Part 33 (1/2)
[Footnote 1057: See these _injunctions_ in Burnet, iv., 341-46; Wilkins, _Concilia,_ iii., 815.]
Meanwhile, a vigorous a.s.sault was made on the strongholds of superst.i.tion; pilgrimages were suppressed, and many wonder-working images were pulled down and destroyed. The famous Rood of Boxley, a figure whose contortions had once imposed on the people, was taken to the market-place at Maidstone,[1058] and the ingenious mechanism, whereby the eyes and lips miraculously opened and shut, was exhibited to the vulgar gaze.[1059] Probably these little devices had already sunk in popular esteem, for the Blood of St. Januarius could not be treated at Naples to-day in the same cavalier fas.h.i.+on as the Blood of Hailes was in England in 1538,[1060] without a riot. But the exposure was a useful method of exciting popular indignation against the monks, and it filled reformers with a holy joy. ”Dagon,” wrote one to Bullinger, ”is everywhere falling in England. Bel of Babylon has been broken to pieces.”[1061] The destruction of the images was a preliminary skirmish in the final campaign against the monks. The Act of 1536 (p. 381) had only granted to the King religious houses which possessed an endowment of less than two hundred pounds a year; the dissolution of the greater monasteries was now gradually effected by a process of more or less voluntary surrender. In some cases the monks may have been willing enough to go; they were loaded with debt, and hara.s.sed by rules imposed by Cromwell, which would have been difficult to keep in the palmiest days of monastic enthusiasm; and they may well have thought that freedom from monastic restraint, coupled with a pension, was a welcome relief, especially when resistance involved the anger of the prince and liability to the penalties of elastic treasons and of a _praemunire_ which no one could understand. So, one after another, the great abbeys yielded to the persuasions and threats of the royal commissioners. The dissolution of the Mendicant Orders and of the Knights of St. John dispersed the last remnants of the papal army as an organised force in England, though warfare of a kind continued for many years.
[Footnote 1058: _L. and P._, XIII., i., 231, 348.]
[Footnote 1059: Father Bridgett in his _Blunders and Forgeries_ repudiates the idea that these ”innocent toys” had been put to any superst.i.tious uses.]
[Footnote 1060: _L. and P._, XIII., i., 347, 564, 580; ii., 186, 409, 488, 709, 710, 856.]
[Footnote 1061: John Hoker of Maidstone to Bullinger in Burnet (ed. Poc.o.c.k, vi., 194, 195).]
These proceedings created as much satisfaction among the Lutherans of Germany as they did disgust at Rome, and an alliance between Henry and the Protestant princes seemed to be dictated by a community of religious, as well as of political, interests. The friends.h.i.+p between Francis and Charles threatened both English and German liberties, and it behoved the two countries to combine against their common foe. Henry's manifesto against the authority of the Pope to summon a General Council had been received with rapture in Germany; at least three German editions were printed, and the Elector of Saxony and the Landgrave of Hesse urged on him the adoption of a common policy.[1062] English envoys were (p. 382) sent to Germany with this purpose in the spring of 1538, and German divines journeyed to England to lay the foundation of a theological union.[1063] They remained five months, but failed to effect an agreement.[1064] To the three points on which they desired further reform in England, the Communion in both kinds, the abolition of private ma.s.ses and of the enforced celibacy of the clergy, Henry himself wrote a long reply,[1065] maintaining in each case the Catholic faith. But the conference showed that Henry was for the time anxious to be conciliatory in religious matters, while from a political point of view the need for an alliance grew more urgent than ever. All Henry's efforts to break the amity between Francis and Charles had failed; his proposals of marriage to imperial and French princesses had come to nothing; and, in the spring of 1539, it was rumoured that the Emperor would further demonstrate the indissolubility of his intimacy with the French King by pa.s.sing through France from Spain to Germany, instead of going, as he had always. .h.i.therto done, by sea, or through Italy and Austria. Cromwell seized the opportunity and persuaded Henry to strengthen his union with the Protestant princes by seeking a wife from a German house.
[Footnote 1062: Gairdner, _Church History_, p. 195; _L. and P._, XII., i., 1310; ii. 1088-89.]
[Footnote 1063: _L. and P._, XIII., i., 352, 353, 367, 645, 648-50, 1102, 1166, 1295, 1305, 1437.]
[Footnote 1064: _Ibid._, XIII., ii., 741; Cranmer, _Works_, ii., 397; Burnet, i., 408; Strype, _Eccl.
Mem._, i., App. Nos. 94-102.]
[Footnote 1065: Burnet, iv., 373.]
