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Michael A. Linton
BOOK V.
CHAPTER THE FIRST.
HENRY THE SEVENTH.
Though Henry had got the crown upon his head, he did not feel quite sure of being able to keep it there, for he knew there was nothing so difficult to balance on the top of a human pole as a regal diadem. He felt that what had been won by the sword must be sustained by that dangerous weapon, though he was not insensible to the fact that edged tools are frequently hurtful to the hand that uses them. He became jealous of Edward Plantagenet, a boy of fifteen, the heir of the Duke of York, and grandson of Warwick, the king-maker. This unhappy lad was sent to the Tower, lest his superior right might prove mightier than the might which Henry had displayed on the field of Bosworth.
The Princess Elizabeth, daughter of the Queen Dowager, who was known by the humbler name of Mrs. E. Woodville, was let out of prison, to which she had been consigned by Richard III., who kept her closely under lock and key from the moment when he found it impossible to unite her to him in wedlock.
Henry came up to London five days after the battle of Bosworth, and was met at Hornsey by the Lord Mayor and Aldermen, all dressed in violet, which caused the new king to exclaim, "Ha! gentlemen, you wish me to take a hint. Your privileges shall be, like yourselves, in-violate!" He then proceeded in a close chariot to St. Paul's, where he deposited his three standards; and it has been suggested, that the celebrated Standard at Cornhill was one of those alluded to. The festivities in London were so numerous at the accession, that the city became crowded to suffocation, and the "sweating sickness," which will be remembered as Stanley's old complaint, broke out among the inhabitants. When it had abated Henry began to think about his coronation, and he took an early dinner at Lambeth with the Archbishop of Canterbury—Thomas Bourchier—to talk the matter over. The king and the prelate soon came to terms over their chop for the
Henry VII. taking a Chop with the Archbishop of Canterbury.
performance of the ceremony, which took place on the 30th of October, 1485, in the usual style of elegance. The good archbishop was an old and experienced hand : for he had crowned Richard III. only two years before, and indeed the system of the prelate was, to ask no questions that he might hear no falsehoods; but he was always ready to perform a coronation for any one who could find his own crown, and pay the fees that were usual.
A Parliament was now summoned, but when the Commons came together, it turned out that several of them had been attainted and outlawed in previous reigns without the attainders having been since reversed, and Henry himself was in the same doubtful predicament. The opinion of the judges was required in this disagreeable dilemma, but the intention in consulting them was only to get these accommodating interpreters of the law to twist it into a shape that would meet existing contingencies. With the usual pliability of the judges of those days, the parties whose opinion was asked gave it in favour of the strongest side, and Henry's having got the crown was declared to have cured all deficiencies of title. The Commons were obliged to have bills passed to reverse their attainders, but the king, like one of those patent fireplaces which are advertised to consume their own smoke, was alleged to have cured the defects of his own title by the bare fact of his having got possession of the royal dignity.
Having settled all matters concerning his claim to the throne, he began to think about his intended wife, Elizabeth. "I beg your pardon for keeping you waiting," said he to Miss Woodville; "but really I have been detained by other engagements." The young lady, who had sometimes feared that her case was one of breach of promise, was glad to disguise her real annoyance, and saying that "It did not at all signify," she prepared for the much retarded nuptials. They were solemnised on the 18th of January, 1486, and they were no sooner over than Henry exclaimed, "Now, Madam, recollect I have married you, but have not married your family." This uncourteous speech had reference to old Mrs. Woodville, who had already written to know what her new son-in-law would do for her. "I will not have her in the house," roared Henry, with savage earnestness; but he settled a small annuity upon her, which he enabled himself to pay by pocketing the whole of her dower.
The Queen became anxious for her coronation, as any woman might reasonably be; but Henry put her off day after day, by exclaiming, "Don't be in a hurry; there's time enough for that nonsense." In this heartless manner he succeeded in adjourning the pageant for an indefinite period.
Henry's next project was to get up his popularity by a tour in the provinces. Happening to put up at Lincoln, he heard that Lord Lovel, with Humphrey and Thomas Stafford "had gone with dangerous intentions no man knew whither." They had much better have remained where they were; for Lord Lovel, after collecting a large body of insurgents, found himself quite unable to pay their wages, and at once disbanded them. He flew into Flanders; but the two Staffords were taken in the very act of concocting an insurrection, for winch Humphrey, the elder, was hanged, while Thomas, on account of his youth, was pardoned.
Henry arrived on the 26th of April, 1486, at York, where Richard III., though killed on Bosworth Field, was still living in some of the people's memories. The marking-ink, in which the tyrant's name was written on their hearts, being by no means indelible, Henry determined to sponge it out as quickly as possible. He tried soft soap upon some and golden ointment upon others; both of which specifics had so much effect that in less than a month the city rang with cries of "Long live King Henry!"
On the 20th of September, the Court newsman of the day announced the interesting fact that the happiness of the king's domestic circle had been increased by the birth of a son; or, rather, the royal circle had been turned into a triangle by the arrival of an infant heir, who was named Arthur.
We must now request the reader to throw the luggage of his imagination on board the boat, and accompany us to Ireland, where, on landing, we will introduce him, ideally, to a priest and a boy who have just arrived in Dublin. The priest describes his young charge as Edward Plantagenet, Earl of Warwick, which will astonish us not a little, inasmuch as our friend, the reader, will remember that we left the little fellow not long ago a close prisoner in the Tower How he got out is the question which we first ask ourselves, which we answer by intimating, that he did not get out at all, but he was only "a boy dressed up" to represent the young Earl, and he played his part so well that many believed his story to be genuine. He had studied the character he represented, and had got by heart all the adventures of the young prince, together with a fund of anecdote that appeared quite inexhaustible. The juvenile impostor scarcely spoke a sentence that did not begin with "When I was a prisoner in the Tower," which made every one believe that he had really been an inmate of that gloomy jail; and the trick succeeded to a miracle. The urchin was proclaimed as Edward VI., King of England and France and Lord of Ireland; for such was the credulity of the Hibernians that they believed every word of the tale that had been told to them. Henry, desirous of exposing the fraud, had the real Plantagenet taken out of the Tower, for exhibition in the London streets; but the Irish declared that the real thing was a mere imposition, and the mock duke the genuine article. They, in fact, illustrated that instructive fable, in which an actor, having been applauded for his imitation of a pig, was succeeded by a rival who went the whole hog and concealed in the folds of his dress a real brute, whose squeak was pronounced very far less natural than that of the original representative of the porcine character.
Henry becoming a little alarmed at these proceedings, began rushing into the extremes of levity and severity; now; pardoning a host of political offenders, and the next day, packing off the Queen Dowager—marked "Carriage paid, with care,"—to the monks at Bermondsey. Lambert Simnel, for so the impostor was called, held out as long as he could, and even got up, by subscription, one coronation during the season; but upon Henry's taking measures to chastise him he soon shrunk into insignificance. After a battle at Stoke, the pretender and his friend, the priest, were taken into custody, when the latter was handed over to the church for trial, and the former received a contemptuous pardon, including the place of scullion, to wash up the dishes and run for the beer in the royal household. He was at once placed in the kitchen, where his perquisites, probably in the way of kitchen stuff, enabled him to save a little money, and, in order to better himself, he subsequently sought and obtained the office of superintendent of the poultry yard, under the imposing title of the king's falconer. The priest, his tutor, seems to have dropped down one of those gratings of the past which lead to the common sewer of obscurity, in which it is quite impossible to follow him. We hear of him last looking through the bars of a prison, where he was left till called for, and, as nobody ever called, he never seems to have emerged from his captivity.
The friends of the house of York now became clamorous at the treatment of the Queen Elizabeth, who had been kept in obscurity, and had urged "that little matter of the coronation" over and over again upon the attention of her selfish husband. "How you bother!" he would sometimes exclaim to his unhappy consort, whom he would endeavour to quiet by the philosophical inquiry of "What are the odds, so long as you're happy?"—a question which, as Elizabeth was not happy, she found some difficulty in answering. At length, one morning at breakfast, he said sulkily, "Well, I suppose I shall never have any peace till that affair comes off;" and the necessary orders for the coronation of the Queen were immediately given. Henry, himself, behaved in a very ungentlemanly manner, during the entire ceremony, for he viewed it from behind a screen, [The old chroniclers affirm that he looked on "from behind a lattice." A modern authority has it, that the king looked on at the dinner from behind a lettuce—spelt lattice—and had a magnificent salad before him during the proceedings.] which was afterwards brought into the hall, to enable him to sit at his ease out of sight, and take occasional peeps at the dinner. He had refused to honour the proceedings with his presence, having declared the ceremony to be "slow," and alleged the
A Young Pretender.
impossibility of his sitting it out after having once suffered the infliction.
It was at about this period of the reign of Henry VII. that the Court of Star Chamber was established; and though it, ultimately, [Vide the valuable work on the Equitable Jurisdiction of the Court of Chancery, comprising its Rise, Progress, and Final Establishment. By George Spence, Esq., Q.C. Vol. i., page 350.] "became odious by the tyrannical exercise of its powers," its intentions were originally as honourable as the most scrupulous of its suitors could have desired. It was founded in consequence of the inefficiency of the ordinary tribunals to do complete justice in criminal matters and other offences of an extraordinary and dangerous character, [Vide the valuable work on the Equitable Jurisdiction of the Court of Chancery, comprising its Rise, Progress, and Final Establishment. By George Spence, Esq., Q.C. Vol. i., page 351.] and to supply a sort of criminal equity—if we may be allowed the term—which should reach the offences of great men, whom the inferior judges and juries of the ordinary tribunals might have been afraid to visit with their merited punishment.
It has been suggested with some plausibility that the court of Star Chamber derived its name from the decorations of the room in which it was held, though it is perhaps a more ingenious supposition of a modern authority, that the word "Star" was applied to the court in question because within its walls justice was administered in a twinkling. It might, with as much reason, be suggested that the name had reference to the constellation of legal talent of which the tribunal was composed: for those stars of the first magnitude—the Lord Chancellor, the Lord Treasurer, the Lord Privy Seal, and the President of the Council—were all of them judges of the Court.
We must not, however, detain the reader any longer in a dull court of law, for we find, ourselves served, in imagination, with a writ of Habeas Corpus, commanding us to bring him up for the purpose of inquiring by what right we hold him in the disagreeable duress of dry legal detail.
In returning to Henry, we find him offering to act as mediator between Charles of France and the Duke of Bretagne, when, like every meddler in the disputes of others, he is unable to emerge from the position in which he has placed himself, without that nasal tweak which is the due reward of impertinence. The taxes he was obliged to impose for the purpose of interference, undertaken, as he alleged, to curb the ambition of the French court were very exorbitant, and particularly so on account of Henry's avarice, which induced him to put about ten per cent, of every levy into his own pocket. The people were, of course, dissatisfied, and the harshness used in collecting the subsidy irritated them so much in the north, that they took their change out of the unfortunate Duke of Northumberland, whom they killed, because he had the ill luck to be employed in the invidious office of tax-gatherer.
In 1490 parliament liberally granted some more money to carry on the war with France, but Henry pocketed the cash, and sent some priests to try and compromise the matter with the enemy. It was not until four years afterwards, in the course of 1494, that he really went to work against the French, but he contrived to make it pay him exceedingly well; for he not only grabbed the subsidies voted for the purpose, but he converted them into so much clear profit, by getting his knights and nobles to bear their own expenses out of their own pockets. He kindly gave them permission to sell their estates without the ordinary fines ; and many a gallant fellow sold himself completely up, in the hope of indemnifying himself by what he should be able to take from the French in battle.
Henry had, however, completely humbugged his gallant knights and nobles; for he never intended them to have the chance of gaining anything in France by conquest, and had, in fact, settled the whole matter at a very early period. He had made up his mind not to spend more than he could help, and had been putting away the subsidies in a couple of huge portmanteaus, which served him for coffers. Under the pretence of doing something, he passed over with his army to France and "sat down" before Boulogne, but his sitting down proved that he had no intention of making any stand, and a truce was very soon agreed upon. Two treaties were drawn up, one of which was to be made public, for the purpose of misleading the people, and the other was a private transaction between the two sovereigns. The first only stipulated for peace, but the second secured the sum of £149,000 to be paid by instalments to Henry, who must have been under the necessity of ordering another coffer to receive the additional wealth that was thus poured in upon him.
New troubles were, however, commencing to disturb the mind of the king, who received one morning at breakfast, a despatch announcing the arrival, at the Cove of Cork, of another pretender to the Crown of England "There seems to be no end to these vagabonds," he mentally exclaimed, as he read the document announcing that a handsome young man had been giving himself out as Richard Duke of York, second son of Edward IV., and legitimate heir to the monarchy. "Pooh, pooh," ejaculated Henry, "the fellow was disposed of in the Tower long ago;" but on perusing further he found that the young man had met this objection by alleging that he had escaped, and had been for seven years a wanderer. It was exceedingly improbable that the royal youth had been so long upon the tramp; but his story was not very rigidly criticised by Henry's enemies. The wanderer introduced himself to the Duchess of Burgundy, who, after some inquiry, pronounced him to be genuine, and embraced him as the undoubted son of her dear brother Edward. She gave him the poetical name of the White Rose of England; but Henry knowing that "the rose by any other name" would not "smell as sweet" in the nostrils of the English, gave out that the "White Rose" was a Jew boy of the name of Peterkin or Perkin Warbeck. It was further alleged that the lad had been recently a footman in the family of Lady Brompton, with whom he had been travelling. Peterkin was materially damaged in public opinion by getting the character of a mere "flunky," and he was afraid to do more than hover about the coast without venturing to effect a landing. Though Henry had held the Pretender up to ridicule, Perkin Warbeck's opposition was in reality no joke, and the king bribed a few of the party to betray their colleagues. Several were at once informed against, among whom were the two Ratcliffes who denied their guilt in the usual Ratcliffe highway: but their repudiation had no effect, for one of them was at once beheaded. Sir William Stanley, a very old friend of the Richmond family, whose brother, Lord Stanley, had put the battered crown on Henry's brow in the field of Bosworth, became an object of suspicion; and thinking he should get off by a confession, he acknowledged everything he had been guilty of, with a supplement containing a catalogue of offences he had never committed. Thus by denying too much for confession and owning enough for condemnation, he fell between two stools—one of which was the stool of repentance—and lost his head at the moment he fancied he was upon a safe footing.
The party of Perkin Warbeck being discouraged by these events, and the people of Flanders having grown tired of the Pretender's long visit, he felt that "now or never," was the time for his descent on England. The White Rose having torn himself away by the force of sheer pluck, attempted to transplant himself to the coast of Deal, but he found a Kentish knight, ready to repel the Rose, and by a cry of "Go it, my tulips," encouraging his followers to resist all oppression. The White Rose and his companions mournfully took their leaves, and as many as could escape returned with press of sail to Flanders, Henry sent a vote of thanks to the men of Kent with a promise of gold, but the remittance never came to hand from that day to the present.
Mr. P. Warbeck was now becoming such a nuisance in Flanders, that he was told he must really suit himself with another situation immediately. He tried Ireland, but the dry announcement of "no such person known," was almost the only answer to his overtures. As a last resource, and a proof of the desperate nature of his fortune he actually threw himself upon the generosity of the Scotch, which was almost as hopeless as running his head against a stone wall; but as it was just possible that Perkin Warbeck, might be turned to profitable account against England, the Scotch opened their hearts—where there is never any admission except on business—to the adventurous wanderer James III., king of Scotland, chiefly out of spite to Henry, not only received Perkin as the genuine duke of York, but married him to Lady Catherine Gordon, the lovely and accomplished daughter of the Earl of Huntley, a relative of the royal house of Stuart. An agreement was drawn up between James of Scotland of the one part, and Perkin Warbeck of the other, by virtue of which Perkin was to be pitchforked on to the English throne, and was to make over the town of Berwick-on-Tweed—when he got it—as an acknowledgment to King James for his valuable services. After some little delay, the Scotch crossed the border to enforce Perkin's demand; but when that individual arrived in England, he found himself so thoroughly snubbed that he sneaked back again.
Notwithstanding the utter failure of this enterprise, which had cost Henry not a penny to resist, he sent in a bill as long as his arm for the equipment of his army. The people who had not been called upon to strike a single blow, and always liked to have, what they called, "their whack for their money," were enraged at being asked to pay for a battle that had never happened. The men of Cornwall were particularly angry at having to give any of their tin, and came up to Blackheath, under Lord Audley, whose inexperience was so great that he might have furnished the original for the sign of the "Green Man," which so long remained the distinguishing feature of the neighbourhood. The battle of Blackheath was fought on the 22nd of June, 1497, with a good deal of superfluous strength on one side, and consummate bad management on the other. On the side of the insurgents, one Flammock or Flummock, an attorney, was a principal leader, but he would gladly have taken out a summons to stay proceedings, had such practice been allowable. It is probable that this "gentleman one, &c." had been persuaded by some noble client who had an interest in the fight to appear as his attorney in this memorable action.
Henry having gained every advantage in his recent transactions was desirous of completing his arrangements, by purchasing Warbeck, if any one could be found base enough to sell that unfortunate individual James of Scotland was too honourable for such a shameful bargain, though he was greatly embarrassed in assisting Warbeck, for whom he had melted down his plate—an act worthy of the most fiddle-headed spoon—besides raising money on a gold chain he used to wear, and to which he was so attached, that he compared it to
"Linked sweetness long drawn out,"
as he drew it forth from his pocket to put it into the hands of the pawnbroker.
It was now intimated to Perkin Warbeck that he "had better go," for his presence had become exceedingly costly and embarrassing "I've nothing more for you, my good man," were the considerate words of James as he despatched his guest to seek his fortune elsewhere, attended by a few trusty retainers, who stuck to him "through thick and thin," an attachment which, as he could hardly pay his own way, must have been very embarrassing. His wife's fidelity to him in his ill-fortune was a beautiful as well as a gratifying fact, for she had, really, seen much better days, and the sacrifices she made in sharing the fate of a Pretender "out of luck" was quite undeniable.
Perkin Warbeck made first for Cork in the hope of raising the Irish, but as he could not raise the Spanish, the former would have nothing to do with him. He next tried Cornwall, and marching inland he soon found himself at the head of a party of discontented ragamuffins, who happened to be ready for a row, without any ulterior views of a very
Perkin Warbeck and his Army.
definite character. He called himself Eichard IV., and penetrated into England as far as Taunton Dean, where Henry's forces had already collected. Warbeck was admirable in all his preliminary arrangements, and it was "quite a picture" to see him reviewing his troops; but, picture as he was, the idea of fighting put him into such a fright, that he always lost his colour. He was first-rate on parade, but quite unequal to the business of a battle, and, indeed, to use an illustration founded on a fact of our own times, he would have been invaluable in the Astley's version of Waterloo, though utterly contemptible in the original performance of that tremendous action.
No sooner had Perkin Warbeck ascertained the propinquity of the enemy than he recommended that his forces should all go to bed in good time to be fresh for action early in the morning. Having first ascertained that all were asleep, he stole off to the stable, saddled his horse, and having mounted the poor brute, stuck spurs into its side until he reached the sanctuary of Beaulieu in the New Forest. When this disgraceful desertion of their leader was discovered the rebels set up a piteous howl and threw themselves on the mercy of Henry, who ordered some to hang, and sent others to starve, by dismissing them without food or clothing. Lady Catherine Gordon, alias Mrs. P. Warbeck, who had been sojourning for safety at St. Michael's Mount in Cornwall, was brought before the King, who, touched by her beauty and her tears, experienced in his heart that truly English sentiment which declares, that "the man who would basely injure a lovely woman, in distress, is
Henry VII. and Perkin Warbeck's Wife.
unworthy of the name of a—a—British officer." He therefore sent her on a visit to the Queen, who paid every attention to the fallen heroine.
The next thing to be done was to rout Perkin Warbeck out of the hole into which cowardice had driven him. Henry was unwilling to disturb the sanctuary, but he sent his agents to parley with Perkin, who, finding himself regularly hemmed in, thought it better to come out on the best terms he could, and he accordingly emerged on the promise of a pardon. Henry was anxious to get a peep at the individual who had caused so much trouble, but thought it infra dig. to admit the rebel into the royal presence. The king, therefore, reverted to his old practice of getting behind a screen, an article he must have carried about with him wherever he went, that he might, unseen, indulge his curiosity. This paltry practice should have obtained for him the name of Peeping Harry, for we find him, at more than one period of his reign, skulking behind a screen, in the most ignoble manner. Perkin was made to ride up to London, behind Henry, at a little distance, and on getting to town he was sent on horseback through Cheapside and Cornhill, as a show for the citizens. There were the usual demonstrations of popular criticism on this occasion, and there is no doubt that amid the gibes and scoffs addressed to the captive the significant interrogatory of "Who ran away from Taunton Dean?" was not forgotten.
After taking a turn to the Tower and back for the accommodation of the inhabitants at the East End, who desired to be gratified with a sight of the Pretender, Perkin was lodged in the palace at Westminster, where a good deal of liberty seems to have been allowed him. He however chose to run away, and being caught again, he was made to stand in the stocks a whole day before the door of Westminster Hall, where he was made to read a written confession, which was interrupted by an occasional egg in his eye, or cabbage leaf over his mouth, for such are the voluntary contributions which a British public has always been ready to offer to helpless impotence.
The next day the same ceremony with the same accessories was repeated at Cheapside, in order to give the East End an opportunity of enjoying the sport, which the West End had already revelled in. Perkin Warbeck was then committed to the Tower, where he and the unfortunate Earl of Warwick became what may be termed fast friends, for they were bound tightly together in the same prison. Warbeck, who was in every sense of the word an accomplished swindler, succeeded in winning the good opinion, not only of his fellow captive, but of the keepers of the jail, three of whom, it is said, had actually undertaken to murder Sir John Digby, the governor, for the sake of getting hold of the keys, and releasing the two captives. It was now evident that Warbeck would never be quiet, and Henry, feeling him to be a troublesome fellow, determined to get rid of him. On the 16th of November, 1499, Warbeck was arraigned at Westminster Hall, and being found guilty as a matter of course, was executed on the 23rd of the same month at Tyburn, where, cowardly to the last, he asked the forgiveness of the king, even on the scaffold.
Walpole, in his "Historic Doubts"—a work that throws every thing into uncertainty and settles nothing—gives it as his opinion that Perkin Warbeck was really the Duke of York; but had Walpole been able to tell "a sheep's head from a carrot," he would never have been guilty of such a piece of confounding and confounded blundering. We who give no encouragement whatever to Historic Doubts are tolerably sure that Perkin Warbeck was merely a fashionable swindler, for he had none of
Perkin Warbeck Reading his Confession.
that personal courage or true dignity which would have redeemed his imposture from the character of mere quackery. He contrived to ruin poor Warwick, or at all events to hasten his destruction by implicating him in a conspiracy, which of his own accord he never would have dreamed of.
When put upon his trial, the hapless earl—who, though only twenty-nine years of age, was from long seclusion in a state of second childhood, if indeed he had ever got out of his first—confessed with piteous simplicity all that had been alleged against him. He was beheaded on Tower Hill the 24th [Hume says the 21st. Another authority says the 28th. It is not with a mere wish to "split the difference" that we adopt the medium date of the 24th, but we have good reasons for stating that to be the exact day, and Mr Charles Macfarlane, in his admirable "Cabinet History of England" has likewise named the 24th of November as the precise time of Warwick's execution.] of November, 1499; and it was said that his death was the most merciful that could be conceived, for in losing his head he was deprived of that which he never knew how to use, and of the possession of which he did not at any time seem sensible. Warbeck's widow continued to go by the name of the White Rose, when Sir Mathew Cradoc, thinking it a pity that she should be "left blooming alone," offered to graft her on his family tree, and the White Rose consented to this arrangement.
Henry had long been anxious to marry his daughter Margaret to James of Scotland, and he sent a cunning bishop, most appropriately named Fox, to act the part of a match-maker. The sly old dog brought the matter so cleverly about that the marriage was agreed upon, and this union led to the peaceful union of the two countries about a century afterwards. The young lady got but a small portion from her stingy father, and her husband made a settlement upon her of £2000 a year, but he got her to accept a paltry compromise. The meanness of the arrangements may be judged of by the ridiculous fact that King James and his young bride rode into Edinburgh on the same palfrey.
Henry's eldest son, Arthur Prince of Wales, had been already married to Catherine, fourth daughter of Ferdinand of Spain, who promised 200,000 crowns, half of which he paid down, as a wedding portion. The young husband died soon after, and Ferdinand naturally asked for his money and his child back again. The English king had pocketed the greater part of the cash, which he was not only quite unwilling to refund, but he had serious thoughts of proceeding for the balance of his daughter-in-law's dowry. He therefore consented to affiance her to his second son, Henry, in compliance with the only condition upon which Ferdinand agreed to waive his claim to the cash already in hand, and he even promised to pay the rest of the portion at his "earliest convenience."
Henry himself, or as we may call him for the sake of distinction, the "old gentleman," had lately lost his wife, and he went at once into the matrimonial market to see whether there was anything upon which it might be safe to speculate. He however wanted to conduct his operations with such extraordinary profit to himself that nothing seemed to tempt his avarice. His ruling passion was for "cash down," and to obtain this he fleeced his subjects most unmercifully, though he employed the disreputable firm of Empsom and Dudley to collect the amount of the various extortions he was continually practising. These two men were little better than swindlers, though as lawyers they adhered to the rules of law, and indeed they kept a rabble always in the house to sit as jurymen. They had trials in their own office, and would often ring the boll to order up a jury from down stairs, just as any one in the present day would order up his dinner. Dudley got the name of the Leech, from his power of drawing, and indeed he would have got the blood out of a blood-stone if the opportunity had been afforded him. [Empson has been described by Hume as a man of "mean birth and brutal temper," who of course did all the bullying of this disreputable firm, while Dudley, who was "better born, better educated, and better bred," acted in the capacity of what may be termed the decoy duck of the concern; or, in other words, the latter snared the game which the former savagely butchered.]
Henry had now but one formidable enemy left, in the person of young Edmund de la Pole, the nephew of Edward IV., and son and heir to the Duke of Suffolk. This turbulent individual renewed the cry in favour of the "White Rose," which was said by a wag of the day to be raised on a pole, after the fashion of the frozen-out gardeners.
Suffolk soon had the mortification of finding that he had not the suffrages of the people, for the rush to the Pole was anything but encouraging. "Ye Pole theyreforre" says Comines, "dydde cutte hys stycke" and became a penniless fugitive in Flanders. He was ultimately surrendered by Philip, the archduke who had received Suffolk as a visitor, but gave him up with a lot of sundries he was transferring to Henry, who promised to spare the prisoner's life, and did so, though he left word in his will that his successor had better kill the earl as he would otherwise prove troublesome.
In the course of the year 1509, Henry's health became very indifferent, and he had repeated attacks of the gout, every one of which put him in ill-humour with himself in particular, and the world in general. Every fresh twinge was paid with interest upon one or more of his unfortunate subjects; and when he got very bad he would be most indiscriminate in his cruelty He fixed upon a poor old alderman named Harris, who died of sheer vexation at his ill-treatment before his indictment came on: and at this remote period we hope we shall not be accused of injuring the feelings of any of the posterity of poor Harris by saying, that he was literally harassed to death through the unkindness of his sovereign During his illness Henry would do justice occasionally between man and man, but a favourable turn in his malady, a quiet night, or a refreshing nap, would bury all his good resolutions in oblivion. At length on the night of the Q 1st of April, 1509, he died at Richmond, leaving behind him a will in which he bequeathed to his son and heir, the delightful task of repairing all his father's errors.
However easy it may be for an executor to pay the pecuniary debts of a testator with plenty of assets in hand, the moral responsibilities which have been left unsatisfied, are not so soon provided for It is true that a good son frequently makes atonement to society for the mischief done by a bad parent; but this, though it strikes a sort of balance with the world, does not prevent the father from being still held accountable for his deficiencies.
Henry died in the fifty-third year of his age, and had he lived a day longer, he would have reigned twenty-three years and eight months, or as Cocker has it, in the simplicity of his heart, "had he been alive in the year 1700, he would have reigned upwards of two centuries." Our business, however, is not with what he might have done, but what he actually did, and we therefore record the fact, that he died April 21st, 1509, and was buried in the magnificent chapel of Westminster Abbey which he built, and which is called after him to this very day and hour that we now write upon. [A quarter to one, a.m., April 13th, 1847.]
It is often the most painful part of our labours to give characters of some of the sovereigns who pass under our review in the course of this history. To those who have only known Henry VII. as the chivalrous and high-minded prince that fought so gallantly with Richard III. on the field of Bosworth, it will be distressing to hear that the Richmond of their dramatic recollections is nothing like a true portrait of the actual character. At all events, if he had virtues in his youth they were not made to wear, for they became sufficiently threadbare to be seen through before he had been a single month an occupant of the throne of England. Even his ambition seems to have been little more than a medium he had adopted for gratifying his avarice, and it is now pretty clear that he rather wanted the crown for what it was worth in a pecuniary point of view, than for the honourable gratification which power when rightly used is capable of conferring on its possessor. Hume tells us that "Henry loved peace without fearing war," which is true enough : for war afforded him a pretext for raising money, while peace, which he generally managed to arrange, gave him an opportunity of pocketing the cash he had collected. War, therefore, was never formidable to him, for he usually manoeuvred to keep out of it; but he made the rumour of it serve as an excuse for taxing his people. He was decidedly clever as a practical man, though exceedingly unprincipled, but several salutary laws were passed in his reign: one of the best of which was an act allowing the poor to sue in forma pauperis. Considering how often the law reduces its suitors to poverty, it is only fair that those who are brought to such a condition should still be allowed to go on, for it is like ruining a man and then turning him out of doors to say that the courts shall be closed against such as are penniless.
Another important and useful measure of Henry's reign was that by which the nobility and gentry could alienate their estates, or cut off the tail, which limited everything to the head of a family. This apparently liberal act was passed for the benefit of the king himself, who wished his nobles to be able to sell everything they had got for the sake of paying the expenses of the wars, which otherwise must have been prosecuted partly out of Henry's own pocket. He owed more to fortune than to his own merit, and even the conspiracies that were got up against him from time to time helped to sustain him in his high position, as the shuttlecock is kept in a state of elevation by constant blows from the battledore
HENRY THE EIGHTH.
