QUEEN ELIZABETH
s Btst f)istorits
ENGLAND
BY
JOHN RICHARD GREEN, LL.D.
Illustrated
WITH A SUPPLEMENTARY CHAPTER OF RECENT EVENTS
BY JULIAN HAWTHORNE
IN FOUR VOLUMES
VOLUME TWO
NEW YORK AND LONDON
THE CO-OPERATIVE PUBLICATION SOCIETY
HISTORY OF ENGLAND
VOLUME TWO
2064912
(XOTTEKTS.
BOOK V.
THE MONARCHY. 1461-1640.
CHAPTER I.
MM
THB HOUSE OF YORK. 14611485 11
CHAPTER II.
THE REVIVAL OP LEABHINQ. 14851514 ..... 78
CHAPTER IIL
WOLSEY. 15141529 Ill
CHAPTER IV.
THOMAS CROMWELL. 15291540 . . . . 147
BOOK VI.
THE REFORMATION. 15401608.
CHAPTER I.
THB PROTESTANT REVOLUTION. 15401558 .... SOI
CHAPTER IL
THB CATHOLIC REACTION. 15531558 . S46
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER IIL
Mm
THE ENGLAND OF ELIZABETH. 15581561 .... 297
CHAPTER IV.
ENGLAND AND MAEY STUART. 15611567 .... 881
CHAPTER V.
ENGLAND AND THE PAPACY. 1567 157 ... 867
CHAPTER VL
ENGLAND AND SPAIN. 15831593 420
CHAPTER VIL
THE ENGLAND OF SHAKSPERE. 10931603 . ... 456
BOOK V.
THE MONARCHY.
14611540.
AUTHORITIES FOR BOOK V.
14611540.
Edward the Fifth is the subject of a work attributed to Sir
Thomas More, and which almost certainly derives much of its im-
portance from Archbishop Morton. Whatever its historical worth
may be, it is remarkable in its English form as the first historical
work of any literary value which we possess written in our modern
prose. The " Letters and Papers of Richard the Third and Henry
the Seventh, " some " Memorials of Henry the Seventh, " including
his life by Bernard Andre of Toulouse, and a volume of " Materials"
for a history of his reign have been edited for the Rolls Series. A
biography of Henry is among the works of Lord Bacon. The his-
tory of Erasmus in England must be followed in his own interesting
letters ; the most accessible edition of the typical book of the revi-
val, the " Utopia, " is the Elizabethan translation, published by Mr.
Arber. Mr. Lupton has done much to increase our scanty knowl-
edge of Colet by his recent editions of several of his works. Halle's
Chronicle extends from the reign of Edward the Fourth to that of
Henry the Eighth ; for the latter he is copied by Grafton and fol-
lowed by Holinshed. Cavendish has given a faithful and touching
account of Wolsey in his later days, but for any real knowledge of
his administration or the foreign policy of Henry the Eighth we
must turn from these to the invaluable Calendars of State Papers for
this period from the English, Spanish, and Austrian archives, with
the prefaces of Professor Brewer and Mr. Bergenroth. Cromwell's
early life as told by Foxe is a mass of fable, and the State Papers
afford the only real information as to his ministry. For Sir Thomas
More we have a touching life by his son-in-law, Roper. The more
important documents for the religious history of the time will be
found in Mr. Pocock's edition of Burnet's "History of the Reforma-
tion ;" those relating to the dissolution of the monasteries in the
collection of letters on that subject published by the Camden Society,
and in the " Original Letters" of Sir Henry Ellis. A mass of mate-
rials of very various value has been accumulated by Strype in his
collections, which commence at this period.
CHAPTER I.
THE HOUSE OP YORK.
1461-1485.
WITH the victory of Towton the war of the succession
came practically to an end. Though Margaret still strug-
gled on the northern border and the treachery of Warwick
for a while drove the new king from his realm, this gleam
of returning fortune only brought a more fatal ruin on the
House of Lancaster and seated the House of York more
firmly on the throne. But the Wars of the Roses did far
more than ruin one royal house or set up another. They
found England, in the words of Commines, "among all
the world's lordships of which I have knowledge, that
where the public weal is best ordered, and where least vio-
lence reigns over the people." An English King the
shrewd observer noticed "can undertake no enterprise
of account without assembling his Parliament, which is a
thing most wise and holy, and therefore are these kings
stronger and better served" than the despotic sovereigns
of the Continent. The English kingship, as a judge, Sir
John Fortescue, could boast when writing at this time,
was not an absolute but a limited monarchy ; the land was
not a land where the will of the prince was itself the law,
but where the prince could neither make laws nor impose
taxes save by his subjects' consent. At no time had Par-
liament played so constant and prominent a part in the
government of the realm. At no time had the principles
of constitutional liberty seemed so thoroughly understood
and so dear to the people at large. The long Parliamen-
tary contest between the Crown and the two Houses since
the days of Edward the First had firmly established the
12 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. |BOOK v
great securities of national liberty the right of freedom
from arbitrary taxation, from arbitrary legislation, from
arbitrary imprisonment, and the responsibility of even the
highest servants of the Crown to Parliament and to the
law.
But with the close of the struggle for the succession this
liberty suddenly disappeared. If the Wars of the Roses
failed in utterly destroying English freedom, they suc-
ceeded in arresting its progress for more than a hundred
years. With them we enter on an epoch of constitutional
retrogression in which the slow work of the age that went
before it was rapidly undone. From the accession of Ed-
ward the Fourth Parliamentary life was almost suspended,
or was turned into a mere form by the overpowering in-
fluence of the Crown. The legislative powers of the two
Houses were usurped by the royal Council. Arbitrary
taxation reappeared in benevolences and forced loans.
Personal liberty was almost extinguished by a formidable
spy-system and by the constant practice of arbitrary im-
prisonment. Justice was degraded by the prodigal use of
bills of attainder, by a wide extension of the judicial power
of the royal Council, by the servility of judges, by the
coercion of juries. So vast and sweeping was the change
that to careless observers of a later day the constitutional
monarchy of the Edwards and the Henries seemed sud-
denly to have transformed itself under the Tudors into a
despotism as complete as the despotism of the Turk. Such
a view is no doubt exaggerated and unjust. Bend and
strain the law as he might, there never was a time when
the most wilful of English rulers failed to own the re-
straints of law; and the obedience of the most servile
among English subjects lay within bounds, at once politi-
cal and religious, which no theory of King- worship could
bring them to overpass. But even if we make these re-
serves, the character of the monarchy from the days of
Edward the Fourth to the days of Elizabeth remains some-
thing strange and isolated in our history. It is hard to
CHAP. 1.] THE MONARCHY. 14611540. 18
connect the kingship of the old English, the Norman, the
Angevin, or the Plantagenet kings with the kingship of
the House of York or of the House of Tudor.
The primary cause of this great change lay in the re-
covery of its older strength by the Crown. Through the
last hundred and fifty years the monarchy had been ham-
pered by the pressure of the war. Through the last fifty
it had been weakened by the insecurity of a disputed suc-
cession. It was to obtain supplies for the strife with Scot-
land and the strife with France that the earlier Plantage-
nets had been forced to yield to the ever-growing claims
which were advanced by the Parliament. It was to win
the consent of Parliament to its occupation of the throne
and its support against every rival that the house of Lan-
caster bent yet more humbly to its demands. But with
the loss of Guienne the war with France came virtually to
an end. The war with Scotland died down into a series
of border forays. The Wars of the Roses settled the ques-
tion of the succession, first by the seeming extinction of
the House of Lancaster, and then by the utter ruin of the
House of York. The royal treasury was not only relieved
from the drain which had left the crown at the mercy of
the Third Estate ; it was filled as it had never been filled
before by the forfeitures and confiscations of the civil war.
In the one bill of attainder which followed Towton twelve
great nobles and more than a hundred knights and squires
were stripped of their estates to the king's profit. Nearly
a fifth of the land is said to have passed into the royal pos-
session at one period or other of the civil strife. Edward the
Fourth and Henry the Seventh not only possessed a power
untrammelled by the difficulties which had beset the Crown
since the days of Edward the First, but they were masters
of a wealth such as the Crown had never known since the
days of Henry the Second. Throughout their reigns these
kings showed a firm resolve to shun the two rocks on which
the monarchy had been so nearly wrecked. No policy
was too inglorious that enabled them to avoid the need
14 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK V.
of war. The inheritance of a warlike policy, the con-
sciousness of great military abilities, the cry of his own
people for a renewal of the struggle, failed to lure Edward
from his system of peace. Henry clung to peace in spite
of the threatening growth of the French monarchy : he re-
fused to be drawn into any serious war even by its ac-
quisition of Brittany and of the coast-line that ran un-
broken along the Channel. Nor was any expedient too
degrading if it swelled the royal hoard. Edward by a
single stroke, the grant of the customs to the king for life,
secured a source of revenue which went far to relieve the
Crown from its dependence on Parliament. He stooped
to add to the gold which his confiscations amassed by
trading on a vast scale; his ships, freighted with tin,
wool, and cloth, made the name of the merchant-king fa-
mous in the ports of Italy and Greece. Henry was as
adroit and as shameless a financier as his predecessor. He
was his own treasurer, he kept his own accounts, he ticked
off with his own hand the compositions he levied on the
western shires for their abortive revolts.
With peace and a full treasury the need for calling Par-
liament together was removed. The collapse of the Houses
was in itself a revolution. Up to this moment they had
played a more and more prominent part in the government
of the realm. The progress made under the earlier Plan-
tagenets had gone as steadily on under Henry the Fourth
and his successor. The Commons had continued their ad-
vance. Not only had the right of self -taxation and of the
initiation of laws been explicitly yielded to them, but they
had interfered with the administration of the state, had
directed the application of subsidies, and called royal min
isters to account by repeated instances of impeachment.
Under the first two kings of the House of Lancaster Par-
liament had been summoned almost every year. Under
Henry the Sixth an important step was made in constitu-
tional progress by abandoning the old form of presenting
the requests of Parliament in the form of petitions which
CHAP. 1.] THE MONARCHY. 14611540. 15
were subsequently moulded into statutes by the royal
Council. The statute itself in its final form was now
presented for the royal assent and the Crown deprived of
all opportunity of modifying it. But with the reign of
Edward the Fourth not only this progress but the very
action of Parliament comes almost to an end. For the
first time since the days of John not a single law which
promoted freedom or remedied the abuses of power was
even proposed. The Houses indeed were only rarely called
together by Edward ; they were only once summoned dur-
ing the last thirteen years of Henry the Seventh. But
this discontinuance of Parliamentary life was not due
merely to the new financial system of the crown. The
policy of the kings was aided by the internal weakness of
Parliament itself. No institution suffered more from the
civil war. The Houses became mere gatherings of nobles
with their retainers and partisans. They were like armed
camps to which the great lords came with small armies at
their backs. When arms were prohibited the retainers of
the warring barons appeared, as in the Club Parliament
of 1426, with clubs on their shoulders. When clubs were
forbidden they hid stones and balls of lead in their clothes.
Amid scenes such as these the faith in and reverence
for Parliaments could hardly fail to die away. But the
very success of the House of York was a more fatal blow
to the trust in them. It was by the act of the Houses that
the Lancastrian line had been raised to the throne. Its
title was a Parliamentary title. Its existence was in fact
a contention that the will of Parliament could override the
claims of blood in the succession to the throne. With all
this the civil war dealt roughly and decisively. The Par-
liamentary line was driven from the throne. The Parlia-
mentary title was set aside as usurpation. The House of
York based its claim to the throne on the incapacity of
Parliament to set aside pretensions which were based on
sheer nearness of blood. The fall of the House of Lancas-
ter, the accession of the Yorkist Kings, must have seemed
16 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Boos V.
to the men who had witnessed the struggle a crushing de-
feat of the Parliament.
Weakened by failure, discredited by faction, no longer
needful as a source of supplies, it was easy for the Mon-
archy to rid itself of the check of the two Houses, and
their riddance at once restored the Crown to the power it
had held under the earlier Kings. But in actual fact Ed-
ward the Fourth found himself the possessor of a far greater
authority than this. The structure of feudal society fronted
a feudal King with two great rival powers in the Baron-
age and the Church. Even in England, though feudalism
had far less hold than elsewhere, the noble and the priest
formed effective checks on the Monarchy. But at the close
of the Wars of the Roses these older checks no longer served
as restraints upon the action of the Crown. With the
growth of Parliament the weight of the Baronage as a
separate constitutional element in the realm, even the sep-
arate influence of the Church, had fallen more and more
into decay. For their irregular and individual action was
gradually substituted the legal and continuous action of
the three Estates ; and now that the assembly of the estates
practically ceased it was too late to revive the older checks
which in earlier days had fettered the action of the Crown.
The kingship of Edward and his successors therefore was
not a mere restoration of the kingship of John or of Henry
the Second. It was the kingship of those Kings apart
from the constitutional forces which in their case stood
side by side with kingship, controlling and regulating its
action, apart from the force of custom, from the strong
arm of the baron, from the religious sanctions which
formed so effective a weapon in the hands of the priest, in
a word apart from that social organization from which our
political constitution had sprung. Nor was the growth of
Parliament the only cause for the weakness of these feudal
restraints. The older social order which had prevailed
throughout Western Europe since the fall of the Roman
Empire was now passing away. The speculation of the
CHAP. 1.] THE MONARCHY. 1461-1540. 17
twelfth century, the scholastic criticism of the thirteenth,
the Lollardry and socialism of the fourteenth century, had
at last done their work. The spell of the past, the spell of
custom and tradition, which had enchained the minds of
men, was roughly broken. The supremacy of the warrior
in a world of war, the severance of privileged from un-
privileged classes, no longer seemed the one natural struc-
ture of society. The belief in its possession of supernatu-
ral truths and supernatural powers no longer held man in
unquestioning awe of the priesthood. The strength of the
Church was sapped alike by theological and moral revolt,
while the growth of new classes, the new greed of peace
and of the wealth that comes of peace, the advance of in-
dustry, the division of property, the progress of centralized
government, dealt fatal blows at the feudal organization
of the state.
Nor was the danger merely an external one. Noble and
priest alike were beginning to disbelieve in themselves.
The new knowledge which was now dawning on the world,
the new direct contact with the Greek and Roman litera-
tures which was just beginning to exert its influence on
western Europe, told above all on these wealthier and more
refined classes. The young scholar or noble who crossed
the Alps brought from the schools of Florence the dim im-
pression of a republican liberty or an imperial order which
disenchanted him of the world in which he found himself.