This policy once adopted, the task of selecting a bride was easy. As early as 1530[1066] the old Duke of Cleves had suggested some (p. 383) marriage alliance between his own and the royal family of England. He was closely allied to the Elector of Saxony, who had married Sibylla, the Duke of Cleves' daughter; and the young Duke, who was soon to succeed his father, had also claims to the Duchy of Guelders. Guelders was a thorn in the side of the Emperor; it stood to the Netherlands in much the same relation as Scotland stood to England, and when there was war between Charles and Francis Guelders had always been one of the most useful p.a.w.ns in the French King's hands. Hence an alliance between the German princes, the King of Denmark, who had joined their political and religious union, Guelders and England would have seriously threatened the Emperor's hold on his Dutch dominions.[1067]
This was the step which Henry was induced to take, when he realised that Charles's friends.h.i.+p with France remained unbroken, and that the Emperor had made up his mind to visit Paris. Hints of a marriage between Henry and Anne of Cleves[1068] were thrown out early in 1539; the only difficulty, which subsequently proved very convenient, was that the lady had been promised to the son of the Duke of (p. 384) Lorraine. The objection was waived on the ground that Anne herself had not given her consent; in view of the advantages of the match and of the Duke's financial straits, Henry agreed to forgo a dowry; and, on the 6th of October, the treaty of marriage was signed.[1069]
[Footnote 1066: _L. and P._, iv., 6364.]
[Footnote 1067: See the present writer in _Cambridge Modern History_, ii., 236, 237. The Duke of Cleves was not a Lutheran or a Protestant, as is generally a.s.sumed. He had established a curious Erasmian compromise between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism, which bears some resemblance to the ecclesiastical policy pursued by Henry VIII., and by the Elector Joachim II. of Brandenburg; and the marriage of Anne with Henry did not imply so great a change in ecclesiastical policy as has usually been supposed. The objections to it were really more political than religious; the Schmalkaldic League was a feeble reed to lean upon, although its feebleness was not exposed until 1546-47.]
[Footnote 1068: _L. and P._, XIV., i., 103; _cf._ Bouterwek, _Anna von Cleve_; Merriman, _Cromwell_, chap. xiii.; and articles on the members of the Cleves family in the _Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie_.]
[Footnote 1069: _L. and P._, XIV., ii., 285, 286.]
Anne of Cleves had already been described to Henry by his amba.s.sador, Dr. Wotton, and Holbein had been sent to paint her portrait (now in the Louvre), which Wotton p.r.o.nounced ”a very lively image”.[1070] She had an oval face, long nose, chestnut eyes, a light complexion, and very pale lips. She was thirty-four years old, and in France was reported to be ugly; but Cromwell told the King that ”every one praised her beauty, both of face and body, and one said she excelled the d.u.c.h.ess of Milan as the golden sun did the silver moon”.[1071]
Wotton's account of her accomplishments was pitched in a minor key.
Her gentleness was universally commended, but she spent her time chiefly in needlework. She knew no language but her own; she could neither sing nor play upon any instrument, accomplishments which were then considered by Germans to be unbecoming in a lady.[1072] On the 12th of December, 1539, she arrived at Calais; but boisterous weather and bad tides delayed her there till the 27th. She landed at Deal (p. 385) and rode to Canterbury. On the 30th she proceeded to Sittingbourne, and thence, on the 31st, to Rochester, where the King met her in disguise.[1073] If he was disappointed with her appearance, he concealed the fact from the public eye. Nothing marred her public reception at Greenwich on the 3rd, or was suffered to hinder the wedding, which was solemnised three days later.[1074] Henry ”lovingly embraced and kissed” his bride in public, and allowed no hint to reach the ears of any one but his most intimate counsellors of the fact that he had been led willingly or unwillingly into the most humiliating situation of his reign.
[Footnote 1070: _Ibid._, XIV., ii., 33. Holbein did not paint a flattering portrait any more than Wotton told a flattering tale; if Henry was deceived in the matter it was by Cromwell's unfortunate a.s.surances. As a matter of fact Anne was at least as good looking as Jane Seymour, and Henry's taste in the matter of feminine beauty was not of a very high order. Bishop Stubbs even suggests that their appearance was ”if not a justification, at least a colourable reason for understanding the readiness with which he put them away” (_Lectures_, 1887, p. 284).]
[Footnote 1071: _L. and P._, XIV., i., 552.]
[Footnote 1072: _Ibid._, XIV., ii., 33.]
[Footnote 1073: _L. and P._, XIV., ii., 664, 674, 677, 726, 732, 753, 754, 769.]
[Footnote 1074: Hall, _Chronicle_, p. 836.]
Such was, in reality, the result of his failure to act on the principle laid down by himself to the French amba.s.sador two years before. He had then declared that the choice of a wife was too delicate a matter to be left to a deputy, and that he must see and know a lady some time before he made up his mind to marry her. Anne of Cleves had been selected by Cromwell, and the lady, whose beauty was, according to Cromwell, in every one's mouth, seemed to Henry no better than ”a Flanders mare”.[1075] The day after the interview at Rochester he told Cromwell that Anne was ”nothing so well as she was spoken of,”
and that, ”if he had known before as much as he knew then, she should not have come within his realm”. He demanded of his Vicegerent what remedy he had to suggest, and Cromwell had none. Next day Cranmer, Norfolk, Suffolk, Southampton and Tunstall were called in with (p. 386) no better result. ”Is there none other remedy,” repeated Henry, ”but that I must needs, against my will, put my neck in the yoke?”[1076]
Apparently there was none. The Emperor was being feted in Paris; to repudiate the marriage would throw the Duke of Cleves into the arms of the allied sovereigns, alienate the German princes, and leave Henry without a friend among the powers of Christendom. So he made up his mind to put his neck in the yoke and to marry ”the Flanders mare”.