HENRY VIII., only surviving son and successor of Henry VII. took to his father's crown and sceptre on the 22nd of April, 1509, amid general rejoicing, for he was an exceedingly gentlemanly youth of eighteen, when he came to the throne, of which his parent had recently been but a bearish occupant. If young Harry had never lived to play old Harry, his popularity might have survived him, for the people had become disgusted with the conduct of his father, and there never was a finer chance for a young man than that which offered itself to the new sovereign.
Nothing could exceed the grossness of the adulation which was poured out upon him at his accession, and the perfection of the art of puffing in England, may, perhaps, be ascribed to this period of our history. His countenance was likened to that of Apollo—a falsehood for which, in his features, no apology can be found; his chest was declared to be that of Mars, though it was evidently his Pa's, for in early youth his resemblance to his father was remarkable. Clemency was declared to be seated on his ample forehead, Equity was pronounced to be balancing itself on the bridge of his nose, Intelligence was recognised lurking in ambush among his bushy hair; and even Erasmus attributes to him the acuteness of the needle, with other intellectual qualities of an exalted character. [We are indebted to Mr. Tytler, who is generally correct to a tittle, for these interesting particulars.—See his Life of Henry VIII., p 16 of the 2nd Edition.]
It is sad to reflect that the philosopher, when he takes the paintbrush in hand to dash off the portrait of a king, is apt to become a mere parasite, and will not abstain from staining his own character by daubing with false colours the canvas of history. Thus, even Erasmus used hues his friends would be glad to erase, and has covered over the black spots in Henry's character, with that pink, of perfection which makes couleur de rose of everything. It is not to be wondered at, that in setting out upon the voyage of government Henry received "one turn-a-head"—if we may be allowed a nautical expression—while the engines of flattery were at work on all sides of him. It is to be regretted, for the sake of himself as well as for the good of his subjects, that truth was not at hand to give him that friendly "shove astern" which has saved many from precipitating themselves on the rocks that always lie in the course of greatness and power.
As if determined to begin as he intended to go on, Henry looked out at once for a wife, and, considering how often he was destined to undergo the marriage ceremony in the course of his reign, it was as well that he should lose no time in commencing the career that lay before him. In his first matrimonial adventure he appears to have let others choose for him, instead of making a selection for himself, and Catherine of Aragon, the widow of his elder brother, Arthur, was pointed out to him as an eligible party for nuptial purposes.
This marriage was strongly recommended by the political faculty, as a saving, of expense, for the lady would have been entitled to a large pension as widow of Prince Arthur; and her friends in Spain, had she been returned upon their hands, would have wanted to know something about the 150,000 crowns she had received as a marriage portion. Of course the whole of it was gone, and it was thought that Henry would be killing a whole covey of birds with one stone, if he would consent to take her as his wife, inasmuch as he would thus extinguish her claims to a pension, and prevent any awkward questions being asked in Spain as to the portion she had brought with her to England. Henry feeling a sort of intuitive consciousness that he should have plenty of opportunities to select a wife for himself, agreed to take, as a beginning, the one that had been chosen for him by others, and accordingly, on the 3rd of June, 1509, the lady, who was eight years older than himself, became his wife, at Greenwich. The royal couple were not destined to roll down the hill together in after life, whatever they may have done on the day of their union, which was doubtless marked by all those sports of which the locality was susceptible. Catherine, though a little passee, looked exceedingly well, for, in order to render her appearance more attractive, she was dressed in white, and "all Greenwich," says Lord Herbert, "did not, on that day, contain a daintier dish of white bait than the Lady of Aragon." The royal pair were crowned on the 24th of June, 1509, being exactly three weeks after marriage, up to which period, at least, there was no indication of that Bluebeardism which subsequently broke out with so much fury in the royal character.
Henry had on his accession thrown himself into the arms of his grandmother, the old Countess of Richmond, upon whose advice he acted in the selection of his ministers. The old lady died in the same month in which her grandson was married and crowned, at the respect-
Henry VIII. and Catherine of Aragon.
able age of sixty-eight; and it is a curious fact that she had been married three times, so that in his multiplicity of wives, Henry VIII. may be said to have simply improved upon the example set him by his grandmother. [Her friend and counsellor, Jack Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, says of her, that "a reddy witte she had to conceive all thyngs, albeit they were ryghte derke."]
The first political act of Henry the Eighth's reign, was to lay the heads of Empson and Dudley upon the scaffold. These rapacious extortioners had been the tools of his father's avarice, but had contrived to feather their own nests tolerably well; and Henry kept them in prison for the purpose of getting out of them the wealth they had acquired by their rapacity. He detained them in the Tower a whole year before he beheaded them, and continued to squeeze out of them everything they possessed, for he was one of those who never threw an orange away without thoroughly sucking it. Having drained it at length completely dry by about the 17th of August, 1510, he, on that day—to pursue the allegory of the orange—declined allowing them any quarter, but sent them to Tower Hill, where execution was done upon both of them.
Henry finding everything going smoothly in England, fell into the common error of those who having every comfort at home must needs look abroad for the elements of discord. He entered into a league against Louis XII. of France, in favour of Pope Julius II. and his father-in-law, Ferdinand of Aragon; but the latter kept helping himself to large slices of territory, and made use of his allies for the purpose of furthering his own interests. Henry's troops were therefore compelled to play an ignoble part, being cooped up in a French town, while the other soldiers overran Navarre, and appropriated everything they could lay their hands upon. Amazed at their moderate success upon land they attempted to retrieve themselves by a sea-fight, but the ruler was not then found by which Britannia subsequently learned to rule the waves, and the French fleet escaping into Brest found shelter in their country's bosom.
In 1513, Henry being anxious to obtain ascendancy over the seas, appointed Sir Edward Howard, one of the sons of the Earl of Surrey, to accomplish the grand object. Howard was so exceedingly confident of success that he sent a private note requesting the king to come and see how beautifully he (Howard) would "spifflicate"—for such was the word—the presumptuous enemy. Henry by no means relished the invitation, and replied to it by desiring Howard to "mind his own business" as admiral. This nettled the naval commander, who, during the engagement, jumped into one of the enemy's ships, and could not jump back again; while Sir John Wallop, upon whom he had relied, exhibited little of that usefulness which his name seems to indicate. Poor Howard was, accordingly, killed; and Henry, flattered by his parasites, came to the resolution that no good would be done till he himself set out for France at the head of an army.
In a few days he arrived off Boulogne, where he instructed the artillery to make as much noise as they could with their guns, in order that he might intimidate the foe, and encourage himself by the roaring of his own cannon. His object was undoubtedly to insinuate to the enemy, "We are coming in tremendous force, and so you had better keep out of our way, for fear of accidents."
Henry, who had various other great guns on board besides his artillery, was
accompanied by Thomas Wolsey, his almoner, lately risen into favour, together
with the celebrated Bishop Fox, and a number of courtiers. He passed his time
very pleasantly at Calais for about three months, when he heard that the celebrated
Bayard—the chevalier sans peur et sans reproche—was moving forward.
The English king bounded on to his horse with the elasticity of Indian rubber,
and advanced at the head of fifteen thousand men—Bishop Fox, with characteristic
cunning, keeping in the rear, and Wolsey following the Fox at a prudent distance.
Twelve hundred French approached under the cover of a regular English fog, which
with a most anti-national spirit favoured the enemies of the country to which
it owed its origin. Bayard would have commenced an attack, but he was overruled
by some of his companions; and Henry, thinking the foe afraid to "come
on," sat himself down in a pavilion made of silk damask, foolishly believing
that the art of the upholsterer could uphold the dignity of a sovereign.
Thus he sat, like the proprietor of a gingerbread stall at a fair, until a terrific shower came on, and the silk streamers were streaming with
Henry's Tent.
wet, and the satin chairs could no longer be sat-in with comfort or convenience. The tent was turned, literally, inside out by the wind, like an umbrella in a storm, and Henry was glad to exchange his gaudy booth for a substantial wooden caravan, that was speedily knocked together for his reception. Though the two armies did not fight they commenced operations by mining and countermining, but instead of making receptacles for gunpowder they were only making gutters for the rain, which took advantage of every opening. The Count of Angouleme (afterwards Francis I.) now arrived at head quarters, and scoured the country, which he was the better able to do from the quantity of water which had fallen on many parts of it.
Henry now received a visit from the Emperor Maximilian, and the English king made the most magnificent preparations for the interview, he equipped himself and some of his nobles in gold and silver tissue—though it is said the latter wore a tissue of falsehoods, for their finery was all sham—and he borrowed every bit of jewellery in his camp for his own personal bedizenment. He had a garniture of garnets in his hat, and even his watch, a tremendous turnip, had a diamond, weighing several carats, on its face, while a magnificent ruby matched with the rubicundity of his forehead, over which the gem was gracefully disposed. The nobles were sprinkled all over with paste, and looked effective enough at the price which Henry had given for their embellishment. Maximilian, who was in mourning, presented a dismal contrast to all this finery, for he wore nothing but a suit of serge, which, however, turned out far more serviceable than the fancy costume of Henry and his courtiers. The rain came on so furiously that unless the silks were washing silks they must have been fearfully damaged by the wet, while the running of the hues one into the other caused Henry's party to come off with—in one sense—flying colours. It was at length determined to make an attack upon the French, and the Emperor Maximilian having got his old serge doublet trimmed up with a red cross, and pinned an artificial flower in his hat, directed the operations of the English. The French cavalry began pretty well; but whether Maximilian looked so great a Guy as to terrify the horses, or through any other cause, it is certain that a panic ran through the ranks, and they commenced a retreat at full gallop, using their spurs with tremendous vehemence.
One of the fugitives, a venerable Marshal, broke his baton in beating a retreat over the back of his charger; and Bayard, who had refused to run, seeing the baton of his comrade broken, exclaimed, "Ha! he has cut his stick!" which afterwards became a bye-word to describe the act of a fugitive. The illustrious Chevalier sans peur et sans reproche became a prisoner, but thoroughly enjoyed the joke of his countrymen having run away, and laughingly called it the battle of the spurs, from the energy with which they had plunged their rowels into the flanks of their chargers.
A meeting between Bayard, Maximilian, and Henry, has been described very graphically in the Histoire de Bon Chevalier; [Vol. ii., page 80.] and it appears from this authority that the two latter bantered their prisoner in a somewhat uncourteous manner. Bayard contended that he had become captive by a voluntary surrender; upon which the emperor and the king burst out into a fit of rude laughter, as if they would have said, "That's a capital joke;" but Bayard protested that he might have got away had he chosen to run for it. They only replied to him by saying "Well, well, my fine fellow, we've got you, and it matters little whether you took yourself into custody or how else you came here; but here you unquestionably are, and there's an end of the discussion."
After taking Tournay, where he held a number of tournaments, and which was actually sacrificed by the inhabitants for the sake of a bad pun [The pun alluded to was couched in these words, which were used by the citizens:—"Que Tournay n'avoit jamais tourne ni encore ne tournerait."]—worse even than the accidental one in the text—Henry returned to England, and arrived on the 24th of October, 1513, at Richmond.
Thus ended the expedition to France; but important events had been happening at home, for the Earl of Surrey had been chevying the Scotch over the Cheviot Hills, and at last fought them at Flodden, where James IV. unfortunately fell; and the English queen, making a parcel of his coat, hat, and gloves, sent them to Henry a3 a proof of the dressing the Scotch had experienced.
It had been intended to resume the war with France, but Louis XII. suggested a compromise, by which he married Mary, the sister of the English king, and Mary thus had the honour of mollifying the asperity of the feelings that the two monarchs had hitherto indulged.
We have already mentioned the name of Wolsey, who accompanied Henry abroad in the capacity of almoner; and it is now time that we give some particulars of a person who played one of the most important parts in the drama of history.
Thomas Wolsey was born at Ipswich, in March, 1471, of humble parents; but the popular story of his father having been a butcher is probably a fable, to which the fact of his having had a stake in the country has perhaps given some likelihood. It is doubtful whether he was brought up to the block, though he might have been obliged to give his head to it at a later period of his life, when he incurred his master's displeasure. It has been said that Wolsey senior could not have been a butcher, because he left money to his son by will; but business must have been bad indeed if he could not bequeath a couple of legacies of thirteen-and-fourpence each, with one of six-and-sevenpence, and another of eleven shillings, in addition to a sum of ten marks, which constitute altogether the entire amount of cash that was actually disposed of by the old gentleman to his wife, his son, and his executors. [His will was published by Dr. Fiddes, from the Registry at Norwich.] If the elder Wolsey was really a butcher, it is certain that he had not a sharper blade in his establishment than his son Tom, who was sent early to school, and having proceeded to the University of Oxford, got on so well as to acquire the name of the Boy Bachelor. He soon became a fellow, and was one of the cleverest young fellows in the College, where he was intrusted to educate the three sons of the Duke of Dorset. In this capacity, by the application of a great deal of flattery—or, as some would have termed it, Dorset Butter—while at home with the young gentlemen for the Christmas holidays, he got the patronage of their noble father, who presented him with the rectory of Lymington. Here he is said to have disgraced himself by getting into a row at a fair, but we can scarcely believe that the clergyman of the parish would have forgotten himself so far as to give his love of gaiety full swing, and allow him to carry absurdity to the height which such a proceeding seems to indicate. He could not have very far compromised his character, or he would not have been employed by Henry VII., on delicate and important missions which a parson fresh from "the fun of the fair" would never have been allowed to execute. Some of his detractors have broadly asserted that Wolsey was inebriated, and fled in shame from his cure, but we really believe that he was never at any period of his life intoxicated with anything but ambition, which undoubtedly is quicker in turning the head than the strongest juice that ever dropped from the ripest juniper. Fox, the Bishop of Winchester, strongly recommended Wolsey to Henry VIII., who, already knowing something of the young man, made him King's Almoner; and on taking Tournay in France, hesitated whether he should burn it down, or make Wolsey its bishop. The latter of the two evils fell upon the town, which was placed under the ambitious churchman's ecclesiastical cognizance. He rose rapidly to the sees of Lincoln and York, became Lord High Chancellor of England, and, on the 7th of September, 1515, received his crowning honour, in the hat of a cardinal.
We must now put Wolsey by for a little bit, though we shall have to bring him out again and again, for we must not keep others waiting by lingering too long in the accomplished churchman's company. We left the princess Mary just married to Louis XII., though her heart had long been given to Charles Brandon, Viscount Lisle, who retained the principal of her affections, though the French king got for a time the interest. He however enjoyed it for only two months, when he died, and Brandon, the remainder-man, became the tenant in possession, by marrying Mary after three months' widowhood. Henry was at first very angry with the match, but the young couple rushing into his presence like two repentant lovers in a farce, and Wolsey interceding with all the air of the "smart servant," the king was persuaded to give that cheapest of all donations—his blessing. Brandon's good sense and modesty went some way in reconciling Henry, for Viscount Lisle never presumed upon his connection with the family of royalty. Pie did not talk continually of "My brother-in-law the king," as he might have done; but he took the following motto, in which there is a strong indication of his "knowing his place," and being determined on keeping it.
Cloth of gold do not despise,
Though thou be match'd with cloth of frize;
Cloth of frize be not too bold,
Though thou be match'd with cloth of gold.
["Granger's Biog. Hist.," vol. i., p. 82.]
Francis I. had succeeded to the French throne and the Archduke Charles of Austria had come in for the whole of the Spanish monarchy by the death of his maternal grandfather, Ferdinand of Aragon. He was a maternal grandfather in a double sense, for he had grown very old womanish, and the adjective maternal was by no means inappropriate. Francis and Charles became competitors for the empire just vacant by the death of Maximilian, and the countenance of Henry was eagerly sought by both of the disputants. Henry had formerly hoped
Henry pardoning the young Couple.
to have been himself a successful candidate, but finding he had no chance, he wrote to Charles, saying he "wished he might get it," which were the genuine sentiments no doubt of the English sovereign. The election fell upon Charles, and Francis affected to take the consequence as if it had been of no consequence at all, though it was clearly otherwise.
The election for the rank and dignity of Emperor was one of the most disgracefully corrupt proceedings that was ever witnessed, even in the palmiest days of the boroughmongering system in England, some centuries afterwards. The candidates were Francis I. of France, Charles V., King of Castile, Henry VIII. of England, and the Elector Frederic of Saxony. The bribery was on a scale of vastness never before heard of, and it is said that Charles scattered his—or his people's—money among the independent electors with frightful prodigality. The electors of Cologne, which was not then in such good odour as might have been expected from the pleasant purity of its Eau, pocketed no less than 200,000 crowns; but the mother of Francis I. declared, that "the electors, among them all, had not received from the king, her son, more than 100,000 crowns," [Ellis's Letters, vol. i., p. 155.] so that the loss of his election is very easily accounted for. Francis, nevertheless, imagined he had secured five electors out of the seven; but these worthies, who were dishonestly receiving bribes from both parties at once, eventually gave to Charles, who paid them best, the benefit of their suffrages. Poor Saxony, expecting in a contest with such powerful opponents that he might get "double milled," resigned in favour of Charles; and Henry, whose committee had been sitting to conduct his election, until it was clear there would be nothing to conduct, threw his influence into the same scale.
On the 28th of June, 1519, the polling commenced, and each elector as he came up to give Ms vote was, no doubt, received with the shouts and salutations that are usual on all similar occasions. When the Elector of Cologne appeared to plump for Charles, after having quite as plumply promised his support to Francis, the jeers of the populace were tremendous, and an egg was even thrown for the purpose of egging on the crowd to acts of violence. The unprincipled elector looked contemptuously on the oval missile, as if he would have said that he did not care about submitting to the yolk, after the extensive "shelling out" that had already taken place for his benefit.
The countenance of Henry was still the object of both their wishes, and Francis asked the English king for an interview, which was arranged to take place in France in the ensuing summer. Upon the appointment having been made, Charles ran over to England to be the first to get Henry's ear, and seeing Wolsey's influence, did his utmost to win over that wary individual. The latter secretly aspired to the papal chair, and it may perhaps be said that his origin is proved to have been that of a butcher's son, because he began to look at everything with a pope's eye, and hoped to eat his mutton in the Vatican. Such frivolous reasoning is so unworthy the dignity of history, that we reject it at once, and confine ourselves to the simple fact, that the triple crown of Rome was always running in or about the head of the ambitious churchman.
The time now drew near for Henry to meet Francis I., who, thinking to flatter Wolsey, requested that the management of the gorgeous scene might be left entirely to the taste of the Cardinal. Wolsey's reputation as a getter-up of spectacles was exceedingly well deserved, for even when at home, he lived in a style of gorgeous magnificence. Every apartment in his house at Hampton was a set scene of itself, with decorations and properties of the most costly character. He kept eight hundred supernumeraries always about him as servants, "of whom nine or ten were noblemen, fifteen knights, and forty esquires." [Fiddes' "Life of Wolsey," pp. 106, 107.] Not contented with an ordinary chair, he always sat with a canopy over his head, and he allowed no one to approach him except in a kneeling attitude. His dress matched his furniture, for he wore a crimson satin surtout, with hat and gloves of scarlet, and even his shoes were silver-gilt—like a pair of electrotyped highlows. His liveries surpassed even those of the Sheriffs of London; and his cook positively wore satin or velvet, so that this functionary was dressed more daintily and delicately than the most recherche of his own dinners. Wolsey, when he appeared in public, carried an orange, stuffed with scents, in his hand; for he used to say affectedly that there was always an exhalation from a vulgar crowd, which gave him the vapours.
Henry the Eighth meeting Francis the First.
The preparations for the interview between Francis and Henry having been intrusted to such a master of all ceremonies as Cardinal Wolsey, could not fail to be made on a scale of unprecedented grandeur; and the place where the two monarchs met acquired the name of the "Field of the Cloth of Gold," from the extreme gorgeousness of the scene in which they acted. The arrangements were nearly completed, and Henry had removed to Canterbury, for the convenience of the journey to France, when Charles of Spain, being jealous of the anticipated meeting, ran over to the Kentish coast, to say a few words to the English king before he left for the Continent.
Charles was received in a most amicable manner, but happening to see the late Queen Dowager of France, then Duchess of Suffolk, who might, could, would, or should have been his own wife, he turned so spoony and sentimental, that he could take no pleasure in the festivities prepared for him. "No, thank you, none for me!" was his almost uniform answer to every inquiry whether he would have a little of this, that, or the other, that was placed before him. He lost first his spirits, then his appetite, and ultimately his time, for he was fit neither for negotiation nor anything else during his stay in England. Having remained four days, he went home, with a "worm in the bud" of his affections, and as he looked at the sea before him, he was overheard muttering that he should "never get over it." His courtiers thought he was alluding to the ocean but he was in reality soliloquising on the loss of his heart, which he left behind him; but happily this is a sort of parcel that can without much difficulty be recovered. On the day he re-embarked for Flanders, Henry set sail for France, having only put off his putting off out of compliment to his illustrious visitor.
A plot of ground between Guisnes and Ardres was fixed upon as the place of meeting, and a temporary palace—of wood, covered with sailcloth—was erected there, for the person and the suite of the English sovereign. Cunning workmen had painted the sacking at the top to look like square stones; but it was sacking, nevertheless, as the inmates found out in rainy weather. The walls glittered with jewels, like the gingerbread stalls at a fair, and the tables groaned, or rather, creaked, under massive plate, which proves that the wood must have been rather green which had been used in making the furniture. Francis, making up his mind not to be outdone, got an enormous mast, and throwing an immense rickcloth over the top, stuck it up umbrella-ways in the part of the field he intended to occupy. A whirlwind having come on, the old rickcloth got inflated with the height of its position, and was soon carried away by the tremendous puffing it experienced. The whole apparatus took, for a moment, the form of a balloon; and the workmen, seeing it was all up, ran away just in time to avoid the consequences of a collapse, which almost instantly happened. Francis was glad to find more substantial lodgings in an old castle near the town of Ardres, where Wolsey speedily paid him a morning visit. The Cardinal, who had only intended to make a short call, remained two days, in. which he arranged an additional treaty with the French king, who agreed to pay a large sum for the neutrality of England in continental matters, and "as to Scotland," said Francis, "you and my mother shall settle that between you!" "I?" exclaimed Louisa of Savoy, with surprise, "I don't know anything about diplomatic affairs!" but the Cardinal flattered the old lady that she did; and, by blandly remarking "he was positive they should not fall out," he persuaded her to join him in the arbitration, for he felt pretty sure he should get the best of the bargain.
Business being concluded, Henry took out of his portmanteau a new dress of silver damask, ribbed with cloth of gold, and in this splendid suit of stripes he went forth to meet his brother Francis. The 7th of June, 1520, and the valley of Andren, were the time and place of their first coming together, when, according to previous arrangement, they saluted and embraced on horseback. Had one waited for the other to dismount and advance, they might have been standing there to this day, but, by a clever act of equestrianism, they contrived to go through the form of introduction on the backs of two highly-trained steeds, to the great admiration of the circle in the midst of which they exhibited. Francis spoke first, but confined himself to a commonplace observation on the length of the distance he had come, and an allusion to the extent of his possessions and power. Henry replied somewhat cleverly, that "the power and possessions of Francis were matters quite secondary in importance to Francis himself, whom he, Henry, had come a long way to see," and thus contempt was adroitly blended with compliment. The royal couple then dismounted, and took a turn arm-in-arm, as if in friendly conversation, after which they went together into a tent and partook of a very sumptuous banquet. Spice and wine were served out in great profusion, in a spirit of liberality equivalent to that which dispenses "hot elder, with a rusk included, a penny a glass," from many modern refectories. There was plenty of a sort of stuff called "ipocras" given to the people outside; but as we never tasted any "ipocras," and strongly suspect that it is a decoction from ipecacuanha, we cannot answer for the quality of the article in which the people "outside" were allowed to luxuriate.
HENRY THE EIGHTH (CONTINUED).
AFTER the banquet the kings came out of the tent, and Hall, the English annalist, got a near view of the French sovereign. Whether Hall had been immersed too thoroughly in "ipo-cras" to allow of his taking a clear view of matters in general, or from any other cause, it is certain that the picture he gives of Francis I. is very unlike the portrait which Titian has left to us. Hall makes the French king "high-nosed and big-lipped," with "great eyes and long feet," as if Hall saw everything double while under the influence of "ipocras;" but Titian, by toning down the nose, so as to make its bridge in conformity with the arches of the eyebrows, has turned out a not unpleasing portrait of the great original.
It had been previously announced that jousts would form part of the festivities; and accordingly, on the 11th of June, these entertainments began in a very spirited manner. The "braying" of trumpets made an appropriate introduction to the sports, and the overture was echoed by braying of a more animated character. Each king fought five battles every day, and of course came off victoriously in every one; for the nobles and gentlemen of those times were most complacent in submitting their heads as dummies to aid the amusements of royalty. The season of the Field of the Cloth of Gold terminated with a fancy dress ball, in which Henry made himself very conspicuous by the character and richness of his disguises. The vastness of his wardrobe enabled him to astonish every one by the effectiveness of his "making-up," and two or three of his masks were models of quaint ugliness.
At the end of a fortnight of foolery and feasting, the two monarchs separated, and the memorable meeting of the Field of the Cloth of Gold passed from the hands of the costumier, the carpenter, and the cook, into those of the historian. Its chief result was to beggar many of the French and English nobles who had taken part in it, and gone to expense they could not support, to outdo each other in magnificence. Thus did the Field of the Cloth of Gold prepare the way for a sort of threadbare seediness, into which many belonging to both nations were plunged, by their having done up themselves in an insane attempt to outdo each other.
Our account of the great meeting on the Field of the Cloth of Gold would not be complete without the following anecdote. Francis rose very early one morning, and made his way to the quarters of Henry, who was in bed and fast asleep on the arrival of his illustrious visitor. The French king shook the English monarch cordially by the whipcord tassel on the top of his night-cap, when the latter, springing out of bed, responded to the playful summons. "You see," said Francis, "I am up with the lark!" to which Henry added, "And I am ready for the bird you have specified." The English king then expressed himself much obliged for such a mark of attention, and cast over the neck of Francis "a splendid collar," being, no doubt, the "false one" taken off on the night previous. It is believed by some that Henry, not knowing the object of the intrusion, collared the intruder at once; but the version of the story which we have already given appears to be the more probable. Francis, in his turn, clasped a bracelet on Henry's arm, or rather, according to an ill-natured reading of the affair, one cuffed the other for the collaring he had experienced. Henry rang his bell for his valet, but Francis would not permit the attendance of any servant, but laid out Henry's clean things with his own hand, taking in his shaving water, putting out his highlows to be cleaned, and taking them in again. [The minuteness with which these particulars are detailed, may cause a doubt of their veracity, but we refer the reader to Mr. Fraser Tytler's "Life of Henry VIII.," in page 123 of which the anecdote we have given is fully recorded.]
Politeness of Francis to Henry.
Henry, on his return from the Field of the Cloth of Gold, took Gravelines in his way, and gave a look in upon Charles of Castile, who saw him home as far as Calais. This far-seeing prince saw that Wolsey had it all his own way with the English king, and the emperor took every possible opportunity of trying to "come over" the proud prelate. Charles promised his "vote and interest" to Wolsey, in the event of any vacancy occurring in the pa,pal chair, and gratified his avarice by making him Bishop of Placentia and Badajos.
Henry, after making a short stay at Calais, returned to Dover, and reached London without a penny in his pocket, for both he and his courtiers were completely cleaned out by their recent extravagance. On the king's arrival, Buckingham got himself into trouble by his impertinent remarks on the expedition to France, and the dreadful waste of money that it had occasioned. He particularly pointed his sarcasms against Wolsey as the originator of all the expensive fooleries that had been committed, and he took every opportunity of gainsaying or otherwise insulting the upstart cardinal. On one occasion, Buckingham had been holding a basin for Henry to wash his hands, when Wolsey, anxious to have a finger in everything belonging to the king, plunged his paws into the same water. The duke, desirous of administering a damper to the cardinal, spilt a quantity of the liquid over his shoes, when Wolsey becoming angry, threatened to "set upon his skirts," which meant in other words, that the cardinal would be down upon him.
There is no doubt that Wolsey took every opportunity of damaging Buckingham; but the duke himself was obnoxious to the king, and gave particular offence by hiring a servant who had been a member of the royal household. Buckingham had been leading the life of a country gentleman, at what he modestly called his "little place" in Gloucestershire, when he received an invitation to court; and, foolishly flattering himself that this little attention was shown to him on account of his merits, he unsuspectingly obeyed the summons. When he had proceeded some way on his journey, he found he was dodged by three disagreeable looking fellows in block tin, who turned out to be members of the king's body guard, and who were sure to be at his heels whenever he looked round over his own shoulder.
Having put up at Windsor for the night, he had no sooner been shown to his bedroom than he saw the same three fellows loitering in the yard of the inn he was stopping at Once or twice, after retiring to rest, he
The Duke of Buckingham suspects that he is watched.
looked out of his window and fancied he saw one of the three knights crouching in a corner beneath his lattice, and he called out to the figure to be off; but the approach of daylight revealed to him the outline of an innocent water-butt, which he had during the hours of darkness imperatively desired to quit the premises. "I know you well," he cried several times to the tub, "and you had better go at once;" but his expostulations were of course disregarded in the quarter to which he was idly addressing them. Declining to stop at Windsor, he determined to breakfast the next morning at Egham; but he had no sooner entered the coffee-room than he was insulted by one Thomas Ward, a creature of the court, which completely took away the appetite of the duke, of whom it was cruelly said that he could eat neither egg nor ham in the hostel at Eg-ham. He then rode on to Westminster, where he got into his barge and pulled clown with the tide as far as Greenwich, but stopped at Wolsey's house on the way, and sent in his card to the cardinal, who sent out word that he was indisposed, and declined seeing his visitor. "Umph," said the duke, "I'm sorry to hear that but I'll step in, and take a glass of wine, if you've no objection!" After a good deal of whispering among Wolsey's servants, Buckingham was shown into the cellar, where he took a draught of wine from the wood; but finding no preparations made for him, he changed colour—that is to say, he looked rather blue—and proceeded on his journey. As he continued pulling along the river, a four-oared, manned by yeomen of the guard, whose captain acted as coxswain, hailed Buckingham in his barge, which was instantly boarded by the crew of the cutter.
