Part 21 (1/2)
[Footnote 670: _Ibid._, ii., 4074.]
[Footnote 671: _Ibid._, iii., 929.]
[Footnote 672: _L. and P._, ii., 4082.]
[Footnote 673: _Ibid._, ii., 4074.]
Eleven more years were to roll before the Church was subverted. They were years of Wolsey's supremacy; he alone stood between the Church and its subjection. It was owing, wrote Campeggio, in 1528, to Wolsey's vigilance and solicitude that the Holy See retained its rank and dignity.[674] His ruin would drag down the Church, and the fact was known to Anne Boleyn and her faction, to Campeggio and Clement VII., as well as to Henry VIII.[675] ”These Lords intend,” wrote Du Bellay, on the eve of Wolsey's fall, ”after he is dead or ruined, to impeach the State of the Church, and take all its goods; which it is hardly needful for me to write in cipher, for they proclaim it openly. I expect they will do fine miracles.”[676] A few days later he says, ”I expect the priests will never have the great seal again; and that in this Parliament they will have terrible alarms. I think Dr. Stephen (Gardiner) will have a good deal to do with the management of affairs, _especially if he will abandon his order_.”[677] At Easter, 1529, Lutheran books were circulating in Henry's Court, advocating the (p. 238) confiscation of ecclesiastical property and the restoration of his Church to its primitive simplicity. Campeggio warned the King against them and maintained that it had been determined by councils and theologians that the Church justly held her temporalties. Henry retorted that according to the Lutherans ”those decisions were arrived at by ecclesiastics and now it was necessary for the laity to interpose”.[678]
In his last interview with Henry, Campeggio ”alluded to this Parliament, which is about to be holden, and I earnestly pressed upon him the liberty of the Church. He certainly seemed to me very well disposed to exert his power to the utmost.”[679] ”Down with the Church” was going to be the Parliament cry. Whether Henry would really ”exert his power”
to maintain her liberties remained to be seen, but there never was a flimsier theory than that the divorce of Catherine was the sole cause of the break with Rome. The centrifugal forces were quite independent of the divorce; its historical importance lies in the fact that it alienated from Rome the only power in England which might have kept them in check. So long as Wolsey and the clerical statesmen, with whom he surrounded the King, remained supreme, the Church was comparatively safe. But Wolsey depended entirely on Henry's support; when that was withdrawn, Church and Cardinal fell together.
[Footnote 674: _Ibid._, iv., 4898.]
[Footnote 675: _Ibid._, iv., 5210, 5255, 5581, 5582.]
[Footnote 676: _Ibid._, iv., 6011.]
[Footnote 677: _Ibid._, 6019.]
[Footnote 678: _L. and P._, iv., 5416.]
[Footnote 679: _Ibid._, iv., 5995. Henry VIII. no doubt also had his eye on Gustavus in Sweden where the Vesteras Recess of 1527 had provided that all episcopal, capitular and monastic property which was not absolutely required should be handed over to the King, and conferred upon him an ecclesiastical jurisdiction as extensive as that afterwards conferred upon Henry VIII. (_Cambridge Modern Hist._, ii., 626).]
Wolsey's ruin was, however, due to more causes than his failure (p. 239) to get a divorce for the King. It was at bottom the result of the natural development of Henry's character. Egotism was from the first his most prominent trait; it was inevitably fostered by the extravagant adulation paid to Tudor sovereigns, and was further encouraged by his realisation, first of his own mental powers, and then of the extent to which he could force his will upon others. He could never brook a rival in whatever sphere he wished to excel. In the days of his youth he was absorbed in physical sports, in gorgeous pageantry and ceremonial; he was content with such exhibitions as prancing before the ladies between every course in a tourney, or acting as pilot on board s.h.i.+p, blowing a whistle as loud as a trumpet, and arrayed in trousers of cloth of gold. Gradually, as time wore on, the athletic mania wore off, and pursuits, such as architecture, took the place of physical sports. A generation later, a writer describes Henry as ”the only Phoenix of his time for fine and curious masonry”.[680]
From his own original designs York House was transformed into Whitehall Palace, Nonsuch Palace was built, and extensive alterations were made at Greenwich and Hampton Court.
[Footnote 680: Harrison, _Description of England_, in Holinshed, ed. 1577, bk. ii., chap. ix.]
But architecture was only a trifle; Henry's uncontrollable activity also broke out in political spheres, and the eruption was fatal to Wolsey's predominance. The King was still in the full vigour of manhood; he had not reached his fortieth year, and his physical graces were the marvel of those who saw him for the first time. Falier, the new Venetian amba.s.sador, who arrived in England in 1529, is as (p. 240) rapturous over the King's personal attractions as Giustinian or Pasqualigo had been. ”In this Eighth Henry,” he writes, ”G.o.d has combined such corporeal and intellectual beauty as not merely to surprise but astound all men.... His face is angelic (nine years before a Frenchman had called it ”feminine”), rather than handsome; his head imperial and bold; and he wears a beard, contrary to the English custom. Who would not be amazed, when contemplating such singular beauty of person, coupled with such bold address, adapting itself with the greatest ease to every manly exercise?”[681] But Henry's physique was no longer proof against every ailment; frequent mention is made about this time of headaches[682] which incapacitated him from business, and it was not long before there appeared on his leg the fistula which racked him with pain till the end of his life, and eventually caused his death.