He looked on the feudalism about him as a brutal anarchy;
he looked on the Church itself as the supplanter of a nobler
and more philosophic morality. In England as elsewhere
the great ecclesiastical body still seemed imposing from
the memories of its past, its immense wealth, its tradition
of statesmanship, its long association with the intellectual
and religious aspirations of men, its hold on social life.
But its real power was small. Its moral inertness, its lack
of spiritual enthusiasm, gave it less and less hold on the
religious minds of the day. Its energies indeed seemed
absorbed in a mere clinging to existence. For in spite of
18 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK V.
steady repression Lollardry still lived on, no longer indeed
as an organized movement, but in scattered and secret
groups whose sole bond was a common loyalty to the Bible
and a common spirit of revolt against the religion of their
day. Nine years after the accession of Henry the Sixth
the Duke of Gloucester was traversing England with men-
at-arms for the purpose of repressing the risings of the Lol-
lards and of hindering the circulation of their invectives
against the clergy. In 1449 " Bible men" were still suffi-
ciently formidable to call a prelate to the front as a con-
troversialist : and the very title of Bishop Pecock's work,
"A Represser of overmuch blaming of the clergy," shows
the damage done by their virulent criticism. Its most
fatal effect was to rob the priesthood of moral power.
Taunted with a love of wealth, with a lower standard of
life than that of the ploughman and weaver who gathered
to read the Bible by night, dreading in themselves any
burst of emotion or enthusiasm as a possible prelude to
heresy, the clergy ceased to be the moral leaders of the na-
tion. They plunged as deeply as the men about them into
the darkest superstition, and above all into the belief in
sorcery and magic which formed so remarkable a feature
of the time. It was for conspiracy with a priest to waste
the King's life by sorcery that Eleanor Cobham did pen-
ance through the streets of London. The mist which
wrapped the battle-field of Barnet was attributed to the
incantations of Friar Bungay. The one pure figure which
rises out of the greed, the selfishness, the scepticism of the
time, the figure of Joan of Arc, was looked on by the doc-
tors and priests who judged her as that of a sorceress.
The prevalence of such beliefs tells its own tale of the in-
tellectual state of the clergy. They were ceasing in fact
to be an intellectual class art all. The monasteries were no
longer seats of learning. "I find in them," says Poggio,
an Italian scholar who visited England some twenty years
after Chaucer's death, "men given up to sensuality in
abundance, but very few lovers of learning and those of a
CHAP. 1.] THE MONARCHY. 14611540. 19
barbarous sort, skilled more in quibbles and sophisms than
in literature." The statement is no doubt colored by the
contempt of the new scholars for the scholastic philosophy
which had taken the place of letters in England as else-
where, but even scholasticism was now at its lowest ebb.
The erection of colleges, which began in the thirteenth cen-
tury but made little progress till the time we have reached,
failed to arrest the quick decline of the universities both
in the numbers and learning of their students. Those at
Oxford amounted to only a fifth of the scholars who had
attended its lectures a century before, and Oxford Latin
became proverbial for a jargon in which the very tradition
of grammar had been lost. Literature, which had till now
rested mainly in the hands of the clergy, came almost to
an end. Of all its nobler forms history alone lingered on ;
but it lingered in compilations or extracts from past writ-
ers, such as make up the so-called works of Walsingham,
in jejune monastic annals, or worthless popular compen-
diums. The only real trace of mental activity was seen in
the numerous treatises which dealt with alchemy or magic,
the elixir of life, or the philosopher's stone; a fungoua
growth which even more clearly than the absence of health-
ier letters witnessed to the progress of intellectual decay.
Somewhat of their old independence lingered indeed
among the lower clergy and the monastic orders ; it was
in fact the successful resistance of the last to an effort made
to establish arbitrary taxation which brought about their
ruin. Up to the terrible statutes of Thomas Cromwell the
clergy in convocation still asserted boldly their older rights
against the Crown. But it was through its prelates that
the Church exercised a directly political influence, and
these showed a different temper from the clergy. Driven
by sheer need, by the attack of the barons on their tempo-
ral possessions and of the Lollard on their spiritual author-
ity, into dependence on the Crown, their weight was thrown
into the scale of the monarchy. Their weakness told di-
rectly on the constitutional progress of the realm, for
20 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK V.
through the diminution in the number of the peers tempo-
ral the greater part of the House of Lords was now com-
posed of spiritual peers, of bishops and the greater abbots.
The statement which attributes this lessening of the bar-
onage to the Wars of the Roses seems indeed to be an error.
Although Henry the Seventh, in dread of opposition to his
throne, summoned only a portion of the temporal peers to
his first Parliament there were as many barons at his ac-
cession as at the accession of Henry the Sixth. Of the
greater houses only those of Beaufort and Tiptoft were ex-
tinguished by the civil war. The decline of the baronage,
the extinction of the greater families, the break-up of the
great estates, had in fact been going on throughout the
reign of the Edwards; and it was after Agincourt that
the number of temporal peers sank to its lowest ebb. From
that time till the time of the Tudors they numbered but
fifty-two. A reduction in the numbers of the baronage,
however, might have been more than compensated by the
concentration of great estates in the hands of the houses
that survived. What wrecked it as a military force was
the revolution which was taking place in the art of war.
The introduction of gunpowder ruined feudalism. The
mounted and heavily armed knight gave way to the meaner
footman. Fortresses which had been impregnable against
the attacks of the Middle Ages crumbled before the new
artillery. Although gunpowder had been in use as early
as Crey it was not till the accession of the House of Lan-
caster that it was really brought into effective employment
as a military resource. But the revolution in warfare was
immediate. The wars of Henry the Fifth were wars of
sieges. The "Last of the Barons," as Warwick has pic-
turesquely been styled, relied mainly on his train of artil-
lery. It was artillery that turned the day at Barnet and
Tewkesbury, and that gave Henry the Seventh his victory
over the formidable dangers which assailed him. The
strength which the change gave to the Crown was in fact
almost irresistible. Throughout the Middle Ages the call
CHAP. l.J THE MONARCHY. 14611540. 21
of a great baron had been enough to raise a formidable re-
volt. Yeomen and retainers took down the bow from their
chimney corner, knights buckled on their armor, and in a
few days a host threatened the throne. Without artillery,
however, such a force was now helpless, and the one train
of artillery in the kingdom lay at the disposal of the King.
But a far greater strength than guns could give was
given to the monarchy by its maintenance of order and by
its policy of peace. For two hundred years England had
been almost constantly at war, and to war without had
been added discord and misrule within. As the country
tasted the sweets of rest and firm government that reaction
of feeling, that horror of fresh civil wars, that content with
its own internal growth and indifference to foreign aggran-
dizement, which distinguished the epoch of the Tudors be-
gan to assert its power. The Crown became identified
with the thought of national prosperity, almost with the
thought of national existence. Loyalty drew to itself the
force of patriotism. Devotion to the Crown became one in
men's minds with devotion to their country. For almost
a hundred years England lost all sense of a national indi-
viduality ; it saw itself only in the Crown. The tendency
became irresistible as the nation owned in the power of its
Kings its one security for social order, its one bulwark
against feudal outrage and popular anarchy. The violence
and anarchy which had always clung like a taint to the
baronage grew more and more unbearable as the nation
moved forward to a more settled peacefulness and industry.
But this tendency to violence received a new impulse from
the war with France. Long before the struggle was over
it had done its fatal work on the mood of the English no-
ble. His aim had become little more than a lust for gold,
a longing after plunder, after the pillage of farms, the sack
of cities, the ransom of captives. So intense was the greed
of gain that in the later years of the war only a threat of
death could keep the fighting-men in their ranks, and the
results of victory after victory were lost through the anr-
22 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK V.
iety of the conquerors to deposit their booty and captives
safely at home. The moment the hand of such leaders as
Henry the Fifth or Bedford was removed the war died
down into mere massacre and brigandage. " If God had
been a captain nowadays, "exclaimed a French general,"
"he would have turned marauder." The temper thus
nursed on the fields of France found at last scope for action
in England itself. Even before the outbreak of the War
of the Roses the nobles had become as lawless and dissolute
at home as they were greedy and cruel abroad.
But with the struggle of York and Lancaster and the
paralysis of government which it brought with it, all hold
over the baronage was gone; and the lawlessness and bru-
tality of their temper showed itself without a check. The
disorder which their violence wrought in a single district
of the country is brought home by the Paston Letters, an
invaluable series of domestic correspondence which lifts
for us a corner of the veil that hides the social state of
England in the fifteenth century. We see houses sacked,
judges overawed or driven from the bench, peaceful men
hewn down by assassins or plundered by armed bands,
women carried off to forced marriages, elections controlled
by brute force, parliaments degraded into camps of armed
retainers. As the number of their actual vassals declined
with the progress of enfranchisement and the upgrowth
of the freeholder, the nobles had found a substitute for
them in the grant of their "liveries," the badges of their
households, to the smaller gentry and farmers of their
neighborhood, and this artificial revival of the dying feu-
dalism became one of the curses of the day. The outlaw,
the broken soldier returning penniless from the wars, found
shelter and wages in the train of the greater barons, and
furnished them with a force ready at any moment for vio-
lence or civil strife. The same motives which brought the
freeman of the tenth century to commend himself to thegn
or baron forced the yeoman or smaller gentleman of the
fifteenth to don the cognizance of his powerful neighbor,
CHAP. 1.] THE MONARCHY. 14611540. 23
and to ask for a grant of " livery" which would secure him
aid and patronage in fray or suit. For to meddle with
such a retainer was perilous even for sheriff or judge ; and
the force which a noble could summon at his call sufficed
to overawe a law-court or to drag a culprit from prison or
dock. The evils of this system of "maintenance" as it
was called had been felt long before the Wars of the Roses ;
and statutes both of Edward the First and of Richard the
Second had been aimed against it. But it was in the civil
war that it showed itself in its full force. The weakness
of the crown and the strife of political factions for suprem-
acy left the nobles masters of the field; and the white rose
of the House of York, the red rose of the House of Lan-
caster, the portcullis of the Beauforts, the pied bull of the
Nevilles, the bear and ragged staff which Warwick bor-
rowed from the Beauchamps, were seen on hundreds of
breasts in Parliament or on the battle-field.
The lawlessness of the baronage tended as it had always
tended to the profit of the crown by driving the people at
large to seek for order and protection at the hands of the
monarchy. And at this moment the craving for such a
protection was strengthened by the general growth of
wealth and industry. The smaller proprietors of the coun-
ties were growing fast both in wealth and numbers, while
the burgess class in the cities were drawing fresh riches
from the development of trade which characterized this
period. The noble himself owed his importance to his
wealth. Poggio, as he wandered through the island, noted
that " the noble who has the greatest revenue is most re-
spected ; and that even men of gentle blood attend to coun-
try business and sell their wool and cattle, not thinking
it any disparagement to engage in rural industry." Slowly
but surely the foreign commerce of the country, hitherto
conducted by the Italian, the Hanse merchant, or the trader
of Catalonia or southern Gaul, was passing into English
hands. English merchants were settled at Florence and
at Venice. English merchant ships appeared in the Bal-
24 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK V.
tic. The first faint upgrowth of manufactures was seen
in a crowd of protective statutes which formed a marked
feature in the legislation of Edward the Fourth. The
weight which the industrial classes had acquired was seen
in the bounds which their opinion set to the Wars of the
Roses. England presented to Philippe de Commines the
rare spectacle of a land where, brutal as was its civil strife,
" there are no buildings destroyed or demolished by war,
and where the mischief of it falls on those who make the
war." The ruin and bloodshed were limited in fact to the
great lords and their feudal retainers. If the towns once
or twice threw themselves, as at Towton, into the strug-
gle, the trading and agricultural classes for the most part
stood wholly apart from it. While the baronage was dash-
ing itself to pieces in battle after battle justice went on
undisturbed. The law courts sat at Westminster. The
judges rode on circuit as of old. The system of jury trial
took more and more its modern form by the separation of
the jurors from the witnesses. But beneath this outer
order and prosperity a social revolution was beginning
which tended as strongly as the outrages of the baronage
to the profit of the crown. The rise in the price of wool
was giving a fresh impulse to the changes in agriculture
which had begun with the Black Death and were to go
steadily on for a hundred years to come. These changes
were the throwing together of the smaller holdings, and
the introduction of sheep-farming, on an enormous scale.
The new wealth of the merchant classes helped on the
change. They began to invest largely in land, and these
"farming gentlemen and clerking knights," as Latimer
bitterly styled them, were restrained by few traditions or
associations in their eviction of the smaller tenants. The
land indeed had been greatly underlet, and as its value rose
with the peace and firm government of the early Tudors
the temptation to raise the customary rents became irre-
sistible. " That which went heretofore for twenty or forty
pounds a year," we learn in Henry the Eighth's day, "now
CHAP. 1.] THE MONAECHY. 1461-1540. 25
is let for fifty or a hundred." But it had been only by
this low scale of rent that the small yeomanry class had
been enabled to exist. "My father," says Latimer, "was
a yeoman, and had no lands of his own ; only he had a
farm of three or four pounds by the year at the uttermost,
and hereupon he tilled so much as kept half-a-dozen men.
He had walk for a hundred sheep, and my mother milked
thirty kine; he was able and did find the King a harness
with himself and his horse while he came to the place that
he should receive the King's wages. I can remember that
I buckled his harness when he went to Blackheath Field.
He kept me to school : he married my sisters with five
pounds apiece, so that he brought them up in godliness
and fear of God. He kept hospitality for his poor neigh-
bors, and some alms he gave to the poor, and all this he
did of the same farm, where he that now hath it payeth
sixteen pounds by year or more, and is not able to do any-
thing for his prince, for himself, nor for his children, or
give a cup of drink to the poor."
Increase of rent ended with such tenants in the relin-
quishment of their holdings, but the bitterness of the ejec-
tions which the new system of cultivation necessitated was
increased by the iniquitous means that were often employed
to bring them about. The farmers, if we believe More in
1515, were "got rid of either by fraud or force, or tired
out with repeated wrongs into parting with their property."
