonials with which they had been consecrated;[208]

and at Rome prayers were sent up that the prince would use them in defence of Holy Church against those enemies for whom justice and judgment were now prepared; that, in estimating the value of the gifts, he would remember their mystic virtue and spiritual potency.[209]

The Scotch were, indeed, ill-selected as allies to the northern English, their hereditary enemies;[210] but religion had reconciled more inveterate antagonisms, and to the sanguine Paul, and his more sanguine English adviser, minor difficulties seemed as nothing, and vanished in the greatness of their cause.

[Sidenote: Reginald Pole is made a cardinal,]

Reginald Pole was now a cardinal. When hopes of peace with England had finally clouded, he was invited to Rome. It was soon after announced that he was to be raised to high dignity in the Roman Church; and although he was warned that the acceptance of such a position would sanction the worst interpretation of his past proceedings, he contented himself with replying with his usual protestations of good meaning, and on the 20th of December he received a cardinal's hat.[211]

[Sidenote: And receives a legate's commission.]

His promotion, like the consecration of the cap and sword, was a consequence of the reports from England. He had been selected a representative of the Holy See on the outbreak of the rebellion which he had foretold, and he was armed with a rank adequate to his mission, and with discretionary instructions either to proceed to England or to the nearest point to it, in France or Flanders, to which he could venture.