The duke having been towed ashore, was at once arrested, and marched in custody down Thames Street, with a mob at his heels, all the way to the Tower. There were a few cries of "Shame!" and other demonstrations of disapproval, but the sympathy of the bystanders having evaporated in a few yells and a mild shower of cabbage leaves, Buckingham was left in the hands of his captors. On the 13th of May, 1521, Buckingham was brought to trial on the charge of tempting Friar Hopkins to make traitorous prophecies. This Hopkins was an old fortune-telling impostor, who had predicted all sorts of good luck to poor Buckingham, none of which ever fell to his lot; so that he had the double mortification of having been cheated out of his cash, for promises that never came true, and being punished for them just as much as if they had all been literally verified. Buckingham defended himself with great courage; and on being convicted as a traitor, he solemnly declared that he was "never none" an indignant mode of exculpation, in which grammar was sacrificed to emphasis. He died, very courageously, on the 17th of May, 1521, and the barbarous ceremony of his execution created the greatest disgust among the populace.
Almost at the very moment that Henry was being guilty of the enormity we have described, he was putting himself forward as the champion of Religion. He professed the greatest horror of the errors and heresies of Luther, whom, in a letter to Louis of Bavaria, he proposed to burn, books and all, in an early bonfire. Finding that the great Reformer was not to be thus made light of, Henry turned author, and by taking up the pen, he, instead of consigning his antagonist to the flames, regularly burnt his own fingers. There is no doubt that the royal scribbler had been thoroughly well crammed for the task he undertook; and Leo X. having read the book, was good-natured enough to say, in the language of our old friend the Evening Paper, that "it ought to be on every gentleman's table." He published a sort of review of it in a special bull, and made the remark, that the author might fairly be called "The Defender of the Faith," a title which was not only adopted by Henry himself, but has been held, to this very day, by all subsequent English sovereigns.
Francis and Charles, the respective monarchs of France and Spain, had all this time continued their bickering, and they at length agreed to ask the arbitration of Henry. He declined interfering personally, but sent Wolsey in his stead, and the cardinal arrived at Calais on the 30th of July, 1521, with a magnificent retinue. His establishment consisted of lords, bishops, doctors, knights, squires, and gentlemen in crimson-velvet coats, with gold chains round their necks, which gave to the whole party an aspect of exceeding flashiness. Wolsey, notwithstanding the number and splendour of his followers, was at a very trifling expense, for he billeted the whole party at Bruges upon the unfortunate emperor, or rather upon his more unfortunate subjects, who were ordered
The citizens of Bruges supplying Wolsey's suite with provisions.
by their sovereign to find everything that was wanted and put it all down to him in that doubtful document, the bill, which between a potentate and his people seldom meets with settlement. Rations of candles, wine, and sugar [Cavendish.], were served out every evening to the whole of Wolsey's suite, so that all who wanted it had the ingredients of grog, while the candles enabled such as were so disposed to make a night of it.
After spending ten days in the enjoyment of every luxury, at the cost of the contending parties—thus showing that he understood how to make the very most of his position as an arbitrator—Wolsey suddenly declared that he saw no chance of Charles and Francis being reconciled. The wily cardinal having been regularly got hold of by Charles, drew up a treaty extremely favourable to the emperor, and even arranged that he should marry Henry's daughter Mary, though the young lady had been previously betrothed to the son of Francis.
This alteration in the domestic arrangements of the parties concerned was simply declared to be "for the good of Christendom," [Galt's Life of Wolsey, book ii., page 43.] and Henry agreed to the plan with a nonchalant assurance that he really thought it the best thing that could be done, for he did not see "how his said affairs might have been better handled." [State Papers.] Pope Leo X., who was in league with Wolsey, the Emperor, and Henry, in their joint arrangements for smashing France, agreed to give the dispensation for the proposed marriage; but Leo died before the nuptial treaty had been ratified.
On the death of Leo X. Wolsey lost no time in offering himself as a candidate for the vacant popedom. Secretary Pace was sent off at a slapping pace to Rome, to see the members of the conclave, and solicit their votes and interests for the English cardinal. Pace, however, seems to have been too slow to be of any use, and Adrian, Cardinal of Tortosa, who was put up almost in joke, and certainly to create a diversion against Giulio de Medici, one of the other candidates, was returned by a large majority. Wolsey's name does not appear to have been even mentioned on the occasion, and Pace took no step to further his employer's interests.
Francis having been thoroughly disgusted at the treatment he had experienced, tried, in the first place to win Henry back to his cause by entreaties, and next by intimidation, in pursuance of which he shabbily stopped the pension of the English sovereign. When two kings fall out, their subjects are usually the sufferers; and accordingly the English in France, and the French in England, became the objects of royal spitefulness. Francis stopped all the British vessels in his ports, and arrested the merchants, while Henry took his revenge by imprisoning the French ambassador, and making a wholesale seizure of all property belonging to Frenchmen. At length the English monarch became so angry, that he sent a challenge by the Clarencieux Herald offering to fight Francis in single combat, that each might have the satisfaction of a gentleman; but whether one refused to go out, or the other drew in, we are not aware, for we only know that the dispute did not end in a duel.
Doubts have been thrown upon the sincerity of Henry in thus inviting Francis to a personal encounter, but there is every reason to believe that, in the words of the Bell's Life of the period, "the British Pet meant business, though the Gallic Cock, having already won his spurs in other quarters, was not disposed to place them in jeopardy." Henry, with the customary determination of the English character, had, no doubt, put himself regularly into training for the event to come off, and it is not unlikely that he may have frequently amused himself by a little practice on the effigy of his intended antagonist. The skill he
Henry practising previous to challenging Francis.
thus acquired in planting his blows and putting in the necessary punishment at the proper points, would have been highly serviceable had he ever been allowed to meet his man; and it is even said that a bottle of claret was placed in the middle of the head of the figure, so that Henry might fully realise the result of his sparring exercise. We know not how far we may put faith in these ancient records, but we are justified in giving them to the reader, who will separate, no doubt, the wholesome corn of fact from the chaff of mere tradition.
In the meantime Charles came over on a visit to his intended father-in-law, and was introduced to his infant bride, who was a child in arms, at his first interview. Henry and Charles indulged in a succession of gaieties, for which neither possessed the means, and Charles even borrowed money of Henry, while the latter made up the deficiency by running into debt to a frightful extent with his own people.
The king now began to find that he "must have cash," and he at once applied to Wolsey to assist him in raising more money. On these occasions Henry spoke in the most flattering manner to the cardinal, calling him endearingly his "Linsey Wolsey," in a word, "his comforter." The prelate readily entered into his master's views, but candidly pointed out the difficulties of extracting anything more from the London merchants. They had lately advanced twenty thousand pounds in a forced loan, and it was determined to vary the demand upon them, by substituting direct taxation for the empty form of borrowing. Wolsey ordered the mayor, the aldermen, and the most substantial citizens of London to attend at his chambers, [Supposed to have been over the gateway of Inner Temple Lane, where Henry and Wolsey shared the rooms now occupied by their successors, Honey and Skelton, the hair-dressers.] when he announced to them the fact that the sovereign was hard up, and required pecuniary assistance. "What, again!" cried a voice which the cardinal pretended not to hear, but proceeded to say that he should require a return of the amount of their annual monies from all of them. This proposition was the origin of that income-tax with which England has since been burdened; and the lovers of antiquity will feel some consolation in the knowledge that they suffer under a grievance which is hallowed by its ancient origin. There is to many a great comfort in being victimised under venerable institutions, and there are individuals who would rather be plundered in conformity with what are termed time-honoured principles, than be fairly dealt with upon any new system.
While, however, we are talking of the simpletons of the present day, the dupes and victims of the period of Henry VIII. are being kept waiting in the presence of Wolsey. "Gentlemen," said the cardinal, "the country is in danger, and the king wants your hearts;" an announcement which was received with cheers of assent, until it was followed up by a declaration that he must also try the strength of their pockets. Murmurs of dissent followed this intimation; but Wolsey went on boldly to say that the king would only require one-tenth of what they had, and if they could not live on the other nine-tenths, he did not know how they would ever be satisfied. "How will his Majesty take the contribution?" at length exclaimed one of the aldermen. "In money, plate, or jewels," cried the cardinal; "but at any rate the thing must be done, and therefore go about it." A promise was made that the money should be repaid out of the first subsidy, which would have been a sort of improvement upon the old practice of borrowing from Peter to pay Paul, for it would have been picking Peter's two pockets at once, and ransacking one under the pretext of replenishing the other.
Henry certainly had the knack of making his people's money go a great way, for it went so far when it passed into his hands, that it never came back again. The enormous sums he had extorted from the citizens soon melted away in dinner parties, pageants, and other expenses, so that he was at last, after a lapse of eight years, obliged to summon a Parliament. It was opened in person by the king, and the Commons elected Sir Thomas More as their speaker.
Sir Thomas More presented one of those rare unions of wisdom and waggery which may occasionally be found, and he was often sent for to the palace to make jokes for his sovereign. The king would often take him out on the leads at night, where, after scrambling through the cock-loft, and getting out upon the tiles. Sir Thomas and his royal pupil would stand for an hour at a time, conversing on the subject of astronomy. The dryness of the topic was ever and anon relieved by the salient wit of More, who had a new joke for every new star, and appropriate puns for all the planets. He was the original author of that brilliant but ancient series of pleasantries on the "milky whey," which have since become so universally popular; and to him may perhaps be attributed the venerable but not sufficiently appreciated remark, that the music of the spheres must proceed from the band of Orion.
The king and Wolsey congratulated each other on having got Tom More as Speaker, for they thought he would act like one of themselves, and that he would soon laugh the people out of all the money they might be required to furnish. Henry and the cardinal foolishly imagined that the man who sometimes made a joke could never be serious; but they found out their mistake, for he proved himself an excellent man of business when occasion required. Wolsey thought to produce an effect by attending the House in person, and making a speech on that most unpromising topic the "crisis," though it was not such a threadbare subject in those days as in our own, when a "crisis" may almost be looked for as a quarterly occurrence. Happily, if we are remarkable for our rapidity in getting a "crisis" up, we have also a wonderful knack of putting it down again with equal promptitude.
The speech of Wolsey was listened to without reply; for, every member of the House considering the cardinal's intrusion a breach of privilege, remained mute and motionless Irritated by their silence, the crafty churchman called up one of the members by name, and asked him for a speech; but the call might just as well have been for a song, since the individual indicated did nothing more than rise up and sit down again. Finding it impossible to get a good word, or indeed any word at all from the Commons, the cardinal lost his temper, and declared that, having come from the king, he should certainly wait for an answer; but Tom More, the Speaker—who, by the bye, deserved the title, for he was the only one that spoke—began to show his wit by saying that the fact was, the Commons were too modest to open their mouths in the presence of so great a personage. Wolsey withdrew in dudgeon, and after a few days' debate, it was at length agreed to give the money that had been asked, but to take five years to pay it in. Though Henry would no doubt have been perfectly willing to make a sacrifice for ready money, and allow a considerable discount on a cash transaction, his minister tried to accelerate the mode of payment without offering any equivalent for a restriction of the term of credit.
The autumn of the year 1525 was rendered remarkable by the confusion into which the Londoners were thrown, in consequence of the almanack-makers and astronomers having tried to give an impetus to their trade by throwing into the market a parcel of very alarming prophecies. It was predicted that the rains would be so tremendous as to convert the whole wealth of the metropolis into floating capital, and the merchants, fearing they might not be able to keep their heads above water, ran in crowds to the suburbs. Several parted with everything they possessed, and their foolish conduct in making their arrangements for being swamped, formed a precedent, no doubt, for a case of recent occurrence, in which an individual of average income, having been led away by a prophecy that the world had only two more years to run, invested the whole of his property in the largest possible annuity he could procure for two years, being under the firm impression that beyond that time neither he nor his heirs, executors, or assigns, would have the opportunity of enjoying a farthing of any surplus. As the world did not keep the appointment that had been made for it by the calculator of its final arrangements, he was left without a penny when the time he had assigned for its duration was up; and thus many had got rid of everything in 1525, under the expectation that all their sorrows and possessions would be drowned in the inundation that did—not happen. During the time the panic prevailed, a few of the tradesmen and artificers did their best to put it to a profitable account, and a turner of the time, who was so clever at his business that he could turn a penny out of anything, constructed several thousand pairs of stilts, and placing them in his window, labelled "Stilts for the inundation," he obtained numerous customers.
Wolsey's attention was suddenly called off from matters at home, by a fresh vacancy in the Popedom, occasioned by the death of Adrian. The English cardinal immediately despatched a letter to his royal master, saying how unfit he was for the pontificate; when Henry, instantly taking the hint, and saying to himself, "Oh! ah! exactly! I see what Wolsey wants," wrote off strongly to Rome, in favour of his election. Powerful efforts were made to secure his return, and push him to the top of the pole; but though he got several votes, he was completely beaten by Giulio de Medici, who was elected to the papal chair by a very large majority. Wolsey bore his disappointment, to all appearances, exceedingly well; but the probability is, that he saw the policy of keeping on good terms with the new pope, who made the cardinal his legate for life, and granted him a bull empowering him to suppress a number of monasteries, for the purpose of taking the money they possessed to endow his own colleges.
Henry and Wolsey declared that the cash should be devoted to "putting down" that "Monster Luther," as they sometimes called him, or that "fellow Luther," as they spoke of him now and then, by way of change, though his fellow did not exist at the period when the term Was applied to him Among the many irons that Henry now had in the fire was an Italian iron, with which he stood a pretty fair chance of burning his fingers; for he had interfered in the disputes between Francis I. of France, and the Emperor Charles, who was at war in Italy. Francis had laid himself down on the pavement before Pavia, resolved to leave no stone unturned to place a curb on the foe, and pave his own way to victory. As he lay under the walls the cream of the Imperial army was poured down upon him, with a savage violence that causes the blood to curdle at the bare recital. Thoroughly soured in his hopes, Francis plunged into the very thick of the Imperial cream, and beating around him with his sword in all directions, reduced seven men, with his own hand, to the inanimate condition of whipped syllabubs. His valour availed him little, for he was removed—to adopt the spelling of the period—in custardy. He was kept in captivity in Spain, at the strong fortress of Pizzichitone, from which he wrote home to his mother—probably for the means of replenishing his sac de nuit—and concluded his note with the memorable words, "Tout est perdu hors l'honneur;" which—for the benefit of that portion of the public who may have learnt their "French without a master," and have, consequently, never mastered it at all—we translate into "All is lost, excepting honour."
Francis being now completely down, Henry and Wolsey proposed to Charles that they should combine in making the very most of the help less position of their prostrate enemy Fortunately for the French
Election of Pope. Getting to the top of the pole.
king, his two opponents were not only deficient in funds, but had begun to quarrel; on the old principle, perhaps, that when Poverty stalks in at the door, Love hops out at the window. The pay of Charles's forces had fallen fearfully into arrear, and they declared they would no longer go on fighting upon half salaries. It was therefore determined to bring the military season to a close; and the grand ballet of action, having for its plot the invasion of France—of which Henry had drawn out the scheme, and which was to have put forward the strength of a double company, comprising a powerful combination of the English and Imperial troupe—was postponed for an indefinite period.
Henry, who was ready to sell himself to either party, finding Charles too poor to purchase him, offered himself without reserve to Francis. Terms were soon arranged, by which Henry was to receive by instalments two millions of crowns, with a permanent annuity when the chief sum was paid off; and Wolsey was also handsomely provided for—at least in the shape of promises. While the agreement was most solemnly ratified by Francis himself and the chief of the French nobility, the Attorney and Solicitor-General of France privately popped a protest on to the file, in order that the king, who was particular about his honour, might not have his scruples shocked should he subsequently feel disposed to break his word and fly off from his agreement. He found considerable difficulty in effecting his release without swearing to at least a dozen things he never intended to perform, and when the document was brought to him, full of concessions to Charles, he affixed his signature with the indifference of a man putting his name to a bill, regardless of the amount, which he does not mean to liquidate. He had no sooner got out of custody, and found himself comfortably seated before his palace fire, than Sir Thomas Cheney and Dr. Taylor walked in with a message from Henry VIII., to congratulate Francis on his delivery "If you'll take my advice," said one of the visitors, at the same time handing his card, with
Dr. Taylor,
Jurist.
upon it, to give weight to his words, "you will pay no attention to the liabilities you have entered into with regard to the Emperor." "Indeed, Doctor, I don't mean to trouble myself upon the subject," was the king's reply; "and in fact I have kept up a running accompaniment of private protests to every obligation I have undertaken." Dr. Taylor explained to him that he was on the safe side, for the bonds he had given were bad in law, having been executed while the king was under duress, and therefore not legally responsible. Thus did the chivalrous Francis, who had written so nobly about having lost everything except his honour, present an early instance, of which later times have furnished so many, of the largest talkers being the smallest doers, or perhaps rather the greatest DOS in the universe.
We have now to relate a curious personal anecdote of Henry VIII., which might have caused a considerable abridgment of his reign, much in the same way that the want of strength in the bowl in which the three wise men of Gotha went to sea, put a premature period to their little history.
["Three wise men of Gotha
Went to sea in a bowl;
Had the bowl been stronger
My story would have been longer"
—Old Nursery Ballad.
Though the fact is not stated, the inference clearly is, that the "wise men" bowled themselves out of existence by that rash proceeding.]
Henry, in his early manhood, was one day running after a hawk, perhaps to put a little salt upon its tail in the idle hope of catching it. The bird was actively retreating before its royal pursuer, and had just quitted a hedge by hopping the twig, when it traversed a ditch on the other side, which Henry endeavoured to clear by the aid of his leaping-pole. The attempt somehow failed, and the monarch pitching on to his head in the soft mud, sunk into it as far as his neck, and became planted with his legs in the air for several seconds. Happily a footman named Edmund Moody—"You all know Tom Moody" though you may never have heard of Edmund—came up at the instant and pulled the king up from the ground by the roots—at least by the roots of his hair—with wondrous promptitude. Had this accident proved fatal, Henry would have been the first instance of a monarch losing his crown by being planted instead of supplanted, which had been the fate of some that had preceded him.
It is now time for us to speak of the commencement of that spirit of Bluebeardism which ultimately gave the most glaring colouring to Henry's character. He had always been a little flighty and indiscriminate in his attentions to the fair sex, but he had hitherto treated Catherine with respect, until he met with Anne Boleyn, or Bullen, the daughter of Sir Thomas Boleyn, who was descended from a former Lord Mayor of London, but by a series of clever match-making—a talent for which was inherited by Miss Anne—the family had succeeded in allying itself, by marriage, to some of the proudest aristocracy in the land.
One of their earliest "dodges" had been to repair the plebeian word Bullen, by omitting the U and substituting an O, which got it to Bollen. In the course of time, having been allowed an inch in the way of license, they took an L, or at least one liquid absorbed another, and the word now stood Bolen. Subsequently a Y, without a why or wherefore, was dropped in, and the Bullens, who had probably acquired their name, originally, from having been landlords, or perhaps potboys, at the "Bull," had now assumed the comparatively elegant title of Boleyn, which has since become so famous in history. Sir Thomas Boleyn, the father of Nancy, had long lived about the court, and had been employed as a deliverer of messages, or ticket-porter, for Henry VIII., on some important occasions. Anne, who was born in the year 1507, had in very early life gone out to service as maid—of honour—to the king's sister, Mary, who, when going over to be married to Louis XII., took the girl abroad, where she picked up a few accomplishments. On Mary's returning home, a widow, Anne Boleyn found another situation with Claude, the wife of Francis I., but after remaining in another family or two for a short time in France, she returned to England, where we find her, in 1527, engaged as maid of honour to Catherine of Aragon.
Henry having become deeply enamoured of Miss Boleyn, who had shown a strong determination to stand no nonsense, was suddenly seized with religious scruples as to his marriage with the queen; for he found out, seventeen years after the event, that he had done wrong in allying himself with his brother's widow. The fact of her being now an oldish lady of forty-three added no doubt considerably to the pious horror of the king at the step which he had taken. He accordingly began to think seriously of a divorce; and when Wolsey was sounded on the subject, the cardinal, for reasons of his own, yielded a prompt concurrence. He was anxious to pay off Catherine on account of a quarrel he had had with her nephew the emperor; and thus, in the words of the poet of Dumbarton Castle,
"He sought to consummate his fiendish part
By breaking a defenceless female's heart."
He was sent as an ambassador to Francis, ostensibly to arrange about the marriage of Henry's only daughter Mary, but really, as it is believed, to induce the French king to consent that Wolsey should be a sort of acting pope during the investment of the castle of St. Angelo, where the Spaniards and Germans had made the real pontiff a prisoner.
Poor Clement bore his ill fortune with patience, though, as long as the investment of the castle lasted, he used to say it was one of the most unprofitable investments in which he had ever been involved, and that nothing but the excessive tightness prevented him from selling out, for he was quite tired of the security
HENRY THE EIGHTH (CONTINUED).
The reign of Henry VIII. would become tedious were it not for the privilege we have assumed of dividing it into chapters; though we shall not follow the example of the melodramatists who suppose fifteen years to have elapsed between each of their acts, and thus carry on their plots by means of the imagination of their audience. It is true that many of the events of Henry's reign are dark enough to cause a wish that we might be allowed to omit them; but we must not give up to squeamishness what we owe to posterity.
We have not yet come to the catalogue of his various female victims, and we have yet to describe those matrimonial freaks upon which we would gladly have put a ban by forbidding the banns, had we lived three centuries in advance of our present existence. We must, however, speak the truth; and though we might imitate the author of the play called The Wife of Seven Husbands, who requested the public to consider that a husband had elapsed between each act, we will not call upon our readers to imagine that a wife of Henry VIII. has elapsed between each chapter.
We will now resume our narrative, and in the first place look after Wolsey, whom we left under orders to proceed to the French dominions; and as the cardinal must by this time have commenced the passage across, we will take him at once out of his unpleasant position, and land him at Boulogne.
Wolsey's reception in France was like that of a royal personage, and had all the inconveniences of such a compliment; for the firing of the guns at Boulogne frightened his mule, who had not been trained to stand fire, and who indulged in a kick-up of the most extraordinary character. This interview with Francis resulted in three treaties, which were concluded on the 18th of August, 1527, [Lord Herbert's Life of Henry VIII., page 160 of the quarto edition, 1741.] by the first of which it was agreed that the Princess Mary should marry young Francis, Duke of Orleans, instead of old Francis, his father, a point that had hitherto been an open question; the second treaty concluded a peace, and the third stipulated that nothing done by the pope during his captivity should take effect, but that as long as Clement was in durance, which it required all his fortitude to endure, Wolsey should have the management of ecclesiastical affairs in England. The pope himself good-naturedly sent over a bull to confirm the cardinal in his new powers; and "here certainly," says Lord Herbert, "began the taste our king took of governing, in chief, the clergy." His lordship might have added with truth that Wolsey had performed the wonderful physical feat of biting off his own nose to be revenged upon the rest of his face, for it is certain that the
Cardinal Wolsey at Boulogne.
taste Henry had been encouraged to take of power over the church, soon led him to be discontented with a mere snack, for his appetite grew fearfully by what it fed upon. Like the modest dropper-in at dinner time, who sits down to take "just a mouthful," and is led on to the consumption of a hearty meal, Henry, who at first simply intended to pick a bit from the power of the pope, soon became a cormorant of church influence. Henry's thoughts were seriously occupied with the design of getting a divorce, and he therefore pretended to be in great alarm as to the succession to the throne, in consequence of a "public doubt" as to his marriage being lawful, and the Princess Mary being legitimate.
There is no question that the wish was in this instance father to the thought, and that so far from Henry's desiring to silence all discussion on the point, he was the first to encourage the criticism of his wife's and his daughter's position. Notwithstanding his notorious flirtation with Anne Boleyn—which the forward minx decidedly encouraged—he pretended to be looking out for an eligible parti in the event of his marriage with Catherine of Aragon being officially nullified. He had a picture sent over to him of the Duchess of Alanson, sister to Francis, and used to pretend that he should probably set his cap at that lady; but the picture was a mere blind, or probably in a very short time it experienced a worse fate than that of a blind, by being turned into a fire-board or consigned to a lumber-room.
The love-making of Henry VIII. and Anne Boleyn was a mixture of mawkishness, childishness, hypocrisy, and scholastic pedantry, tinctured with an affectation of religion that was not the least disgusting feature of this disgraceful courtship. Henry used to write love-letters full of extracts from Thomas Aquinas, complaints of head-ache, reference to pious books, and sickly sentimentalism about "mine own sweet heart;" while the good-for-nothing Nancy B. would reply by sending him pretty little toys and pretty little words of encouragement. She had made good use of her time in Wolsey's absence, for when the cardinal came back, the king in answer to his own question, "Guess who's the gal of my art?" which his friend gave up, enthusiastically responded, Anne Boleyn.
The already corpulent monarch was stupidly and spoonily love-sick about this "artful puss," as Catherine (might have) called her, and he used to leave scraps of paper about the palace, scribbled over with charades, conundrums, and anagrams to the object of his admiration. [One of these has been preserved ; it is to the following effect:—My first is the article indefinite (An) ; my second is a very useful animal (Bull); my third is the abode of hospitality (Inn) and my whole is the "gal of my art." An(n) Bull-Inn, (Anne Boleyn).] Wolsey was a good deal annoyed by this avowal, but finding his opposition would do no good, he changed his tack, and fell in with the sovereign's fancy. Henry ordered him to consult Sir Thomas More, who not at all liking the job, referred him politely to St. Jerome and St. Augustine, saying, it was more in their way than his own, and he felt any interference on his part would be irregular and unprofessional. Wolsey next tried the bishops, who shook their heads, and said, "You had better ask the pope," to whom the king at last determined upon a reference.
The pope, whom we left locked up in the castle of St. Angelo, had been obliged to "come out of that" for want of provisions, and had escaped in the disguise of a gardener, in which a shovel hat may have been of some use to him. He played his cards so well as the one of spades, that with the assistance of one or two true hearts, who turned out trumps, he reached in safety the town of Orvieto, where he expected reinforcement from a French army. Long before the promised aid arrived, he received a card inscribed "Dr. Knight," and he had scarcely time to say, "Doctor Knight, who is Doctor Knight? I don't know any Doctor Knight," when the King of England's secretary, who bore that name, rushed into the presence of the pontiff. The doctor having briefly explained his object in coming, which was to get the pope's consent to Henry's divorce, succeeded in extracting the requisite authority from his holiness, who was very unwilling, but he could not keep back his bull without finding himself on the horns of a worse dilemma. He at all events wished the matter to be kept secret for a short time; but a friend of Wolsey stepped forward to stipulate that an Italian cardinal should be sent to England with Dr. Knight, to prove that the document he took with him was genuine. Poor Clement, being afraid to refuse compliance, pointed to half a-dozen cardinals standing in one corner, and hurriedly observed, "There, there, Dr. Knight, take any one of those, for the whole six are quite at your service." In conformity with this permission, Cardinal Campeggio was selected to visit England, and he carried with him in his pocket a decree, rendering final any judgment that he and Wolsey might agree upon.
On the arrival of Campeggio a public entry into London was proposed; but he excused himself on the score of gout, which had laid him by the heels, or rather seized him by the great toe, and prevented him from coming into the metropolis on the footing that he might have desired. After spending a few days with his leg in a sling, he was introduced to the king, whom he greatly irritated by advising that the business of the divorce should not be proceeded with. Henry began declaring that he had been deceived, and that the pope was an old humbug, which caused the gouty leg of the legate to tremble in its shoe; and, taking the bull from his pocket, he showed that the pontiff meant business, and had given full authority for transacting it.
Henry's desire for a divorce got soon rumoured about the city, and caused so much dissatisfaction that he called a meeting of the judges, lord mayor, common council, and others, at which it was announced that his majesty would attend to give explanations, and enter into a justification of his conduct. He made an elaborate speech of the most artful and hypocritical kind, in which he asserted that his religious scruples alone made him agitate the question of a divorce, and that if his marriage was valid, nothing would give him greater pleasure than to finish his life in the society of the old lady, who had been for many years the partner of his existence. It is notorious that he had made up his mind to desert Catherine for Anne Boleyn; and his speech is therefore a disgusting specimen of low cunning, rendered doubly odious by the religious cant with which it was accompanied.
Henry the Eighth and his Queen "Out a-Maying."
The unhappy queen, when visited by Wolsey and Campeggio, exclaimed at once,
"I know what you have come about." She said she thought it hard to
have her marriage doubted after nearly twenty years; and spoke pathetically
of those early days when she was in the habit of going out a-Maying with her
royal husband. "Ah, madam!" replied Wolsey, "if we could have
May all the year round, it would be pleasant enough; but the spring of the year,
as well as the spring-time of existence, is not perpetual." Catherine acknowledged
she was not so young as she had been, and the English cardinal ventured to hint,
that, even in those Maying days, she had the advantage of Henry,—at least,
if there can be any advantage to a lady who is her husband's senior. Finding
pathos of no use, she proceeded to argument, and endeavoured to show that Henry
had almost lost his claim to a divorce by mere laches, in having so long neglected
to apply for one. The two cardinals only shook their heads, as if they would
say, "I can't see much in that;" and she then ventured to take another
ground for opposing her husband's project. She complained that her father had
paid for the license and dispensation from the pope, but that the dispensations
might be dispensed with as valueless, if one could supersede another at the
instigation of the great and powerful against the comparatively friendless and
impotent. At length, losing all temper and patience, she turned to Wolsey, taxing
him with having "done it all;" when the wily cardinal did nothing
but bow and smile in general terms, placing his hand upon his heart, muttering
out, "Ton honour!" "Nothing of the sort!" and giving other
similar assurances that he had in no way instigated "the conduct pursued
by Henry.
The preliminary meeting to which we have referred was held in the Hall of the
Black Friars, on the 31st of May, 1529; and an adjournment till the 21st of
June having taken place, Wolsey and Campeggio were at their posts at the appointed
hour. Henry and Catherine were both in attendance; and the former, when his
name was called, gave a terrific shout of "Here!" which had a startling
effect upon the whole assembly.
Henry answering "Here!" at the Trial of Queen Catherine.
Catherine, though she might be considered upon her trial, was accommodated with a seat on the left of the bench, and was attended by four friendly bishops, who had come in the amiable capacity of moral bottle-holders to this injured woman When her name was called she refused to answer, or to say a word; but the dignity of the queen soon gave way to the volubility of the woman, and her tongue started off into a gallop of the most touching eloquence. She commenced in the old style of appeal, by throwing herself at the king's feet, presuming perhaps that if he had a tender point it might be upon his toes, and she should thus make sure of touching it. She then implored his compassion, as a woman and a stranger, concluding with a happy alliterative effect by declaring herself "a friendless female foreigner."