" In this way it comes to pass that these poor wretches,
men, women, husbands, orphans, widows, parents with
little children, households greater in number than in wealth
(for arable fanning requires many hands, while one shep-
herd and herdsman will suffice for a pasture farm), all
these emigrate from their native fields without knowing
where to go." The sale of their scanty household stuff
drove them to wander homeless abroad, to be thrown into
prison as vagabonds, to beg and to steal. Yet in the face
of such a spectacle as this we still find the old complaint
of scarcity of labor, and the old legal remedy for it in a
26 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK V.
fixed scale of wages. The social disorder, in fact, baffled
the sagacity of English statesmen, and they could find no
better remedy for it than laws against the further exten-
sion of sheep-farms, and a formidable increase of public
executions. Both were alike fruitless. Enclosures and
evictions went on as before and swelled the numbers and
the turbulence of the floating labor class. The riots against
"enclosures," of which we first hear in the time of Henry
the Sixth and which became a constant feature of the Tudor
period, are indications not only of a perpetual strife going
on in every quarter between the landowners and the smaller
peasant class, but of a mass of social discontent which was
to seek constant outlets in violence and revolution. And
into this mass of disorder the break-up of the military
households and the return of wounded and disabled soldiers
from the wars introduced a dangerous leaven of outrage
and crime. England for the first time saw a distinct
criminal class in the organized gangs of robbers which be-
gan to infest the roads and were always ready to gather
round the standard of revolt. The gallows did their work
in vain. " If you do not remedy the evils which produce
thieves," More urged with bitter truth, "the rigorous ex-
ecution of justice in punishing thieves will be vain." But
even More could only suggest a remedy which, efficacious
as it was subsequently to prove, had yet to wait a century
for its realization. " Let the woollen manufacture be in-
troduced, so that honest employment may be found for
those whom want has made thieves or will make thieves
ere long." The extension of industry at last succeeded in
absorbing this mass of surplus labor, but the process was
not complete till the close of Elizabeth's day, and through-
out the time of the Tudors the discontent of the labor class
bound the wealthier classes to the crown. It was in truth
this social danger which lay at the root of the Tudor des-
potism. For the proprietary classes the repression of the
poor was a question of life and death. Employer and pro-
prietor were ready to surrender freedom into the hands of
CHAP. l.J THE MONARCHY. 14611540. *7
the one power which could preserve them from social an-
archy. It was to the selfish panic of the landowners that
England owed the Statute of Laborers and its terrible
heritage of pauperism. It was to the selfish panic of both
landowner and merchant that she owed the despotism of
the Monarchy.
The most fatal effect of this panic, of this passion for
"order," was seen in the striving of these classes after
special privileges which the Crown alone could bestow.
Even before the outbreak of the civil war this tendency
toward privilege had produced important constitutional re-
sults. The character of the House of Commons had been
changed by the restriction of both the borough and the
county franchise. Up to this time all freemen settling in
a borough and paying their dues to it became by the mere
fact of settlement its burgesses. But during the reign of
Henry the Sixth and still more under Edward the Fourth
this largeness of borough life was roughly curtailed. The
trade companies which vindicated civic freedom from the
tyranny of the older merchant guilds themselves tended to
become a narrow and exclusive oligarchy. Most of the
boroughs had by this time acquired civic property, and it
was with the aim of securing their own enjoyment of this
against any share of it by " strangers" that the existing
burgesses for the most part procured charters of incorpora-
tion from the Crown, which turned them into a close body
and excluded from their number all who were not burgesses
by birth or who failed henceforth to purchase their right
of entrance by a long apprenticeship. In addition to this
narrowing of the burgess-body the internal government of
the boroughs had almost universally passed since the fail-
ure of the Communal movement in the thirteenth century
from the free gathering of the citizens in borough-mote
into the hands of Common Councils, either self -elected or
elected by the wealthier burgesses ; and to these councils,
or to a yet more restricted number of " select men" belong-
ing to them, clauses in the new charters generally confined
28 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK V.
the right of choosing their representatives in Parliament.
It was with this restriction that the long process of degra-
dation began which ended in reducing the representation
of our boroughs to a mere mockery. Influences which
would have had small weight over the town at large proved
irresistible by the small body of corporators or "select
men." Great nobles, neighboring landowners, the Crown
itself, seized on the boroughs as their prey, and dictated
the choice of their representatives. Corruption did what-
ever force failed to do : and from the Wars of the Roses to
the days of Pitt the voice of the people had to be looked
for not in the members for the towns but in the knights
for the counties.
The restriction of the county franchise on the other hand
was the direct work of the Parliament itself. Economic
changes were fast widening the franchise in the shires.
The number of freeholders increased with the subdivision
of estates and the social changes which we have already
noticed. But this increase of independence was marked
by " riots and divisions between the gentlemen and other
people" which the statesmen of the day attributed to the
excessive number of voters. In many counties the power
of the great lords undoubtedly enabled them to control
elections through the number of their retainers. In Cade's
revolt the Kentishmen complained that " the people of the
shire are not allowed to have their free elections in the
choosing of knights for the shire, but letters have been sent
from divers estates to the great nobles of the county, the
which enforceth their tenants and other people by force tc
choose other persons than the common will is." It was
primarily to check this abuse that a statute of the reign of
Henry the Sixth restricted in 1430 the right of voting in
shires to freeholders holding land worth forty shillings,
a sum equal in our money to at least twenty pounds a year
and representing a far higher proportional income at the
present time. Whatever its original purpose may have
been, the result of the statute was a wide disfranchise-
CHAP. I.] THE MONARCHY. 14611540. 29
ment. It was aimed, in its own words, against voters " of
no value, whereof every of them pretended to have a voice
equivalent with the more worthy knights and esquires
dwelling in the same counties." But in actual working
the statute was interpreted in a more destructive fashion
than its words were intended to convey. Up to this time
all suitors who attended at the Sheriff's Court had voted
without question for the Knight of the Shire, but by the
new statute the great . bulk of the existing voters, every
leaseholder and every copyholder, found themselves im-
plicitly deprived of their franchise.
The restriction of the suffrage was the main cause that
broke the growing strength of the House of Commons.
The ruin of the baronage, the weakness of the prelacy,
broke that of the House of Lords. The power of the Par-
liament died down therefore at the very moment when the
cessation of war, the opening of new sources of revenue,
the cry for protection against social anarchy, doubled the
strength of the Crown. A change passed over the spirit
of English government which was little short of a revolu-
tion. The change, however, was a slow and gradual one.
It is with the victory of Towton that the new power of
the Monarchy begins, but in the years that immediately
followed this victory there was little to promise the tri-
umph of the Crown. The King, Edward the Fourth, waa
but a boy of nineteen ; and decisive as his march upon
London proved, he had as yet given few signs of political
ability. His luxurious temper showed itself in the pomp
and gayety of his court, in feast and tourney, or in love-
passages with city wives and noble ladies. The work of
government, the defence of the new throne against its
restless foes, he left as yet to sterner hands. Among the
few great houses who recalled the might of the older bar-
onage two families of the northern border stood first in
power and repute. The Percies had played the chief part
in the revolution which gave the crown to the House of
Lancaster. Their rivals, the Nevilles, had set the line of
30 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. JBoOK V.
York on the throne. Fortune seemed to delight in adding
lands and wealth to the last powerful family. The heiress
of the Montacutes brought the Earldom of Salisbury and
the barony of Monthermer to a second son of their chief,
the Earl of Westmoreland ; and Salisbury's son, Richard
Neville, won the Earldom of Warwick with the hand of
the heiress of the Beauchamps. The ruin of the Percies,
whose lands and Earldom of Northumberland were granted
to Warwick's brother, raised the -Nevilles to unrivalled
greatness in the land. Warwick, who on his father's
death added the Earldom of Salisbury to his earlier titles,
had like his father warmly espoused the cause of Richard
of York, and it was to his counsels that men ascribed the
decisive step by which his cousin Edward of March as-
sumed the crown. From St. Albans to Towton he had
been the foremost among the assailants of the Lancastrian
line ; and the death of his uncle and father, the youth of
the King, and the glory of the great victory which con-
firmed his throne, placed the Earl at the head of the York-
ist party.
Warwick's services were munificently rewarded by a
grant of vast estates from the confiscated lands of the
Lancastrian baronage, and by his elevation to the highest
posts in the service of the State. He was Captain of
Calais, admiral of the fleet in the Channel, and Warden
of the Western Marches. The command of the northern
border lay in the lands of his brother, Lord Montagu, who
received as his share of the spoil the forfeited Earldom of
Northumberland and the estates of his hereditary rivals,
the Percies. A younger brother, George Neville, was
raised to the See of York and the post of Lord Chancellor.
Lesser rewards fell to Warwick's uncles, the minor chiefs
of the House of Neville, Lords Falconberg, Abergavenny,
and Latimer. The vast power which such an accumula-
tion of wealth and honors placed at the Earl's disposal
was wielded with consummate ability. In outer seeming
Warwick was the very type of the feudal baron. He
CHAP. 1.] THE MONARCHY. 1461-1540. bl
could raise armies at his call from his own earldoms. Six
hundred lireried retainers followed him to Parliament.
Thousands of dependants feasted in his court-yard. But
few men w^re really further from the feudal ideal. Active
and ruthless warrior as he was, his enemies denied to
the Earl the gift of personal daring. In war he showed
himself more general than soldier, and in spite of a series
of victories his genius was not so much military as dip-
lomatic. A Burgundian chronicler who knew him well
describes him as the craftiest man of his day, "leplus
soubtil homme de son vivant." Secret, patient, without
faith or loyalty, ruthless, unscrupulous, what Warwick
excelled in was intrigue, treachery, the contrivance of
plots, and sudden desertions.
His temper brought out in terrible relief the moral dis-
organization of the time. The old order of the world was
passing away. Since the fall of the Roman Empire civil
society had been held together by the power of the given
word, by the " fealty" and " loyalty" that bound vassal to
lord and lord to king. A common faith in its possession
of supernatural truths and supernatural powers had bound
men together in the religious society which knew itself
as the Church. But the spell of religious belief was now
broken and the feudal conception of society was passing
away. On the other hand the individual sense of personal
duty, the political consciousness of each citizen that na-
tional order and national welfare are essential to his own
well-being, had not yet come. The bonds which had held
the world together through so many ages loosened and
broke only to leave man face to face with his own selfish-
ness. The motives that sway and ennoble the common
conduct of men were powerless over the ruling classes.
Pope and king, bishop and noble, vied with each other
in greed, in self-seeking, in lust, in faithlessness, in a
pitiless cruelty. It is this moral degradation that flings
BO dark a shade over the Wars of the Roses. From no
period in our annals do we turn with such weariness and
32 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK V.
disgust. Their savage battles, their ruthless executions,
their shameless treasons, seem all the more terrible from
the pure selfishness of the ends for which men fought, for
the utter want of all nobleness and chivalry in the contest
itself, of all great result in its close. And it is this moral
disorganization that expresses itself in the men whom the
civil war left behind it. Of honor, of loyalty, of good
faith, Warwick knew nothing. He had fought for the
House of Neville rather than for the House of York, had
set Edward on the throne as a puppet whom he could rule
at his will, and his policy seemed to have gained its end
in leaving the Earl master of the realm.
In the three years which followed Towton the power of
the Nevilles overshadowed that of the King. It was
Warwick who crushed a new rising which Margaret
brought about by a landing in the north, and who drove
the queen and her child over the Scotch border. It was
his brother, Lord Montagu, who suppressed a new revolt
in 1464. The defeat of this rising in the battle of Hexham
seemed to bring the miserable war to a close, for after
some helpless wanderings Henry the Sixth was betrayed
into the hands of his enemies and brought in triumph to
London. His feet were tied to the stirrups, he was led
thrice round the pillory, and then sent as a prisoner to
the Tower. Warwick was now all-powerful in the State,
but the cessation of the war was the signal for a silent
strife between the Earl and his young sovereign. In Ed-
ward indeed Warwick was to meet not only a consum-
mate general but a politician whose subtlety and rapidity
of conception were far above his own. As a mere boy
Edward had shown himself among the ablest and the most
pitiless of the warriors of the civil war. He had looked
on with cool ruthlessness while gray-haired nobles were
hurried to the block. The terrible bloodshed of Towton
woke no pity in his heart; he turned from it only to frame
a vast bill of attainder which drove twelve great nobles
and a hundred knights to beggary and exile. When
CHAP. 1.] THE MONARCHY. 14611540. 33
treachery placed his harmless rival in his power he visited
him with cruel insult. His military ability had been dis-
played in his rapid march upon London, the fierce blow
which freed him from his enemy in the rear, the decisive
victory at Towton. But his political ability was slower
in developing itself. In his earliest years he showed little
taste for the work of rule. While Warwick was winning
triumphs on battle-field after battle-field, the young King
seemed to abandon himself to a voluptuous indolence, to
revels with the city wives of London, and to the caresses
of mistresses like Jane Shore. Tall in stature and of sin-
gular beauty, his winning manners and gay carelessness
of bearing secured Edward a popularity which had been
denied to nobler kings. When he asked a rich old lady
for ten pounds toward a war with France, she answered,
"For thy comely face thou shalt have twenty." The
King thanked and kissed her, and the old woman made
her twenty forty. In outer appearance indeed no one
could contrast more utterly with the subtle sovereigns of
his time, with the mean-visaged Lewis of France or the
meanly clad Ferdinand of Aragon. But Edward's work
was the same as theirs and it was done as completely.
While jesting with aldermen, or dallying with mistresses,
or idling over new pages from the printing-press at West-
minster, Edward was silently laying the foundations of an
absolute rule.
The very faults of his nature helped him to success.
His pleasure-loving and self- indulgent temper needed the
pressure of emergency, of actual danger, to flash out into
action. Men like Commines who saw him only in mo-
ments of security and indolence scorned Edward as dull,
sensual, easy to be led and gulled by keener wits. It was
in the hour of need and despair that his genius showed it-
self, cool, rapid, subtle, utterly fearless, moving straight
to its aim through clouds of treachery and intrigue, and
striking hard when its aim was reached. But even in his
idler hours his purpose never wavered. His indolence and
34 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. '[BOOK V.
gayety were in fact mere veils thrown over a will of steel.
