Volume III Part 31 (1/2)

”How say you, my lord?” the king said. ”Is it not as I told you? Say what they will, she is nothing fair. The personage is well and seemly, but nothing else.” Cromwell attempted faintly to soothe him by suggesting that she had ”a queenly manner.” The king agreed to that;[545] but the recommendation was insufficient to overcome the repugnance which he had conceived; and he could resolve on nothing. A frail fibre of hope offered itself in the story of the pre-contract with the Count of Lorraine. Henry caught at it to postpone the marriage for two days; and, on the Sunday morning he sent for the German suite who had attended the princess, and requested to see the papers connected with the Lorraine treaty. Astonished and unprepared, they requested time to consider. The following morning they had an interview with the council, when they stated that, never antic.i.p.ating any such demand, they could not possibly comply with it on the instant; but the engagement had been nothing. The instrument which they had brought with them declared the princess free from all ties whatever. If the king really required the whole body of the doc.u.ments, they would send to Cleves for them; but, in the meantime, they trusted he would not refuse to accept their solemn a.s.surances.

[Sidenote: Monday, January 5.]

[Sidenote: He exhibits his reluctance to the lady, but in vain.]

[Sidenote: He must put his neck into the yoke,]

[Sidenote: And marries Tuesday, January 6]

Cromwell carried the answer to Henry; and it was miserably unwelcome. ”I have been ill-handled,” he said. ”If it were not that she is come so far into England, and for fear of making a ruffle in the world, and _driving her brother into the Emperor and French king's hands, now being together_, I would never have her. But now it is too far gone; wherefore I am sorry.”[546] As a last pretext for hesitation, he sent to Anne herself to desire a protest from her that she was free from contracts; a proof of backwardness on the side of the king might, perhaps, provoke a corresponding unwillingness. But the impa.s.sive const.i.tution of the lady would have been proof against a stronger hint. The protest was drawn and signed with instant readiness. ”Is there no remedy,” Henry exclaimed, ”but that I must needs, against my will, put my neck into this yoke?”

There was none. It was inevitable. The conference at Paris lay before him like a thunder-cloud. The divorce of Catherine and the crimes of Anne Boleyn had already created sufficient scandal in Europe. At such a moment he durst not pa.s.s an affront upon the Germans, which might drive them also into a compromise with his other enemies. He gathered up his resolution. As the thing was to be done, it might be done at once; delay would not make the bitter dose less unpalatable; and the day remained fixed for the date of its first postponement--Tuesday, the 6th of January. As he was preparing for the sacrifice, he called Cromwell to him in the chamber of presence: ”My lord,” he said openly, ”if it were not to satisfy the world and my realm, I would not do that I must do this day for none earthly thing.”

[Sidenote: His dislike increases to aversion, and his hope of children is frustrated.]

The marriage was solemnized. A last chance remained to the Privy Seal and to the eager prelates who had trembled in the storm on Barham Down, that the affection which could not precede the ceremony might perhaps follow it. But the tide had turned against the Reformers; and their contrivances to stem the current were not of the sort which could be allowed to prosper. Dislike was confirmed into rooted aversion. The instinct with which the king recoiled from Anne settled into a defined resolution. He was personally kind to her. His provocations did not tempt him into discourtesy; but, although she shared his bed, necessity and inclination alike limited the companions.h.i.+p to a form; and Henry lamented to Cromwell, who had been the cause of the calamity, that ”surely he would never have any more children for the comfort of the realm.”[547]

[Sidenote: The results of the disappointment not immediately visible.]

[Sidenote: Theological controversy in London between Gardiner and the Protestants,]

[Sidenote: Who are protected by Cromwell.]

The union of France and the Empire, which had obliged the accomplishment of this unlucky connexion, meanwhile prevented, so long as it continued, either an open _fracas_ or an alteration in the policy of the kingdom.

The relations of the king and queen were known only to a few of the council. Cromwell continued in power, and the Protestants remained in security. The excitement which had been created in London by the persecution of Dr. Watts was kept alive by a controversy[548] between the Bishop of Winchester and three of the Lutheran preachers: Dr.

Barnes, for ever unwisely prominent; the Vicar of Stepney, who had shuffled over his recantation; and Garrett, the same who had been in danger of the stake at Oxford for selling Testaments, and had since been a chaplain of Latimer. It is difficult to exaggerate the audacity with which the orators of the moving party trespa.s.sed on the patience of the laity. The disputes, which had been slightly turned out of their channel by the Six Articles, were running now on justification,--a sufficient subject, however, to give scope for differences, and for the full enunciation of the Lutheran gospel. The magistrates in the country attempted to keep order and enforce the law; but, when they imprisoned a heretic, they found themselves rebuked and menaced by the Privy Seal.