At the conclusion of a very powerful speech she rose slowly, and when it was expected she would return to her seat, she marched deliberately out of the hall, to the great amazement of the friendly quartette of bishops by whom she had been accompanied. Henry was a little staggered by what had occurred; but he nevertheless made a reply, which was partly inaudible from the flurry of the king himself, and the consternation into which the court had been thrown by the queen's very telling speech, and highly dramatic exit. He was understood to say, that he had a very high respect for the distinguished lady who had just addressed them; that she was a very good wife; that he had in fact no fault to find; but that really his scruples as to the lawfulness of his marriage had made him very uncomfortable. He remarked that his conscience was so exceedingly delicate that it could not bear the slightest shock; and here indeed he seems to have spoken the truth, for his conscience appears to have died altogether within a very short time of the occurrence we have mentioned.
Catherine's departure from the court turned out to be final, for nothing could induce her to enter it again; and, being pronounced contumacious, the proceedings were carried on in her absence. The two cardinals, out of regard to her majesty's interests, requested Dr. Taylor—an aged junior in the back rows—to hold a brief for the defendant, and examine the witnesses: a proposition at which the learned gentleman jumped, for he had previously been occupying his own mind and the official ink in sketching the scene before him on the desk, or handing down his name to posterity by cutting it out on the bench with a pocket penknife. Dr. Taylor, if he had practised little before, had quite enough to do on the occasion that brought him into notice, for Lord Herbert, in his "Life and Reign of Henry VIII.," gives a list of thirty-seven witnesses for the plaintiff, all of whom our venerable junior had the task of cross-examining. Some idea may be formed of the magnitude of this achievement, when it is stated that several of the witnesses were ladies, and that the evidence of the first of them—namely, Mary, Countess of Essex—is summed up in the report as having amounted to "little," though conveyed in "general terms."
There is something truly overwhelming in the idea which this slight summary conveys; for it is impossible that the imagination can set any limits to the "little" a lady can contrive to say when she avails herself of "general terms" to give it utterance. Cardinal Campeggio evinced a decided reluctance to bring the matter to a decision, though Henry's case was undoubtedly well supported by evidence; and old Taylor being, professionally speaking, a young hand, was able to do little for his absent client. The king at length grew angry at Campeggio's delay, and instructed counsel to move for judgment, which was accordingly done on the 23rd of July in a somewhat peremptory manner. The Italian cardinal refused the motion, and intimated that he would not be bullied by any man, "be he king or any other potentate." He then went on to say, that "he was an old man, sick, decayed, and daily looking for death:" which certainly gave no reason for delay; and a whisper to that effect went no doubt round the bar, and was caught up by Henry's counsel, who "humbly submitted" that "if the court expected to be soon defunct, there must be the stronger reason for fixing an early day for its decision."
Cardinal Campeggio got up somewhat angrily, and intimated that the cause must be made a "remanet;" that in fact it must stand over until next term, as he was not disposed to continue his sittings. "Is your lordship aware," asked Sampson, [The King's leading counsel was Richard Sampson, with whom was John Bell.—Lord Herbert's Life of Henry VIII., page 205.] K.C., "that you will throw us over
Cardinal Campeggio and Mr. Sampson.—"I can hear nothing now, Mr. Sampson."
the long vacation; for we are now only in July, and the next term begins in October." The cardinal, who was half-way towards the robing room, turned sharply round to observe that "the court was virtually up," and that "he really wished gentlemen of the bar would observe more regularity in their proceedings." Sampson, K.C., had nevertheless got as far as "Will your lordship allow us," in another attempt to be heard, when Campeggio, growling out furiously, "I can hear nothing now, Mr. Sampson," retired angrily to his private apartment. The court never met again, and Campeggio left England a few days afterwards, having first taken leave of the king, who kept his temper, and behaved very decently. He even gave a few presents to the refractory cardinal; but as the latter lay at Dover, previous to embarkation, his bed-room door was burst open, his trunks were rummaged, and probably all his presents were taken away again.
Wolsey, who had been associated in the hearing of the great cause, Henry versus Catherine, or the Queen at the suit of the King, fell into instant disgrace for the part he had taken, or rather for the part he had omitted to take, upon this momentous occasion. Miss Anne Boleyn, who had calculated on his keeping Campeggio up to the mark in pronouncing for the divorce, was especially angry with Wolsey for his apathy. Even the courtiers got up a joke upon the supineness of the English cardinal by calling him the supine in(h)um, while Campeggio was compared to the gerund in do, by reason of his active duplicity, through which he was declared to have regularly done the English sovereign. Many of the nobility attempted to excite the avarice of Henry by hinting to him that Wolsey's overthrow would be a good speculation, if only for the sake of obtaining the wealth he had managed to accumulate; and from this moment the cardinal stood in the precarious position of a turkey that is only crammed to await the favourable opportunity for sacrifice.
Soon after the trial of his cause, in which he thought proper to assume that he was entitled to a verdict, Henry set off on a tour, accompanied by Miss Anne Boleyn, who, in spite of Hume's panegyric on her "virtue and modesty," appears to have been what is commonly called a very pretty character. Wolsey was not invited to be of the party, but he rode after the court, for he was one of those hangers-on that are not to be shaken off very easily. He came up with the king at Grafton, in Northamptonshire, and was very kindly received, but the next morning he was told distinctly that he was not wanted in the royal suite, and that he might go back to London; after which he never saw his master's face again. [Cavendish.] Henry being anxious to ruin his late favourite selon les regles, took the very decisive method of going to law with him. Two bills were filed against the cardinal in the King's Bench; but Wolsey, nevertheless, proceeded to the Court of Chancery to take his seat, just as if nothing had happened. None of the servants of the court paid him any respect; and it is probable that even the mace-bearer, the ushers, and other officers omitted the customary ceremonies of preceding him with the mace, and crying out, "Pray silence" upon his entrance. On his expressing his readiness to take motions, he was responded to by one general motion towards the door, in which the whole bar joined. Being thus left quite alone, he amused himself by giving judgment in some old suit, which had lasted so long that the parties were all dead, and he consoled himself by saying that this accounted for the fact of nobody appearing on either side.
The king, hearing of the cardinal's proceedings, gave orders that he should be forbidden the court altogether, and when he went to take his seat as usual, he found the doors closed against him. When he got home to York Place, where he resided, he was told that two gentlemen were waiting to see him, and on going up stairs, the Dukes of Suffolk and Norfolk requested to have a few words with him. They told him that the king intended to come and live at York Place, so that Wolsey must "turn out," to which he made no objection; but when they insolently and tauntingly demanded the Great Seal, he declared he would not trust it in their possession without a written authority. "How do I know what you are going to do with it?" cried the cardinal, holding it firmly in his grasp, and returning it to the seal-skin case in which he was in the habit of keeping it. The two dukes having exhausted their vocabulary of abuse, retired for that day, but came back the next morning with an order, signed by the king, for the delivery of the Great Seal, which Wolsey gave up to them, together
Wolsey surrendering the Great Seal.
with an inventory of the furniture and fixtures of the magnificent abode he was about to vacate in favour of his sovereign. The catalogue exhibited a long list of luxurious appointments, and, commencing with "a splendid set of curtains of cloth of gold," [Herbert's Life of Henry the Eighth, and Hume's History of England.] went on with—a ditto—a ditto—and a ditto, down to the end of the three first pages. The neatness and variety of his table-covers cannot be conceived, and his magnificent side-board of gold and silver plate was in those days unparalleled. He had got also a thousand pieces of fine Holland; but as the chief use of Holland is, we believe, to make blinds, we must regard his purchase of this material in so large a quantity, as one of those blind bargains which are sometimes the result of excessive opulence. Having made over all those articles to the king, Wolsey left his sumptuous palace, and jumping into a barge, desired the bargemen to drop him down with the tide towards Putney. The river was crowded with boats to see him shove off, and he was assailed with the most savage yells from the populace. As the bargeman gave Wolsey his hand and pulled him on board, the poor cardinal stumbled over a block of Walls End, when an inhuman shout of "That's right, haul him over the coals," arose from one unfeeling brute, and was echoed by countless multitudes.
On reaching Putney, Wolsey gave the word to "pull her in shore," when he disembarked, with his fool and one or two others who had agreed to share his exile. They had not gone very far when they heard a cry of "Ho! ho! hilly hilly ho!" and looking back, they perceived Sir John Norris coming full pelt after them. The cardinal was mounted on a mule—hired probably at Putney, or picked off the common—and though he endeavoured to put the animal along by giving her first her own head, and then the head of a thick stick, the rise of a hill brought Wolsey to a dead stand-still. Here he was easily overtaken by Sir John Norris, who came, as it turned out, with a present of a ring from the king's own finger, and a "comfortable message." The abject cardinal went into the most humiliating ecstasies, and actually grovelled in the very mud, to show his humble sense of the kindness and condescension of his sovereign. Thinking that Sir John Norris possibly expected something for his trouble in bringing the grateful tidings, Wolsey shook his head mournfully, saying, "I have nothing left except the clothes on my back—but here, take this"—and he tore from his neck an old piece of jewellery. "As for my sovereign," he cried, "I have nothing worthy of his acceptance;" when suddenly his eyes lighted upon his faithful fool, who had been such a thorough fool as to follow a fallen master. "Ha!" exclaimed Wolsey, "I will send to his majesty my jester, who is worth a thousand pounds to anybody who has never heard his jokes before; but as I am familiar with the entire collection, I have no further use for him." The faithful fool was exceedingly reluctant to go, and it took six stout yeomen [Lord Herbert, 293.] to drag him away—a fact which, as he was full of wit, proves the humour of the period to have been dreadfully ponderous. Some of the jests of our own time are heavy enough, but we doubt whether it would require half-a-dozen porters to carry a professed wag of the present day—including the burden of his entire stock-in-trade—into the presence of royalty. It is not impossible that the obstinate resistance of the fool to a transfer from the service of a disgraced subject to that of a powerful king, may have been intended as a sample of his style of joking; but we can only say that if this was a specimen of his wit, the value set upon him by his old master was rather exorbitant.
Wolsey now lodged at Esher, where his spirits soon fell—if we may be allowed an engineering phrase—to a very dumpy level. Continual sighing had fearfully reduced his size, and he fretted so much that a sort of fret-work of tears seemed to be always hanging to his eye-lashes. His face became wrinkled and pale, as if constant crying had not only intersected his countenance with little channels, but had likewise washed out all its colour. It is not unlikely that he sometimes regretted having parted with his fool, whose dry humour might have mitigated the moisture or subdued the soaking which naturally resulted from the emptying of so many cups of sorrow over the dismal drooping and dripping cardinal. Nothing seemed to rouse him from his despondency, and the people about him could never succeed in stirring him up to a fit of even temporary gaiety. After dinner they would sometimes ask him to partake of a bowl of sack; but at the mere mention of the word sack he would burst into tears, and sob out, that the sack he had already received had been the cause of all his wretchedness. Upon this he would leave the dinner-table, and wander forth to enjoy his solitary whine in the wood, among the thickly planted solitudes in the neighbourhood of Esher. Sometimes he would sit pining for hours under a favourite pine, or would go and indulge in a weeping match with one of the most lachrymose he could find of weeping willows. All this crying brought on a crisis at last, and Wolsey had so damped all his vital energies by the incessant showers of tears he let fall, that he fell into a slow fever.
The king now seemed to take some compassion upon his former friend, and sent down a medical man to see the prostrate cardinal; though we are inclined to attribute this anxiety for his health to a desire to keep him alive until the process was complete for depriving him of all his property. At all events a Parliament was suddenly summoned, and a bill of impeachment promptly prepared against the fallen and feeble Wolsey.
There were no less than four-and-forty articles in this document, which contained, among a variety of other ridiculous accusations, a charge of having, when ill with a fever, "come whispering daily in the king's ear, and blowing upon his most noble grace with breath infective and perilous." This would, indeed, have been convicting him out of his own mouth; but though the Lords passed the bill, it was thrown out in the Commons, through a speech of Thomas Cromwell, who had been secretary to the unfortunate cardinal.
Wolsey had always felt that when he did fall, he should fall not only as Shakespeare said, "like Lucifer," but like an entire box of lucifers, "never to rise again." Directly the cardinal learned that the bill had been defeated, his appetite returned, his cheeks resumed their colour, the furrows began to fill out, for grief had been at sad work with its plough all over his countenance. He had still a good deal of property left, but the king began tearing it away by handfuls at a time, until Wolsey had nothing left but the bishoprics of York and Winchester. Even these were a good deal impoverished by Henry, who made a series of snatches at the revenues, and divided the amount among Viscount Rochford, the father of Anne Boleyn—who used to say, "I am sure papa would like that," whenever there was a good thing to be had—the Duke of Norfolk, and a few other lay cormorants. Wolsey was at length completely beggared, by treatment that was of such an impoverishing nature as really to beggar description. He had nothing left him, but a free pardon, a little plate—including two table-spoons, which his enemies said were more than his desert,—a small van of furniture, comprising, among other articles, an arm-chair, in which he was tauntingly told he might set himself down comfortably for life, and a little cash for current expenses. He was allowed also to move nearer town, and giving up his lodgings at Esher he took an apartment at Richmond, where he was not permitted to remain very long, for Anne and her party—including several knights of the Star and Garter—persuaded Henry to order the cardinal off to his own archbishopric.
The fallen prelate thought this forced journey so very hard that he tried to soften it by easy stages, and he travelled at the slowest possible pace, in the hope of being sent for back again. At every inn he entered for refreshment on the road he always left a request in the bar, that if any one should ask for a gentleman of the name of Wolsey, the inquirer should be shown straight up, without the delay of an instant Not a knock came to the door of his bed-room but he expected it was a messenger from the king; and when he found, in many cases, it was "only the boots," his disappointment would vent itself in terms of great bitterness. Adopting the customary mode of showing grief in those superstitious days, he took to wearing shirts made of horse-hair next his skin, but donkey's-hair would certainly have been more appropriate. He had, however, become so accustomed to hard rubs, that a little extra scarification was scarcely perceptible. On his arrival at York, he endeavoured to make himself neighbourly with the people about him, and became a sort of gentleman farmer, expressing the utmost interest in rural affairs. He made himself an universal favourite, and was the lion of every evening party within twelve miles of his residence. He was, however, scarcely a figure for these reunions, in his horse-hair shirt; but he probably concealed the penitential part of his costume by wearing a camel's-hair waistcoat immediately over it.
The clergy were always getting up little fetes, of which he was the hero; and he was invited to the ceremony of installation in his cathedral, which he promised to go through, on condition of the thing being done as quietly as possible. It was understood that there should be "no fuss," but several of the nobility and gentry sent contributions of cold meat and wine, forming themselves in fact into a provisional committee, so that the affair partook rather of the character of a pic-nic than of a pageant. Three days before it was to take place Wolsey was sitting at dinner, when there came a knock at the door, and it was announced that the Earl of Northumberland—his friend and pupil—was waiting in the court-yard. "Let him come up and do as we are doing," exclaimed the cardinal. "Dear me, I wish he had been a little earlier; but he is just in pudding-time at any rate." As Northumberland entered the room Wolsey seized him by the hand, entreating him to sit down and enjoy a social snack—or, in other words, go snacks in the humble dinner. Northumberland seemed much affected, when Wolsey, continuing his meal, observed, "Well, you will not make yourself at home, and I can't make you out, so I may as well finish my dinner." At length Northumberland, with a tottering foot, a trembling hand, a quivering lip, a faltering tongue, and a tearful eye, approached his friend Wolsey, and threw himself with a heavy heart—adding at least a pound to his weight—upon the old man's bosom. Wolsey had scarcely time to exclaim, "Hold up!" when the Earl, mournfully tapping the cardinal on the shoulder, murmured, in a voice completely macadamised with sobs, "My Lord—(oh, oh, oh!)—I arrest you—(here his voice became guttural from a perfect gutter of tears)—for high treason." Poor Wolsey remained rooted to the spot, but it was soon necessary to transplant him, and he was speedily removed in custody. His old weakness again came over him, for he began to leak again at both eyes, as if he carried the veritable New River Head under the hat of a cardinal. He of course made himself ill, and indeed he was frequently warned that if he continued much longer in this liquid state, he would liquidate the debt of nature altogether The warning was verified very speedily, for on reaching Leicester Abbey, when the monks came to the door with a candle to light him to bed, he observed to the abbot, "Father, I am come to lay my bones among you." He died on the 29th of November, 1530, in the sixtieth year of his age, and was buried in Leicester Abbey.
News of his death was at once dispatched to Henry, who was having a little archery practice at Hampton Court on the arrival of the messenger. The king continued his sport for some time, until the straw man, upon whom he was trying his skill, had become thoroughly trussed with arrows, when his majesty turned round with an abrupt "Now then, what is it," to the bearer of the sad intelligence. At the tale of Wolsey's death Henry pretended to be much affected, but he soon recovered his spirits sufficiently to inquire whether a sum of £1500 had not been left by the cardinal. The king expressed a desire to administer to his lamented friend's effects, but when the discovery was made, that instead of having £1500 to leave, Wolsey had just borrowed and spent that amount, his royal master thought it as well to have nothing to do with the business. Poor Wolsey had been the unfortunate goose who might have continued laying golden eggs for a considerable time had not Henry cut him prematurely up for the sake of immediate profit.
We cannot part with Wolsey until we have dropped a few inky tears to his memory. We have already seen that his talents were considerable, but according to one of his biographers [Galt, page 199, Bogue's European Library.] he had a most elastic mind, or in other words he could "pull out" amazingly when occasion required.
Some time before Wolsey's death a new ministry had been appointed, in which the family and friends of Anne Boleyn got very snug berths; but though in those days "any fool" could have a seat in the cabinet, it was necessary to have a chancellor of good abilities. The woolsack was literally in the market for a few days, until Henry thrust it on to the shoulders of Sir Thomas More, who would have declined the profitable burden, and who was somewhat averse to the sack of wool, because he felt that much of the material was obtained by fleecing the suitors. He, however, was persuaded to accept the dignity, or rather to undertake the burden, and he was even heard to say—by a gentleman who wishes to remain incog.—that he wished there were porters' knots for moral responsibilities as well as for actual weights, since it was exceedingly difficult to preserve one's uprightness beneath a load of dignity.
Among the persons recently introduced to court was Thomas Cranmer, who happened to have met Dr. Gardiner, the king's secretary, and Dr. Fox, at a private dinner table. As the party sat over their wine, the divorce of Henry was brought upon the tapis, and Cranmer made the sagacious observation, that the proper way would be to have it looked into. Gardiner and Fox exchanged glances, as much as to say "Shrewd fellow that;" and they both agreed that he was a wonderful man for his age—which it will be remembered was the sixteenth century. They endeavoured to bring him out, and upon a free circulation of the bottle, Cranmer gave it as his opinion that there was "only one course to pursue," that "the thing lay in a nutshell," that "it was as clear as A, B, C;" a series of sentiments which, though more knowing than conclusive, made a deep impression on Fox and Gardiner. "There's a great deal in that fellow," said Fox after Cranmer had gone home, and indeed there was a good deal in him no doubt, for scarcely any thing had been got out of him. The two doctors hastened to the king to inform him of the enormous catch they had got in Cranmer, whose winks, innuendos, and occasional ejaculations of "I see it all;" "Plain as a pike-staff," &c, &c, had made such a deep impression upon the two doctors. Henry was as much taken with their description of Cranmer as they had been with the original, and the king exclaimed in a perfect rhapsody, "That man has got the right sow by the ear;" [Todd's Life of Cranmer, Tytller's Life of Henry the Eighth, etc, etc.] an expression which we are sufficiently pig-headed not to appreciate. It was arranged that Cranmer should be asked to dine at the palace; and after a good deal of desultory conversation, in which "Exactly," "I see it," "No question about it," were Cranmer's running fire of ad captandum remarks, Henry got so puzzled that he requested the gentleman to put his opinions in writing at his earliest convenience.
The individual who had thus received instructions to act as pamphleteer in ordinary to the king, was sprung from an ancient family in Nottinghamshire, but he was destined for higher things than dragging out the thread of his existence in Notts, as we shall soon see when we proceed to unravel his history. His early education had been somewhat neglected, for his father was a sportsman, who took more delight in going out to shoot than in teaching the young idea how to follow his example. Young Cranmer's master was a severe priest, who ruled his pupils with a rod of iron, and thrashed them with a rod of a different material. He snapped many a whip over the young whipper-snappers, as he was in the habit of calling his youthful charges, who, at all events, became hardened by the salutary treatment they experienced.
Cranmer applied himself with diligence to his studies, and in turn took pupils of his own at Cambridge, where he happened to meet one day at dinner with Fox and Gardiner, who, as we have already seen, introduced him to the sovereign. The pamphleteer elect to Henry VIII. was lodged in the house of the Earl of Wiltshire, the father of Anne Boleyn, who used to lock the author up in a garret, with a pen and ink and something to drink, upon which he received instructions to "fire away" in support of the views of his master. Cranmer soon rattled off a treatise in which he smashed the pope, demolished every objection to Henry's divorce, and proved to the satisfaction of the king that he could do as he liked as to contracting a second marriage. "Would you say as much to the pope himself?" asked Henry of his literary man. "Aye, that I would, as soon as look at him," was the reply; upon which Cranmer was taken at his word, and sent off to Rome with old Boleyn, now the Earl of Wiltshire. As they entered the papal presence, Clement held out his toe to receive the usual homage, but the old Earl positively declined to perform the humiliating ceremony, and after the pontiff had stood upon one leg for a considerable time, he found that he and his visitor must meet upon an equal footing. Cranmer, though not allowed a public disputation with the pope, took every opportunity of earwigging the people about him, and got many of them to admit that the king's marriage was illegal, though they would not acknowledge that his holiness had no power to give it validity. Though Cranmer's pamphlet had proved everything, it had done nothing, and Henry beginning to speak of his exertions as "all talk," another tool was required to carry out the royal project. This tool came originally from a blacksmith's shop in Putney, in the shape of one Thomas Cromwell, of whom it has since been said that he was a sharp file, who would cut right through a difficulty, while Cranmer was active enough in hammering away at a point, but his hitting the right nail upon the head was generally very dubious.
The father of Cromwell did smiths' work in general, but nothing at all in particular, for he had amassed a decent fortune. His son was sent as a clerk to a factory at Antwerp, where he kept the books; but he soon abandoned accounts, in the hope of cutting a figure. He entered the army, and was present when Rome was made a bed of ruins, by getting a complete sacking. He next entered the counting-house of a merchant of Venice, who dealt in Venetian blinds and Venetian carpeting, but young Cromwell soon threw up the one and indignantly laid down the other. On arriving in London, he commenced the study of the law, and took chambers in Inner Temple Lane, which was, even at that early period, the grand mart of legal ability. Wolsey, who had lodgings over the gate hard by, [These lodgings still exist as Honey and Skelton's the hair-dressers, who have preserved a series of interesting historical documents, among which may be seen Wolsey's first brief, and other curious relics.] was in the habit of meeting Cromwell, who eventually became what is professionally termed "the devil" of that ingenious advocate.
On the fall of his senior, Cromwell contrived to keep just far enough off to prevent himself from being crushed by the weight of the unfortunate Cardinal, and offering his services to the king, was immediately retained in the great cause of Henry VIII. versus Catherine of Aragon, ex parte Anne Boleyn. By the advice of Cromwell the authority of the pope was set at defiance, and in 1532 a law was passed prohibiting the payment to him of first-fruits; "which do not mean," says Strype, "the earliest gooseberries, to enable his holiness to play at gooseberry fool, but the first profits of a benefice."
Henry at last determined to cut the gordian knot, by forming another tie, and in January, 1533, he solved the question of the divorce by marrying Anne Boleyn. The ceremony was performed in a garret at Whitehall, in the presence of Norris and Heneage, who were a couple of grooms, and of Mrs. Savage, the train-bearer of the bride, whose wedding came off much in the style of those clandestine affairs, in which the clerk gives the lady away, and the old pew-opener acts in the capacity of bridesmaid. Cranmer, who had lately arrived in town for the season, found a vacancy in the see of Canterbury, which he consented to fill up, without scrupling to take the usual oaths to the pope, though openly avowing himself a Protestant. Clement himself not only ratified the election of the man he knew was committing perjury, but even consented to make a reduction in the fees that were usual on similar occasions.
Thus did these two precious humbugs humbug each other and their contemporaries; but the historian will not allow them any longer to humbug posterity. Cranmer swore obedience against his conscience, and intending to break his oath, but intent on obtaining the dignity which he could purchase by perjury, and Clement took a reduced fee, on the principle of half a loaf being better than no bread, from a man who, on the slightest opposition being offered to him, might have snapped his fingers at the papal chair as he did in his heart—if one can snap one's fingers in one's heart—at the papal authority. Thus did the great champions of Protestantism on one side, and Catholicism on the other, agree in a disgraceful arrangement, by which one sold his sacred authority for a pecuniary bribe, and the other bartered his conscience for a temporary dignity.
It has been said by Cranmer's apologists, that he took his false oaths with a mental reservation; but if this excuse were allowed to prevail, the conscience would possess a salve as efficacious as that of the quack which was warranted to cure every disease from apoplexy to chilblains, and prevent the necessity of patients with delicate lungs from exporting themselves abroad to avoid the danger of being left for home consumption.
The contemplation of so much hypocrisy, in such high quarters, having put us so thoroughly out of patience that we are unable to proceed, we break off here with the remark, that tergiversation and treachery have ever been common among even the highest in rank, and so we fear they will continue to be until—ha! ha!—the end of the chapter.
HENRY THE EIGHTH—(CONCLUDED.)
Though Henry VIII. had already married Anne Boleyn, the little affair of the divorce from Catherine had not been quite settled, and as it was just possible that his two wives might clash, he resolved to hurry on his legal separation from her, whom we may call, by way of distinction, the "old original." Cranmer, who was a very spaniel in his sneaking subservience to his royal master, was instantly set on to worry, as a cur worries a cat, the unhappy Catherine. A court was immediately constituted, under the presidentship of Cranmer, to decide on the legality of her marriage, and the lady was cited to appear; but she did not attend, and though summoned by her judges fifteen times, the more they kept on calling, the more she kept on not coming. Difficult as it is in general to anticipate what a judicial decision will be, the judgment in the case of the King ex parte Anne Boleyn versus Catherine of Aragon might be foreseen very easily. The marriage was of course pronounced illegal, and Cranmer wrote to Henry on the 12th of May, 1533, to say that he had just had the pleasure of pronouncing the "old lady" vere et manifests contumax. The Court declared she had never been married to Henry, but was the widow of the Prince of Wales, to whose title she must in future restrict herself When the news was brought to her she exclaimed indignantly, "Not married to the king! marry come up, indeed!" and the wretchedness of the pun speaks volumes for the misery to which she had been reduced by her enemies.
Henry, wishing to make the work complete, and aware that finis coronat opus, determined that a coronation should be the finishing touch of his recent matrimonial manoeuvreing. The ceremony was performed with great pomp, on the 1st of June, 1533; when, though the regular crown was used, the weak head of Anne was too feeble to bear it, and it was replaced by a smaller diadem, which had been purposely prepared as a substitute When Clement heard of what had been passing in England, he sent forth a bull, expecting that Henry would be immediately cowed by it. The pontiff ordered the monarch to take back his original wife, but the latter refused to listen to any motion for returns; observing, that those who are at Rome may do as Rome does, but that he should entirely repudiate the papal jurisdiction. A parliament which was held soon after, seconded the sovereign's views, and, by way of paying off the pope, he was deprived of all fees, rights, and privileges which he had hitherto enjoyed as head of the Church of England. The ecclesiastical party in England had been subservient to the whim of Henry, and had assisted in nullifying its own supremacy over the state, by cutting off its own head; so that the experiment of amputating one's own nose to be revenged upon one's face was somewhat more than realised.
On the 7th of September, 1533, Anne Boleyn became the mother of a little girl, who was named Elizabeth, and the courtiers of the day already offered to lay heavy bets on the future greatness of Betsy. The king, who had buoyed himself up with hopes of a boy, was a little angry
Birth of the Princess Elizabeth.
at the unfavourable issue, and he vented his ill-humour in further insults towards the unfortunate Catherine. Every one who continued, either by design or accident, to call her queen, was thrown into prison; and even a slip of the tongue, occasioned by absence of mind, was followed by absence of body, for the luckless offender was dragged off to gaol, from the bosom of his family.
Henry having lopped off Catherine as a branch of the royal tree, and grafted Anne Boleyn on the trunk, began to think about the successional crops, in the treatment of which he was assisted by a servile parliament. Little Mary, the daughter of Catherine, was rooted out like a worthless marigold, and Elizabeth was declared to be the rising flower of the royal family. Among the atrocities committed by parliament on account of its miserable subserviency to the will of the king, was the bill of attainder of high treason, passed against a female fanatic called the Maid of Kent, and some of her accomplices. This person, whose name was Elizabeth Barton, and who resided at Aldington in Kent, was subject to hysterical fits, as well as to talking like a fool, which in those days—as in these—was often mistaken for a symptom of superior sagacity. Extremes are said to meet, and the mental imbecility of Miss E. Barton was thought by many to border on an amount of wisdom, which only inspiration could impart, and the semi-natural got credit for the possession of supernatural attributes. Some of her idiotic and incoherent talk having been heard by her ignorant companions, was declared by them to be inspired, because it was something they did not understand; and as knavery is always ready to turn to profit the idea that folly sets on foot, persons were soon found willing to take the Maid of Kent under their patronage for political purposes.