From the first his aim was to free the Crown from the
control of the baronage. He made no secret of his hos-
tility to the nobles. At Towton as in all his after battles
he bade his followers slay knight and baron, but spare the
commons. In his earliest Parliament, that of 1461, he
renewed the statutes against giving of liveries, and though
this enactment proved as fruitless as its predecessors to
reduce the households of the baronage it marked Edward's
resolve to adhere to the invariable policy of the Crown in
striving for their reduction. But efforts like these, though
they indicated" the young King's policy, could produce little
effect so long as the mightiest of the barons overawed the
throne. Yet even a king as bold as Edward might well
have shrunk from a struggle with Warwick. The Earl
was all powerful in the state; the military resources of
the realm were in his hands. As captain of Calais he was
master of the one disciplined force at the disposal of the
Crown, and as admiral he controlled the royal fleet. The
forces he drew from his wide possessions, from his vast
wealth (for his official revenues alone were estimated at
eighty thousand crowns a year), from his warlike renown
and his wide kinship, were backed by his personal popu-
larity. Above all the Yorkist party, bound to Warwick
by a long series of victories, looked on him rather than on
the young and untried King as its head. Even Edward
was forced to delay any break with the Earl till the des-
perate struggle of Margaret was over. It was only after
her defeat at Hexham and the capture of Henry that the
King saw himself free for a strife with the great soldier
who overawed the throne.
The policy of Warwick pointed to a close alliance with
France. The Hundred Years' War, though it had driven
the English from Guienne and the South, had left the
French Monarchy hemmed in by great feudatories on every
other border. Brittany was almost independent in the
west. On the east the house of Anjou lay, restless and
CHAP. 1.] THE MONARCHY. 14611540. 95
ambitious, in Lorraine and Provence, while the house of
Burgundy occupied its hereditary duchy and Franche
Comte. On the northern frontier the same Burgundian
house was massing together into a single state nearly all
the crowd of counties, marquisates, and dukedoms which
now make up Holland and Belgium. Nobles hardly less
powerful or more dependent on the Crown held the central
provinces of the kingdom when Lewis the Eleventh
mounted its throne but a few months after Edward's ac-
cession. The temper of the new King drove him to a strife
for the mastery of his realm, and his efforts after central-
ization and a more effective rule soon goaded the baronage
into a mode of revolt. But Lewis saw well that a struggle
with it was only possible if England stood aloof. His
father's cool sagacity had planned the securing of his con-
quests by the marriage of Lewis himself to an English
wife, and though this project had fallen through, and the
civil wars had given safety to Prance to the end of
Charles' reign, the ruin of the Lancastrian cause at Tow-
ton again roused the danger of attack from England at the
moment when Lewis mounted the throne. Its young and
warlike King, the great baron who was still fresh from
the glory of Towton, might well resolve to win back the
heritage of Eleanor, that Duchy of Guienne which had
been lost but some ten years before. Even if such an
effort proved fruitless, Lewis saw that an English war
would not only ruin his plans for the overthrow of the
nobles, but would leave him more than ever at their mercy.
Above all it would throw him helplessly into the hands of
the Burgundian Duke. In the new struggle as in the old
the friendship of Burgundy could alone bring a favorable
issue, and such a friendship would have to be paid for by
sacrifices even more terrible than those which had been
wrenched from the need of Charles the Seventh. The
passing of Burgundy from the side of England to the side
of France after the Treaty of Arras had been bought by
the cession to its Duke of the towns along the Somme, of
36 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK V.
that Picardy which brought the Burgundian frontier to
some fifty miles from Paris. Sacrifices even more costly
would have to buy the aid of Burgundy in a struggle with
Edward the Fourth.
How vivid was his sense of these dangers was seen in
the eagerness of Lewis to get the truce with England re-
newed and extended. But his efforts for a general peace
broke down before the demands of the English council for
the restoration of Normandy and Guienne. Nor were his
difficulties from England alone. An English alliance was
unpopular in France itself. " Seek no friendship from the
English, Sire!" said Pierre de Breze, the Seneschal of
Normandy, "for the more they love you, the more all
Frenchmen will hate you I" All Lewis could do was to
fetter Edward's action by giving him work at home.
When Margaret appealed to him for aid after Towton he
refused any formal help, but her pledge to surrender
Calais in case of success drew from him some succor in
money and men which enabled the Queen to renew the
struggle in the north. Though her effort failed, the hint
so roughly given had been enough to change the mood of
the English statesmen; the truce with France was re-
newed, and a different reception met the new proposals of
alliance which followed it. Lewis indeed was now busy
with an even more pressing danger. In any struggle of
the King with England or the nobles what gave Burgundy
its chief weight was the possession of the towns on the
Somme, and it was his consciousness of the vital impor-
tance of these to his throne that spurred Lewis to the bold
and dextrous diplomacy by which Duke Philip the Good,
under the influence of counsellors who looked to the French
King for protection against the Duke's son, Charles of
Charolais, was brought to surrender Picardy on payment
of the sum stipulated for its ransom in the Treaty of Arras.
The formal surrender of the towns on the Somme took
place in October, 1463, but they were hardly his own when
Lewis turned to press his alliance upon England. From
CHAP. 1.] THE MONARCHY. 14611540. 37
Picardy, where he was busy in securing his newly-won
possessions, he sought an interview with Warwick. His
danger indeed was still great ; for the irritated nobles were
already drawing together into a League of the Public
Weal, and Charles of Charolais, indignant at the coun-
sellors who severed him from his father and at the King
who traded through them on the Duke's dotage, was eager
to place himself at its head. But these counsellors, the
Croys, saw their own ruin as well as the ruin of Lewis in
the success of a league of which Charles was the head ;
and at their instigation Duke Philip busied himself at the
opening of 1464 as the mediator of an alliance which would
secure Lewis against it, a triple alliance between Bur-
gundy and the French and English Kings.
Such an alliance had now become Warwick's settled
policy. In it lay the certainty of peace at home as abroad,
the assurance of security to the throne which he had built
up. While Margaret of Anjou could look for aid from
France the house of York could hope for no cessation of
the civil war. A union between France, Burgundy and
England left the partisans of Lancaster without hope.
When Lewis therefore summoned him to an interview on
the Somme, Warwick, though unable to quit England in
face of the dangers which still threatened from the north,
promised to send his brother the Chancellor to conduct a
negotiation. Whether the mission took place or no, the
questions not only of peace with France but of a marriage
between Edward and one of the French King's kinswomen
were discussed in the English Council as early as th
spring of 1464, for in the May of that year, at a moment
when Warwick was hurrying to the north to crush Mar-
garet's last effort in the battle of Hexham, a Burgundian
agent announced to the Croys that an English embassy
would be despatched to St. Omer on the coming St. John's
day to confer with Lewis and Duke Philip on the peace
and the marriage-treaty. The victory of Hexham and the
capture of Henry, successes which were accepted by for-
38 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK V.
eign powers as a final settlement of the civil strife, and
which left Edward's hands free as they had never been
free before, quickened the anxiety of Lewis, who felt every
day the toils of the great confederacy of the French princes
closing more tightly round him. But Margaret was still
in his hands, and Warwick remained firm in his policy of
alliance. At Michaelmas the Earl prepared to cross the
sea for the meeting at St. Omer.
It was this moment that Edward chose for a sudden and
decisive blow. Only six days before the departure of the
embassy the young King informed his Council that he was
already wedded. By a second match with a Kentish
knight, Sir Richard Woodville, Jacquetta of Luxemburg,
the widow of the Regent Duke of Bedford, had become
the mother of a daughter Elizabeth. Elizabeth married
Sir John Grey, a Lancastrian partisan, but his fall some
few years back in the second battle of St. Albans left her
a widow, and she caught the young King's fancy. At
the opening of May, at the moment when Warwick's pur-
pose to conclude the marriage-treaty was announced to the
court of Burgundy, Edward had secretly made her his
wife. He had reserved, however, the announcement of
his marriage till the very eve of the negotiations, when its
disclosure served not only to shatter Warwick's plans but
to strike a sudden and decisive blow at the sway he had
wielded till now in the royal Council. The blow in fact
was so sudden and unexpected that Warwick could only
take refuge in a feigned submission. " The King, " wrote
one of his partisans, Lord Wenlock, to the Court of Bur-
gundy, " has taken a wife at his pleasure, without knowl-
edge of them whom he ought to have called to counsel him ;
by reason of which it is highly displeasing to many great
lords and to the bulk of his Council. But since the mar-
riage has gone so far that it cannot be helped, we must
take patience in spite of ourselves." Not only did the ne-
gotiations with France come to an end, but the Earl found
himself cut off from the King's counsels. " As one knows
CHAP. 1.] THE MONARCHY. 14611540. 39
not," wrote his adherent, "seeing the marriage is made
in this way, what purpose the King may have to go on
with the other two points, truce or peace, the opinion of
the Council is that my Lord of Warwick will not pass the
sea till one learns the King's will and pleasure on that
point." Even Warwick indeed might have paused before
the new aspect of affairs across the Channel. For at this
moment the growing weakness of Duke Philip enabled
Charles of Charolais to overthrow the Croys, and to be-
come the virtual ruler of the Burgundian states. At the
close of 1464 the League of the Public Weal drew fast to
a head, and Charles dispatched the Chancellor of Bur-
gundy to secure the aid of England. But the English
Council met the advances of the League with coldness.
Edward himself could have seen little save danger to his
throne from its triumph. Count Charles, proud of his con-
nection with the House of Lancaster through his Portu-
guese mother, a descendant of John of Gaunt, was known
to be hostile to the Yorkist throne. The foremost of his col-
leagues, John of Calabria, was a son of Rene of Anjou and
a brother of Margaret. Another of the conspirators, the
Count of Maine, was Margaret's uncle. It was significant
that the Duke of Somerset had found a place in the train
of Charles the Bold. On, the other hand the warmest ad-
vocates of the French alliance could hardly press for closer
relations with a King whose ruin seemed certain, and even
Warwick must have been held back by the utter collapse
of the royal power when the League attacked Lewis in
1465. Deserted by every great noble, and cooped up within
the walls of Paris, the French King could only save him-
self by a humiliating submission to the demands of the
Leaguers.
The close of the struggle justified Edward's policy of
inaction, for the terms of the peace told strongly for Eng-
lish interests. The restoration of the towns on the Somme
to Burgundy, the cession of Normandy to the King's
brother, Francis, the hostility of Brittany, not only de-
40 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BoOK V.
tached the whole western coast from the hold of Lewis,
but forced its possessors to look for aid to the English
King who lay in their rear. But Edward had little time
to enjoy this piece of good luck. No sooner had the army
of the League broken up than its work was undone. The
restless genius of Lewis detached prince from prince, won
over the houses of Brittany and Anjou to friendship,
snatched back Normandy in January, 1466, and gathered
an army in Picardy to meet attack either from England or
Count Charles. From neither, however, was any serious
danger to be feared. Charles was held at home till the
close of the year by revolts at Liege and Dinant, while a
war of factions within Edward's court distracted the en-
ergies of England. The young King had rapidly followed
up the blow of his marriage by raising his wife's family
to a greatness which was meant to balance that of the
Nevilles. The Queen's father, Lord Rivers, was made
treasurer and constable; her brothers and sisters were
matched with great nobles and heiresses ; the heiress of the
Duke of Exeter, Edward's niece, whose hand Warwick
sought for his brother's son, was betrothed to Elizabeth's
son by her former marriage. The King's confidence was
given to his new kinsmen, and Warwick saw himself
checked even at the council-board by the influence of the
Woodvilles. Still true to an alliance with France, he was
met by their advocacy of an alliance with Burgundy where
Charles of Charolais through his father's sickness and
age was now supreme. Both powers were equally eager
for English aid. Lewis despatched an envoy to prolong
the truce from his camp on the Somme, and proposed to
renew negotiations for a marriage treaty by seeking the
hand of Edward's sister, Margaret, for a French prince.
Though " the thing which Charles hated most, " as Corn-
mines tells us, "was the house of York," the stress of
politics drew him as irresistibly to Edward. His wife,
Isabella of Bourbon, had died during the war of the
League, and much as such a union was "against his
CHAP. 1.] THE MONARCHY. 14611540. 41
heart," the activity of Lewis forced him at the close of
1466 to seek to buy English aid by demanding Margaret's
hand in marriage.
It is from this moment that the two great lines of our
foreign policy become settled and defined. In drawing
together the states of the Low Countries into a single po-
litical body, the Burgundian Dukes had built up a power
which has ever since served as a barrier against the ad-
vance of France to the north or its mastery of the Rhine.
To maintain this power, whether in the hands of the
Dukes or their successors, the Spaniard or the Emperor,
has always been a foremost object of English statesman-
ship ; and the Burgundian alliance in its earlier or later
shapes has been the constant rival of the alliance with
France. At this moment indeed the attitude of Burgundy
was one rather of attack than of defence. If Charles did
not aim at the direct conquest of France, he looked to
such a weakening of it as would prevent Lewis from hin-
dering the great plan on which he had set his heart, the
plan of uniting his scattered dominions on the northern
and eastern frontier of his rival by the annexation of Lor-
raine, and of raising them into a great European power by
extending his dominion along the whole course of the
Rhine. His policy was still to strengthen the great feuda-
tories against the Crown. "I love France so much," he
laughed, " that I had rather it had six kings than one ;"
and weak as the League of the Public Weal had proved he
was already trying to build up a new confederacy against
Lewis. In this confederacy he strove that England should
take part. Throughout 1466 the English court was the
field for a diplomatic struggle between Charles and Lewis.
Warwick pressed Margaret's marriage with one of the
French princes. The marriage with Charles was backed
by the Wcodvilles. Edward bore himself between the
two parties with matchless perfidy. Apparently yielding
to the counsels of the Earl, he despatched him in 1467 to
treat for peace with Lewis at Rouen. Warwick was re-
43 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. IBoOK V.
ceived with honors which marked the importance of his
mission in the French King's eyes. Bishops and clergy
went out to meet him, his attendants received gifts of
velvet robes and the rich stuffs of Rouen, and for twelve
days the Earl and Lewis were seen busy in secret confer-
ence. But while the Earl was busy with the French King
the Great Bastard of Burgundy crossed to England, and
a sumptuous tourney, in which he figured with one of the
Woodvilles, hardly veiled the progress of counter-negotia-
tions between Charles and Edward himself. The young
King seized on the honors paid to Warwick as the pretext
for an outburst of jealousy. The seals were suddenly taken
from his brother, the Archbishop of York, and when the
Earl himself returned with a draft-treaty stipulating a
pension from France and a reference of the English claims
on Normandy and Guienne to the Pope's decision Edward
listened coldly and disavowed his envoy.
Bitter reproaches on his intrigues with the French King
marked even more vividly the close of Warwick's power.
He withdrew from court to his castle of Middleham, while
the conclusion of a marriage-treaty between Charles and
Margaret proved the triumph of his rivals. The death of
his father in the summer of 1467 raised Charles to the
Dukedom of Burgundy, and his diplomatic success in Eng-
land was followed by preparations for a new struggle with
the French King. In 1468 a formal league bound Eng-
land, Burgundy, and Brittany together against Lewis.