Their prison doors were opened, they were exposed to vexatious suits for loss or injury to the property of the discharged offenders, and their authority and persons were treated with disrespect and contumely.[549]

The Reformers had outshot their healthy growth. They required to be toned down by renewed persecution into that good sense and severity of mind without which religion is but as idle and unprofitable a folly as worldly excitement.

[Gardiner preaches a Popish sermon at Paul's Cross.]

[Sidenote: Foolish insolence of Dr. Barnes.]

[Sidenote: Gardiner complains to the king.]

In London, on the first Sunday in Lent, the Bishop of Winchester preached on the now prominent topic at Paul's Cross: ”A very Popish sermon,” says Traheron, one of the English correspondents of Bullinger, ”and much to the discontent of the people.”[550] To the discontent it may have been of many, but not to the discontent of the ten thousand citizens who had designed the procession to Lambeth. The Sunday following, the same pulpit was occupied by Barnes, who, calling Gardiner a fighting-c.o.c.k, and himself another, challenged the bishop to trim his spurs for a battle.[551] He taunted his adversary with concealed Romanism. Like the judges at Fouquier Tinville's tribunal, whose test of loyalty to the republic was the question what the accused had done to be hanged on the restoration of the monarchy, Barnes said that, if he and the Bishop of Winchester were at Rome together, much money would not save his life, but for the bishop there was no fear--a little entreatance would purchase favour enough for him.[552] From these specimens we may conjecture the character of the sermon; and, from Traheron's delight with it, we may gather equally the imprudent exultation of the Protestants.[553] Gardiner complained to the king. He had a fair cause, and was favourably listened to. Henry sent for Barnes, and examined him in a private audience. The questions of the day were opened. Merit, works, faith, free-will, grace of congruity, were each discussed,--once mystic words of power, able, like the writing on the seal of Solomon, to convulse the world, now mere innocent sounds, which the languid but still eager lips of a dying controversy breathe in vain.

Barnes, too vain of his supposed abilities to understand the disposition with which he was dealing, told the king, in an excess of unwisdom, that he would submit himself to him.

[Sidenote: Interview between Barnes and Henry.]

[Sidenote: Barnes affects to recant.]

Henry was more than angry: ”Yield not to me,” he said; ”I am a mortal man.” He rose as he spoke, and turning to the sacrament, which stood on a private altar in the room, and taking off his bonnet,--”Yonder is the Master of us all,” he said; ”yield in truth to Him; otherwise submit yourself not to me.” Barnes was commanded, with Garrett and Jerome, to make a public acknowledgment of his errors; and to apologize especially for his insolent language to Gardiner. It has been already seen how Jerome could act in such a position. An admirer of these men, in relating their conduct on the present occasion, declared, as if it was something to their credit, ”how gaily they handled the matter, both to satisfy the recantation and also, in the same sermon, to utter out the truth, that it might spread without let of the world.”

Like giddy night-moths, they were flitting round the fire which would soon devour them.

[Sidenote: Confident in the German alliance, the king provokes a quarrel with the Emperor.]

[Sidenote: He instructs Wyatt to reproach Charles with ingrat.i.tude.]

In April, parliament was to meet--the same parliament which had pa.s.sed the Six Articles Bill with acclamation. It was to be seen in what temper they would bear the suspension of their favourite measure. The bearing of the parliament, was, however, for the moment, of comparative indifference. The king and his ministers were occupied with other matters too seriously to be able to attend it. A dispute had arisen between the Emperor and the Duke of Cleves, on the duchy of Gueldres, to which Charles threatened to a.s.sert his right by force; and, galling as Henry found his marriage, the alliance in which it had involved him, its only present recommendation, was too useful to be neglected. The treatment of English residents in Spain, the open patronage of Brancetor, and the haughty and even insolent language which had been used to Wyatt, could not be pa.s.sed over in silence, whatever might be the consequences; and, with the support of Germany, he believed that he might now, perhaps, repay the Emperor for the alarms and anxieties of years. After staying a few days in Paris, Charles had gone on to Brussels. On the receipt of Wyatt's despatch with the account of his first interview, the king instructed him to require in reply the immediate surrender of the English traitor; to insist that the proceedings of the Inquisition should be redressed and punished; and to signify, at the same time, that the English government desired to mediate between himself and the king's brother-in-law. Nor was the imperiousness of the message to be softened in the manner of delivery.