[Footnote 681: _Ven. Cal._, iv., 184, 185, 293.]
[Footnote 682: _L. and P._, iv., 4546. Henry had had small-pox in February, 1514 (_ibid._, i., 4831), without any serious consequences, but apart from that he had had no great illness.]
The divorce and the insuperable obstacles, which he discovered in attaining the end he thought easy at first, did more to harden Henry's temper than any bodily ills. He became a really serious man, and developed that extraordinary power of self-control which stood him in good stead in his later years. Naturally a man of violent pa.s.sions, he could never have steered clear of the dangers that beset him without unusual capacity for curbing his temper, concealing his intentions, and keeping his own counsel. Ministers might flatter themselves that they could read his mind and calculate his actions, but it is quite certain that henceforth no minister read so clearly his master's (p. 241) mind as the master did his minister's. ”Three may keep counsel,” said the King in 1530,[683] ”if two be away; and if I thought that my cap knew my counsel, I would cast it into the fire and burn it.” ”Never,”
comments a modern writer,[684] ”had the King spoken a truer word, or described himself more accurately. Few would have thought that, under so careless and splendid an exterior--the very ideal of bluff, open-hearted good-humour and frankness--there lay a watchful and secret eye, that marked what was going on, without appearing to mark it; kept its own counsel until it was time to strike, and then struck, as suddenly and remorselessly as a beast of prey. It was strange to witness so much subtlety, combined with so much strength.”
[Footnote 683: Cavendish, _Life of Wolsey_, p.
397.]
[Footnote 684: Brewer, Introd. to _L. and P._, iv., p. dcxxi.]
In spite of his remorseless blows and arbitrary temper, Henry was too shrewd and too great a man to despise the counsel of others, or think any worse of an adviser because his advice differed from his own. He loved to meet argument with argument, even when he might command. To the end of his days he valued a councillor who would honestly maintain the opposite of what the King desired. These councillors to whom he gave his confidence were never minions or servile flatterers. Henry had his Court favourites with whom he hunted and shot and diced; with whom he played--always for money--tennis, primero and bowls, and the more mysterious games of Pope July, Imperial and Shovelboard;[685] and to whom he threw many an acre of choice monastic land. But they never influenced his policy. No man was ever advanced to political (p. 242) power in Henry's reign, merely because he pandered to the King's vanity or to his vices. No one was a better judge of conduct in the case of others, or a sterner champion of moral probity, when it did not conflict with his own desires or conscience. In 1528 Anne Boleyn and her friends were anxious to make a relative abbess of Wilton.[686]
But she had been notoriously unchaste. ”Wherefore,” wrote Henry to Anne herself, ”I would not, for all the gold in the world, cloak your conscience nor mine to make her ruler of a house which is of so unG.o.dly demeanour; nor I trust you would not that neither for brother nor sister I should so distain mine honour or conscience.” He objected, on similar grounds, to the prioress whom Wolsey wished to nominate; the Cardinal neglected Henry's wishes, and thereby called down upon himself a rebuke remarkable for dignity and delicacy. ”The great affection and love I bear you,” wrote the King, ”causeth me, using the doctrine of my Master, saying _Quem diligo, castigo_, thus plainly, as ensueth, to break to you my mind.... Methink it is not the right train of a trusty loving friend and servant, when the matter is put by the master's consent into his arbitre and judgment (specially in a matter wherein his master hath both royalty and interest), to elect and choose a person which was by him defended (forbidden). And yet another thing, which much displeaseth me more,--that is, to cloak your offence made by ignorance of my pleasure, saying that you expressly knew not my determinate mind in that behalf.” Then, after showing how empty were Wolsey's excuses, he continues: ”Ah! my Lord, it is a double offence, both to do ill and colour it too; but with (p. 243) men that have wit it cannot be accepted so. Wherefore, good my Lord, use no more that way with me, for there is no man living that more hateth it.” He then proceeds to warn the Cardinal against sinister reports with regard to his methods of raising money for his college at Oxford. ”They say the college is a cloak for all mischief. I perceive by your letter that you have received money of the exempts for having their old visitors. If your legacy (legatine authority) is a cloak _apud homines_, it is not _apud Deum_. I doubt not, therefore, you will desist.” Wolsey had used his legatine authority to extort money from monasteries as the price of their immunity from his visitatorial powers. The monasteries, too, had strenuously opposed the late Amicable Loan to the King; by Wolsey's means they had been released from that obligation; and Henry strongly suspected that they had purchased their exemption from relieving his necessities by lavish contributions to the Cardinal's colleges. ”I pray you, my Lord,” he concludes, ”think not that it is upon any displeasure that I write this unto you. For surely it is for my discharge afore G.o.d, being in the room that I am in; and secondly for the great zeal I bear unto you.” Henry possessed in the highest degree not a few of the best of kingly attributes. His words are not the words of a hypocrite without conscience, devoid of the fear of G.o.d and man. For all the strange and violent things that he did, he obtained the sanction of his conscience, but his imperious egotism made conscience his humble slave, and blinded to his own sins a judgment so keen to detect and chastise the failings of others.
[Footnote 685: See various entries in Privy Purse Expenses, _L. and P._, v., 747-62.]
[Footnote 686: _L. and P._, iv., 4477, 4488, 4507, 4509.]