While Charles gathered an army in Picardy Edward
bound himself to throw a body of troops into the strong
places of Normandy which were held by the Breton Duke ;
and six thousand mounted archers under the Queen's
brother, Anthony, Lord Scales, were held ready to cross
the Channel. Parliament was called together in May,
and the announcement of the Burgundian alliance and of
the King's purpose to recover his heritage over sea was
met by a large grant of supplies from the Commons. In
June the pompous marriage of Margaret with the Bur-
CHAP. 1.] THE MONARCHY. 14611540. 43
gundian Duke set its seal on Edward's policy. How
strongly the current of national feeling ran in its favor
was seen in Warwick's humiliation. The Earl was help-
less. The King's dextrous use of his conference with
Lewis and of the honors he had received from him gave
him the color of a false Englishman and of a friend to
France. The Earl lost power over the Yorkists. The
war party, who formed the bulk of it, went hotly with thei
King; the merchants, who were its most powerful sup-
port, leaned to a close connection with the master of
Flanders and the Lower Rhine. The danger of his posi-
tion drove Warwick further and further from his old
standing ground ; he clung for aid to Lewis ; he became
the French king's pensioner and dependant. At the
French court he was looked upon already as a partisan of
the House of Lancaster. Edward dextrously seized on
the rumor to cut him off more completely from his old
party. He called on him to confront his accusers; and
though Warwick purged himself of the charge, the stigma
remained. The victor of Towton was no longer counted
as a good Yorkist. But triumphant as he was, Edward
had no mind to drive the Earl into revolt, nor was War-
wick ready for revenge. The two subtle enemies drew
together again. The Earl appeared at court; he was-for-
mally reconciled both to the King and to the Woodvilles;
as though to announce his conversion to the Burgundian
alliance he rode before the new Duchess Margaret on her
way to the sea. His submission removed the last obstacle
to the King's action, and Edward declared his purpose to
take the field in person against the King of France.
But at the moment when the danger seemed greatest the
quick, hard blows of Lewis paralyzed the League. He
called Margaret from Bar to Harfleur, where Jasper Tudor,
the Earl of Pembroke, prepared to cross with a small force
of French soldiers into Wales. The dread of a Lancastrian
rising should Margaret land in England hindered Lord
Scales from crossing the sea ; and marking the slowness
44 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. (BooK v.
with which the Burgundian troops gathered in Picardy
Lewis flung himself in September on the Breton Duke, re-
duced him to submission, and exacted the surrender of the
Norman towns which offered an entry for the English
troops. His eagerness to complete his work by persuading
Charles to recognize his failure in a personal interview
threw him into the Duke's hands ; and though he was re-
leased at the end of the year it was only on humiliating
terms. But the danger from the triple alliance was over;
he had bought a fresh peace with Burgundy, and Ed-
ward's hopes of French conquest were utterly foiled. We
can hardly doubt that this failure told on the startling
revolution which marked the following year. Master of
Calais, wealthy, powerful as he was, Warwick had shown
by his feigned submission his sense that single-handed he
was no match for the King. In detaching from him the
confidence of the Yorkist party which had regarded him
as its head, Edward had robbed him of his strength. But
the King was far from having won the Yorkist party to
himself. His marriage with the widow of a slain Lan-
castrian, his promotion of a Lancastrian family to the
highest honors, estranged him from the men who had
fought his way to the Crown. Warwick saw that the
Yorkists could still be rallied round the elder of Edward's
brothers, the Duke of Clarence; and the temper of Clar-
ence, weak and greedy of power, hating the Woodvilles,
looking on himself as heir to the crown yet dreading the
claims of Edward's daughter Elizabeth, lent itself to his
arts. The spring of 1469 was spent in intrigues to win
over Clarence by offering him the hand of Warwick's elder
daughter and co-heiress, and in preparations for a rising
in Lancashire. So secretly were these conducted that
Edward was utterly taken by surprise when Clarence aiid
the Earl met in July at Calais and the marriage of the
Duke proved the signal for a rising at home.
The revolt turned out a formidable one. The first force
ent against it was cut to pieces at Edgecote near Banbury,
CHAP. 1.] THE MONARCHY. 14611540. 45
and its leaders, Earl Rivers and one of the queen's brothers,
taken and beheaded. Edward was hurrying to the sup-
port of this advanced body when it was defeated; but on
the news his force melted away and he was driven to fall
back upon London. Galled as he had been by his brother's
marriage, he saw nothing in it save the greed of Clarence
for the Earl's heritage, and it was with little distrust that
he summoned Warwick with the trained troops who
formed the garrison of Calais to his aid. The Duke and
Earl at once crossed the Channel. Gathering troops as
they moved, they joined Edward near Oxford, and the
end of their plot was at last revealed. No sooner had the
armies united than Edward found himself virtually a pris-
oner in Warwick's hands. But 'the bold scheme broke
down. The Yorkist nobles demanded the King's libera-
tion. London called for it. The Duke of Burgundy
"practised secretly," says Commines, "that Bang Edward
might escape," and threatened to break off all trade with
Flanders if he were not freed. Warwick could look for
support only to the Lancastrians, but the Lancastrians
demanded Henry's restoration as the price of their aid.
Such a demand was fatal to the plan for placing Clarence
on the throne, and Warwick was thrown back on a. formal
reconciliation with the King. Edward was freed, and
Duke and Earl withdrew to their estates for the winter.
But the impulse which Warwick had given to his adherents
brought about a new rising in the spring of 1470. A force
gathered in Lincolnshire under Sir Robert Welles with
the avowed purpose of setting Clarence on the throne, and
Warwick and the Duke though summoned to Edward's
camp on pain of being held for traitors remained sullenly
aloof. The King, however, was now ready for the strife.
A rapid march to the north ended in the rout of the in-
surgents, and Edward turned on the instigators of the
rising. But Clarence and the Earl could gather no force
to meet him. Yorkist and Lancastrian alike held aloof,
and they were driven to flight. Calais, though held by
46 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK V.
Warwick's deputy, repulsed them from its walls, and the
Earl's fleet was forced to take refuge in the harbors of
France.
The long struggle seemed at last over. In subtlety, as
in warlike daring, the young King had proved himself
more than a match for the " subtlest man of men now liv-
ing." He had driven him to throw himself on " our ad-
versary of France." Warwick's hold over the Yorkists
was all but gone. His own brothers, the Earl of North-
umberland and the Archbishop of York, were with the
King, and Edward counted on the first as a firm friend.
Warwick had lost Calais. Though he still retained his
fleet he was forced to support it by making prizes of Flem-
ish ships, and this involved him in fresh difficulties. The
Duke of Burgundy made the reception of these ships in
French harbors the pretext for a new strife with Lewis;
he seized the goods of French merchants at Bruges and
demanded redress. Lewis was in no humor for risking
for so small a matter the peace he had won, and refused
to see or speak with Warwick till the prizes were restored.
But he was soon driven from this neutral position. The
violent language of Duke Charles showed his desire to
renew the war with France in the faith that Warwick's
presence at the French court would insure Edward's sup-
port ; and Lewis resolved to prevent such a war by giving
Edward work to do at home. He supplied Warwick with
money and men, and pressed him to hasten his departure
for England. "You know," he wrote to an agent, "the
desire I have for Warwick's return to England, as well
because I wish to see him get the better of his enemies as
that at least through him the realm of England may be
again thrown into confusion, so as to avoid the questions
which have arisen out of his residence here." But War-
wick was too cautious a statesman to hope to win England
with French troops only. His hopes of Yorkist aid were
over with the failure of Clarence; and, covered as he was
with Lancastrian blood, he turned to the House of Lancas-
CHAP. 1.] THE MONARCHY. 1461-1540. 47
ter. Margaret was summoned to the French court; the me-
diation of Lewis bent her proud spirit to a reconciliation on
Warwick's promise to restore her husband to the throne,
and after a fortnight's struggle she consented at the close
of July to betroth her son to the earl's second daughter,
Anne Neville. Such an alliance shielded Warwick, as he
trusted, from Lancastrian vengeance, but it at once
detached Clarence from his cause. Edward had already
made secret overtures to his brother, and though Warwick
strove to reconcile the Duke to his new policy by a provi-
sion that in default of heirs to the son of Margaret Clarence
should inherit the throne, the Duke's resentment drew him
back to his brother's side. But whether by Edward's coun-
sel or no his resentment was concealed ; Clarence swore
fealty to the house of Lancaster, and joined in the prepara-
tions which Warwick was making for a landing in Eng-
land.
What the Earl really counted on was not so much
Lancastrian aid as Yorkist treason. Edward reckoned on
the loyalty of Warwick's brothers, the Archbishop of
York and Lord Montagu. The last indeed he "loved,*'
and Montagu's firm allegiance during his brother's de
fection seemed to justify his confidence in him. But in
his desire to redress some , of the wrongs of the civil war
Edward had utterly estranged the Nevilles. In 1469 he
released Henry Percy from the Tower, and restored to him
the title and estates of his father, the attainted Earl of
Northumberland. Montagu had possessed both as his
share of the Yorkist spoil, and though Edward made him a
marquis in amends he had ever since nursed plans of re-
venge. From after-events it is clear that he had already
pledged himself to betray the King. But his treachery
was veiled with consummate art, and in spite of repeated
warnings from Burgundy Edward remained unconcerned
at the threats of invasion. Of the Yorkist party he held
himself secure since Warwick's desertion of their cause;
of the Lancastrian, he had little fear: and the powerful
3 YOL. 2
48 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK V.
fleet of Duke Charles prisoned the Earl's ships in the
Norman harbors. Fortune, however, was with his foes.
A rising called Edward to the north in September, and
while he was engaged in its suppression a storm swept the
Burgundian ships from the Channel. Warwick seized
the opportunity to cross the sea. On the thirteenth of
September he landed with Clarence at Dartmouth, and
with an army which grew at every step pushed rapidly
northward to meet the King. Taken as he was by sur-
prise, Edward felt little dread of the conflict. He relied
on the secret promises of Clarence and on the repeated oaths
of the two Nevilles, and called on Charles of Burgundy
to cut off Warwick's retreat by sea after the victory on
which he counted. But the Earl's army no sooner drew
near than cries of " Long live King Henry !" from Mon-
tagu's camp announced his treason. Panic spread through
the royal forces ; and in the rout that followed Edward
could only fly to the shore, and embarking some eight hun-
dred men who still clung to him in a few trading vessels
which he found there set sail for the coast of Holland.
In a single fortnight Warwick had destroyed a throne.
The work of Towton was undone. The House of Lancas-
ter was restored. Henry the Sixth was drawn from the
Tower to play again the part of King, while his rival could
only appeal as a destitute fugitive to the friendship of
Charles the Bold. But Charles had small friendship to
give. His disgust at the sudden overthrow of his plans
for a joint attack on Lewis was quickened by a sense of
danger. England was now at the French King's dis-
posal, and the coalition of England and Burgundy against
France which he had planned seemed likely to become a
coalition of France and England against Burgundy.
Lewis indeed was quick to seize on the new turn of affairs.
Thanksgivings were ordered in every French town. Mar-
garet and her son were feasted royally at Paris. An em-
bassy crossed the sea to conclude a treaty of alliance, and
Warwick promised that an immediate force of four thott
CHAP. 1.] THE MONARCHY. 14611540. 49
sand men should be dispatched to Calais. With English
aid the King felt he could become assailant in his turn ;
he declared the King of Burgundy a rebel, and pushed his
army rapidly to the Somme. How keenly Charles felt
his danger was seen in his refusal to receive Edward at
his court, and in his desperate attempts to conciliate the
new English government. His friendship, he said, was
not for this or that English King but for England. He
Again boasted of his Lancastrian blood. He despatched
the Lancastrian Dukes of Somerset and Exeter, who had
found refuge ever since Towton at his court, to carry fair
words to Margaret. The Queen and her son were still at
Paris, detained as it was said by unfavorable winds, but
really by the wish of Lewis to hold a check upon Warwick
and by their own distrust of him. Triumphant indeed as
he seemed, the Earl found himself alone in the hour of his
triumph. The marriage of Prince Edward with Anne
Neville, which had been promised as soon as Henry was
restored, was his one security against the vengeance of the
Lancastrians, and the continued delays of Margaret showed
little eagerness to redeem her promise. The heads of the
Lancastrian party, the Dukes of Somerset and Exeter, had
pledged themselves to Charles the Bold at their departure
from his court to bring about Warwick's ruin. From
Lewis he could look for no further help, for the remon-
strances of the English merchants compelled him in spita
of the treaty he had concluded to keep the troops he had
promised against Burgundy at home. Of his own main,
supporters Clarence was only waiting for an opportunity
of deserting him. Even his brother Montagu shrank fron\
striking fresh blows to further the triumph of a party which
aimed at the ruin of the Nevilles, and looked forward with
dread to the coming of the Queen.
The preparations for her departure in March brought
matters to a head. With a French Queen on the throne
a French alliance became an instant danger for Burgundy c
and Charles was driven to lend a secret ear to Edward's
50 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK V.
prayer for aid. Money and ships were placed at his ser-
vice, and on the fourteenth of March, 1471, the young
King landed at Ravenspur on the estuary of the Humber
with a force of two thousand men. In the north all re-
mained quiet. York opened its gates when Edward pro*
fessed to be seeking not the crown but his father's dukedom.
Montagu lay motionless at Pomfret as the little army
marched by him to the south. Routing at Newark a force
which had gathered on his flank, Edward pushed straight
for Warwick, who had hurried from London to raise an
army in his own county. His forces were already larger
than those of his cousin, but the Earl cautiously waited
within the walls of Coventry for the reinforcements under
Clarence and Montagu which he believed to be hastening
to his aid. The arrival of Clarence, however, was at once
followed by his junction with Edward, and the offer of
" good conditions" shows that Warwick himself was con-
templating a similar treason when the coming of two Lan-
castrian leaders, the Duke of Exeter and the Earl of Ox-
ford, put an end to the negotiation. The union of Montagu
with his brother forced Edward to decisive action; he
marched upon London, followed closely by Warwick's
army, and found its gates opened by the perfidy of Arch-
bishop Neville. Again master of Henry of Lancaster,
who passed anew to the Tower, Edward sallied afresh from
the capital two days after his arrival with an army strongly
reinforced. At early dawn on the fourteenth of April the
two hosts fronted one another at Barnet. A thick mist
covered the field, and beneath its veil Warwick's men
fought fiercely till dread of mutual betrayal ended the strife.
