Volume Iv Part 1 (1/2)
History of the English People.
by John Richard Green.
Volume 4.
BOOK VI
THE REFORMATION
1540-1603
AUTHORITIES FOR BOOK VI
1540-1603
For the close of Henry the Eighth's reign as for the reigns of Edward and Mary we possess copious materials. Strype covers this period in his ”Memorials” and in his lives of Cranmer, Cheke, and Smith; Hayward's ”Life of Edward the Sixth” may be supplemented by the young king's own Journal; ”Machyn's Diary” gives us the aspect of affairs as they presented themselves to a common Englishman; while Holinshed is near enough to serve as a contemporary authority. The troubled period of the Protectorate is ill.u.s.trated by Mr. Tytler in the correspondence which he has published in his ”England under Edward the Sixth and Mary,” while much light is thrown on its close by Mr. Nicholls in the ”Chronicle of Queen Jane,” published by the Camden Society. In spite of countless errors, of Puritan prejudices, and some deliberate suppressions of the truth, its ma.s.s of facts and wonderful charm of style will always give importance to the ”Acts and Monuments” or ”Book of Martyrs” of John Foxe, as a record of the Marian persecution. Among outer observers, the Venetian Soranzo throws some light on the Protectorate; and the despatches of Giovanni Michiel, published by Mr. Friedmann, give us a new insight into the events of Mary's reign.
For the succeeding reign we have a valuable contemporary account in Camden's ”Life of Elizabeth.” The ”Annals” of Sir John Hayward refer to the first four years of the Queen's rule. Its political and diplomatic side is only now being fully unveiled in the Calendar of State Papers for this period, which are being issued by the Master of the Rolls, and fresh light has yet to be looked for from the Cecil Papers and the doc.u.ments at Simancas, some of which are embodied in the history of this reign by Mr. Froude. Among the published materials for this time we have the Burleigh Papers, the Sidney Papers, the Sadler State Papers, much correspondence in the Hardwicke State Papers, the letters published by Mr. Wright in his ”Elizabeth and her Times,” the collections of Murdin, the Egerton Papers, the ”Letters of Elizabeth and James the Sixth”
published by Mr. Bruce. Harrington's ”Nugae Antiquae” contain some details of value. Among foreign materials as yet published the ”Papiers d'Etat”
of Cardinal Granvelle and the series of French despatches published by M. Teulet are among the more important. Mr. Motley in his ”Rise of the Dutch Republic” and ”History of the United Netherlands” has used the State Papers of the countries concerned in this struggle to pour a flood of new light on the diplomacy and outer policy of Burleigh and his mistress. His wide and independent research among the same cla.s.s of doc.u.ments gives almost an original value to Ranke's treatment of this period in his English History. The earlier religious changes in Scotland have been painted with wonderful energy, and on the whole with truthfulness, by Knox himself in his ”History of the Reformation.” Among the contemporary materials for the history of Mary Stuart we have the well-known works of Buchanan and Leslie, Labanoff's ”Lettres et Memoires de Marie Stuart,” the correspondence appended to Mignet's biography, Stevenson's ”Ill.u.s.trations of the Life of Queen Mary,” Melville's Memoirs, and the collections of Keith and Anderson.
For the religious history of Elizabeth's reign Strype, as usual, gives us copious details in his ”Annals,” his lives of Parker, Grindal, and Whitgift. Some light is thrown on the Queen's earlier steps by the Zurich Letters published by the Parker Society. The strife with the later Puritans can only be fairly judged after reading the Martin Marprelate Tracts, which have been reprinted by Mr. Maskell, who has given a short abstract of the more important in his ”History of the Martin Marprelate Controversy.” Her policy towards the Catholics is set out in Burleigh's tract ”The Execution of Justice in England, not for Religion, but for Treason,” which was answered by Allen in his ”Defense of the English Catholics.” On the actual working of the penal laws much new information has been given us in the series of contemporary narratives published by Father Morris under the t.i.tle of ”The Troubles of our Catholic Forefathers”; the general history of the Catholics may be found in the work of Dodd; and the sufferings of the Jesuits in More's ”Historia Provinciae Anglicanae Societatis Jesu.” To these may be added Mr. Simpson's biography of Campion. For our const.i.tutional history during Elizabeth's reign we have D'Ewes's Journals and Townshend's ”Journal of Parliamentary Proceedings from 1580 to 1601,” the first detailed account we possess of the proceedings of the House of Commons.
Macpherson in his Annals of Commerce gives details of the wonderful expansion of English trade during this period, and Hakluyt's collection of Voyages tells of its wonderful activity. Amidst a crowd of biographers, whose number marks the new importance of individual life and action at the time, we may note as embodying information elsewhere inaccessible the lives of Hatton and Davison by Sir Harris Nicolas, the three accounts of Raleigh by Oldys, Tytler, and Mr. Edwards, the Lives of the two Devereux, Earls of Ess.e.x, Mr. Spedding's ”Life of Bacon,” and Barrow's ”Life of Sir Francis Drake.”
CHAPTER I
THE PROTESTANT REVOLUTION
1540-1553
[Sidenote: Cromwell and the Monarchy.]