Richard Maister or Masters, the vicar of the place, whom Hume calls "a designing fellow" behind his back, whatever the historian might have said to the reverend gentleman's face, was the first to take an interest in Elizabeth Barton, and introduced her to public notice as a sort of mesmeric prodigy; in which capacity she brought out a bundle of Sybiline leaves, with the intention, probably, of making a regular business of telling fortunes. Anxious for the recommendation of being able to announce herself as "Prophetess in Ordinary to the King," Miss Barton began predicting all sorts of things with reference to Henry; but unfortunately she had not the tact to make his Majesty the subject of happy auguries. She hoped, perhaps, that if she went to work boldly, he would buy her off; for it has sometimes proved a good speculation to establish a nuisance in a respectable neighbourhood, which will often pay the annoyance to remove itself to some other locality. Miss Barton did not, however, manage so well, for instead of getting literally bought up, she was destined to be put down very speedily. Making a bold bid for royal patronage, she prophesied that if Henry put away Catherine he would die a violent death within seven months; and Elizabeth Barton thus made sure that if the king declined treating with her for the stoppage of her mouth, the ex-queen would at least make her some compliment in return for her complimentary prophecy. Henry, who had no objection to her dealing out death either wholesale, retail, or even for exportation, to some of his popish enemies abroad, could not allow such a liberty to be taken with his own name; and accordingly the fortune-teller, who professed to hold consultation with the stars, was brought up before the Star Chamber. She soon found in the president a Great Bear more terrible than the Ursa Major to whom she had been accustomed; and perceiving by the rough manner of the assembled stars of the Star Chamber, that theirs was anything but the Milky Way, she was glad to own herself an impostor, for she saw that it would have been useless to plead not guilty, before judges who, according to her own conviction, were resolved on convicting her. She was committed to prison on her own confession; and as the seven months within which Henry would have become due, according to her prediction of his death, had expired, it was to be hoped that he, at least, would have been satisfied without subjecting Miss Barton to further punishment. He however seemed to have become positively irritated at the falsehood of her prophecy; and because he had not died in the proper course, he subjected the maid and six accomplices to a bill of attainder of treason, in pursuance of which they were all executed on the 21st of April, 1534, at Tyburn.
We will not dwell on the disgusting subject of Henry's cruelties towards such excellent men as Fisher, bishop of Rochester, and Sir Thomas More, both of whom fell victims to the ferocity of their royal master. Their conscientious refusal to recognise Henry as the head of the Church had excited his rage, which increased to the height of savageness when the pope offered to send to poor Fisher the hat of a cardinal. The king at first attempted to put a prohibition on the importation of all hats; but anticipating that the chapeau intended for Fisher might be smuggled into England, Henry contented himself with the barbarous joke, that the hat would be useless without a head to wear it on. The monarch soon carried out his threat, and then turned his fury upon the unfortunate Sir Thomas More, who had retired into private life in the hope of escaping Henry's tyranny. This, however, was impossible; for though conscience must often have whispered "Can't you leave the man alone?" some evil genius kept ever and anon murmuring the words, "At him again," into the ears of the despot.
Among the petty persecutions to which More was exposed, was the taking away of all writing implements from the good old man, who, deprived of pens and ink, took a coal as a substitute. He at length learned to write with a piece of Wall's End as rapidly as he could use a pen, and, with a coal-scuttle for an inkstand, he never wanted the material to keep alive the fire of his genius. Considering how famous he was for the use of "words that burn," we do not see how he could have found a better instrument than a piece of coal for transcribing his sentiments. A pretext was soon found for taking the life of this excellent man, whose facetious bearing at his own execution shall not mislead us into unseemly levity in alluding to it. He made jokes upon the scaffold, but we must admit that they are of so sad and melancholy a description, as to be scarcely considered inappropriate to his very serious position. So much has been said of the wit of More, that we may perhaps be excused for hazarding a word or two concerning it. Judging by some of the bon mots that have been preserved, they seem to us hardly worth the expense of their keep; for as horses are said to have eaten off their own heads, so the witticisms of More appear in many instances to have consumed all their own point, or, at all events, the rust of ages has a good deal dimmed their brilliancy. His wife had but little respect for his waggery, and would sometimes ask him "how he could play the fool in a close, filthy prison?" and she evidently thought it was carrying a joke a little too far, when she found her husband would not "drop it" even in the Tower. His allusion to his being obliged to write with coals instead of pens, which caused him to say that "he was but a wreck of his former self, and had better be scuttled at once," seems to us equally deficient in point and dignity. He was executed on the 6th of July, 1535, after a quantity of badinage with the headsman, which makes us regret, for the sake of More, that any reporters were allowed to be present.
Henry had now come to open war with the Church of Rome, and, under the advice of Cromwell; he determined to make a profit as well as a pleasure of the recent rupture. While the pope let loose his bulls upon the king, the latter turned out his bull-dogs, in the shape of emissaries, empowered to pillage the rich monasteries in England. Cromwell acted as whipper-in to this cruel sport, and hounded on the servile dogs at his command, in pursuit of those monastic herds, which had been luxuriating in the rich pastures the church had hitherto afforded. It is true that many impositions on the public were discovered by the emissaries of Henry; but one fault does not justify another, and the frauds of the monks afforded no excuse for the robbery committed by the monarch. We may feel indignant at the showman who exhibits on his delusive canvas "more, much more," than his caravan can hold, but we have no right to appropriate to ourselves the whole of his stock because he has been guilty of trickery. Henry did not pocket the whole of the proceeds thus unscrupulously obtained, but gave a few slices to the church, by creating half-a-dozen new bishoprics and establishing a professorship or two in the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. The greedy cry of "Give us a bit," which was raised by his clerical tools, could not be altogether disregarded, and he threw them a few crumbs of the good things he had seized, more with the hope of stopping the mouths than satisfying the appetites of the hungry claimants.
Poor Catherine of Aragon died at Kimbolton on the 8th of January, 1536, after writing a letter to the king, which it is said extracted one tear from the sovereign's heart—a circumstance which must have raised hopes at the time, that the process of extracting blood from a stone might not be found impossible.
The year 1536 was marked by a voyage of discovery under the patronage of the king, for the purpose of sending some emigrants on a wild-goose chase to the north-west coast of America. Thirty of the adventurers were gentlemen from the Temple and Chancery Lane, who, thinking anything better than nothing, had probably dashed their wigs to the ground, and thrown themselves on the mercy of that motion of course which the sea was certain to supply them with. It is said, though we know not with how much truth, that the learned wanderers being short of provisions, made each other their prey—a result to be expected when clients were not accessible. It is added that none of the party returned but a learned gentleman of the name of Ruts, who was so changed that his father and mother did not know him until he pointed to a wart which had not been washed away by the water.
Henry continued his hostility to the pope, absurdly declaring that he would not be bullied, and in defiance of the papal see caused Anne
Henry is determined not to be bullied.
Boleyn, who is said to have exulted over the death of Catherine, to drain the cup of sorrow, or rather to lap it up; for she one day found Jane Seymour, a maid of honour, sitting on the knee of Henry. It was in vain that the monarch and his new favourite endeavoured to laugh the matter off as a mere lapsus, for Anne declared that the king must have begun to nurse a new passion
Henry making love to Jane Seymour.
As they who are convicted of a fault themselves are anxious to pick holes in the conduct of others, Henry having been proved to see more in Seymour than became him as a married man, commenced harbouring suspicions against Anne Boleyn. On May-day, 1536, there had been a royal party at Greenwich—in fact, a regular fair—when suddenly, in the midst of the sports, Henry started up exceedingly indignant at something he had witnessed. The queen did the same, and her husband pretended that he had seen her either winking at one Norris, a groom, or clown to the ring, in which the jousts were going forward, or making signals to Mark Smeaton, a musician in the orchestra. Several persons were seized at once, and sent to the Tower, including poor Smeaton, the member of the band who was accused of acting in concert with men of higher note, to whom he was charged with playing second fiddle.
Poor Anne was taken to the Tower, where a number of scandalous old women were sent about her to talk her into admissions against herself, and to talk her out of anything that they could manage to extract from her simplicity. She wrote what may justly be called "a very pretty letter" to the king, dated the 6th of May, 1536; but if any answer was received it must have come from Echo, who is the general respondent to all communications which receive no attention from the parties to whom they are directed. On the l2th of the same month Norris, Weston, Brereton, and Smeaton were tried and executed, all denying their guilt but the musician, who changed his key note a little before he died, and modulated off from a fortissimo declaration of innocence to a most pianissimo confession. There is every reason to believe that this composition of Smeaton was a piece of thorough base, which is only to be accounted for on the score of treachery.
On the 15th of May, a building as trumpery as the charge against her having been knocked together in the Tower, Anne Boleyn was brought up for trial before a court of twenty-six barons, one of whom was her own father, while her uncle the Duke of Norfolk sat as president One would have imagined that a jury comprising two relatives would have given a positive advantage to Anne; but her uncle being a rogue, and her father a fool, the former was too venal, and the latter too timid, to be of any use to her. She pleaded her own cause with such earnestness, that every one who heard how she had acquitted herself, thought that her judges must have acquitted her. They, however, found her guilty, to the intense bewilderment of the Lord Mayor, who had heard her defence, and could only go about exclaiming, "Well, I never! did you ever?" for the remainder of his existence.
It would seem that there was something in the mere prospect of the axe, which imparted its sharpness to the intellects of those upon whose heads the instrument was on the point of falling. We have already alluded to the mots of More when he was positively moribund, and the quips of the queen became very numerous and sparkling as the prospect of the scaffold opened out to her. She made a sad joke upon the little span of her own neck—in reference, no doubt, to the small span of human existence—and paid a compliment to foreign talent by requesting that she might have the benefit of the services of that sharp blade that had just come from Calais—alluding to the recent arrival of the French executioner.
Henry was on a hunting party in Epping Forest, and was break fasting on Epping sausages, when the execution took place, the announcement of which he had ordered should be made to him by the firing of a gun as a distant signal. During the dejeuner Henry kept continually exclaiming "hush," and entreating "silence," with all the energy of an usher in a court of law, until a loud bang boomed over the breakfast-table. Henry instantly started up, exclaiming, "Ha, ha! 'tis done!" and ordering the dogs to be let slip while his breakfast-cup was still at his lip, he resumed his sport with even more than his wonted gaiety. On the very next day, he was married to Jane Seymour, there having been a very short lapse of time since she was discovered on the lap of Henry.
Henry the Eighth Monk-Hunting.
A parliament having been speedily assembled, that servile body passed every act that Henry desired, and began by cancelling, in one batch, the entire issue of his former marriages. The princesses Mary and Elizabeth were declared illegitimate, while the condemnation of Anne Boleyn was legalised by statute; a measure which was a little tardy, considering that she had already lost her head in pursuance, or rather in anticipation of the confirmation of her sentence.
The destruction of monasteries was now carried on with a most brutal rapacity, and a mixture of barbarism and barbarity that disgusted a great portion of the community. Not satisfied with robbing the inmates of the monasteries, Henry's myrmidons destroyed the buildings themselves with the most wanton violence, and it was remarked that they were never contented with emptying a cellar of all its wine, but must always remain to take shots at the bottles. This unprovoked and tasteless taste for mere mischief roused the discontent of the people in many places, and the Lincolnshire fens assumed the offensive with one Mackrel, an odd fish, as the leader of the insurgents. This Mackrel soon got himself into a sad pickle, for he was executed at a very early period of the insurrectionary movement.
On the 12th of October, 1537, Her Majesty Queen Seymour gave birth to a son, an event which made Henry as happy as a king, or at least as happy as such a king, with such a conscience as Henry carried about with him, could possibly make himself. He dandled the royal
Delight of Henry at having a Son and Heir.
infant in his arms with all a parent's pride, and sang snatches of nursery ballads in the ear of the baby. The child was called Edward, which Henry fondly translated into Teddy Peddy; and three little coronets—the size of first caps—were instantly made for the Prince of Wales, the Duke of Cornwall, and the Earl of Chester, for such was the tria juncta in uno formed by the birth of the illustrious little stranger. The queen died in twelve days after giving birth to an heir; but this circumstance did not seem to affect the spirits of Henry, who perhaps felt that there was one more wife out of the way, without the trouble and expense of getting rid of her.
The arbitrary monarch now experienced a good deal of trouble from one Pole, whom the tyrant made several attempts to bring to the scaffold. This Pole was remarkable for standing erect, and for his firmness, after once taking his ground, in keeping his position. He was the son of Sir Richard Pole and Margaret Countess of Salisbury, for the first Pole was a kind of leaping Pole, with a strong tendency to raise not only himself, but all those that belonged to him. Reginald, for such was the name of the Pole that had stirred up the rage of Henry, had received from the pope a cardinal's hat, with the assurance that such a Pole ought not to be bare, but deserved the most honourable covering. Being himself resident abroad, he was as much out of the English tyrant's power as if he had been the old original North Pole, of whom we have all heard; but his brothers and relatives at home were seized upon, and either executed or burnt like so much firewood. Parliament aided the despotism of the king, by passing a suicidal act, declaring that a royal proclamation should have the force of law; a resolution equivalent to an act of self-destruction; for if the king could do everything by himself, there was, of course, no occasion for Lords and Commons to help him in the task of government.
Henry having become disembarrassed of no less than three wives, began to think so little of the encumbrance of matrimony, that he contemplated a fourth engagement. It was indeed natural enough that he should be fearless of that which might make bolder men afraid, for he had given evidence of a facility in making an escape, and he consequently risked little by braving danger. He advertised, as it were, for a wife, in all the markets of European royalty, and he continued popping a series of questions; but his—to revive a mot (we cannot call it a bon mot) of the period—was of all pops the most unpopular. "Nobody will have me, by Jingo," he would sometimes mutter to himself; and at length the wily Cromwell proposed to act as matrimonial agent to his Majesty.
The Duchess Dowager of Milan was treated with for her hand, but she wrote back to say that if she had a couple of heads, she might listen to Henry's proposal, for he would certainly cut off one, and it would be awkward not having another head to fall back upon. He next sent an offer to the Duchess of Guise, saying that wedlock, coming to him in such a Guise, would be the height of happiness; but this lady politely excused herself, on the ground of a "previous engagement."
Somewhat hurt by these repeated rebuffs, he requested Francis the king of France to "trot out" his two sisters for Henry to take his choice; but Frank said frankly that he would have nothing to do with the humiliating business. We have it on the authority of a letter among Cromwell's correspondence, that Henry was rather taken with Madame de Montreuil, a French lady, who having come from France to Scotland in the suite of Magdalen, first queen of James V. of Scotland, was now on her way back again. Henry appears to have gone to Dover for the purpose of meeting her on the pier or the parade; but he must have found her passe as he surveyed her through his glass, for nothing came of their meeting. The lady lingered in England to give him every chance, but Henry could only shake his head, observing "No! by Jove it won't do;" and Madame de Montreuil, pitying his want of taste, was compelled to return to her own country.
At length Cromwell came running one morning to Henry, exclaiming, "I think I've found something to suit your majesty at last," and placed in the king's hand the card of "Anne, second daughter of John Duke of Cleves, one of the princes of the Germanic Confederacy." Henry was not positively averse to the match, but was wavering, when Cromwell produced a lovely portrait as that of the candidate for the hand of the English sovereign. The king examined the picture with the eye of a connoisseur, and being pleased with the sample, ordered the lot to be sent over to him with as little delay as possible. The picture was by Holbein, who had utterly concealed the plain fact, and bestowed upon the German princess such handsome treatment, that he had imparted the lustre of the brilliant to an object which was as inferior to the copy, as German paste is worthless by the side of the diamond. Henry hastened, on her arrival in England, to compare the original with the picture; and having disguised himself, sent forward Sir Anthony Brown to say that a gentleman was coming on to see her, with a new year's present. Poor Brown was fearfully taken aback at seeing a lady so thoroughly laide as Anne of Cleves, but gave no opinion to his royal master. Henry went tripping into the apartment with all the ardour of a youthful lover; but the first glance was enough, and he shrunk back, muttering to himself, that the princess instead of looking like the picture of Holbein, reminded him rather of the picture of misery. He nevertheless summoned up all his resolution to give her a kiss; but it was clear to all who witnessed the scene, that Henry repented a bargain in which he found himself mixed up with such a decidedly ugly customer. After a few minutes passed in small-talk—the smallness of which limited it to twenty words—Henry went away in deep dudgeon, but he made up his mind to the marriage, lest he might be involved with any of the German powers in an action for a breach of promise.
The evening before the nuptials were solemnised, Henry sat with Cromwell, bewailing—probably over some nocturnal grog—the "alarming sacrifice," that had become unavoidable. The statesman, who had recommended the match, tried hard to soften down some of the most repulsive features of Anne; but Henry coarsely described her as "a great Flanders mare," and Holbein as a "humbug" for having so grossly flattered such a coarse clumsy animal. "By my troth," he exclaimed—for his indignation rose as the liquor in his glass became lower—"you got me into this scrape and you must get me out of it. I shall expect you to find some means of abating for me this frightful nuisance."
Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, the head of the popish party in the church, was, of course, an opponent of Cromwell, and took advantage of the recent matrimonial mistake, to damage him still further in the opinion of his royal master. Gardiner nattered himself that the train had been already laid, and that the awfully bad match which Cromwell himself had provided, would certainly hasten the explosion that there was good reason to anticipate. The wily Bishop of Winchester introduced Catherine Howard, the lovely niece of his friend the Duke of Norfolk, to the king, who was instantly struck by her beauty, and said warmly, "Ha! the man who has discovered this charming Kate knows how to cater for his sovereign." [Strype—who certainly deserves a hundred stripes for recording such an atrocity.]
Cromwell's doom was now sealed, and the Duke of Norfolk, on the 10th of June, 1540, had the luxury of taking into custody his political antagonist. A charge of having one day pulled out a dagger, and declared he would stick to the cause of the Reformation, even against the king, was speedily got up, and, by the 28th of July, he was disposed of, at Tower Hill, in the customary manner. While in prison, he wrote a pitiful letter to Henry, with the word "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy!" reiterated thrice as a P.S.; the meanness and tautology of which evinced a poverty in the spirit as well as in the letter.
The king had now determined to marry Catherine Howard, but the old difficulty—another wife living—stood in the way of the desired arrangement. Having consulted his attorney, it was proposed to search for some previous marriage contract in which Anne of Cleves had been concerned; and as everybody is engaged, on an average, at least half-a-dozen times before being married once, there would have appeared little difficulty in accomplishing Henry's wishes.
The excessive ugliness of Anne of Cleves, however, placed great obstacles in the way, for she had clearly been a drug in the matrimonial market, and neither by hook nor by crook could an old offer for her be fished up until something of the kind from the young Prince of Lorraine—entered into before he was old enough to know better—was happily hit upon. A commission was at once issued, the matter tried, and of course decided in Henry's favour. By way of strengthening the king's case, it was urged by his learned counsel that he had married against his will, and therefore ought to be released from his contract. The Court, however, held that the establishment of such a principle would be almost equivalent to the passing of a general divorce act for half the couples in Christendom, and on that point at least the rule for a new trial of Henry's luck was refused accordingly. His suit for a nullification of his contract with Anne of Cleves succeeded on the other point, and both parties were equally gratified by the result which set them both at liberty. The lady felt she had much rather lose her husband's hand than her own head, and Henry began to think he might be wearing out the axe upon his wives before he had half done with it, and if he could find any other means for severing the marriage tie he much preferred doing so. He offered to make her his sister, with three thousand a year, an arrangement with which she expressed herself perfectly satisfied. Both parties were permitted to enter into wedlock again, if they pleased, and the king of course availed himself of the option with his accustomed celerity. The Bill was brought into Parliament on the 12th of July, and the 8th of August found Catherine Howard already publicly acknowledged as the fifth Mrs. Henry Tudor.
It had now become the boast of Henry that he held the balance with an even hand between the Catholics and the Reformers; but his impartiality was shown in a manner most inconvenient to both of them. He used to deal out what he called equal justice to both, by submitting a few on each side of the question to equal cruelty. He would forward three Catholics at a time to Smithfield, to be hanged as traitors, and by the same hurdle he would send three Lutherans to be burned as heretics.
As we are unwilling to turn our history into a Newgate Calendar, for the sake of recording the atrocities of a sanguinary king, we shall, in our account of the remainder of this odious reign, preserve the heads, and avoid the executions. The murder of the Countess of Salisbury, an old woman upwards of seventy, and the mother of Cardinal Pole, stands out perhaps from some other sanguinary deeds by its peculiar atrocity The venerable lady, at the last moment, defied the executioner to come on, and a combat of the fiercest character took place upon the scaffold.
Henry, who had frequently tried to inoculate his nephew, James V. of Scotland, with his own predatory propensities, became at length angry that the latter declined turning thief in the name of religion, and plundering the church under the pretext of simply reforming it. A conference had been agreed upon between the English and Scotch kings; but the latter, at the instigation of Cardinal Beaton, whose olfactory nerves had detected a rat, broke his appointment with his imperious uncle. This ungentlemanly proceeding gave such offence to the English tyrant, that he threatened, with an awful oath, to let the weight of old Henry be felt in Scotland; and the expression that So-and-So purposes "playing old Harry," no doubt took its rise from the incident to which we have alluded.
The Duke of Norfolk was sent, as a low fellow of the period hath it, "to take the shine out of that Jem," who was completely defeated at Solway Moss, through his own troops turning their backs—not upon him, as it is said by some, but upon the enemy. James was so overwhelmed with shame and despair, that he drew his helmet over his eyes, assumed a stoop—a sure sign that he was stupified—and never raised his head again, but fell a victim to that very vulgar malady, a low fever. He left his kingdom to his daughter, then only eight days old, who came to the throne on the ninth; but as she was not a nine days' wonder, she evinced no miraculous aptitude for the task of government.
Henry had in the meantime been made very uncomfortable by rumours that his wife, familiarly known as Miss Kate Howard, had not been acting properly. When the king heard the news, he was deeply affected, for he was one of those persons who make up, in feeling for themselves, for their deficiency of feeling with regard to others. He sat down and had a good crocodilian cry, which irrigated his hands to such an extent that he was compelled to wring them to get them dry again. Cranmner and Norfolk were appointed to examine into the truth of the charges against the queen, who, when her guilt was proved beyond doubt, made a virtue of necessity—the only virtue of which she could boast—by boldly confessing it.
This unfortunate young woman had been promised a pardon on condition of her revealing the extent of her transgression; but when she had admitted not only a great deal she had done, but had thrown into the bargain a great deal she had never done at all, Henry, regardless of his pledge, thought that the best way to get rid of an annoyance was to break the neck of it. Catherine Howard was accordingly beheaded at the Tower, on the 15th of February, 1542, and finding her confession had done her no good, she retracted the greater part of it. "It was not to be supposed," says Mullins, "that a person who had shown himself so double as Henry, could long remain single," and he accordingly threw himself once more upon the matrimonial market. There he was of course no longer at a premium, but he was pretty soon at Parr; and it is a strange fact that he would have commanded a better price had it been certain that he could be had without the coupon, which had distinguished the settling days of two of the wives of this shocking bad sovereign. Catherine Parr was a corpulent old lady, fortified by at least forty summers, but she readily listened to the proposals of Henry. Henry entered her at once on his share or chere list, and in allusion to her bulk, placed opposite to her name the words "commands a very heavy figure." She was the widow of Neville, Lord Latimer; but, thought Henry, "What care I, if she has even killed her man?—it will not be the first time that I shall have killed my woman."
The English king courted her at once, and made much of her; but to have made more of her than there really was, would have been rather difficult. He married her on the 10th of July, 1543, and it is a curious fact that she outlived him, which we can only attribute to the lady partaking the longevity of her namesake old Parr, for there must have been a vigorous adhesion to life in any one who could marry and survive the wife-exterminating tyrant. For some time she humoured Henry, but having a touch of Lutherism, she began meddling with matters of Church and State, which embroiled her with a bishop or two, who ran and told the king what she had been impudent enough to talk about. "Marry come up!" roared Henry, in allusion to his having elevated Catherine Parr by marrying her; "so you are a doctor, are you, Kate?" But having had
Henry wooing Catherine Parr.
a hint that her mixing in politics was not agreeable, she only replied, meekly, "No, no, your Kate is no caitiff." This speech had the effect of diverting Henry's wrath, almost as much as it will divert posterity by its delightful quaintness. Gardiner, who had justified his name-allowing of course for the difference of spelling—by sowing the seeds of dissension between the king and queen, had arranged with the sovereign that Her Majesty was to be seized next morning by forty guards, headed by Chancellor Wriothesley. This person was not a little astonished at finding himself called "an arrant knave, a foole, and a beastlie foole," [Lord Herbert.] by the king, when ho came to execute his mission. He was, in fact, dismissed with an entire earful of fleas, of which Henry had always an abundance on hand for unwelcome visitors.
Henry had now become, literally, the greatest monarch that ever sat upon the throne, for he had increased awfully in size, and become irritable at the same time, so that the task of getting round him was, in every sense, extremely difficult. Had there been a prize monarch show, open to the whole world, he must have carried off the palm, for he was too fat to lie down, lest no power should be able to get him up again. It is true he had been born to greatness, but he also had greatness thrust upon him—some say by over-feeding—to such an extent that he was obliged to be wheeled about, on account of his very unwieldiness. It might have been supposed that Henry would have begun to soften tinder all these circumstances; but he exhibited no tendency to melt, for he continued his cruelties in burning those whom he chose to denounce as heretics. It is disgraceful to the ecclesiastical character of the age, that the church party that happened to be in power sanctioned the cruelties practised towards the party that happened to be out, and it was said, at the time, that the fires of Smithfield were always being stirred by some high clerical dignitary, who might be considered the "holy poker" of the period.
The prospect of a speedy vacancy on the throne, created a rush of candidates, who commenced literally cutting each others' throats—a desperate game, in which the Howards and Hertfords made themselves very conspicuous. Young Howard, Earl of Surrey, used to sneer at Hertford, who had been recently ennobled, as a "new man," and Hertford would retort unfeelingly upon Howard's father, the Duke of Norfolk, by saying "it was better to be a new man than an old sinner." The Norfolk family got the worst of it, for Norfolk and Surrey were taken to the Tower on the 12th of December, 1546, on the frivolous charge of having quartered with their own arms the arms of Edward the Confessor. Had they gone so far as to use these arms upon a seal, it ought not to have sealed their doom, nor stamped them as traitors; but the frivolousness of the charge marks the tyrannical character of the period. Commissioners were sent to their country seat at Kuming Hall, to ransack the drawers, pillage the plate-chest, and send the proceeds to the king; but the people intrusted with the job, either found or pretended to find scarcely anything. They wrote to the king, telling him that the jewels were all either sold or in pawn; but as the tickets never came to hand, it is possible that the searchers were practising a sort of duplicate rascality. They forwarded to the king a box of beads and buttons; but though every bead was glass, Henry does not appear to have seen through it. Surrey was tried at Guildhall for having quartered the royal arms with his own, and on his defence he observed. "By my troth, mine enemies will not allow me any quarter whatever." He was found guilty, of course, and beheaded on the 19th of January. 1547, and his father's execution had been set down in the peremptory paper for the 28th of the same month, when the proceedings were suddenly stayed just before execution, by the death of Henry.
The tyrant, who had been getting physically as well as morally worse and worse, clung to life with such desperate tenacity, that is a sure sign of there being good reason for dreading death in those among whom, after a certain age, such a cowardly fear is manifest. He would often impiously threaten that "he would outlive all the younger people about him yet;" and though his time was evidently not far off, he would not bear to be told of his true condition. Instead of repenting of his past life, he devoted the wretched remnant of his existence to doing all the mischief he could, and venting his malice to the fullest extent that his now failing strength would admit of. Nobody dared muster resolution to tell the unhappy old brute that he must very speedily die, until Sir Anthony Denny, a knight who shared our friend Drummond's ["Drummond is so averse to humbug of any description."—Vide Tijou.] aversion to humbug of any description, boldly told old Harry that he was on the point of visiting his redoubtable namesake.
Finding all chance of escape cut off, he began confessing his sins; but it was rather too late, for, had his repentance been sincere, the catalogue of his crimes was far too voluminous to allow of his getting through one half of it before his dissolution. He had been in the habit of adjourning that court of conscience existing in his as well as in every man's breast, and he always postponed it sine die; but when the time to die actually came, or the die was really cast, it was rather late to move for a new trial. Henry died on the 29th of January, 1547, in the fifty-sixth year of his age, the thirty-eighth of his reign, and at least the forty-first of his selfishness, baseness, and brutality.
He had been married six times, having divorced two of his wives, beheaded two more, and left one a widow. This leaves one more—Jane Seymour—still unaccounted for; and indeed her death was the most wonderful of all, because it was natural. He left behind him three children : but he did not care a pin's head, or even—to name an article of smaller importance to him—a wife's head, for any one of them. Such a very bad man was sure to be a very bad father, and he had declared two of his children illegitimate, for it was the delight of this monster to depreciate his own offspring in the eyes of the world as much as possible His religious reforms, however wholesome in their results, were brutal in their execution and base in their origin. His insincerity may be gathered from the fact that he appointed masses to be said for his own soul, though he had burnt many persons for popery; and he seemed to think that, by taking up two creeds at once on his death-bed, he could make up for the utter irreligion of his past existence. He is said to have contributed to the cause of enlightenment, and so perhaps he did with all his blackness, as the coal contributes to the gas; and never was a bit of Wall's End half so hard, or a tenth part so black, as the heart of this despicable sovereign. He never had a friend; but he was surrounded by sycophants, whom, one after the other, he atrociously sacrificed.
Cranmer being a man of superior mind, exercised an influence over him, and was sent for to his death-bed, when he pressed the prelate's hand; but whether the pressure arose from cramp or conscience, rheumatism or remorse, penitence or "pins and needles," must be considered a question to which we will not hazard an answer. We regret that we have been unable to adhere to the excellent motto, de mortuis nil nisi bonum, in this case; but Henry was such a decided malum in se, that mischief was bred in the bone, and the nil nisi bonum becomes impossible.
Learning certainly advanced in this reign, and Henry himself affected authorship ; but every literary man, from the highest flyer in the realms of fancy to the humblest historian of last night's fire or yesterday's police, will be honestly ashamed of his royal fellow-craftsman.
Several colleges and schools were founded in this reign, among the principal of which were Christ Church at Oxford, Trinity at Cambridge, and St. Paul's in London. Here it was that the lowly Lily, of Lily's grammar notoriety, first raised his humble head as the head master of the school; and, though there is something lack-a-daisy-cal in Lily's style, his grammar was at one time the first round of the ladder by which every lad climbed the heights of classical instruction.
It may be interesting to the gastronomic reader to be informed that salads and turnips first came into use, with other roots, towards which the people had shown until then a rooted antipathy. They swallowed spinach without any gammon, and even the carrot, that had formerly stuck in their throat as if they feared it would injure the carotid artery, was consumed with alacrity; and those who had disdained the most delicious of green food, by courageously exclaiming "Come, let us try it," are supposed by some—though we disclaim the monstrous idea—to have given its name to the lettuce. The cultivation of hops came as if with a hop, skip, and jump across from Flanders, and the trade in wool was brought, under the fostering patronage of Wolsey, to a state of some prosperity.