Montagu's followers attacked the Lancastrian soldiers of
Lord Oxford, whether as some said through an error which
sprang from the similarity of his cognizance to that of
Edward's, or as the Lancastrians alleged while themselves
in the act of deserting to the enemy. Warwick himself
was charged with cowardly flight. In three hours the
medley of carnage and treason was over. Four thousand
CHAP. 1.] THE MONARCHY. 14611540. 51
men lay on the field ; and the Earl and his brother were
found among the slain.
But the fall of the Nevilles was far from giving rest to
Edward. The restoration of Henry, the return of their
old leaders, had revived the hopes of the Lancastrian party ;
and in the ruin of Warwick they saw only the removal of
an obstacle to their cause. The great Lancastrian lords
had been looking forward to a struggle with the Earl on
Margaret's arrival, and their jealousy of him was seen in
the choice of the Queen's landing-place. Instead of join-
ing her husband and the Nevilles in London she disem-
barked from the French fleet at Weymouth, to find the men
of the western counties already flocking to the standards
of the Duke of Somerset and of the Courtenays, the Welsh
arming at the call of Jasper Tudor, and Cheshire and Lan-
cashire only waiting for her presence to rise. A march
upon London with forces such as these would have left
Warwick at her mercy and freed the Lancastrian throne
from the supremacy of the Nevilles. The news of Barnet
which followed hard on the Queen's landing scattered these
plans to the winds; but the means which had been de-
signed to overawe Warwick might still be employed against
his conqueror. Moving to Exeter to gather the men of
Devonshire and Corn wall,, Margaret turned through Taun-
ton on Bath to hear that Edward was already encamped
in her front at Cirencester. The young King's action
showed his genius for war. Barnet was hardly fought
when he was pushing to the west. After a halt at Abing-
don to gain news of Margaret's movements he moved
rapidly by Cirencester and Malmesbury toward the Lan-
castrians at Bath. But Margaret was as eager to avoid a
battle before her Welsh reinforcements reached her as Ed-
ward was to force one on. Slipping aside to Bristol, and
detaching a small body of troops to amuse the King by a
feint upon Sodbury, her army reached Berkeley by a night-
march and hurried forward through the following day to
Tewkesbury. But rapid us their movements had been,
52 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK V.
they had failed to outstrip Edward. Marching on an inner
line along the open Cotswold country while his enemy was
struggling through the deep and tangled lanes of the Sev-
ern valley, the King was now near enough to bring Mar-
garet to bay; and the Lancastrian leaders were forced to
take their stand on the slopes south of the town, in a posi-
tion approachable only through "foul lanes and deep
dykes." Here Edward at once fell on them at daybreak
of the fourth of May. His army, if smaller in numbers,
was superior in military quality to the motley host gath-
ered round the Queen, for as at Barnet he had with him a
force of Germans armed with hand-guns, then a new
weapon in war, and a fine train of artillery. It was prob-
ably the fire from these that drew Somerset from the strong
position which he held, but his repulse and the rout of the
force he led was followed up with quick decision. A gen-
eral advance broke the Lancastrian lines, and all was over.
Three thousand were cut down on the field, and a large
number of fugitives were taken in the town and abbey.
To the leaders short shrift was given. Edward was reso-
lute to make an end of his foes. The fall of the Duke of
Somerset extinguished the male branch of the House of
Beaufort. Margaret was a prisoner; and with the mur-
der of her son after his surrender on the field and the mys-
terious death of Henry the Sixth in the Tower which fol-
lowed the King's return to the capital the direct line of
Lancaster passed away.
Edward was at last master of his realm. No noble was
likely to measure swords with the conqueror of the Ne-
villes. The one rival who could revive the Lancastrian
claims, the last heir of the House of Beaufort, Henry Tu-
dor, was a boy and an exile. The King was free to display
his genius for war on nobler fields than those of Barnet
and Tewkesbury, and for a while his temper and the pas-
sion of his people alike drove him to the strife with France.
But the country was too exhausted to meddle in the attack
on Lewis which Charles, assured at any rate against Eng-
CHAP. 1.] THE MONARCHY. 14611540. 53
lish hostility, renewed in 1472 in union with the Dukes of
Guienne and Brittany, and which was foiled as of old
through the death of the one ally and the desertion of the
other. The failure aided in giving a turn to his policy,
which was to bring about immense results on the after
history of Europe. French as he was in blood, the nature
of his possessions had made Charles from the first a Ger-
man prince rather than a French. If he held of Lewis his
duchy of Burgundy, his domain on the Somme, and Flan-
ders west of the Scheldt, the mass of his dominions was
held of the Empire. While he failed too in extending his
power on the one side it widened rapidly on the other. In
war after war he had been unable to gain an inch of French
ground beyond the towns of the Somme. But year after
year had seen new gains on his German frontier. Elsass
and the Breisgau passed into his hands as security for a
loan to the Austrian Duke Sigismund; in 1473 he seized
Lorraine by force of arms, and inherited from its Duke
Gelderland and the county of Cleves. Master of the Upper
Rhine and Lower Rhine, as well as of a crowd of German
princedoms, Charles was now the mightiest among the
princes of the Empire, and in actual power superior to the
Emperor himself. The house of Austria, in which the Im-
perial crown seemed to be becoming hereditary, was weak-
ened by attacks from without as by divisions within, by
the loss of Bohemia and Hungary, by the loss of its hold
over German Switzerland, and still more by the mean and
spiritless temper of its Imperial head, Frederick the Third.
But its ambition remained boundless as ever ; and in the
Burgundian dominion, destined now to be the heritage of
a girl, for Mary was the Duke's only child, it saw the
means of building up a greatness such as it had never
known. Its overtures at once turned the Duke's ambition
from France to Germany. He was ready to give his
daughter's hand to Frederick's son, Maximilian ; but his
price was that of succession to the Imperial crown, and
his election to the dignity of King of the Romans. In such
54 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK V.
an event the Empire and his vast dominions would pass
together at his death to Maximilian, and the aim of the
Austrian House would be realized. It was to negotiate
this marriage, a marriage which in the end was destined
to shape the political map of modern Europe, that Duke
and Emperor met in 1473 at Trier.
But if Frederick's policy was to strengthen his house
the policy of the princes of the Empire lay in keeping it
weak ; and their pressure was backed by suspicions of the
Duke's treachery and of the possibility of a later marriage
whose male progeny might forever exclude the house of
Austria from the Imperial throne. Frederick's sudden
flight broke up the conference; but Charles was far from
relinquishing his plans. To win the mastery of the whole
Rhine valley was the first step in their realization, and at
the opening of 1474 he undertook the siege of Neuss, whose
reduction meant that of Koln and of the central district
which broke his sway along it. But vast as were the new
dreams of ambition which thus opened before Charles, he
had given no open sign of his change of purpose. Lewis
watched his progress on the Rhine almost as jealously as
his attitude on the Somme ; and the friendship of England
was still of the highest value as a check on any attempt
of France to interrupt his plans. With this view the Duke
maintained his relations with England and fed Edward's
hopes of a joint invasion. In the summer of 1474, on the
eve of his march upon the Rhine, he concluded a treaty for
an attack on France which was to open on his return after
the capture of Neuss. Edward was to recover Normandy
and Aquitaine as well as his " kingdom of France" ; Cham-
pagne and Bar were to be the prizes of Charles. Through
the whole of 1474 the English king prepared actively for
war. A treaty was concluded with Brittany. The na-
tion was wild with enthusiasm. Large supplies were
granted by Parliament : and a large army gathered for the
coming campaign. The plan of attack was a masterly one.
While Edward moved from Normandy on Paris, the f o*se
CHAP. 1.] THE MONARCHY. 14611540. 55
of Burgundy and of Brittany on his right hand and his
left were to converge on the same point. But the aim of
Charles in these negotiations was simply to hold Lewis
from any intervention in his campaign on the Rhine. The
siege of Neuss was not opened till the close of July, and
its difficulties soon unfolded themselves. Once master of
the whole Rhineland, the house of Austria saw that Charles
would be strong enough to wrest from it the succession to
the Empire ; and while Sigismund paid back his loan and
roused Elsass to revolt the Emperor Frederick brought the
whole force of Germany to the relief of the town. From
that moment the siege was a hopeless one, but Charles
clung to it with stubborn pride through autumn, winter,
and spring, and it was only at the close of June, 1475, that
the menace of new leagues against his dominions on the
upper Rhineland forced him to withdraw. So broken was
his army that he could not, even if he would, have aided
in carrying out the schemes of the preceding year. But
an English invasion would secure him from attack by
Lewis till his forces could be reorganized ; and with the
same unscrupulous selfishness as of old Charles pledged
himself to co-operate and called on Edward to cross the
Channel. In July Edward landed with an army of twenty-
four thousand men at Calais. In numbers and in com-
pleteness of equipment no such force had as yet left English
shores. But no Burgundian force was seen on the Somme ;
and after long delays Charles proposed that Edward should
advance alone upon Paris on his assurance that the for-
tresses of the Somme would open their gates. The English
army crossed the Somme and approached St. Quentin, but
it was repulsed from the walls by a discharge of artillery.
It was now the middle of August, and heavy rains pre-
vented further advance ; while only excuses for delay came
from Brittany and it became every day clearer that the
Burgundian Duke had no real purpose to aid. Lewis
seized the moment of despair to propose peace on terms
which a conqueror might have accepted, the security of
56 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. .(BOOK V.
Brittany, the payment of what the English deemed a trib-
ute of fifty thousand crowns a year, and the betrothal of
Edward's daughter to the Dauphin. A separate treaty
provided for mutual aid in case of revolt among the sub-
jects of either king, and for mutual shelter should either
be driven from his realm. In spite of remonstrances from
the Duke of Burgundy this truce was signed at the close
of August and the English soldiers recrossed the sea.
The desertion of Charles threw Edward whether he
would or no on the French alliance; and the ruin of the
Duke explains the tenacity with which he clung to it.
Defeated by the Swiss at Morat in the following year,
Charles fell in the opening of 1477 on the field of Nanci,
and his vast dominion was left in his daughter's charge.
Lewis seized Picardy and Artois. the Burgundian duchy
and Franche Comte : and strove to gain the rest by forc-
ing on Mary of Burgundy the hand of the Dauphin. But
the Imperial dreams which had been fatal to Charles had
to be carried out through the very ruin they wrought.
Pressed by revolt in Flanders and by the French king's
greed, Mary gave her hand to the Emperor's son, Maxi-
milian; 'and her heritage passed to the Austrian house.
Edward took no part in the war between Lewis and Maxi-
milian which followed on the marriage. The contest be-
tween England and France had drifted into a mightier
European struggle between France and the House of Aus-
tria ; and from this struggle the King wisely held aloof.
He saw what Henry the Seventh saw after him and what
Henry the Eighth learned at last to see, that England could
only join in such a contest as the tool of one or other of the
combatants, a tool to be used while the struggle lasted and
to be thrown aside as soon as it was over. With the
growth of Austrian power England was secure from French
aggression; and rapidly as Lewis was adding province
after province to his dominions his loyalty to the pledge
he had given of leaving Brittany untouched and his anx-
iety to conclude a closer treaty of amity in 1478 showed
CHAP. 1.] THE MONARCHY. 14611540. 57
the price he set on his English alliance. Nor was Ed-
ward's course guided solely by considerations of foreign
policy. A French alliance meant peace ; and peace was
needful for the plans which Edward proceeded steadily to
carry out. With the closing years of his reign the Mon-
archy took a new color. The introduction of an elaborate
spy system, the use of the rack, and the practice of inter-
ference with the purity of justice gave the first signs of
an arbitrary rule which the Tudors were to develop. It
was on his creation of a new financial system that the
King laid the foundation of a despotic rule. Rich, and
secure at home as abroad, Edward had small need to call
the Houses together; no parliament met for five years,
and when one was called at last it was suffered to do little
but raise the custom duties, which were now granted to
the King for life. Sums were extorted from the clergy ;
monopolies were sold; the confiscations of the civil war
filled the royal exchequer ; Edward did not disdain to turn
merchant on his own account. The promise of a French
war had not only drawn heavy subsidies from the Com-
mons, much of which remained in the royal treasury
through the abrupt close of the strife, but enabled the King
to deal a deadly blow at the liberty which the Commons
had won. Edward set aside the usage of contracting loans
by authority of parliament ; and calling before him the
merchants of London, begged from each a gift or " benev-
olence" in proportion to the royal needs. How bitterly
this exaction was resented even by the classes with whom
the King had been most popular was seen in the protest
which the citizens addressed to his successor against these
" extortions and new impositions against the laws of Gcd
and man and the liberty and laws of this realm." But for
the moment resistance was fruitless, and the " benevolence"
of Edward was suffered to furnish a precedent for the f oread
loans of Wolsey and of Charles the First.
In the history of intellectual progress his reign takes a
brighter color. The founder of a aew despotism presents
J8 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK V.
a claim to our regard as the patron of Caxton. It is in the
life of the first English printer that we see the new up-
growth of larger and more national energies which were to
compensate for the decay of the narrower energies of the
Middle Age. Beneath the mouldering forms of the old
world a new world was bursting into life ; if the fifteenth
century was an age of death it was an age of birth as well,
of that new birth, that Renascence, from which the after
life of Europe was to flow. The force which till now con-
centrated itself in privileged classes was beginning to dif-
fuse itself through nations. The tendency of the time
was to expansion, to diffusion. The smaller gentry and
the merchant class rose in importance as the nobles fell.
Religion and morality passed out of the hands of the priest-
hood into those of the laity. Knowledge became vulgar-
ized, it stooped to lower and meaner forms that it might
educate the whole people. England was slow to catch the
intellectual fire which was already burning brightly across
the Alps, but even amid the turmoil of its wars and revo-
lutions intelligence was being more widely spread. While
the older literary class was dying out, a glance beneath
the surface shows us the stir of a new interest in knowl-
edge among the masses of the people itself. The very
character of the authorship of the time, its love of com-
pendiums and abridgments of such scientific and histori-
cal knowledge as the world believed it possessed, its dra-
matic performances or mysteries, the commonplace
morality of its poets, the popularity of its rhymed chronicles,
are proof that literature was ceasing to be the possession
of a purely intellectual class and was beginning to appeal
to the nation at large. The correspondence of the Paston
family not only displays a fluency and grammatical cor-
rectness which would have been impossible a few years
before, but shows country squires discussing about books
and gathering libraries. The increased use of linen paper
in place of the costlier parchment helped in the populari-
zation of letters. In no former age had finer copies of
CHAP. 1.] THE MONARCHY. 1461-1540. 59
books been produced ; in none had so many been transcribed.