At the death of Cromwell the success of his policy was complete. The Monarchy had reached the height of its power. The old liberties of England lay prostrate at the feet of the king. The Lords were cowed and spiritless; the House of Commons was filled with the creatures of the Court and degraded into an engine of tyranny. Royal proclamations were taking the place of parliamentary legislation; royal benevolences were encroaching more and more on the right of parliamentary taxation.
Justice was prost.i.tuted in the ordinary courts to the royal will, while the boundless and arbitrary powers of the royal Council were gradually superseding the slower processes of the Common Law. The religious changes had thrown an almost sacred character over the ”majesty” of the king. Henry was the Head of the Church. From the primate to the meanest deacon every minister of it derived from him his sole right to exercise spiritual powers. The voice of its preachers was the echo of his will.
He alone could define orthodoxy or declare heresy. The forms of its wors.h.i.+p and belief were changed and rechanged at the royal caprice. Half of its wealth went to swell the royal treasury, and the other half lay at the king's mercy. It was this unprecedented concentration of all power in the hands of a single man that overawed the imagination of Henry's subjects. He was regarded as something high above the laws which govern common men. The voices of statesmen and priests extolled his wisdom and authority as more than human. The Parliament itself rose and bowed to the vacant throne when his name was mentioned. An absolute devotion to his person replaced the old loyalty to the law. When the Primate of the English Church described the chief merit of Cromwell, it was by a.s.serting that he loved the king ”no less than he loved G.o.d.”
[Sidenote: Cromwell and the Parliament.]
It was indeed Cromwell who more than any man had reared this fabric of king-wors.h.i.+p. But he had hardly reared it when it began to give way. The very success of his measures indeed brought about the ruin of his policy. One of the most striking features of Cromwell's system had been his developement of parliamentary action. The great a.s.sembly which the Monarchy had dreaded and silenced from the days of Edward the Fourth to the days of Wolsey had been called to the front again at the Cardinal's fall. Proud of his popularity, and conscious of his people's sympathy with him in his protest against a foreign jurisdiction, Henry set aside the policy of the Crown to deal a heavier blow at the Papacy. Both the parties represented in the ministry that followed Wolsey welcomed the change, for the n.o.bles represented by Norfolk and the men of the New Learning represented by More regarded Parliament with the same favour.
More indeed in significant though almost exaggerated phrases set its omnipotence face to face with the growing despotism of the Crown. The policy of Cromwell fell in with this revival of the two Houses. The daring of his temper led him not to dread and suppress national inst.i.tutions, but to seize them and master them, and to turn them into means of enhancing the royal power. As he saw in the Church a means of raising the king into the spiritual ruler of the faith and consciences of his people, so he saw in the Parliament a means of shrouding the boldest aggressions of the monarchy under the veil of popular a.s.sent, and of giving to the most ruthless acts of despotism the stamp and semblance of law. He saw nothing to fear in a House of Lords whose n.o.bles cowered helpless before the might of the Crown, and whose spiritual members his policy was degrading into mere tools of the royal will. Nor could he find anything to dread in a House of Commons which was crowded with members directly or indirectly nominated by the royal Council. With a Parliament such as this Cromwell might well trust to make the nation itself through its very representatives an accomplice in the work of absolutism.
[Sidenote: Growth of Parliamentary power.]
His trust seemed more than justified by the conduct of the Houses. It was by parliamentary statutes that the Church was prostrated at the feet of the Monarchy. It was by bills of attainder that great n.o.bles were brought to the block. It was under const.i.tutional forms that freedom was gagged with new treasons and oaths and questionings. One of the first bills of Cromwell's Parliaments freed Henry from the need of paying his debts, one of the last gave his proclamations the force of laws. In the action of the two Houses the Crown seemed to have discovered a means of carrying its power into regions from which a bare despotism has often had to shrink. Henry might have dared single-handed to break with Rome or to send Sir Thomas More to the block. But without Parliament to back him he could hardly have ventured on such an enormous confiscation of property as was involved in the suppression of the monasteries or on such changes in the national religion as were brought about by the Ten Articles and the Six. It was this discovery of the use to which the Houses could be turned that accounts for the immense developement of their powers, the immense widening of their range of action, which they owe to Cromwell. Now that the great engine was at his own command, he used it as it had never been used before. Instead of rare and short a.s.semblies of Parliament, England saw it gathered year after year. All the jealousy with which the Crown had watched its older encroachments on the prerogative was set aside. Matters which had even in the days of their greatest influence been scrupulously withheld from the cognizance of the Houses were now absolutely forced on their attention. It was by Parliament that England was torn from the great body of Western Christendom. It was by parliamentary enactment that the English Church was reft of its older liberties and made absolutely subservient to the Crown. It was a parliamentary statute that defined the very faith and religion of the land. The vastest confiscation of landed property which England had ever witnessed was wrought by Parliament. It regulated the succession to the throne. It decided on the validity of the king's marriages and the legitimacy of the king's children. Former sovereigns had struggled against the claim of the Houses to meddle with the royal ministers or with members of the royal household. Now Parliament was called on by the king himself to attaint his ministers and his Queens.
[Sidenote: The New n.o.bles.]