With the exception of the burning of monasteries and the murder of his wives, there was little to render the reign of Henry remarkable, beyond, perhaps, the invention of beef-eaters. The word beef-eater is known to be a corruption of buffetier, and indeed there was corruption, to a certain extent, in everything connected with this detestable tyrant. It is said they were called buffetiers from attending at the buffets, or side-board of plate, but it is far more likely that they got the name from the buffeting to which every servant of the royal ruffian must have been occasionally liable. The neck was so often in danger, that any menial of the malignant monarch might be expected to ruff it in the best way he could, and hence the enormous ruffs, which are conspicuous to this day, round the chins of the beef-eaters. The looseness of their habits may be considered characteristic of the court to which these functionaries were attached, though it has been said by some authorities that the beef-eaters were puffed and padded out to an enormous extent, in order that the monster Henry might not appear conspicuous.
The reign of Henry was also remarkable for the invention of pins, to which somebody had given his own head with intense earnestness. The sharpness of the English had not yet reached so fine a point as to have led to the discovery of the needle, which was doubtless suggested by the pin, to some one who had an eye for improvement. The thimble is a still later introduction, the merit of which is considerable; for though at the present day every sempstress has the thimble at her finger ends, there was a time when no one had thought of this very simple but necessary appendage to the ladies' work-table. If the reign of Henry had never been devoted to anything more objectionable than the discovery of pins and needles we should have had little reason to complain, for a few pricks of conscience, no matter whence they emanated, would have done him good; but the scissors for cutting the thread of existence formed the instruments chiefly in use during this cruel and most disastrous reign.
Shilling of Henry VIII.
EDWARD THE SIXTH.
AN enormous weight was taken off the whole country when the late lump of obesity was removed from the throne; but, shameful to relate, the first use the nation made of the power of breathing freely was to give a few puffs to the departed tyrant. The chancellor Wriothesley announced the king's death to the House of Lords in tears, and there is said to have been much weeping; but there are tears of joy as well as of sorrow, and the former must have been the quality of the brine in which the memory of Henry was preserved for a few days by his people. The lamentations, whether sincere or hypocritical, were very soon exchanged for joy at the accession of Edward the Sixth, who was only in his tenth year when he woke one morning and found the crown of England over his ordinary nightcap. To rub his eyes and ask "What's this?" were the work of an instant, when, taking off the bauble, drawing aside his curtains, and holding the article up to the light, he at once recognised the royal diadem.
Young Edward was what we should call a little forward chit had he been a common lad, but being a king we must at once accept him as an infant prodigy. He had learnt several tongues from Mr. Cheke, and had been a pupil of Sir Anthony Cook; but many of such cooks would have spoiled the best "broth of a boy," for Sir Anthony was a pedant, "with five learned daughters"—being equivalent to a couple of pair of blue stockings, and an odd one over.
Henry, in his reluctance to leave to his son what he could no longer hold himself, had fettered the monarchy as much as he could by his will, which was, however, soon treated with the contempt it merited. He had appointed sixteen executors and twelve councillors, but all to no purpose; for all power was placed in the hands of the young king's uncle, Hertford, who was created Duke of Somerset. The vaulting ambition of this man, who turned Somersets over every obstacle that fell in his way, rendered his new title very appropriate. He was invested with the office of Protector, and he very soon set to work, but, still true to his name of Somerset, he went head over heels into a war with Scotland. The object of this proceeding was to demand the hand of Mary, Queen of Scots, for the child Edward; but the idea of a person coming to make love with a fleet of sixty sail, and an army of 18,000 men, was a little trop fort to suit the taste of the Caledonians. They placed a ban upon the marriage, which was equivalent to forbidding the banns, and suggested, that if the young gentleman wanted to come courting, he had better come by himself to pay his addresses. After a little negotiation, which ended in nothing, a battle ensued, which is famous as the Battle of Pinkey, where the combatants pinked each other off most cruelly with the points of their swords; and it is added by the inveterate Strype—who deserves two thousand stripes, at least, for this offence—that "on this field, which was within half a mile of Musselburgh, the soldiers on both sides strained every muscle." The
English Archer of the Period, from such a rare old print.
English archers sent their arrows from their bows with destructive effect; and looking, as they did, like so many Cupids in a valentine, it must be confessed that that mode of warfare was, at least, appropriate to a war undertaken in the cause of Hymen. The Scotch were sadly defeated, but they still refused to give up their little queen to the young fellow who sought her hand through his subjects' arms, and she was accordingly sent to finish her education in France ; where, though only six years of age, she was betrothed to the Dauphin.
Somerset, instead of following up his successes, made the best of his way home ; for he heard that his own brother, Sir Thomas Seymour, the Lord High Admiral, who had been created also Baron Seymour of Sedley, was making himself a great deal too agreeable to the royal ladies in England. Old Kitty Parr, Henry's widow, was so much taken with Tom Seymour's attentions, that she fell at once into his arms, and became his wife; but poor Parr soon fell to a discount in the eyes of her husband, who had become enamoured of the young Princess Elizabeth. The unhappy old Parr swallowed many a bitter pill at this time, until death put an end to her annoyances. Admiral Seymour was now free to pay his addresses to Elizabeth, but it would seem that he was not more free than welcome, for even during the life of her mother-in law, that young lady had afforded him every encouragement.
In order to stop his flirtations, which were now becoming serious, he was clapped in the Tower, but his enemies were considerate enough to send a bishop to him to preach patience, and as Ely was selected, who prosed exceedingly, the preaching was accompanied by a practical lesson in patience, with which it is to be hoped that Seymour was sufficiently edified. He was accused of treason, and at a council the boy Edward, who had no doubt been crammed for the occasion, delivered an elaborate judgment, which his parasites puffed as extemporaneous. He regretted being obliged to sacrifice his uncle Seymour to the common weal—a weal that has brought woe to many, and to which the wheel of fortune bears, except in its orthography, a wondrous similarity. Seymour was executed on Wednesday, the 20th of March, 1549, and the last use he made of his head before it was struck off was to shake it, and observe that " 'pon his honour, if he had been guilty of any treason against the king it was quite unintentional."
The country was about this time agitated by one of those fits of general discontent which prevail every now and then among the lower orders of society. As usual there was a good deal of reason mixed with a large amount of unreasonableness in their complaints, and the customary feeling of "not knowing exactly what they really wanted," became alarmingly general. Some cried for this, another for that, and another for t'other, while an almost universal shout for the privilege of ruling themselves was accompanied by a clear manifestation of an utter want of self-control on the part of the people. Their self-styled friends were of course busy in goading them on to acts of violence, and the protector himself, instead of repressing tumult first, and pardoning it afterwards, pursued the opposite course, which only had the effect of clearing off old scores, that new might be run up with fresh alacrity.
One of the most prominent ringleaders in the revolt was a tanner of Norfolk, named Robert Ket, of whom it was vulgarly said, that such a bob was as good as two tanners; "and hence perhaps," says my Lord Herbert, or some one else, "two tanners or sixpences came to be called in the vernacular equivalent to one bob, or a shilling." Ket had been cruelly provoked in having the mob set upon one of his inclosures by a gentleman who had suffered from the destruction of one of his own hedges; but the tanner retaliated by administering such a leathering to his assailants as they would have remembered to this hour had any one of them been left alive to indulge in such reminiscences. It was found necessary to send over to Scotland for Warwick to go and settle Ket, which was very speedily clone, for finding himself unable to keep upon his legs, he laid down his arms, after having run for his life, and crept into a barn among some corn to avoid an immediate thrashing. He was taken to Norwich, and lodged in the castle, whence he wrote to a friend, saying, "I shall be hanging out for the present at the above address;" and his words were soon verified, for he was hanged out on the top of the building a few days afterwards.
Poor Somerset was now about to take the most formidable somerset in the whole of his career, namely, a fall from the extreme of power to the depths of disgrace, chiefly by the rivalry of Warwick. The protector found it high time to think about protecting himself, and tried to muster his friends, to many of whom he wrote; but verbal answers of "Not at home," "Mr. So and So will send," and similar evasive replies, convinced poor Somerset that there was very little hope for him In the meantime Warwick and party were meeting daily at Ely Place, Holborn, where they were settling in that very legal neighbourhood the draft of a set of charges against the protector, who was accused among other things of having pulled down a church in the Strand to build Somerset House, and having spent in bricks and mortar the money intrusted him to keep up the wooden walls of old England, by paying the sailors and soldiers their respective salaries A bill of pains and penalties was issued from Ely Place, which is to this day famous for its art in making out bills, and twenty-eight charges were brought against Somerset, who thought it better to confess every one of them, on a promise that he should be leniently dealt with. This leniency consisted in taking away almost everything he possessed, which caused him to remonstrate on the heaviness of the fine; but on being told snappishly he might consider himself lucky in having got off with his life, he shrunk back in an attitude of the utmost humility. He was set at liberty and pardoned, but we shall have him at mischief and in trouble again before the end of this chapter.
Though a mere child was on the throne, the atrocities committed at Smithfield, in the burning of what were called heretics, went on as briskly as ever, the fires being stirred by Cranmer and Ridley, in the most savage manner. Mary, the king's eldest sister, gave considerable trouble, by insisting on the celebration of mass in her own household; and, though told by the council she musn't, the truly feminine reply "that she should see if she shouldn't," and "that she would though—they'd see if she wouldn't," was all that she condescended to say in answer to the requisition.
Somerset since his liberation had been still hanging about the court, and had apparently become reconciled to Warwick, whose eldest son, Lord Lisle, had been married to Lady Ann, one of the daughters of the ex-protector. Nevertheless, on Friday the 16th of October, 1551, Somerset found himself once more in the "lock-up," on a charge of treason. He was accused of an intention to run about London crying out "Liberty! Liberty!" and if that had not succeeded he was to have gone to the Isle of Wight to try on the same game in that direction. If that had not succeeded there is no knowing what he would have done; but at all events, orders were sent to the Tower to set a watch upon the great seal, because Somerset wanted to run away with it. If he had made off with the seal he might, perhaps, have taken the watch also; but this did not occur to the council. His trial took place at Westminster, on the 1st of December, 1551, at the sittings after Michaelmas term, when he denied everything, and was found guilty of just enough to get a judgment—with speedy execution—against him. His politeness was quite marvellous, for he thanked the lords who had tried him, and he threw as much grace as he could into the bow he was compelled to make on submitting his head to the axe of the executioner. "This," says Fox, on the authority of a nobleman who was present, "came off on Friday, the 22nd of January, 1552," and it is a curious fact, that of every execution that occurred in his reign the boy king had preserved the heads in his private journal.
Warwick, who had got himself promoted to the dukedom of Northumberland, seemed desirous of making government a business for the benefit of himself and family. He took the motto of "anything for peace and quiet," though he had blamed his predecessor, Somerset, for having done the same thing, and he bought off the hostility of France and Scotland by selling Boulogne regularly up, placing a carpet on the light-house, dividing the upper and lower town into lots, declaring that he wanted money down on the nail, and to hit the right one on the head he must resort to the hammer. He made excellent marriages for his children, and allied his son, Guilford Dudley, with the royal family of France, by wedding him to Lady Jane Grey, a daughter of a son of the old original Mary Tudor of France, to whose descendants the English crown would fall in the event of a failure of a more direct succession.
The young king Edward, who had not yet passed through the ordinary routine of infantine complaints, now took the measles—or rather the measles took him—and he had scarcely recovered from this complaint, when the small-pox placed him under indentures which seemed much too strong to be cancelled within any reasonable period. He was serving his time to this malady, when another latent illness that had hitherto been playing at hide and seek, set up a cry of "whoop," and his youthful majesty was in for the whooping-cough. Northumberland, taking advantage of the king's weak state, advised him not to leave the crown to his big and bigoted sister Mary. "True," said Edward, "but how about poor little Bet?" "Why she," replied the protector, "is very little better." With such weak sophistry as this, he persuaded the poor invalid king to draw up a settlement of the crown on Lady Jane Grey, and the judges, with all the law officers, were summoned to approve the document. Sir Edward Montague, the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, with Sir Thomas Bromley, one of his puisnes, came accompanied by the attorney and solicitor-generals, to say that the deed was illegal, and that they, one and all, would have nothing to do with it Upon this, Northumberland rushed into the
The Duke of Northumberland offers to fight any one of them.
room, called Montague a traitor, [Burnet.] banged the door, threatened to bang the judges, and offered to fight in his shirt-sleeves any one of them He declared that if they could not see the deed in its proper light, he would pretty soon beat it into them, and he was squaring up to the poor puisne with an evident intention for mischief, when the judges offered to take the papers home and reconsider them.
The next day, they were again sent for, when, finding Northumberland as pugilistic as ever, and hand in glove with the king, the chief justice consented to the deed; and the puisne, on being approached by Northumberland in an attitude of menace, was glad to stammer out, "I am of the same opinion," as rapidly as he could give the words their utterance. The judges were promised that the deeds should be ratified by parliament, and that they should be pardoned, if they had done wrong; for otherwise, from the fists of Northumberland to the hands of the legislature, might have been analogous to getting out of the frying-pan into the fire.
All this row in the palace of an invalid produced the effect that might have been expected, for the poor boy died a day or two afterwards. A pugilistic encounter between a duke and a judge, was somewhat too much of a stimulant for a child in Edward's weak state, and his physicians having given him up, he was turned over to the treatment of a female quack, who finished him. She did the business on the 6th of July, 1533, when he sunk under a complication of evils, among which his medical attendant was undoubtedly the greatest. He had lived fifteen years, eight months, and twenty-two days, having been upon the throne six years and a half; affording a curious instance of a reign, in which the part of the sovereign was so insignificant that it might just as well have been omitted.
This little fellow has been greatly eulogised for his talents, as shown in his journal; but on looking at this juvenile production we regret to say that we could not go the length of our old friend the evening paper, in stating that it is "a very remarkable production." He mentions certain dinners and suppers with evident gusto, and alludes to the return of the sweating sickness, but misses the obvious point, that he hopes it will not prove so perverse as to begin sweating sovereigns. Some of the historians of his reign allege that he had studied the business of the mint; but it may fairly be replied, that merely looking at the process of coining does not make a sovereign. He is said to have known all the harbours in Scotland, England, and France, with the amount of water they were capable of containing—and though this may prove the depth of his research, it is no particular mark of his ability. He took notes of everything he heard; but as sovereigns hear a great deal of thorough trash, the collection must have been rather tedious and elaborate than instructive or entertaining.
If we are to judge young Edward by the laws passed in his reign, there is no great deal to be said for him. Beggars were declared to be the slaves of those who apprehended them, and iron collars were permitted to be put about the throats of the latter; but this was too much for the pride of the stiff-necked people of England, and the law was repealed, within two or three years of its having been enacted.
There is no doubt that he was a most amiable little fellow, as docile as a lamb, if indeed his gentleness did not amount to absolute sheepish-ness. His flatterers say that he could speak five languages, and had a taste for music and physic, in the latter of which predilections we are quite unable to sympathise. We should have said he was a nice child but for the peculiarity to which we have just made allusion. As a quiet young gentleman at a preparatory school kept by ladies, Master Edward Tudor would have done credit no doubt to the establishment in which he might have been placed; but we would as soon select a sovereign from a seminary at once, and take him from the bread-and-butter to the throne, as see the spirit of the monarchy diluted in milk-and-water, and the sceptre dwindling down into a king's pattern spoon.
MARY.
Northumberland having got the deed appointing his daughter-in-law the Lady Jane Grey to the throne, began to get rather nervous as to the effect of making known to the people such a preposterous arrangement. He was afraid to advertise the king's death, and walked about the palace at Greenwich, biting his nails, thinking what he should do, or shut himself up in a small apartment, which, from the colour of its walls, was known as the brown study. He subsequently sent for the Lord Mayor of London, half-a-dozen aldermen, and a dozen citizens, to whom he communicated, one at a time, but always in a whisper, the decease of the sovereign. "Mind you don't tell," was the precautionary observation he made to each; and a will was then produced, in which the boy-king had appointed Lady Jane Grey his successor. The Cockneys expressed their readiness to swear allegiance to the lady, if it was "all right;" and Northumberland pledged his honour as a peer, that he would make it so. This happened on the 1st of July, and two days afterwards Lady Jane was forwarded by water to the Tower of London, some of the corporation, who had been gained over by her father-in-law, rowing in the same boat with her. After her safe arrival, the death of King Edward was publicly announced, and Lady Jane Grey was proclaimed amid very slight applause, accompanied by murmurs of the name of Mary. Poor Jane was sadly genee by the position into which she was thrust, for she was a quiet, unaspiring, lovely creature, whose only fault seems to have been, that she read Plato in the original Greek, [Roger Ascham.] which appears to us the very alpha and omega of absurdity.
In the meantime, Mary, whose sanguinary disposition, and love for cutting off heads in her father's style, fully entitled her to the name of the "chip of the old block," was raising friends to resist the views of Northumberland. Mary, whose catholic predilections were known, promised those who were favourable to the Reformation, that she would make no change in the religion fixed by Edward; and thus, though she was understood to have mass celebrated at home, she silenced the scruples of the masses. The proclamation of Lady Jane Grey had been contrived at a packed meeting of the council, on the 10th of July; but it is said that a vintner's lad—or more probably a boy going round with the beer—entered a protest—possibly through an open window—to the arrangement. A policeman was instantly sent after him, and he was at once set in the pillory, where the tops of his ears paid the penalty of a juvenile offence, which he would not have committed had he arrived at the years of discretion. This little incident, trifling as it was, showed that there was a feeling abroad unfavourable to the elevation of Jane; for the potboy is always an authority on the subject of public measures. His opportunities of listening to the discussions of the people, are great; and though he may hear much frothy declamation, as well as witness a vast tendency to half-and-half principles, in the course of his experience, he is nevertheless capable of judging, to a considerable extent, of the feelings of the multitude.
Northumberland, seeing that opinion was taking a powerful turn in Mary's favour, became fearfully perplexed, and hearing that an adverse force was being collected, came to the resolution that "somebody" must go and oppose the enemy. Who that "somebody" should be, was a very puzzling question, for Northumberland did not like the business himself, and was afraid to trust any one else with a matter of so much consequence. At length he offered the task to Suffolk, the father of Lady Jane Grey; but that young lady began to cry very bitterly at the idea of her poor papa, who was "wholly unaccustomed to public fighting," being sent into battle. Whether it was an arrangement between father and daughter it is impossible to say; but it is well known that Suffolk was not over valorous, and even if he did not "cry off," Lady Jane did so for him, by keeping up a constant cry until they found her father a substitute. Northumberland, perceiving that Suffolk had made up his mind not to go, was looking about him for somebody else, when a general interrogatory of, "Why don't he go himself?" seemed to suggest itself to the council. With a reluctance that indicated the feeling in his mind of "Well, I suppose I must," he started off with a small army, which experienced a cold reception in its progress, and the silence of the-spectators giving them the air of mutes, invested with the dolefulness of a funeral procession the march of the troops as far as Bury.
Northumberland had no sooner turned his back on the council than they turned their backs on him, by proclaiming Mary as Queen of England; and on a party being sent to besiege the Tower, Lady Jane Grey, by the advice of her own papa, resigned all pretensions to the sovereign dignity. Suffolk not only evinced no disposition to defend his daughter's claims, but turning his sword into a steel-pen, hastened to sign the decrees that were being issued in the name of Mary.
Poor Northumberland, who was waiting for succours which never came, and who was accordingly being victimised by the expenses of his soldiers, who acted as suckers of a different kind, heard of what had taken place in London, and having fallen back upon Cambridge, sent for a herald, or town crier, with whom he bargained for the proclamation of Mary, at the market-place. It has been atrociously hinted, by an old offender, whose family we spare by the suppression of his name, that Northumberland took this humiliating course in the hope that Mary would be mollified. He had scarcely finished the proceeding we have described, when he received a sharp letter from the council in London, desiring him to disband his army; but looking round, he perceived that it had disbanded itself, for all his followers had deserted him. They had, in fact, gone over to the other side, with a canting recantation of their opinions, and a whining declaration that they never should have thought of taking arms against their lawful queen "had not Northumberland made them do it." The unhappy duke himself was hanging about the streets of Cambridge the next day, not knowing whether to give himself up or "run for it," when the Earl of Arundel, coming up and tapping him on the shoulder, observed "You must come along with me—you're my prisoner." Northumberland burst into a loud bellow, fell upon his knees, and begged for his life; but Arundel, contemptuously desiring an underling to "bring him along," lodged the captive in the Tower. Poor Lady Jane, whose representations of the part of queen had been limited to ten days, was already locked up, and, in fact, the state prison was full to overflowing of her unfortunate partisans. Her father, the Duke of Suffolk, obtained his pardon on the 81st of July, through Mary, who, on the 3rd of August, 1553, made her triumphant entry into London, accompanied by her little sister, afterwards the great Elizabeth. On the 18th of the same month, Northumberland, his eldest son John, Earl of Warwick, and two or three others, were brought to trial at Westminster Hall, when they pleaded the general issue; but the chief prisoner, finding it useless to throw himself upon the country, threw himself on the floor, asking, in the most abject terms, for mercy. This prostration was of no avail, for sentence of death was speedily passed upon him; the sycophant Suffolk (Lady Jane Grey's own father) being one of the judges who presided at the trial. The Earl of Warwick behaved with more spirit than his parent, and upon hearing that he was to die as a traitor, which would involve the confiscation of his property, he coolly requested that his unfortunate creditors might not be victimised. "Don't pay me off, without paying them off, also," were the chivalrous words of the young nobleman. The Marquis of Northampton, when called upon for his defence, said that he had been out with the hounds and engaged in field sports while the conspiracy was going on, so that he had been quite upon another scent; but this availed nothing for the sly old fox, who was immediately found guilty. Sir John Gates, as well as Sir Henry Gates, both of whom were fearfully unhinged, were also condemned; and Northumberland made a long penitential speech from the scaffold, when, as if caught by the example, Sir John Gates opened out with extraordinary eloquence. Poor Gates having been brought to a close by a hint from the headsman, the axe and the curtain fell together upon this fearful tragedy.
Mary soon began to show her papist predilections, and after making Gardiner Chancellor, she proceeded to establish a most rigorous censorship of the press, like a person who, having evil designs, is anxious to get the watch-dog muzzled as speedily as possible. She prohibited all persons from speaking against her, for a time; but putting a prohibition on the press is like throwing coals on a volcano, which gets smothered for a while, but is sure to burst out with a stronger light on account of the attempt to extinguish it.
The fanaticism of Mary is said to have been caused by the wretchedness of her early life, during which a brutal father was continually threatening to chop off her head or make a nun of her. That unnatural parent was one of those monsters to whom it seems marvellous that children were ever given at all, for he could never appreciate the blessings they were calculated to afford, and he was for ever engaged in trying to mar their happiness. The stock from which she came was, however, so abominably bad, that there is nothing surprising in her cruelty; for when children happen to go wrong, it may be taken as a general rule that they get from their birth one half, and from their bringing-up the other half, of their iniquity. Mary, who proved herself a worthy descendant of a most unworthy sire, and turned the state prisons at once into warehouses for storing up the fuel of future martyrdom. Cranmer, Latimer, and others were stowed away with this view, while the queen herself prepared for a coronation of unusual pageantry at Westminster.
The calm and philosophical Anne of Cleves—who will be remembered as the queen that Henry refused to have at any price—was a visitor to the show, and came to it in the same "fly" with the Princess Elizabeth The latter, as sister to the queen, carried the crown in the procession, mid was complaining of its weight in a whisper—for she was always flirting with somebody—to Noailles, the French ambassador. "Be patient," replied the polite Parisian; "it will be lighter when it is on your head;" and an interchange of winks proved that the allusion was understood by the future sovereign of England A parliament was assembled in less than a week, and the legislature that had lately been in favour of protestantism to the fullest extent, now relapsed into all the forms of popery. Both Houses opened with the celebration of mass, and Taylor, the Bishop of Lincoln, who objected to such flagrant apostacy, was fairly kicked down stairs, like a bill thrown out of the Upper House, where tergiversation was the order of the day throughout the session. Another bishop, of the name of Harley, the low comedian of the episcopal bench, whom Burnet calls a "drie dogge," was also ejected for exhibiting the same honourable consistency; but Harley restored the good nature of the House by throwing a little humour into his forced exit.
A convocation of the clergy was shortly afterwards held, to get rid of the Reformation as far as it had gone, and bring Catholicism back again. Some of the bishops conformed to the new regulations laid down for them; but some few, who happened to be married, found that though shaking off an opinion was easy enough, getting rid of a wife was far more difficult. The celibacy of the clergy was, of course, insisted upon; but Holgate, Archbishop of York, however happy he might have been never to have linked himself with Mrs. Holgate at all, soon discovered that a divorce from that good lady was not so easily accomplished as talked about. Several bishops who had got entangled in the connubial noose, were nearly finding it a halter for their necks, inasmuch as they were all deprived of their sees, and some even of their lives, for having committed the offence of matrimony. An attempt was made to save them, by urging that the punishment accompanied the crime, and that it was hard to make those suffer who must already have endured a great deal; but the plea was not allowed to prevail, and deprivation was inflicted on all as an equal punishment. Several of the bishops conformed; and it has been said, in extenuation of their weakness, that their insincerity was not in changing from protestant to catholic, but had consisted in their originally veering round against their wills from catholic to to protestant. It matters little whether, in turning from popery to the Reformation, they had been robbing Peter to pay Paul, or whether, in changing once more, they were guilty of some additional cheat, in order to restore what they had taken from Peter; but it is not to be denied, that on one occasion or the other they had been guilty of gross apostacy.
On the 13th of November, 1553, Cranmer, Lady Jane Grey, her husband Lord Guildford Dudley, and his brother Ambrose Dudley, were all condemned to die as traitors, by judges many of whom were the very people who had set on poor Jane to play the game, in which she had never taken the smallest interest. After sentence had been passed, execution was stayed. But Cranmer had no sooner been let out upon the charge of treason, than it was found on searching the office there was something else against him, whereupon he was taken and locked up once more upon an accusation of heresy. Lady Jane Grey had the freedom of the Tower presented to her in the shape of a permission to walk about the gardens, while Guildford Dudley and Ambrose were granted a few moderate indulgencies—amounting, perhaps, to a set of skittles, a bat, trap and ball, or a couple of hockey-sticks.
This moderation was, however, accompanied by other acts of cruelty; and poor Judge Hales, who had really done nothing but refuse to change his religion, was, though he had stoutly defended the title of the queen, thrown into prison. The poor fellow went out of his mind, and though he was liberated, he had got so fearfully impressed with the idea of being burnt, that he thought to make himself fire-proof by running into the water; but it was so deep, and he stayed there so very long, that he unfortunately drowned himself.
Mary, who had been disappointed of several husbands—for nobody who saw
her would think of having her—now resolved to make use of her position
as Queen of England to draw some unhappy victim into a marriage. Comparatively
old, exceedingly hard, and totally void of all the milk of human kindness, she
was naturally very inflammable, and she had already fallen in love with young
Ned Courtenay, a son of the Marquis of Exeter; but the predilection of that
young gentleman for her half-sister Elizabeth, had somewhat cooled the ardour
of Mary, who found it was useless to set her cap at the young Earl of Devon,
which was the title she had restored to the courteous Courtenay.
The project of a marriage continued to fill the head of the queen, but as it
was evident there would be "nobody coming to marry her," and, indeed,
"nobody coming to woo," unless she looked out pretty sharply for herself,
she threw aside all scruples of delicacy, and began to advertise through the
medium of her ambassadors. The Emperor Charles of Spain had been affianced to
her thirty years ago, and though she might once have been accustomed to sing
"Charlie's my darling," in her youthful days, that prince had, long
ago, grown old enough to know better than to marry her. He nevertheless thought
she might be a good match for his son Philip, or rather that the latter might
be a match for the lady, inasmuch as the Spanish Prince was crafty, cruel, and
bigoted. Mary made a last effort to get a husband of her own choice by sending
a proposal to Cardinal Pole, who would have nothing to do with her. Thus, even
her indelicate eagerness to rush to the pole did not secure her election, and
she was obliged to take Philip "for better, for worse," or rather
for worse, for want of a better.
When the Commons heard of her intention they respectfully recommended her to wed an Englishman, but the idea that it was necessary for Mary to "first catch the Englishman" does not seem to have occurred to them. She announced her intention of marrying Philip partly out of old associations, but the oldness of the association was all on her own side, for the gentleman was young in comparison to the lady It was not to be expected that Philip would make what he might justly have considered an "alarming sacrifice" without some equivalent, and it was agreed that he should have the honour and title of King of England, though he was not to interfere in the government. In case Mary survived him, he was to settle upon her £60,000 a year, but as he always flattered himself that he should, as he said, "see the old girl out," he looked upon this arrangement as merely nominal.
The English people had in those days, as they still have in these, an objection to Spanish Marriages, and one Sir Thomas Wyatt, who had been in Spain, gave such a feaful picture of Philip, that the people of Kent, learning to regard him as something between "Old Bogie" and "Spring-heeled Jack," resolved to oppose his landing. Wyatt collected a. considerable force at Rochester and marched upon London, when taking the first to the left, then the second to the right, they found themselves masters of Southwark. He had intended to give battle in Bermondsey, and put a cannon at the corner of the street, but it did not go off so well as he expected. In the meantime the queen's forces began pouring upon him some of the juice of the grape, from the Tower, and intimating to his followers that it might affect their heads, he withdrew as far as Kingston. His object was to march upon London by the other road, and he had got about as far as Hammersmith when an accident happened to his largest buss, or blunderbuss—as he called his heaviest gun—and he wasted several hours in getting it, once more, upon its wheels again. By daylight he had got as far as Hyde Park, when he found that the royal forces were in the enclosure of St. James's, waiting to receive him, and having a large reserve in the hollow that now forms the reservoir.