This increased demand for their production caused the pro-
cesses of copying and illuminating manuscripts to be trans-
ferred from the scriptoria of the religious houses into the
hands of trade guilds like the Guild of St. John at Bruges
or the Brothers of the Pen at Brussels. It was in fact this
increase of demand for books, pamphlets, or fly-sheets, es-
pecially of a grammatical or religious character, in the
middle of the fifteenth century that brought about the in-
troduction of printing. We meet with the first records of
the printer's art in rude sheets struck off from wooden
blocks, " block-books" as they are now called. Later on
came the vast advance of printing from separate and mov-
able types. Originating at Maintz with the three famous
printers, Gutenberg, Fust, and Schoeffer, this new process
travelled southward to Strassburg, crossed the Alps to
Venice, where it lent itself through the Aldi to the spread
of Greek literature in Europe, and then floated down the
Rhine to the towns of Flanders.
It was probably at the press of Colard Mansion, in a lit-
tle room over the porch of St. Donat's at Bruges, that Wil-
liam Caxton learned the art which he was the first to in-
troduce into England. A Kentish boy by birth, but
apprenticed to a London mercer, Caxton had already spent
thirty years of his manhood in Flanders as Governor of
the English guild of Merchant Adventurers there when we
find him engaged as copyist in the service of Edward's
sister, Duchess Margaret of Burgundy. But the tedious
process of copying was soon thrown aside for the new art
which Colard Mansion had introduced into Bruges. " For
as much as in the writing of the same," Caxton tells us in
the preface to his first printed work, the Tales of Troy,
" my pen is worn, my hand weary and not steadfast, mine
eyes dimmed with over much looking on the white paper,
and my courage not so prone and ready to labor as it hath
been, and that age creepeth on me daily and feebleth all
the body, and also because I have promised to divers gen-
60 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK V.
tlemen and to my friends to address to them as hastily as
I might the said book, therefore I have practised and learned
at my great charge and dispense to ordain this said book
in print after the manner and form as ye may see, and is
not written with pen and ink as other books be, to the end
that every man may have them at once, for all the books
of this story here emprynted as ye see were begun in one
day and also finished in one day." The printing-press
was the precious freight he brought back to England in
1476 after an absence of five-and- thirty years. Through
the next fifteen, at an age when other men look for ease
and retirement, we see him plunging with characteristic
energy into his new occupation. His " red pale" or her-
aldic shield marked with a red bar down the middle in-
vited buyers to the press he established in the Almonry at
Westminster, a little enclosure containing a chapel and
almshouses near the west front of the church, where the
alms of the abbey were distributed to the poor. " If it
please any man, spiritual or temporal," runs his advertise-
ment, " to buy any pyes of two or three commemorations of
Salisbury all emprynted after the form of the present let-
ter, which be well and truly correct, let him come to West-
minster into the Almonry at the red pale, and he shall have
them good chepe." Caxton was a practical man of busi-
ness, as this advertisement shows, no rival of the Venetian
Aldi or of the classical printers of Rome, but resolved to
get a living from his trade, supplying priests with service
books and preachers with sermons, furnishing the clerk
with his "Golden Legend" and knight and baron with
"joyous and pleasant histories of chivalry." But while
careful to win his daily bread, he found time to do much
for what of higher literature lay fairly to hand. He printed
all the English poetry of any moment which was then in
existence. His reverence for that " worshipful man, Geof-
frey Chaucer," who "ought to be eternally remembered,"
is shown not merely by his edition of the " Canterbury
Tales," but by his reprint of them when a purer text of the
CHAP. l.J THE MONARCHY. 14611540. 61
poem offered itself. The poems of Lydgate and Gower
were added to those of Chaucer. The Chronicle of Brut
and Higden's " Polychronicon" were the only available
works of an historical character then existing in the Eng-
lish tongue, and Caxton not only printed them but himself
continued the latter up to his own time. A translation of
Boethius, a version of the Eneid from the French, and a
tract or two of Cicero, were the stray first-fruits of the
classical press in England.
Busy as was Caxton 's printing-press, he was even busier
as a translator than as a printer. More than four thousand
of his printed pages are from works of his own rendering.
The need of these translations shows the popular drift of
literature at the time; but keen as the demand seems to
have been, there is nothing mechanical in the temper with
which Caxton prepared to meet it. A natural, simple-
hearted taste and enthusiasm, especially for the style and
forms of language, breaks out in his curious prefaces.
" Having no work in tiand," he says in the preface to his
Eneid, " I sitting in my study where as lay many divers
pamphlets and books, happened that to my hand came a
little book in French, which late was translated out of
Latin by some noble clerk of France which book is named
Eneydos, and made in Latin by that noble poet and great
clerk Vergyl in which book I had great pleasure by rea-
son of the fair and honest termes and wordes in French
which I never saw to-fore-like, none so pleasant nor so
well ordered, which book as me seemed should be much
requisite for noble men to see, as well for the eloquence as
the histories ; and when I had advised me to this said book
I deliberated and concluded to translate it into English,
and forthwith took a pen and ink and wrote a leaf or
twain." But the work of translation involved a choice of
English which made Caxton 's work important in the his-
tory of our language. He stood between two schools of
translation, that of French affectation and English ped-
antry. It was a moment when the character of our liter-
62 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK V.
ary tongue was being settled, and it is curious to see in
his own words the struggle over it which was going on in
Caxton's time. " Some honest and great clerks have been
with me and desired me to write the most curious terms
that I could find ;" on the other hand, " some gentlemen of
late blamed me, saying that in my translations I had over
many curious terms which could not be understood of com-
mon people, and desired me to use old and homely terms
in my translations." "Fain would I please every man,"
comments the good-humored printer, but his sturdy sense
saved him alike from the temptations of the court and the
schools. His own taste pointed to English, but "to the
common terms that be daily used" rather than to the Eng-
lish of his antiquarian advisers. " I took an old book and
read therein, and certainly the English was so rude and
broad I could not well understand it," while the Old-Eng-
lish charters which the Abbot of Westminster lent as
models from the archives of his house seemed " more like
to Dutch than to English." To adopt current phraseology
however was by no means easy at a time when even the
speech of common talk was in a state of rapid flux. " Our
language now used varieth far from that which was used
and spoken when I was born. " Not only so, but the tongue
of each shire was still peculiar to itself and hardly intelli-
gible to men of another county. " Common English that
is spoken in one shire varieth from another so much, that
in my days happened that certain merchants were in a
ship in Thames for to have sailed over the sea into Zea-
land, and for lack of wind they tarred at Foreland and
went on land for to refresh them. And one of them, named
Sheffield, a mercer, came into a house and asked for meat,
and especially he asked them after eggs. And the good
wife answered that she could speak no French. And the
merchant was angry, for he also could speak no French,
but would have eggs, but he understood him not. And
then at last another said he would have eyren, then the
good wife said she understood him well. Lo ! what should
. 1.] THE MONARCHY. 14611540. 63
a man in thesp days now write," adds the puzzled printer,
"eggs or eyren? certainly it is hard to please every man
by cause of diversity and change of language." His own
mother-tongue too was that of " Kent in the Weald, where
I doubt not is spoken as broad and rude English as in any
place in England ;" and coupling this with his long absence
in Flanders we can hardly wonder at the confession he
makes over his first translation, that "when all these things
came to fore me, after that I had made and written a five
or six quires I fell in despair of this work, and purposed
never to have continued therein, and the quires laid apart,
and in two years after labored no more in this work. "
He was still, however, busy translating when he died.
All difficulties in fact were lightened by the general interest
which his labors aroused. When the length of the " Gol-
den Legend" makes him " half desperate to have accom-
plish it" and ready to "lay it apart," the Earl of Arundel
solicits him in no wise to leave it and promises a yearly
fee of a buck in summer and a doe in winter, once it were
done. " Many noble and divers gentle men of this realm
came and demanded many and often times wherefore I
have not made and imprinted the noble hi story of the 'San
Graal. ' " We see his visitors discussing with the sagacious
printer the historic existence of Arthur, Duchess Marga-
ret of Somerset lent him her " Blanchardine and Eglan-
tine ;" an Archdeacon of Colchester brought him his trans-
lation of the work called "Cato;" a mercer of London
pressed him to undertake the " Royal Book" of Philip le
Bel. Earl Rivers chatted with him over his own transla-
tion of the "Sayings of the Philosophers." Even kings
showed their interest in his work; his " Tully" was printed
under the patronage of Edward the Fourth, his " Order of
Chivalry" dedicated to Richard the Third, his " Facts of
Arms" published at the desire of Henry the Seventh. Cax-
ton profited in fact by the wide literary interest which was
a mark of the time. The fashion of large and gorgeous
libraries had passed from the French to the English prince
64 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK V.
of his day : Henry the Sixth had a valuable collection of
books ; that of the Louvre was seized by Duke Humphrey
of Gloucester and formed the basis of the fine library which
he presented to the University of Oxford. Great nobles
took an active and personal part in the literary revival.
The warrior, Sir John Fastolf , was a well-known lover of
books. Earl Rivers was himself one of the authors of the
day ; he found leisure in the intervals of pilgrimages and
politics to translate the " Sayings of the Philosophers" and
a couple of religious tracts for Caxton's press. A friend
of far greater intellectual distinction, however, than these
was found in John Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester. He had
wandered during the reign of Henry the Sixth in search of
learning to Italy, had studied at her universities and be-
come a teacher at Padua, where the elegance of his Latinity
drew tears from the most learned of the Popes, Pius the
Second, better known as JEneas Sylvius. Caxton can find
no words warm enough to express his admiration of one
" which in his time flowered in virtue and cunning, to
whom I know none like among the lords of the temporal-
ity in science and moral virtue." But the ruthlessness of
the Renascence appeared in Tiptoft side by side with its
intellectual vigor, and the fall of one whose cruelty had
earned him the surname of " the Butcher" even amid the
horrors of civil war was greeted with sorrow by none but
the faithful printer. "What great loss was it," he says
in a preface printed long after his fall, " of that noble, vir-
tuous, and well-disposed lord ; when I remember and ad-
vertise his life, his science, and his virtue, me thinketh
(God not displeased) over great the loss of such a man con-
sidering his estate and cunning."
Among the nobles who encouraged the work of Caxton
was the King's youngest brother, Richard Duke of Glou-
cester. Edward had never forgiven Clarence his desertion ;
and his impeachment in 1478 on a. charge of treason, a
charge soon followed by his death in the Tower, brought
Richard nearer to the throne. Ruthless and subtle as Ed-
CHAP. 1.] THE MONARCHY. 14611540. 65
ward himself, the Duke was already renowned as a war-
rior; his courage and military skill had been shown at
Barnet and Tewkesbury; and at the close of Edward's
reign an outbreak of strife with the Scots enabled him to
march in triumph upon Edinburgh in 1482. The sudden
death of his brother called Richard at once to the front.
Worn with excesses, though little more than forty years
old, Edward died in the spring of 1483, and his son Ed-
ward the Fifth succeeded peacefully to the throne. The
succession of a boy of thirteen woke again the fierce rival-
ries of the court. The Woodvilles had the young King in
their hands ; but Lord Hastings, the chief adviser of his
father, at once joined with Gloucester and the Duke of
Buckingham, the heir of Edward the Third's youngest son
and one of the greatest nobles of the realm, to overthrow
them. The efforts of the Queen-mother to obtain the re-
gency were foiled, Lord Rivers and two Woodvilles were
seized and sent to the block, and the King transferred to
the charge of Richard, who was proclaimed by a great
council of bishops and nobles Protector of the Realm. But
if he hated the Queen's kindred Hastings was as loyal as
the Woodvilles themselves to the children of Edward the
Fourth ; and the next step of the two Dukes was to remove
this obstacle. Little more than a month had passed after
the overthrow of the Woodvilles when Richard suddenly
entered the Council-chamber and charged Hastings with
sorcery and attempts upon his life. As he dashed his
hand upon the table the room filled with soldiery. " I will
not dine," said the Duke, turning to the minister, "till they
have brought me your head." Hastings was hurried to
execution in the court-yard of the Tower, his fellow-coun-
sellors thrown into prison, and the last check on Richard's
ambition was removed. Buckingham lent him his aid in
a claim of the crown ; and on the twenty-fifth of June the
Duke consented after some show of reluctance to listen to
the prayer of a Parliament hastily gathered together,
which, setting aside Edward's children as the fruit of an
66 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK V.
unlawful marriage and those of Clarence as disabled by
his attainder, besought him to take the office and title of
King.
Violent as his acts had been, Richard's career had as
yet jarred little with popular sentiment. The Woodvilles
were unpopular, Hastings was detested as the agent of
Edward's despotism, the reign of a child-king was gener-
ally deemed impossible. The country, longing only fop
peace after all its storms, called for a vigorous and active
ruler; and Richard's vigor and ability were seen in his
encounter with the first danger that threatened his throne.
The new revolution had again roused the hopes of the
Lancastrian party. With the deaths of Henry the Sixth
and his son all the descendants of Henry the Fourth passed
away ; but the line of John of Gaunt still survived in the
heir of the Beauforts. The legality of the royal act which
barred their claim to the crown was a more than question-
able one; the Beauforts had never admitted it, and the
conduct of Henry the Sixth in his earlier years points to
a belief in their right of succession. Their male line was
extinguished by the fall of the last Duke of Somerset at
Tewkesbury, but the claim of the house was still main-
tained by the son of Margaret Beaufort, the daughter of
Duke John and great-granddaughter of John of Gaunt.
While still but a girl Margaret had become both wife and
mother. She had wedded the Earl of Richmond, Edmund
Tudor, a son of Henry the Fifth's widow, Katharine of
France, by a marriage with a Welsh squire, Owen Tudor ;
and had given birth to a son, the later Henry the Seventh.
From very childhood the life of Henry had been a troubled
one. His father died in the year of his birth ; his uncle
and guardian, Jasper, Earl of Pembroke, was driven from
the realm on the fall of the House of Lancaster ; and the
boy himself, attainted at five years old, remained a pris-
oner till the restoration of Henry the Sixth by Lord War-
wick. But Edward's fresh success drove him from the
realm, and escaping to Brittany he was held there, halt-
CHAP. 1.] THE MONARCHY. 14611540. 6?
guest, half -prisoner, by its Duke. The extinction of the
direct Lancastrian line had given Henry a new importance.
