Part 31 (1/2)
[Footnote 997: _Ibid._, XII., i., 46, 64, 102, 104, 141, 142.]
[Footnote 998: Henry, says Dr. Gairdner, examined ”the evidence sent up to him in the spirit of a detective policeman” (XII., i., p. xxix.).]
[Footnote 999: _L. and P._, XII., i., 227, 228, 401, 402, 416, 457, 458, 468, 478, 498.]
[Footnote 1000: _L. and P._, XII., i., 594, 595, 636, 667. Norfolk thought Henry's plan was to govern the North by the aid of thieves and murderers.]
[Footnote 1001: Much of the correspondence of this Council found its way to Hamilton Palace in Scotland, and thence to Germany; it was purchased for the British Museum in 1889 and now comprises _Addit. MSS._, 32091, 32647-48, 32654 and 32657 (printed as _Hamilton Papers_, 2 vols., 1890-92).]
With one aftermath of the Pilgrimage of Grace he had yet to deal. The opportunity had been too good for Paul III. to neglect; and early in 1537 he had sent a legate _a latere_ to Flanders to do what he could to abet the rebellion.[1002] His choice fell on Reginald Pole, the son of the Countess of Salisbury and grandson of George, Duke of Clarence.
Pole had been one of Henry's great favourites; the King had paid for his education, given him, while yet a layman, rich church preferments, and contributed the equivalent of about twelve hundred pounds a year to enable him to complete his studies in Italy.[1003] In 1530 Pole was employed to obtain opinions at Paris favourable to Henry's divorce,[1004]
and was offered the Archbishopric of York. He refused from conscientious scruples,[1005] sought in vain to turn the King from his evil ways, and, in 1532, left England; they parted friends, and Henry continued Pole's pensions. While Pole was regarding with increasing disgust the King's actions, Henry still hoped that Pole was on his (p. 359) side, and, in 1536, in answer to Henry's request for his views, Pole sent his famous treatise _De Unitate Ecclesiae_. His heart was better than his head; he thought Henry had been treated too gently, and that the fulmination of a bull of excommunication earlier in his course would have stopped his headlong career. To repair the Pope's omissions, Pole now proceeded to administer the necessary castigation; ”flattery,”
he said, ”had been the cause of all the evil”. Even his friend, Cardinal Contarini, thought the book too bitter, and among his family in England it produced consternation.[1006] Some of them were hand in glove with Chapuys, who had suggested Pole to Charles as a candidate for the throne; and his book might well have broken the thin ice on which they stood. Henry, however, suppressed his anger and invited Pole to England; he, perhaps wisely, refused, but immediately afterwards he accepted the Pope's call to Rome, where he was made cardinal,[1007] and sent to Flanders as legate to foment the northern rebellion.
[Footnote 1002: _L. and P._, XII., i., 367, 368, 779.]
[Footnote 1003: _Ibid._, ii., 3943 (reference misprinted in _D.N.B._, xlvi., 35, as 3493); iii., 1544.]
[Footnote 1004: _Ibid._, iv., 6003, 6252, 6383, 6394, 6505.]
[Footnote 1005: _Ibid._, v., 737.]
[Footnote 1006: _L. and P._, x., 420, 426; xi., 72, 93, 156.]
[Footnote 1007: On 22nd December, 1536 (_Ibid._, xi., 1353).]
He came too late to do anything except exhibit his own and the papal impotence. The rebellion was crushed before his commission was signed.
As Pole journeyed through France, Henry sent to demand his extradition as a traitor.[1008] With that request Francis could hardly comply, but he ordered the legate to quit his dominions. Pole sought refuge in Flanders, but was stopped on the frontier. Charles could no more than Francis afford to offend the English King, and the cardinal-legate was informed that he might visit the Bishop of Liege, but only if he (p. 360) went in disguise.[1009] Never, wrote Pole to the Regent, had a papal legate been so treated before. Truly Henry had fulfilled his boast that he would show the princes of Europe how small was the power of a Pope. He had obliterated every vestige of papal authority in England and defied the Pope to do his worst; and now, when the Pope attempted to do it, his legate was chased out of the dominions of the faithful sons of the Church at the demand of the excommunicate King. Henry had come triumphant out of perils which every one else believed would destroy him. He had carried England through the greatest revolution in her history. He had crushed the only revolt which that revolution evoked at home; and abroad the greatest princes of Europe had shown that they valued as nothing the goodwill of the Pope against that of Henry VIII.
[Footnote 1008: _Ibid._ XII., i., 760, 939, 987, 988, 996.]
[Footnote 1009: _L. and P._, XII., i., 997, 1061, 1135, 1167, 1174.]
The culminating point in his good fortune was reached in the following autumn. On the 12th of October, 1537, Queen Jane gave birth to a son.
Henry had determined that, had he a son by Anne Boleyn, the child should be named Henry after himself, or Edward after his grandfather, Edward IV. Queen Jane's son was born on the eve of the feast of St.
Edward, and that fact decided the choice of his name. Twelve days later the mother, who had never been crowned, pa.s.sed away.[1010] She, alone of Henry's wives, was buried with royal pomp in St. George's Chapel at Windsor; and to her alone the King paid the compliment (p. 361) of mourning. His grief was sincere, and for the unusual s.p.a.ce of more than two years he remained without a wife. But Queen Jane's death was not to be compared in importance with the birth of Edward VI. The legitimate male heir, the object of so many desires and the cause of so many tragedies, had come at last to fill to the brim the cup of Henry's triumph. The greatest storm and stress of his reign was pa.s.sed. There were crises to come, which might have been deemed serious in a less troubled reign, and they still needed all Henry's wary cunning to meet; Francis and Charles were even now preparing to end a struggle from which only Henry drew profit; and Paul was hoping to join them in war upon England. Yet Henry had weathered the worst of the gale, and he now felt free to devote his energies to the extension abroad of the authority which he had established so firmly at home.
[Footnote 1010: The fable that the Caesarean operation was performed on her, invented or propagated by Nicholas Sanders, rests upon the further error repeated by most historians that Queen Jane died on the 14th of October, instead of the 24th (see Nichols, _Literary Remains of Edward VI._, pp. xxiv., xxv.).]
CHAPTER XIV. (p. 362)
REX ET IMPERATOR.
Notwithstanding the absence of ”Empire” and ”Emperor” from the various t.i.tles which Henry VIII. possessed or a.s.sumed, he has more than one claim to be reputed the father of modern imperialism. It is not till a year after his death that we have any doc.u.mentary evidence of an intention on the part of the English Government to unite England and Scotland into one Empire, and to proclaim their sovereign the Emperor of Great Britain.[1011] But a marriage between Edward VI. and Mary, Queen of Scots, by which it was sought to effect that union, had been the main object of Henry's efforts during the closing years of his reign, and the imperial idea was a dominant note in Henry's mind. No king was more fond of protesting that he wore an imperial crown and ruled an imperial realm. When, in 1536, Convocation declared England to be ”an imperial See of itself,” it only clothed in decent and formal language Henry's own boast that he was not merely King, but Pope and Emperor, in his own domains. The rest of Western Europe was under the temporal sway of Caesar, as it was under the spiritual sway of the Pope; but neither to one nor to the other did Henry owe any allegiance.[1012]
[Footnote 1011: Odet de Selve, _Corresp. Pol._, p.
268.]