The battle commenced with a noisy overture, consisting of the firing of cannons, loaded only with powder, and doing no harm to anybody. Wyatt's followers had dwindled very materially as he came into town; several of his soldiers having discovered, at Kew, it was not their "cue to fight," and others experiencing, at Turnham Green, sufficient to turn 'em pale, and turn 'em back, at the very thought of meeting the enemy. Wyatt was nevertheless undaunted, and rushed upon the enemy, who falling quietly back, let him regularly in among the troops, with the full intention of never letting him out again. Without looking behind, he charged, at full gallop, along Charing Cross, and continuing his furious career up the Strand, pulled up, at last, at Ludgate Hill, which he found closed against him. Finding no sympathy among the citizens he attempted to back out, and had got as far as the Temple, where,
Sir Thomas Wyatt surrendering to Sir Maurice Berkeley.
strange to say, his opponents gave him no law, and the unhappy old Pump, being at last caught in Pump Court, surrendered to Sir Maurice Berkeley. Poor Wyatt was soon afterwards condemned to death, and executed, as well as about four hundred of his followers, but several were brought with ropes round their necks before the queen, who permitted them to find in the halter a loop-hole for escape, by an humble prayer for pardon.
Mary exceedingly angry at the attempt to shake her throne, vented her animosity on her little sister Elizabeth, who was brought on a litter to London, though she was so ill that the journey might have killed her, had not youth, a good constitution, and some stout porters carried her through the dangerous ordeal. She was accused of having been a party to Wyatt's rebellion, and was taken to the Tower, though not without giving a good deal of trouble to the proper officer, for she insisted on sitting down, every now and then, upon a stone step in the yard, though the rain was falling heavily.
Mary, whose reign may be considered as the original "reign of terror,"—though the brutality that distinguished it was confined to a few, while in the French edition the whole nation thirsted for blood—who exercised en detail the cruelties that France subsequently practised en gros, sentenced to death, in rapid rotation, all who did not quite agree with her. The unfortunate Lady Jane Grey and her husband, Lord Guildford Dudley, were both executed on the same day, and indeed the victims were so numerous that we should be inclined to say, "for further particulars see small bills," if we thought that any of the true bills found against the parties were still extant.
A curious commentary on the value of trial by jury was furnished about this time, by the extraordinary case of Sir Nicholas Throgmorton—the father of Throgmorton Street, and friend of Sir Thomas Wyatt—who after making his defence, obtained, to the surprise of everybody, a verdict of acquittal. Sir Thomas Bromley, the Chief Justice, began to cough, and "hem and ha!" as if there must be some mistake, and as though he would have said, "Gentlemen of the jury, do you know what you are doing?" The twelve honest men replied, that it was "all right," they "knew what they were about," and persisted in their decision, until the Chief Justice, who thought every jury box ought to be a packing case, hinted that the matter was one in which the Crown was interested, and that the Crown would stand no nonsense. The jurymen, being still firm, they were hurried off to prison, and were only released upon paying enormous fines; which proved, at least, that the Government set a tremendous price upon their honesty.
On the 19th of July, 1554, Philip landed at Southampton, on his way to fulfil his marriage contract with Mary; but he had taken the precaution to send on before him the Count of Egmont, who was intended to be mistaken for his master, and thus serve as a sort of pilot engine, in case of any collision with the populace. The expedient was very necessary, for the pilot engine—we mean Egmont—got some very hard knocks from several old buffers with whom he came in contact, and Philip, seeing the kind of reception he might expect, came accompanied by a very long train, by way of escort to his new station. On the 25th of the same month he was married to the queen, at Winchester, and the pair, whom we must call, by courtesy, "the happy couple," came to London, where a series of festivities, including the rapid descent of II Diavolo Somebody, along a rope from the top of St. Paul's, [A fact.—See Stowe.] had been prepared in honour of the Royal marriage.
The object of Philip in marrying Mary had been simply the crown, and his conduct, if not his words, very plainly told her so. Her fondness for him became quite a bore, particularly when he found that she
Philip and Mary.
could not get Parliament to agree to the projects he made her propose for his own aggrandisement. She had not long been the wife of Philip, when an attack of dropsy was added to her other interesting points, and her heartless husband made her a butt—or, as Strype says, a water-butt—for his unfeeling ridicule. In order to obtain a little popularity, Philip made his wife release Elizabeth, and Courtenay, Earl of Devon, from the Tower, as well as a few other favourites of the public, but the people never took to the husband of the queen, while the quarrels between the Spanish and the English were perpetual. On New-Year's Day, 1555, there was a row among them at Westminster, when a Spanish, friar got into the Abbey, and pulled away at the alarum with tremendous fury. He frightened the city almost into fits, and, for thus trifling with the rope, Philip doomed him to the halter, in order to gratify the people, who by no means chimed in with this extraordinary freak of bell-ringing.
The year 1555 was signalised by the revival of all the statutes against heretics, and the Protestants were kept burning night and day, in the neighbourhood of Smithfield. We will not dwell longer than necessary upon this disgraceful portion of our national annals. Among many distinguished persons who suffered death were Ridley, Latimer, and Cranmer, who all exhibited firmness worthy of a better fate, and it is said of Cranmer that he put his right hand into the fire first, for having, some time before, signed some documents of recantation, in the hope of saving his life at the expense of his consistency. In three years about three hundred individuals perished at the stake, through refusing to put their characters at stake by vacillation in the moment of danger.
After the death of Cranmer, Cardinal Pole was installed in the see of Canterbury, for Mary's rage against the Protestants was extreme, and she hoped that the fires of Smithfield would be kept alive by that exalted prelate, though in expecting to stir them up with the long Pole she was somewhat disappointed, for the new archbishop was rather moderate than otherwise in his ecclesiastical policy.
The queen's object was to control England in the war between France and Spain, but Pole, even at the risk of becoming in his turn a scaffold Pole, resisted the royal will to the extent of his power. The fact is that Philip, who had never married for love, was determined to be as plain with his wife as she was plain to him, and told her that unless he could make his union profitable, he should make a slip-knot of the nuptial tie, and get away from it altogether. Alarmed at the prospect of being left "a lone woman" on the throne, she sought and found a pretext for declaring a war against France by getting up one of those confessions which in those days a judicious use of the torture could always procure at a few hours' notice.
Some unhappy agitators were detected in a small conspiracy, when the fact or falsehood of their having been encouraged by Henry of France was, after the intense application of the screw, regularly screwed out of them. They were made to fabricate stories to suit the purposes of the queen, and indeed their invention was literally put to the rack by the cruelties to which they were subjected. War against France was now declared, but the revenue was in such a miserable state that Mary was obliged to beg, borrow, and steal in every direction for the necessary funds to commence hostilities. Having at last got together an army of ten thousand men, she found that the troops must be fed, and she accordingly seized all the corn she could find, threatening at the same time to thrash the owners like their own wheat if they had the impudence to ask for the value of the stolen property.
The well-known impolicy of interfering in other people's quarrels was powerfully illustrated by the fate of the English interposition in the dispute between France and Spain, for after a few trifling advantages, one of which was the taking of Ham before breakfast by Philip himself, England sustained a loss, which was at that time regarded as one of the most serious character. Valour, tinder the guise of the great Duke of Guise, wrested Calais from its masters, and restored it to the French, whose hearts rebounded with boundless joy at the acquisition of this valuable fortress.
The exchequer was reduced to such a beggarly condition by the expenses of the late unfortunate war, that the queen, who never called upon her Parliament unless she wanted something, was compelled to summon the commons. With their usual squeezability they permitted to flow into the public coffers sufficient to keep the royal head above water; and one Copley, who ventured a few words by way of remonstrance, was pusillanimously committed to that custody from which the old English expression of "cowardy cowardy custard" (guery, custod.) has been supposed to derive its origin.
Part of the produce of the recent subsidy was laid out in ships, and as the ships came to no good, it was said at the time that this appropriation of the money was very like making ducks and drakes of it. The fleet after passing over the bosom of the ocean, came to Brest, but the breastworks were so strong, that the British force had not the heart to make an attack upon them, Some miscellaneous pillage was perpetrated in the neighbourhood by the English, who nevertheless came off second best; and Philip, who was getting rather tired of the business, was willing to treat with a view to a treaty.
While thinking how he should retire from foreign hostilities, he received from England tidings that held out the certain prospect of. domestic peace, for he got the news of the death of his wife Mary Miserable and middle-aged, detested and dropsical, this wretched woman was tormented by every kind of reflection, from that presented by the mirror of her own mind, to the dismal prospect shadowed forth in her looking-glass. She had lost Calais; but, as the audacious Strype has boldly suggested, she might have become callous to that, had she not known the fearful fact, that her husband Philip declared he had had his fill of double cursedness, and intended to try in Spain what a timely return to single blessedness might do for him. All these troubles proved, like herself, unbearable, and on the 17th of November, 1558, she expired, after a short and yet too long a reign of five years, four months, and eleven days. She had reached the forty-third year of her age, and must have made the most of her time, in one way at least; for no woman of her age had obtained so much odium of a durable quality, as she in her comparatively short life had acquired.
If we were to draw a faithful character of this princess, we need do nothing more than upset our inkstand over our paper, and cause the saturated manuscript to be transferred to our pages in one enormous black blot: for we are sure that no printer's type could furnish a type of the person whom we have the horribly black job of handing down—
Philip (of England and Spain) hears of his wife's death.
or rather knocking down—to posterity. Those indefatigable readers who are desirous of having the appropriate epithets which Mary's character deserves, are requested to take down the dictionary, and having selected from it all the adjectives expressive of badness that the language contains, place them in a string or a series of strings, before the name of Mary.
To look for her virtues would require the aid of one of those solar microscopes which give visibility to the merest atom, and the particle if even discovered, might be deposited in the mental eye without its being susceptible of anything having entered it. She seems to have possessed some sincerity; but this only gave a certain degree of vigour to her evil propensities. She was perhaps susceptible of some attachments, but so is a boa constrictor, though few would conceive it a privilege to be held in the firm embraces of that paragon of tenacity towards those with whose fate it happens to twine itself. She had a certain vigour of mind, just as the tiger has a certain vigour of spring, a parallel the force of which her victims very frequently experienced.
The loss of Calais was, perhaps, one of the most important events of Mary's reign, and it is said to have had such an effect upon her, that she declared, when she died the word Calais would he found engraved upon her heart: though we are quite sure, that if the word had been found at all, it would not have presented itself as an engraving, but as a lithograph. For two hundred years the town had been in the possession of the English, and it was through a miserable economy in cutting down the garrison during the winter months, and trying to work the thing at a reduced expense, that the whole concern fell into the power of the enemy. This paltry system proved, of course, unprofitable in the end; for when the Duke of Guise made his attack, those points that required two or three stout fellows to defend them, were left to the fatal imbecility of "a man and a boy,"—a couple never yet known to heartily co-operate. It is the unhappy blunder of a man and a boy being left to pull together as unsympathetically as an elephant and an ass, that has impeded the progress of so many of our public works; and it was, unquestionably, the trial of the "man and boy" system at Calais during the winter months, that, in the early part of 1558, caused the loss of the city. The English had been in the habit of trusting during the cold weather to the snow, and the overflowing of the marshes, to keep out the French; but the Duke of Guise was not afraid of getting his feet wet, and besides, as he wittily observed, "I can always rely on the strength of my pumps to keep the water out." He ultimately made a resolute splash, and, though often up to his middle in mud, he drove the English clean out of the citadel.
It may be worth while to mention, that Mary's reign was the first in which friendly relations with Russia were established, through some English traders who found themselves, or rather lost themselves, at Archangel, in the course of a wild-goose search for a north-east passage. The Czar, after asking them what they were doing there, and telling them they had come fearfully out of their way, received them very kindly; but it does not seem that any north-east passage, beyond the old court which used to lead from Holborn Hill to Clerkenwell, was at that time discovered.
Few if any salutary laws were passed in her reign, though a bad one was repealed, which had ruined the wool trade, by prohibiting any one from making wool who had not served seven years' apprenticeship There was of course a great cry and very little wool m consequence of this absurd enactment, which was so decidedly impolitic that we can give Mary very little credit for having done away with it.
ELIZABETH.
THE death of Mary was concealed for some hours, since it is only bad news that will travel very fast; but when the truth did come to be generally known, the joy which burst out on all sides took the more decent form of exultation at the accession of the new sovereign. Elizabeth, Betsy, Bessy, or Bess as she has been indiscriminately called, was at Hatfield when her sister died, and she soon moved to London, escorted by one of those patriotic mobs which are always ready to hoot and halloo for any distance the last new sovereign.
On the 15th of January, 1559, the queen was crowned at Westminster Abbey, but during the ceremony she was compelled to remain bareheaded for a considerable time, as on account of her suspected Protestant predilections not one of the Bishops would invest her with the diadem. In vain did she give appealing looks to the entire bench, until at last a decided ogle took effect on Oglethorpe, the Bishop of Carlisle, who, snatching up the bauble with a shout of "Here goes," boldly bonneted the royal maiden.
On the 25th of the same month a Parliament assembled, when Cecil and Sir Nicholas Bacon made their debuts on the treasury benches. Cecil was chief secretary, or key of the Cabinet, while Bacon was great seal, with instructions to keep continually on the watch in the capacity of Keeper. The first act of the Parliament was to restore many of the laws of religion existing in Edward's reign, and an attempt was made to reinstate such clergymen as had been deprived on account of marriage; but Elizabeth, who began to show anti-matrimonial opinions at the very beginning of her reign, would not accede to such an arrangement. Early in the session the Parliament tried its hand at royal match-making by carrying up an address to the queen, recommending her to take a husband; but in a somewhat prudish tone she expressed at once her horror at "the fellows," and her determination to have nothing to do with them. Her sincerity was soon put to the test by a direct offer from Philip, her late sister's husband; but a playful "go along with you," and a coquettish "a-done, do!" were the utmost words of encouragement he could manage to extract from her.
Parliament broke up on the 8th of May, and on the 15th the bishops and other churchmen of note were summoned to take the oath of conformity to the new statutes. Much to the credit of their consistency they all refused, with the exception of one Kitchen, the Bishop of Llandaff, a low fellow, whose name implies his origin. This Kitchen had acquired the rotatory motion of the roasting-jack, as well as a fondness for sops in the pan, for he had been twirling round and having a finger in the ecclesiastical pie since the year 1545, from which time to that of Elizabeth he had, through all changes, stuck to his bishopric The clergy, who had refused to conform to the Protestant religion, were on the whole gently dealt with, some being exported to Spain amid the luggage of the Spanish ambassador, and a few being quartered upon their successors in England. Most of the inferior clergy seemed to have been made of Kitchen-stuff, that is to say, they appeared to be composed of much the same material as the Bishop Kitchen we have named, and were at all events alive to the necessity of keeping the pot boiling, for out of 9400 persons holding benefices, there were scarcely more than a hundred, exclusive of the fifteen bishops, who quitted their preferments rather than change their religion.
We must now look at Scotland, of which the celebrated Mary was queen when she was suddenly called to France to share the throne which had devolved upon her husband, Francis II., or rather upon which he had devolved by the death of his father, Henry. This somewhat elderly gentleman had been playing the fool in a tilting match, which was rather infra dig. at his time of life, and ended in his receiving a dig in the eye from a broken lance, which ultimately closed in death both the wounded and its companion optic. In the, absence of Mary from Scotland, Elizabeth did her utmost to advance the Protestant cause in that country, and dealt out some heavy blows through the medium of the celebrated Knox against the Catholics. Mary's mamma, who had remained at home to keep house as it were in her daughter's absence, did not exactly like what was passing, particularly when she found that English emissaries were continually passing to and fro, for the purpose of bribing the Scotch, whose "itching palm" has always been a national characteristic that we decline accounting for. The English were bent on getting the French out of Scotland, but the task was as difficult as expelling the fleas from a hay mattress, in which they have once got embedded. After a good deal of desultory fighting, the Queen Regent was worried out of her life, and she was no sooner gone, than some of her most devoted adherents were off like shots to draw up a treaty with the enemy. Peace was proclaimed, and the French Governor of Leith gave the besiegers a dinner, at which salted horse was the only animal food, for there was not even a saddle of mutton to make the horse go off with effect at this truly horsepitable banquet. By the treaty mutual indemnities were exchanged, oblivion of the past was determined upon at Leith, which on that occasion became a veritable Lethe. Elizabeth had two or three flags in Scotland surrendered to her, but religion, which was the ostensible cause of the whole dispute, was permitted to stand over as an open question.
It was not to be expected that such a capital match as the Queen of England would fail to be the subject of several flames, and an old beau, in the person of Eric, now the King of Sweden, together with two or three other suitors, royal as well as noble, sent in the most tender tenders for the hand of Elizabeth. Like a true coquette, she gave encouragement to all; and even some seedy adventurers among hex own subjects were induced to strike up to her.
Mary, who as great niece of Henry VIII. had in the first instance assumed the arms and title of Queen of England, a measure almost as futile as if Snooks of Surrey should assume the arms and title of Seringapatam, relinquished her nominal pretensions upon the death of her husband, which happened on the 5th of December, 1560. Mary had become so habituated to the splendid formalities of the French Court that on returning to Scotland the substantial barrenness of that bleak country completely disgusted her. Tears, it is said, came into her eyes when she saw the wretched ponies that were about to convey herself and her ladies from the water-side to Holyrood, while the saddles, made of wood, gave her such a series of bumpers at parting that she declared the impression made by her reception would never be forgotten.
Mary, who had been born and bred a Catholic, was of course anxious for the privilege of following her own religion; but her Scotch subjects, who claimed liberty of conscience for themselves, practised upon their unfortunate sovereign the most brutal and intolerant tyranny. She was insulted on her way to mass, her indulgence in the most harmless amusements was savagely condemned, and she was continually exposed to the hardest raps from Knox, who undertook the task of converting her. This vulgar, but zealous, and no doubt sincere personage endeavoured to effect his purpose by coarse abuse, and always spoke of his queen from the pulpit as Jezabel. In vain did Mary endeavour to quiet her turbulent and libellous assailant by offering him private audiences; but, as if nothing short of mob popularity would answer his purpose, he rudely declined her invitation, telling her it was her duty to come to him, and continued to make the pulpit the medium of the most malignant assaults on his sovereign. However honest and upright the intentions of Knox may have been, his brutal manner of telling his home truths deprived them of much of their influence; and Knox made very few effective hits in the course of his noisy and vituperative career as a Presbyterian Reformer.
Elizabeth saw with unamiable pleasure that her rival, Mary, was having what, very figuratively speaking, may be termed, a nice time of it. The English queen busily occupied herself in feathering her own nest in a variety of ways, and, among other measures, she called in all the debased coin; for, as she sometimes said, with a sneer at poor Mary, "I have a great objection to light sovereigns." She filled her arsenals with arms, and had quite a conservatory of grape at the Tower, while, by way of putting the country into a state of defence, she resorted to the very odd expedient of reviewing the militia. She improved the arts of making gunpowder and casting cannon, so that, as she used to say, "every brave brick in my army may have a supply of mortar, with which, in the hour of battle, he may cement the interests of my empire."
The increase of the navy occupied her special care, and she laid the foundation of that glorious system which has given immortality to our naval hornpipes, and made our enemies dance at the balls given by our British seamen. It was to Elizabeth we owe the origin of that enthusiasm which induces "honest Jack," as he facetiously calls himself, to spend all his wages in a week, and to conclude a rapid series of light-hearted freaks as the helplessly inebriated fare of a metropolitan cab,
Honest Jack Tars of the Period.
or the equally inanimate inmate of a London station-house. The interior of Elizabeth's Court was a scene of petty rivalries and jealousies, for she was surrounded with various suitors, and though she gave encouragement to nearly all, the valuable precept, "Ne sutor ultra crepidam," seems never to have escaped her memory. She would treat them with easy familiarity, such as thumping their backs and patting their cheeks; but if any of them ventured upon trying to get on with her at the same slapping pace, she would administer a rap of the knuckles that at once discouraged them from trying their hands at a renewal of such familiarity.
Though not blinded to the adulation of her courtiers, she was very nearly becoming so by the small-pox, against which, however, a good constitution was happily pitted. On her recovery, the Parliament fearing the explosion that might have ensued had she popped off without a successor having been named, entreated her either to marry, or appoint some lady or gentleman to fill the throne in the event of there being a vacancy. With a good deal of that old traditional feeling imputed to the anonymous dog in the very indefinite manger, who was unwilling to relinquish to others what he was unable personally to enjoy, Elizabeth was very reluctant to say who should come after her as queen, but she held out a vague prospect that her marriage would not be impossible, in the event of any very eligible offer happening to present itself. This indirect advertisement of her hand was at once answered by the Duke of Wurtemberg, a small German, whose pretensions were contemptuously pooh-pooh'd! and indeed every post brought letters from various single men of prepossessing appearance, gentlemanly manners, and amiable disposition, who were anxious to take this somewhat unusual method of placing their hands and hearts at the service of the Queen of England. In the very largest field there will generally be one or two favourites, and in Elizabeth's good books the names of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and Ratcliffe, Earl of Sussex, stood so high, that there might have been even betting upon both, with a shade or two, perhaps, in the former's favour
Mary of Scotland was less indifferent on the subject of marriage than the English queen, and, indeed, the former went so seriously into the matrimonial market, as to consult the latter on the subject of a judicious selection. Apparently with the intention of throwing the matter back, Elizabeth offered her own favourite, Dudley, Earl of Leicester, as a husband for Mary; but on the latter, after recovering from her surprise, exclaiming, "Well, I don't mind," the virgin Queen of England, mentally responding, "Oh! yes! I dare say," backed out of her proposition. The Earl of Leicester was one of those good-looking scamps who used, in the last century, to go by the name of "pretty fellows," but in our own more enlightened age, would obtain no gentler appellation, than "pretty scoundrels." The virtuous Elizabeth liked to have him about her on account of his good looks, but if the homely proverb, that "handsome is as handsome does," had prevailed he would have been thought as little ornamental in person, as in mind he was deformed and hideous. Notwithstanding the pattern of propriety as which the virgin Queen of England has been, by some historians, extolled, she gave encouragement to Leicester, whom she knew to be a married man, until, by murdering his wife, he removed that slight barrier to the accomplishment of his ambitious wishes. He reported that his unfortunate lady had tumbled down stairs, but this was a daring flight of a guilty imagination, and there is little doubt that while staying in the house of her husband's servant, Foster, he forced her either over the balustrade, or got rid of her by some other means of equal violence.
Poor Mary, who was really in need of a protector, becoming impatient at the delay in choosing her a husband, at length selected one for herself, in the person of her cousin, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley. This young nobleman was a mere lad in age, but a perfect ladder in height, for he was very tall, and very thin, so that if he could offer Mary no substantial support, he was, at all events, a person she might lookup to, as may be said, familiarly, "at a stretch," in cases of great emergency. He was the son of Henry VIII.'s sister's daughter's second husband, and was acccordingly the next heir but one to the English throne, if any one could be called an heir at all in those days, when might overcame right in a manner somewhat unceremonious.
Lord Darnley.
Darnley, though showy in appearance, was in reality a fool, and it might be said that instead of having been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, he was in himself the embodiment of that auspicious article. Though exceedingly tall, he was tremendously shallow, and before he had been married two months, he acted with so much insolence, that Mary could scarcely get a servant to stay with her. His own father, old Lennox, who had got a snug place in the household, packed up his box at a moment's notice, declaring he would not stop, and the wretched royal spoon found in the glass the only pursuit with which his habits were congenial.
Though neglectful of his young and lovely wife, he claimed the bad husband's privilege of being jealous of the attentions of others, and Signor David Rizzio, the first and only tenor at the Scotch court, soon furnished ground for Darnley's suspicions of Mary's fidelity. Rizzio had come over in the suite of the ambassador of Savoy, as a professor of the spinette, and a teacher of foreign languages. In his vocal capacity he attended evening parties, and having been introduced at court, his airs soon wafted him into the favour of his sovereign. His knowledge of the French language caused him to be promoted to the vacant post of French secretary to the queen, when an outcry was raised because a Scotchman was not appointed to the office, though not a soul among the natives had any pretensions to understanding the language in which the services of a secretary were required. Many of them maintained that their broken Scotch would have been an excellent substitute for Rizzio's unintelligible gibberish, and the nobles used to make faces at him, shoulder him, or taunt him as a base-born fiddler even in the presence of his sovereign.
The ill-used musician, who understood scarcely a word of the insulting language that was addressed to him, happening to catch the sound of the word fiddle, gallantly declared that he would be found toujours fidele to the royal lady who had honoured him by her favour. There seems to be good reason for doubt whether the scandalous stories concerning Mary and her French secretary were true, and as in duty bound we give the benefit of the doubt to the accused parties. Poor Rizzio had however become such an object of hatred to the people about the Court, that one evening, as he sat at a side-table taking his supper, as he always did when the queen was present, a party of armed men, headed by Darnley himself, rushed into the chamber where the Duchess of Argyle and Erskine, the Governor of Holyrood, were also present. Rizzio had probably been favouring the company with a song or songs, and was whetting his whistle, with a view perhaps to further melody, when he was brutally desired to "come out of that" by the ruffian Ruthven, whose gout for murder was so excessive that he had left a sick bed to take a part in the sanguinary business. To make a long and painful story short, Rizzio was savagely butchered as he clung to the skirts of Mary's dress in a vain hope to find shelter under petticoat influence. For having caused the death of Rizzio, Mary never forgave Darnley, who took to drink, in the hope of drowning care; but an evil conscience seems to be supplied with corks, which carry it up to the surface of the deepest bowl in which an attempt was ever made to get rid of it.
On the 19th of June. 1566, there appeared, among the births of the day, the announcement of "Mary, Queen of Scots, of a son and heir at Holyrood." The infant was James VI., of Scotland, and subsequently the first of England, who was not a Jem remarkable for any particular brilliancy. It had previously been arranged that Elizabeth should stand godmother to the first-born of Mary, and intelligence of the interesting event was therefore conveyed to the English Queen by special express through that diligent overland male, the faithful Melville. Elizabeth was having a romp after a supper at Greenwich when the news arrived, and was in the midst of a furious fandango, when Cecil whispered something in her ear which struck her all of a heap, and caused her to leave her fandango unfinished. Speedily, however, regaining her composure, she gave the ambassador something for himself, and charged him with the usual infantine presents for her royal godson.
The question of a successor to Elizabeth now turned up again with increased interest since the birth of little James; but Elizabeth, becoming irritable and ill-humoured, declared she was looking out for a husband, and intended to have an heir of her own, which would put an end to all the airs and graces which other people were exhibiting. When the Commons grew more urgent on the point, she became angry in the extreme, for the subject must have been rather a delicate one with Elizabeth, who was growing every day a less eligible match, and might not perhaps have succeeded in finding a husband equal in point of station to an alliance with the Queen of England.
ELIZABETH (CONTINUED).
Mary and her husband were leading the life familiarly known as cat and dog; but the cat was in this instance getting rather the best of it. She would not allow him to be present at the christening party given in honour of their little son, and he was never permitted to hold the baby, or enjoy any of those privileges of paternity which are rather honorary than agreeable to the individual by whom they are exercised. In ordering a dinner or forming a cabinet his wishes were equally disregarded, and if he happened to have objected to a particular dish he was very likely to be told there was nothing else in the house; while Murray, Bothwell, and Huntley, whom he hated, were appointed to the ministry. It was at length determined to get him entirely out of the way; and, as he happened to have taken the small-pox, it was agreed that he should sleep out, on account of the baby, who, though very soon cowed in his after life, had not undergone the process of vaccination, for the simple reason that Dr. Jenner had not invented it. Darnley had consequently a bed at a lonely house called the Kirk-a-field, where he was taken in only that he might be the more effectually done for by his enemies.
An explosion was heard in the middle of the night, and on the next morning the house was found in ruins, with Darnley doubled up under a tree at some considerable distance. It was reported that lightning had been the cause of the event; but it is not likely that lightning would have known how to conduct itself with such precision as to have carried Darnley out of a three-pair of stairs window, and lay him down at a considerable distance from the house, without breaking a bone, or inflicting a bruise of any description whatever. There is every ground for suspicion that Bothwell and his colleagues were instrumental to Darnley's death; but in order to throw dust—or gold-dust—in the public eye, they offered a reward of two thousand pounds for the murderers. This liberality was cheap enough, for they knew they could not be called upon to pay any reward, they being themselves the parties for whom they advertised. A paper war was nevertheless commenced upon the walls, in which the murderers were advertised for on one side, and pointed out by name upon the other, when fresh rewards were offered, and the bill-stickers warned to beware of the libel they were helping to disseminate. At length, such a stir was created, that on April 12th, 1567, Bothwell was put upon his trial, when by some wilful negligence the counsel for the prosecution had no brief, and was of course unable to offer any evidence. The accused was accordingly acquitted, and the ends of justice were defeated in a manner that sometimes prevails in our own day, by an omission to instruct counsel; which seems to be a failing that may at least claim the merit of antiquity.
Though Bothwell was not to be executed for his crime, he was destined to be married; which, next to the capital penalty, was perhaps the highest he could pay, particularly as Mary, who had already seen out a couple of husbands and a favourite, was the lady destined for his future partner. Bothwell had the audacity to give a supper at a tavern in Edinburgh, at the close of the session of Parliament—an entertainment somewhat similar to our ministerial whitebait arrangement at Blackwall—when he drew from his pocket a recommendation of himself as a fitting husband for the Queen of Scotland. Eight bishops, nine earls, and seven lords, most of whom were under the influence of toddy, which turned them into toadies of Bothwell, affixed their names to the document; and, armed with this instrument, he, at the head of a thousand horse, effected the forcible abduction of Mary on her way from Stirling Castle. An elopement on such an extensive scale was something very unusual, even in those days of extravagance, and it has been doubted whether it was with Mary's own consent that Bothwell run away with her. It is, however, indisputable that, after making him Duke of Orkney on the 12th of May, she married him on the 15th, and a number of fresh raps from Knox followed, as a matter of course, the imprudence she had been guilty of. Her subjects took so much offence at this proceeding, that they rose against her; and Bothwell, abandoning her to her fate by flying to Denmark, left her to settle the matter as she could with her own people. A defenceless woman, and a female in distress, was of course impotent against an army of raw Scotchmen—whose rawness is so excessive, that they can very seldom be done—and Mary was consigned as a prisoner to the island of Lochleven. It may be as well to dispose of Bothwell at once, before we proceed; and, having traced him to Denmark, we meet him picking up a scanty subsistence by doing what we are justified in terming pirates' work in general. The badness of business or some other cause ultimately turned his head, and we find him subsequently an inmate of an asylum for lunatics. Here he took to writing confessions; but some of them were so vague, and all of them so contradictory, that, recollecting the horrid story-teller Bothwell was known to be, we are at a loss to decide how much credit may be attached to his statements. If, as a general rule, we may believe half what is said, we shall believe nothing that Bothwell has told us; for he has himself contradicted one half of his own story, and the other moiety must be struck off in pursuance of the principle we have just been adverting to. The fact of his death, not having come from his own mouth, may, however, be safely relied upon.
While Mary was a prisoner at Lochleven, her subjects took advantage of her helplessness to make her sign her own abdication, and settle the crown on the head of her baby son, whose first caps had scarcely been laid aside when they had to be replaced by the royal diadem. Her half-brother, Murray, was appointed regent, and, coming over to Scotland, he was crowned at Stirling, where all who declared themselves sterling friends of poor Mary, gave in their adherence to the new ruler.
There was staying with the governor of the prison a young hobbledehoy of the name of George Douglas, who being on a visit to his brother, was allowed the privilege of seeing the royal captive. Master George Douglas, in natural accordance with the sentimentality peculiar to seventeen, fell sheepishly in love with the handsome Mary. She gave some encouragement to the gawky youth, but rather with the view of getting him to aid her in an escape, than out of any regard to the over sensitive stripling. Going to his brother's bedroom in the night, the boy took the keys from the basket in which they were
Mary's Elopement.
deposited, and letting Mary out, he handed her to a skiff and took her for a row, without thinking of the row his conduct was leading to. When she reached the shore she was joined by several friends, and marched, as the only lady among six thousand men, in the direction of Dumbarton. Murray, however, was instantly on the alert, and meeting her near Glasgow, he gave her such a routing, that she was glad to fly anywhere she could, to get out of the way of his rough treatment. After some little consideration she determined to make for England; and, throwing herself and retinue into a fishing-smack, she sailed smack for Workington, whence she resolved on walking to Carlisle, against the advice of her followers.
Though Elizabeth had expressed some sympathy towards Mary in her struggles, the English queen determined that her Scottish sister was not a person that could be received at the Court of a virgin—and such a virgin—sovereign. The unfortunate woman, who had come over for protection as a fugitive, was at once made a prisoner, first at Carlisle and then at Bolton, when she was virtually put upon her trial for the purpose of ascertaining whether she was good enough to be visited by that dragon of virtue, the chaste Elizabeth.
In order to inculpate the Queen of Scots, an old melodramatic incident, that then perhaps had the merit of novelty, was resorted to by Murray, who produced, towards the closing scene of the trial, a packet of letters, by which it was pretended that Mary had furnished proofs of her own share in the murder of her husband Darnley. It was not very likely that, if guilty, she would have taken the trouble to commit the fact to paper, or to leave the letters about; and it only wanted a dagger wrapped in rag smeared over with red ochre, to complete the melodramatic denouement that Murray seemed anxious to arrive at. These "properties," if we may be allowed the expression, had an unfavourable effect upon Mary's cause, and a delay having taken place in the proceedings, Murray took advantage of it to offer to wash out the red ochre from the retributive rag, and throw all the letters in the fire, on condition of his being left to do as he pleased with the Scotch regency. To this proposition Mary refused to accede, and defied him to the proof of his charges, which were believed to be chiefly false; and she retaliated upon him by accusing him of having been accessary to the death of Darnley. As Elizabeth candidly acknowledged that she believed neither, she at first thought of punishing both; but at length Murray was furnished with means to return home, while poor Mary was conveyed to Tutbury in the county of Stafford, where it does not appear that even the old woman of Tutbury was allowed to be sometimes the companion of her captivity.
The royal prisoner was now under the supervision of the Earl of Shrewsbury, and was permitted, at last, to see a few visitors, several of whom were smitten by the charms of one who, though become a little passe, was, from the gentleness of her manners, always sure to be popular. Norfolk was so much taken with her that he offered her his hand, and promised to employ it in handing her on to the throne of England. As there was still an obstacle to the marriage, outstanding in the name of Bothwell, Mary could only consent, subject to that person's approval. The piratical business in Denmark having become slack, he was glad to take a small bonus to agree to a divorce, and an alliance between Norfolk and Mary Queen of Scots was understood, in private circles, to be one of the marriages in high life, which the season would see solemnised. Unfortunately for the parties interested, Mary
Lord Burleigh.
had to send a remittance, in the year 1571, to some friends in Scotland, and the post being either irregular or untrustworthy, she had despatched the communication by hand, through a confidential servant of the Duke of Norfolk, whose name was Banister. This Banister, who was not in the secret, went gaping about with the letter in his hand, and, thinking there was something mysterious about it, took it to Lord Burleigh, whose significant shakes of the head have earned him a note of admiration (!) in the pages of history. Burleigh, taking the letter in his hand, and placing his fore-finger on the side of his nose, began to wag his head from side to side, like the pendulum of a clock, as if he would be up to the time of day, according to his usual fashion; when, deliberately holding the letter up to the light, he, in the most ungentlemanly manner, perused every word of it. He ascertained that Norfolk and Mary were contriving to drive Elizabeth from the throne, and the Duke was accordingly brought to trial. The stupidity of his servants completed his ruin, for his secretary, instead of destroying the evidences, of his master's guilt, had merely stowed them away under the door mats, and stuffed them among the tiles, so that the house from top to toe bore testimony to the guilt of its owner. He was beheaded in 1572, Elizabeth declaring, as she always did when it was too late, that she intended pardoning him, but that somehow or other her royal clemency was not forthcoming until it was too late to be of any use to its contemplated object.
The queen was urged by many of her admirers to get rid of Mary at once; but, as a cat delights to play with a mouse, Elizabeth seemed to take pleasure in exercising a feline influence over her unfortunate prisoner. The Protestant cause had, about this time, been violently assailed in France, and Elizabeth encouraged the departure of English volunteers to aid the French Huguenots. Among the British auxiliary legion that went forth on this expedition were, of course, a number of adventurers, but one of them, in particular, was destined to cut a conspicuous figure in the history of his country. This was Walter Raleigh, who had been in the habit of huzzaing at every royal progress, and keeping up a loyal shouting at the side of the carriage of the queen, whenever he met it in the public thoroughfares In her visits to Greenwich, Raleigh was often found waiting at the stairs to see her land, and on one occasion the queen was about to set her foot in a puddle, when the adventurer, taking off his cloak, converted it into a temporary square of carpeting, to prevent Elizabeth from making a greater splash than she intended, on her arrival at Greenwich The cloak itself was of no particular value, and a little water was more likely to freshen it up than to detract from its already faded beauty; but the incident flattered the vanity of the queen, and it is said that she never forgot the delicate attention that Walter Raleigh had shown to her.
Queen Elizabeth and Sir Walter Raleigh.
In the year 1571 a rumour got into circulation that a match was on the tapis between Mary and the Duke of Anjou, one of the brothers of the French king; and though the report was unfounded, Elizabeth was so jealous of any one marrying anybody but herself, that she, for about the twentieth time, threw herself into the European market, as an eligible investment for any one who would venture upon a speculation of such a very awful character. She sent over Walsingham as her ambassador, to see what could be done; but the Duke of Anjou, after sufficient negotiation to put an end to any match that might have been contemplated between Mary and himself, had the firmness to decline the honour of an alliance with Elizabeth. The aged angler next baited a hook for the young Duke of Alencon, the boy brother of the Duke of Anjou, but the friends of the child stepped m to prevent the sacrifice.
It was not long after the events we have described, that a conspiracy to take Mary out of prison, and put Elizabeth out of the world, was by accident discovered. One Babington, a man of ardent mind, was implicated in this disgraceful affair, which was discovered by the dangerous and irregular practice of thrusting letters through chinks in walls,—at a time, however, when the post-office arrangements were not so complete as to afford the comfort and convenience of a regular letter-box. Mary was undeniably implicated in the plot, which was so clumsily carried on that fourteen of the parties concerned were executed before she even knew that the scheme had been detected. She was taking an airing on a palfrey,—one of those whose wretched trappings had made her think "caparisons are indeed odious," as she thought of her riding excursions in her dear France,—when a messenger from the queen turned her horse's head towards Fotheringay Castle, in Northamptonshire. Commissioners were instantly sent down to try her for conspiracy, and on the 85th of October, 1586, sentence was pronounced against her in the Star Chamber.
When Elizabeth heard the decision, she affected the utmost reluctance to sign the warrant for Mary's execution; and indeed this reluctance seems to have been somewhat sincere, for she wished the death of her rival without any of the odium attaching to a share in an act of so much cruelty. The English queen would have preferred that one of her subjects should have anticipated the effect of a death-warrant, by taking the life of Mary a little in advance; but no one was base or brutal enough to further the obvious wishes of the female tyrant. The signing of the warrant was performed amid sighs and tears, before Sir Robert Cary, Dame Cary, and the little Carys, when some of the children thought they recognised tears of sincerity falling from Elizabeth's eyes; but Mother Cary's chickens we must not depend upon. After some months of delay and duplicity, during which poor Mary was kept in a state of suspense more cruel than death itself, the warrant was signed; but Elizabeth endeavoured, as far as possible, to throw the blame on her ministers This only aggravates her conduct, for her being ashamed of it, shows she was aware of its enormity, and that she did not consider herself to be merely performing an act of straightforward duty, though a painful one, in consigning to an ignominious death her sister sovereign. Mary was executed on the 7th of February, 1587, in the forty-fifth year of her age; and it is said that when the executioner held up her head by its auburn locks, they came off in his hand, and the grey stubble underneath proved too plainly that Mary had lived for many years a secret adherent to wig principles.
ELIZABETH (CONCLUDED).
A few weeks had elapsed after the execution of poor Mary, when an ambassador, to palaver over the unfortunate queen's only son, James, was sent to Scotland by Elizabeth. When the lad first heard the news he began to roar like a calf, and quiver like an arrow. He vowed vengeance, in a voice of soprano shrillness, and the homely figure of a storm in a slop-basin was faithfully realised.
The ambassador let him have his cry completely out, and then drawing himself up with an air of some dignity, observed, "When you have left off roaring, and can hear me speak, I will tell you the rights of it." "Nobody has any right to murder my mamma," was the reply of the boy, who again opened the sluices of his grief, and allowed the tears to irrigate his face with a couple of meandering rivulets. At length silence being obtained, the ambassador declared that the amputation of Mary's head was accidental as far as Elizabeth was concerned; but, "axe-i-dental you mean," was the bitter reply of her sobbing offspring. The messenger, nevertheless, persisted that the Queen of England meant nothing by signing the death-warrant; that, in fact, she had been "only in fun;" and as he wound up with the offer of an increased pension to James, the heartless brat dried his eyes, with, the observation, that "What's done can't be undone," and pocketed a quarter in advance of his enlarged income. That Elizabeth had really been determined upon Mary's death, is a point upon which our sagacious readers will require no enlightenment; for to them the character of the royal catamountain—we use the Johnsonian word, in preference to the old, familiar term of catamaran—will be clear, from the gallons of midnight oil which we have bestowed upon it. How to get rid of Mary was, in fact, a subject of frequent deliberation between the English queen and her creatures—pretty creatures they were—among whom Leicester and Walsingham stood prominent. Leicester had proposed poison, while Elizabeth suggested assassination; but the dagger and bowl, the emblems of legitimate tragedy, were both laid aside for the farce of a trial. When the sanguinary business was done, the chief actors in it threw the blame upon the subordinates, and poor Mr. Secretary Davison was declared by Elizabeth to have been the sole cause of the execution of the Scottish queen, because he had assisted in executing the deed that consigned her to the scaffold. When Davison was accused of the act, he went about exclaiming, "I! Well, that is the coolest!—Ton my word! What next?" But he soon found what was next, for he was committed to prison, and fined ten thousand pounds, merely to give colour to the accusation. When confidentially apprised of the cause of his detention, he went into hysterics at the half-ridiculous, half-melancholy, idea of his being impounded to give colour to a charge which was altogether false; and "It only just cleans me out!—ruins me, by Jove!" was the touching remark he made as he paid the entire fine imposed upon him, and quitted the prison.
Philip of Spain was now becoming desirous of an attack upon England, without having any definite views, beyond a desire for mischief, which was inherent in his character. He had got together a very formidable fleet, and Elizabeth taking alarm, tried all sorts of plans to check his warlike purpose. One of the expedients of her ministers—and it was not a bad one—was to throw discredit on a quantity of Philip's bills, in the hope of his finding a difficulty in getting them discounted. Sir Francis Drake was despatched to Cadiz with a fleet of thirty sail, and Elizabeth having on his departure said to him, affectionately, "Go, and do your best, Drake—there's a duck," he dashed into Cadiz Bay, knocked down four castles, sunk a hundred ships—. forecastles included—and going home by the Tagus, took a large man-of-war from under the very nose of the Marquis of Santa Cruz, and then made him a polite obeisance from the bow of the vessel.
Philip did not relax in his preparations for invading England, and he got together a very numerous fleet, by hiring vessels wherever he could, and sending his emissaries to engage a whole squadron at a time, like an individual, who, jumping into the first cab on a stand, desires the whole rank to follow him. The Armada—for such it was called—became, of course, rather numerous than select; but there is no doubt that if its quality was queer, its quantity was most respectable.
The naval service of England had been so shabbily provided for, that the British fleet did not exceed thirty-six sail of the line; though by-the-bye, as the authorities have just told us that Drake took or demolished one hundred ships at Cadiz, there seems a slight error in figures, which will occasionally happen in the best regulated histories. As it was not known where the enemy was to land, the High Admiral, Lord Howard of Effingham, was obliged to exclaim—"Now, gentlemen, spread yourselves, spread yourselves!" as he ordered Drake, Hawkins, and Frobisher, to the command of their respective detachments. The gallant Drake took up his station at Ushant, as if he would have said "You shan't," to any foe who might have come to that point to effect a landing. Hawkins cruised near the Scilly Islands to look out, as he said, for the silly fellows who should come in his way; and Lord Henry Seymour cruised along the Flanders coast, while other captains vigorously scoured the Chops of the Channel. It was expected that the Spanish Armada would have come down the Thames, and perhaps amused themselves with an excursion to Rosherville, which was strongly fortified, as well as all the places on the river. The Roshervillians threw themselves into the arms of their resident baron; and the peaceful inhabitants of Sheerness prepared to fight, out of sheer necessity Catholics and Protestants vied with each other in eagerness to repel the invader from their shores; and the gallant fellows living near the Tower, declared in their blunt but expressive language, that "though the foe might pass a Gravesend, outlive a Blackwall, or go in safety through a Greenwich, he would most assuredly never survive a Wapping!"
The queen herself, having driven down in her tilbury to Tilbury Fort, mounted a saddle-horse, and, flushed by her nautical enthusiasm, she looked a very horse-marine as she cantered about upon her steed in the presence of her people. The Earls of Essex and Leicester having held her rein, she majestically bridled up, and sent forth among the crowd a volley of clap-traps, declaring she had come among them, as the song says—
"To conquer, to conqu-e-e-er,
To co-o-onquer, or to boldly die-i-i-i-e."
At length it was determined by Philip that the Spanish Armada should set out; and, as Strype pleasantly tells us, "a pretty set-out they made of it." Poor Santa Cruz, the high admiral, made a most unlucky hit to begin with, by falling ill and dying, when his second in command, the Duke of Parma, followed his leader's example, with most inconvenient rapidity.
The chief command was given to the Duke of Medina Sidonia, who was "a very good man, but a very bad sailor," [Vide George Cruikshank's renowned etching.] and knew so little of maritime affairs, that he is reported to have sent to a dealer in marine stores for an outfit. At length the Invincible Armada was ready to put to sea, and they succeeded in "shoving her off," on the 29th of May, 1588, from the Tagus. The seas, which evidently had no notion of being ruled by any but Britannia, turned turbulent under the Spanish usurpers, and a general rising of the waves made it a toss-up whether Medina Sidonia and his fleet would ride out the storm in safety. Four of the ships were actually lost, and nearly all the rest dispersed, and when the high admiral called upon his subordinate officers to be "calm and collected," he found that the storm had not allowed them to be either the one or the other. Having got his forces together again, as well as he could, the Spanish admiral made another start towards the English coast, and appeared off the Lizard Point, with his fleet drawn up in the form of a crescent, being seven miles from horn to horn, and presenting to the enemy the horns of a dilemma. The English were on shore at Plymouth, playing at bowls on the Hoe, and Drake, who was getting the better of the game, declared he would play it out, for there was no hurry, as he could beat his companions first, and the Spaniards afterwards. Having, at length, taken to their vessels, the British watched the foe as they came rolling in their heavy, lumbering ships up the channel. Their guns were planted so high up that they shot entirely over the English vessels, and into one another, while their unwieldy size rendering them unmanageable, several of them were banged to bits by a series of frightful collisions. To add to the confusion, one of the vessels took fire, and was burnt, by an accident of the cook on board, who, it has been ingeniously suggested, was trying to fry some of the celebrated chops of the channel, "which," as Mrs. Markham says, in her very excellent Abridgment, "you know, my little deal's, you have all heard talked about."
Another large vessel sprung her mast, another sprung a leak, a third burst her binnacle; a fourth shivered her timbers, a fifth lost all her fore part; and the crew were driven by stem necessity into the stern; while on all sides, there prevailed the utmost confusion. Medina Sidonia retired to the back yard of one of his ships, where he sat dejected and alone, and after a good deal of skirmishing, in which the Spaniards got the worst of it at all points of the compass, the duke made the best of his way home again. He arrived at Santander about the end of September, 1588, with the mere skeleton of the force he had started with, and every sailor he brought back, was in himself a complete wreck of what he had been when he quitted his own country. Thus ended the grand design of invading England by means of the Spanish Armada, which, to say the truth, did more mischief to itself than it sustained at the hands of the enemy. Had a public meeting been held at the time to celebrate the victory, we are sure that any English patriot might have proposed a vote of thanks to the Armada, for the "able and impartial manner in which it banged itself almost to pieces, with a total disregard of its own interests, and to the incalculable advantage of England."
On the 4th of September, 1588, Leicester, the queen's favourite, died on his way to Kenilworth; but Elizabeth never felt the loss, for she had already effected a transfer of her affections to Robert Devereux, the young Earl of Essex. Her grief at Leicester's death was so slight, that it did not prevent her from putting an execution into his house, sweeping off all he had, under a bill of sale, and submitting it to the public hammer in order to repay herself the sums she had advanced to him in his life-time. Essex was a mere boy, and the part of favourite to a disagreeable ugly old woman like "our Bessy," was by no means a sinecure. He was expected to appear at all times as the light comedian of the Court, and was compelled to exercise flattery and gallantry towards a harridan who neither justified the one nor inspired the other. He took the earliest opportunity of getting away from her for a short time, by going to sea against her express orders; but he would have braved anything for a respite from the society of the royal bore, whose fondness had become odious to its object, though policy restrained him from openly saying so. On his return home, he found himself almost cut out of the queen's good graces by Sir Walter Raleigh, whose name we have already mentioned as that of a young adventurer. Raleigh was a distinguished navigator, which does not mean that he worked on the cuttings of a railway; but that he belonged to a very humble line, is a point there is not a doubt upon. His reputation rests chiefly on the luggage he brought with him after one of his voyages, when some potatoes, and a few ounces of tobacco crammed into his sac de nuit, were destined to hand him down to immortality. The most popular vegetable the world ever saw, has put Raleigh into everybody's mouth; and when we see the cloud rising from the cigar, our imagination may trace, in the "smoke that so gracefully curls," the name of one whose renown cannot be whiffed away into the regions of oblivion.
The jealousy of Essex caused Raleigh to be sent into Ireland, where he remained
for years; and his long sojourn may account for the hold that the potato had
taken upon the affections of the Irish people.
His rival being thus summarily got rid of, Essex was left to make his way with
the "virgin queen," who was now verging on old age, and treated her
young favourite less as a subject than a son; for she had come to that time
of life when anything she could show in the shape of fondness deserved the epithet
of motherly. The boy was a fine one of his age being brave and good-looking;
but Burleigh and other wise counsellors, seeing that Essex made a fool of the
queen, or rather, that she made a fool of herself by her partiality for him,
took a dislike to the stripling. On one occasion, old Elizabeth, getting kittenish
and playful, boxed the boy's ear, which tingled with the pain—for her hand
had become bony from age—when he laid his hand upon his sword, and was
thrown into disgrace, like a child who has been guilty of naughtiness. He was
soon recalled, and promising that he would "never do so any more,"
he rapidly resumed his place in the favour of the royal dotard.
The death of Burleigh, on the 4th of August, 1598, for whom the hurly-burly of politics had been too much, left the entire field to Essex, and he made the most of it, by getting the appointment of Lord Lieutenant of Ireland; from which he derived the double advantage of advancing his own views and getting away from Elizabeth. He took with him a considerable force, which he somehow or other frittered away without doing any good whatever; and after losing several of his soldiers by marching them completely off their legs, he determined that he must have "a truce to such an unpleasant sort of thing," and entered at once into a truce with the enemy. Elizabeth, who had calculated upon his settling the Irish question at the point of the sword, was disgusted at his failure, and desired him not to come home till he had subjected his honour to thorough repair, and taken all the stains out of his character. As he had no relish for the task imposed upon him, he suddenly quitted his post, and hastening to England, arrived at the palace covered with mud and dirt, for he had made a regular steeple-chase of the latter part of his journey Without going home to change his boots, he rushed into the presence-chamber before the queen was up, and, without asking any questions, he pushed his way to her dressing-room. He found her completely en deshabille, and started back at finding her hair on a block before her, instead of on her head, for she had got her wig in hand, and was trying to turn and twist it into a becoming form, by means of powder, pomatum, tongs, combs, and curl-papers. Startled by his sudden appearance, she hastened to put herself to rights as well as she could, and was angry at the intrusion; but as he fell at her feet, she contrived to cover the baldness of her head, and then received him more affably. He had no sooner gone than she began to reflect upon his presumption in having thus taken her unawares; and when he returned, after going home to dress, she would have nothing to say to him. He was desired to stay at home, and consider himself a prisoner in his own house; but as the old crone had allowed so many former familiarities, he was quite unprepared for the game of propriety she was now practising. He went home and took to his bed, for it made him perfectly sick to witness the sudden prudery of the queen, who, during his illness sent him a daily basin of broth from her own table. She ordered eight eminent physicians to consult on his case; but this calling in of a powerful medical force looks very much as if she had been disposed to get rid of him, and preferred physic to law for once, as a method of destruction. In spite of his eight doctors Essex got better, and sent submissive messages, to which Elizabeth turned a deaf ear; and Essex, by attributing her deafness to age, irritated her beyond expression. He was told that he would find her unbending; when he at once replied that he had found her bent nearly double, when he last had the honour of seeing her, and he was glad to hear that royalty was once more beginning to look up in England, by taking its proper position. These remarks irritated Elizabeth beyond expression; and having brought him before the privy council, she caused a sentence of banishment to be inflicted upon him, which he sarcastically declared was agreeable to him, as it would keep from him the sight of Elizabeth, whom he now denominated his "old queene." Anxious to try the effect of intimidation upon the nervous septuagenarian who now sat upon the throne, he entered into a conspiracy with Scotland; but it was soon found out, and, rushing with desperate fury into the streets, he tried to raise a mob by addressing inflammatory speeches to the populace. The citizens looked at him and listened to him, but shaking their heads, passed on, when he soon found out that a solo movement unsupported by any concerted piece, rendered him truly ridiculous. At length he was hurried off to the Tower, and having been tried, he was condemned to die, though he fully expected the palsied old creature who held the sceptre in her tremulous hand, would, in a love-sick mood, decree his pardon.
It is said that in "happier days," when Essex had been in the habit
of striking "the light, the light, the light guitar," to the tin-like
sound of Elizabeth's voice, she had given him a ring, telling him if ever he
fell into disgrace, the return of that ring would obtain his pardon. Elizabeth
was from day to day listening to every knock, expecting the identical ring,
but it never came, and on the 25th of February, 1601, he was actually beheaded.
Elizabeth never held up her Head again; but indeed, as she had long contracted
a stoop from debility and old age, there is nothing astonishing in the fact
we have mentioned
The spectacle of an old woman pining in love after a mere boy, was revolting
enough; but the fact is made doubly disgusting by the recollection that she
had herself caused the death of the object of her disreputable dotage.
Some time after the execution of Essex, the Countess of Nottingham was taken ill, and sending for Elizabeth confessed that the favourite had given the ring before his death to be delivered to the queen, but that it had been kept back for party purposes. The sovereign, who was shaking in every limb from ambiguity and agitation, flew at the Countess of Nottingham in her bed, seized her by the shoulder, and administered the most violent cuffs that a female of seventy is capable of bestowing on one who has offended her. "Take that—and that—and that—and that—and that!"—was the cry of the queen, as she suited the action to the word in every instance. The exertion was too much for the tottering fabric of human frailty, who threw herself on the floor when she got to her own room, and refusing to go to bed, rolled about for ten days on a pile of cushions. Being asked to name her successor, she is said by some to have specified James; while others maintain that she said nothing. When she was too exhausted to oppose her attendants, they got her into bed, and on the 24th of March, 1603, she died in the seventieth year of her age, and forty-fifth of her reign.
Many people have a very natural objection to written characters, but we feel compelled to give a written character of Queen Elizabeth; and we are sorry to remark, that we can say very little that will be thought complimentary. In person she was bony, coarse, muscular and masculine. Her hair was red, but this she inherited from her father Henry, and thus her red hair has been said, by that mountebank, Strype, to have been he-red-hair-tary at that time in the royal family. She endeavoured, by the aid of dress, to make up for the unkindness of Nature; and she surrounded herself with a quantity of hoops, which, as her figure was rather tub-like, may be considered appropriate. She never gave away her old clothes, and no less than three thousand dresses were found at her death, the bodies of which, it is said, would have covered half London at its then size, while the skirts would have covered all the outskirts. Her portrait is always drawn with an enormous ruff round her neck, which she adopted, it is believed, to hide the roughness of her chin, which showed Nature to be her enemy, for it had bearded her frightfully.
She was exceedingly fond of visiting the houses of the nobility; but she usually ruined all whom she honoured in this way, by the expense they were put to in entertaining her. Lord Leicester, who had her staying with him at Kenilworth, for a few days, nearly ruined himself in bears, of which he took in a great quantity to bait for the amusement of his sovereign.
In disposition, manners, and appearance, there was nothing feminine or graceful about Elizabeth; but Hume, who seems very fond of her, tells us, that in weighing her, one ought to sink the female and think only of the sovereign. We cannot, however, understand a person being at the same time a good queen and a bad woman, unless the woman happens to be somebody beside herself, when she is obviously unfit to be trusted with the responsibility of government. Elizabeth had a certain amount of talent; "for she had," says Hume, "both temper and capacity;" but capacity seems to have belonged rather to the bony bulkiness of her unfeminine form, than to the extent of her intellect.
Her private character was exceedingly disreputable; and her amorous propensities, which seemed rather to increase with her old age, rendered her disgusting to her contemporaries, as well as ridiculous in the eyes of posterity. She was constantly in love with some stripling about the Court, who when he became un peu passe, was thrown aside for some more juvenile admirer.
There can be no doubt that the admirable character of Mrs. Skewton, if we may be allowed an irreverent allusion to fiction amid the awful solemnities of fact, is to be attributed to the extensive historical research of Mr. Dickens, and his intimate acquaintance with the period of the reign of Elizabeth. It may be admitted that she governed with considerable firmness; but the praise, such as it is, of "coming it exceedingly strong," is, after all, a most questionable compliment.
Several of the greatest names in science and literature, shed a glory on Elizabeth's reign; but the most magnificent sunshine, by falling on a mean object, does not make the object itself in reality more respectable. Bacon, Shakspeare, Spenser, and others, are said to have flourished at the time; but we have examined their autographs with peculiar care, and have seen no symptoms of flourishing about any one of them. To say they all wrote at the period, would be true; but to say they flourished is an exaggeration to which we will not lend ourselves.
The reign of Elizabeth was, at least, considerably in advance of our own time in one respect, for it is remarkable for the passing of a Poor Law which, unlike that of the present day, was founded on the principles of humanity. This blot, however, will, we trust, be removed in time for a sixth—though not quite quickly enough for a second, third, fourth, or fifth—edition of this work; for the Spirit of the Times has doomed the Poor Law to perdition.
Theatres first came into vogue in Elizabeth's reign; and it is a fact at which our sober reverence for the Swan of Avon takes considerable alarm, that that ever-to-be lamented bird was in the habit of exercising his quills in the neighbourhood of the New Cut, at a concern called the Globe, where the prices were only twopence to the pit, and one penny in the gallery. The critics sat on the stage, and were furnished with pipes and tobacco—a gentle intimation to them to "draw it mild" in their notices of the performances. It is possible, that through the fumes of the tobacco they got a bird's-eye view of the stage, which was favourable to their performance of their critical duties. The audience used to read, play at cards, smoke, and drink, before the performance began; and perhaps, if the piece happened to be dull, they relieved it by some of those pastimes even during its progress.
Smoking, which has since reached such universality that every man one meets is a chimney, and every boy a flue, is known to have been introduced by Raleigh, who, fearing that his friends would rally him on the propensity, used to indulge it in secret. One day some smoke was seen to issue from his apartment, and the people about him fearing he was on fire, inundated him with buckets of water that put him out very seriously, and determined him in future not to smoke the pipe of privacy. The mode of living was not very luxurious in Elizabeth's reign, for a glass of ale and a slice of bread formed the ordinary breakfast, while brawn was an article of general consumption; and, as Elizabeth was very fond of it, her great brawny arms are easily accounted for.
An attempt has been made to attribute various graces and accomplishments to Elizabeth, which, even after attempting to enlarge our credulity, and stir up our organ of veneration to its fullest extent, we are unable to give her credit for It is said that she played, sang, and danced tolerably well, though her figure seems to give very weighty testimony against her probable possession of the last of these accomplishments.
She admired dancing among her courtiers, and she is said to have promoted Hatton for his terpsichorean efforts, she having once seen him practising his steps, when she declared that he held himself so well in the first position, that she would elevate him to the first position as soon as possible. Elizabeth, though profuse in her own indulgences, was stingy in the extreme to others, and her accumulation of old clothes proves a tenacity of bad habits, and a shabbiness towards her femme de chambre, that are on a par with the other despicable points in her character.