Edward the Fourth never ceased to strive for his surren-
der, and if the Breton Duke refused to give him up, his
alliance with the English King was too valuable to be im-
perilled by suffering him to go free. The value of such a
check on Richard was seen by Lewis of France ; and his
demands for Henry's surrender into his hands drove the
Duke of Brittany, who was now influenced by a minister
in Richard's pay, to seek for aid from England. In June
the King sent a thousand archers to Brittany; but the
troubles of the Duchy had done more for Henry than
Lewis could have done. The nobles rose against Duke
and minister ; and in the struggle that followed the young
Earl was free to set sail as he would.
He found unexpected aid in the Duke of Buckingham,
whose support had done much to put Richard on the throne.
Though rewarded with numerous grants and the post of
Constable, Buckingham's greed was still unsated; and on
the refusal of his demand of the lands belonging to the
earldom of Hereford the Duke lent his ear to the counsels
of Margaret Beaufort, who had married his brother, Henry
Stafford, but still remained true to the cause of her boy.
Buckingham looked no doubt to the chance of fooling
Yorkist and Lancastrian alike, and of pressing his own
claims to the throne on Richard's fall. But he was in the
hands of subtler plotters. Morton, the exiled Bishop of
Ely, had founded a scheme of union on the disappearance
of Edward the Fifth and his brother, who had been im-
prisoned in the Tower since Richard's accession to the
throne, and were now believed to have been murdered by
his orders. The death of the boys left their sister Eliza-
beth, who had taken sanctuary at Westminster with her
mother, the heiress of Edward the Fourth ; and the scheme
of Morton was to unite the discontented Yorkists with
what remained of the Lancastrian party by the marriage
of Elizabeth with Henry Tudor. The Queen-mother and
68 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK V.
her kindred gave their consent to this plan, and a wide
revolt was organized under Buckingham's leadership. In
October, 1483, the Woodvilles and the iradherente rose in
Wiltshire, Kent, and Berkshire, the Courtenays in Devon,
while Buckingham marched to their support from Wales.
Troubles in Brittany had at this moment freed Henry
Tudor, and on the news of the rising he sailed with a strong
fleet and five thousand soldiers on board. A proclamation
of the new pretender announced to the nation what seems
as yet to have been carefully hidden, the death of the princes
in the Tower. But, whether the story was believed or no,
the duration of the revolt was too short for it to tell upon
public opinion. Henry's fleet was driven back by a storm,
Buckingham was delayed by a flood in the Severn, and the
smaller outbreaks were quickly put down. Richard showed
little inclination to deal roughly with the insurgents.
Buckingham indeed was beheaded, but the bulk of his fol-
lowers were pardoned, and the overthrow of her hopes rec-
onciled the Queen-mother to the King. She quitted the
sanctuary with Elizabeth, and thus broke up the league on
which Henry's hopes hung. But Richard was too wary
a statesman to trust for safety to mere force of arms. He
resolved to enlist the nation on his side. During his
brother's reign he had watched the upgrowth of public
discontent as the new policy of the monarchy developed
itself, and he now appealed to England as the restorer of
its ancient liberties. "We be determined," said the citi-
zens of London in a petition to the King, " rather to ad-
venture and to commit us to the peril of our lives and jeop-
ardy of death than to live in such thraldom and bondage
as we have lived some time heretofore, oppressed and in-
jured by extortions and new impositions against the laws
of God and man and the liberty and laws of this realm
wherein every Englishman is inherited." Richard met
the appeal by convoking Parliament in January, 1484, and
by sweeping measures of reform. The practice of extort-
ing money by benevolences was declared illegal, while
CEAP. 1.] THE MONARCHY. 14611540. 69
grants of pardons and remissions of forfeitures reversed in
some measure the policy of terror by which Edward at
once held the country in awe and filled his treasury. Nu-
merous statutes broke the slumbers of Parliamentary leg-
islation. A series of mercantile enactments strove to protect
the growing interests of English commerce. The King's
love of literature showed itself in a provision that no stat-
utes should act as a hindrance " to any artificer or merchant
stranger, of what nation or country he be, for bringing
into this realm or selling by retail or otherwise of any
manner of books, written or imprinted." His prohibition
of the iniquitous seizure of goods before conviction of
felony which had prevailed during Edward's reign, his
liberation of the bondmen who still remained unenfran-
chised on the royal domain, and his religious foundations
show Richard's keen anxiety to purchase a popularity in
which the bloody opening of his reign might be forgotten.
It was doubtless the same wish to render his throne pop-
ular which led Richard to revive the schemes of a war with
France. He had strongly remonstrated against his brother's
withdrawal and alliance in 1475, and it must have been
rather a suspicion of his warlike designs than any horror
at the ruthlessness of his ambition which led Lewis the
Eleventh on his death-bed to refuse to recognize his ac-
cession. At the close of Edward the Fourth's reign the
alliance which- had bound the two countries together was
brought to an end by the ambition and faithlessness of the
French King. The war between Lewis and Maximilian
ended at the close of 1482 through the sudden death of
Mary of Burgundy and the reluctance of the Flemish towns
to own Maximilian's authority as guardian of her son,
Philip, the heir of the Burgundian states. Lewis was able
to conclude a treaty at Arras, by which Philip's sister,
Margaret, was betrothed to the Dauphin Charles, and
brought with her as dower the counties of Artois and Bur-
gundy. By the treaty with England Charles was already
betrothed to Edward's daughter, Elizabeth; and this open
70 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK V.
breach of treaty was followed by the cessation of the sub-
sidy which had been punctually paid since 1475. France
in fact had no more need of buying English neutrality.
Galled as he was, Edward's death but a few months later
hindered any open quarrel, but the refusal of Lewis to rec-
ognize Richard and his attempts to force from Brittany
the surrender of Henry Tudor added to the estrangement
of the two courts ; and we can hardly wonder that on the
death of the French King only a few months after his ac-
cession Richard seized the opportunity which the troubles
at the French court afforded him. Charles the Eighth
was a minor; and the control of power was disputed as of
old between the Regent, Anne of Beaujeu, and the Duke
of Orleans. Orleans entered into correspondence with
Richard and Maximilian, whom Anne's policy was pre-
venting from gaining the mastery over the Low Countries,
and preparations were making for a coalition which would
have again brought an English army and the young Eng-
lish King on to the soil of France. It was to provide
against this danger that Anne had received Henry Tudor
at the French court when the threat of delivering him up
to Richard forced him to quit Brittany after the failure
of his first expedition ; and she met the new coalition by
encouraging the Earl to renew his attack. Had Richard
retained his popularity the attempt must have ended in a
failure even more disastrous than before. But the news
of the royal children's murder had slowly spread through
the nation, and even the most pitiless shrank aghast before
this crowning deed of blood. The pretence of a constitu-
tional rule too was soon thrown off, and in the opening of
1485 a general irritation was caused by the levy of benev-
olences in defiance of the statute which had just been
passed. The King felt himself safe; the consent of the
Queen-mother to his contemplated marriage with her
daughter Elizabeth appeared to secure him against any
danger from the discontented Yorkists ; and Henry, alone
and in exile, seemed a small danger. Henry however had
CHAP. 1.] THE MONARCHY. 14611540. 71
no sooner landed at Milford Haven than a wide conspiracy
revealed itself. Lord Stanley had as yet stood foremost
among Richard's adherents; he had supported him in the
rising of 1483 and had been rewarded with Buckingham's
post of Constable. His brother too stood high in the King's
confidence. But Margaret Beaufort, again left a widow,
wedded Lord Stanley ; and turned her third marriage, as
she had turned her second, to the profit of her boy. A
pledge of support from her husband explains the haste with
which Henry pressed forward to his encounter with the
King. The treason, however, was skilfully veiled; and
though defection after defection warned Richard of his
danger as Henry moved against him, the Stanleys still re-
mained by his side and held command of a large body of
his forces. But the armies no sooner met on the twenty-
second of August at Bosworth Field in Leicestershire than
their treason was declared. The forces under Lord Stan-
ley abandoned the King when the battle began ; a second
body of troops under the Earl of Northumberland drew
off as it opened. In the crisis of the fight Sir William
Stanley passed over to Henry's side. With a cry of " Trea-
son ! treason !" Richard flung himself into the thick of the
battle, and in the fury of his despair he had already dashed
the Lancastrian standard to the ground and hewed his way
into the presence of his rival when he fell overpowered
with numbers, and the crown which he had worn and
which was found as the struggle ended lying near a haw-
thorn bush was placed on the head of the conqueror.
VOL. 2
CHAPTER II.
THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING.
14851514.
STILL young, for he was hardly thirty when his victory
at Bosworth placed him on the throne, the temper of Henry
the Seventh seemed to promise the reign of a poetic dreamer
rather than of a statesman. The spare form, the sallow
face, the quick eye, lit now and then with a fire that told
of his Celtic blood, the shy, solitary humor which was only
broken by outbursts of pleasant converse or genial sarcasm,
told of an inner concentration and enthusiasm ; and to the
last Henry's mind remained imaginative and adventurous.
He dreamed of crusades, he dwelt with delight on the
legends of Arthur which Caxton gave to the world in the
year of his accession. His tastes were literary and artistic.
He called foreign scholars to his court to serve as secreta-
ries and historiographers; he trained his children in the
highest cult ire of their day ; he was a patron of the new
printing press, a lover of books and of art. The chapel at
Westminster which bears his name reflects his passion for
architecture. But life gave Henry little leisure for dreams
or culture. From the first he had to struggle for sheer life
against the dangers that beset him. A battle and treason
had given him the throne ; treason and a battle might dash
him from it. His claim of blood was an uncertain and
disputable one even by men of his own party. He stood
attainted by solemn Act of Parliament ; and though the
judges ruled that the possession of the crown cleared all
attaint the stigma and peril remained. His victory had
been a surprise; he could not trust the nobles; of fifty-two
CHAP. 2.] THE MONARCHY. 14611540. 73
peers he dared summon only a part to the Parliament which
assembled after his coronation and gave its recognition to
his claim of the crown. The act made no mention of hered-
itary right, or of any right by conquest, but simply declared
" that the inheritance of the crown should be, rest, remain,
and abide in the most royal person of their sovereign Lord,
King Henry the Seventh, and the heirs of his body law-
fulty ensuing." Such a declaration gave Henry a true
Parliamentary title to his throne; and his consciousness
of this was shown in a second act which assumed him to
have been King since the death of Henry the Sixth and
attainted Richard and his adherents as rebels and traitors.
But such an act was too manifestly unjust to give real
strength to his throne; it was in fact practically undone
in 1495 when a new statute declared that no one should
henceforth be attainted for serving a de facto king ; and
BO insecure seemed Henry's title that no power acknowl-
edged him as King save France and the Pope, and the
support of France gained as men believed by a pledge to
abandon the English claims on Normandy and Guienne
was as perilous at home as it was useful abroad.
It was in vain that he carried out his promise to Morton
and the Woodvilles by marrying Elizabeth of York; he
had significantly delayed the marriage till he was owned
as King in his own right, and a purely Lancastrian claim
to the throne roused wrath in every Yorkist which no afte*
match could allay. During the early years of his reign
the country was troubled with local insurrections, some so
obscure that they have escaped the notice of our chroni-
clers, some, like that of Lovel and of the Staffords, general
and formidable. The turmoil within was quickened by
encouragement from without. The Yorkist sympathies of
the Earl of Kildare, the deputy of Ireland, offered a start-
ing-point for a descent from the west ; while the sister of
Edward the Fourth, the Duchess Margaret of Burgundy,
a fanatic in the cause of her house, was ready to aid any
Yorkist attempt from Flanders. A trivial rising in 1486
74 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK V.
proved to be the prelude of a vast conspiracy in the follow-
ing year. The Earl of Warwick, the son of the Duke of
Clarence and thus next male heir of the Yorkist line, had
been secured by Henry as by Richard in the Tower; but
in the opening of 1487 Lambert Simnel, a boy carefully
trained for the purpose of this imposture, landed under his
name in Ireland. The whole island espoused Simnel's
cause, the Lord Deputy supported him, and he was soon
joined by the Earl of Lincoln, John de la Pole, the son of
a sister of Edward the Fourth by the Duke of Suffolk, and
who on the death of Richard's son had been recognized by
that sovereign as his heir. Edward's queen and the Wood-
villes seem to have joined in the plot, and Margaret sent
troops which enabled the pretender to land in Lancashire.
But Henry was quick to meet the danger, and the impos-
tor's defeat at Stoke near Newark proved fatal to the hopes
of the Yorkists. Simnel was taken and made a scullion
in the King's kitchen, Lincoln fell on the field.
The victory of Stoke set Henry free to turn to the inner
government of his realm. He took up with a new vigor
and fulness the policy of Edward the Fourth. Parliament
was only summoned on rare and critical occasions. It
was but twice convened during the last thirteen years of
Henry's reign. The chief aim of the King was the accu-
mulation of a treasure which should relieve him from the
need of ever appealing for its aid. Subsidies granted for
the support of wars which Henry evaded formed the base
of a royal treasure which was swelled by the revival of
dormant claims of the crown, by the exaction of fines for
the breach of forgotten tenures, and by a host of petty ex-
tortions. Benevolences were again revived. A dilemma
of Henry's minister, which received the name of "Mor-
ton's fork," extorted gifts to the exchequer from men who
lived handsomely on the ground that their wealth was
manifest, and from those who lived plainly on the plea that
economy had made them wealthy. Still greater sums were
drawn from those who were compromised in the revolts
CHAP. 2.] THE MONARCHY. 14611540. 75
which chequered the King's rule. It was with his own
hand that Henry indorsed the rolls of fines imposed after
every insurrection. So successful were these efforts that
at the end of his reign the King bequeathed a hoard of two
millions to his successor. The same imitation of Edward's
policy was seen in Henry's civil government. Broken as
was the strength of the baronage, there still remained lords
whom the new monarch watched with a jealous solicitude.
Their power lay in the hosts of disorderly retainers who
swarmed round their houses, ready to furnish a force in
case of revolt, while in peace they became centres of out-
rage and defiance to the law. Edward had ordered the
dissolution of these military households in his Statute of
Liveries, and the statute was enforced by Henry with the
utmost severity. On a visit to the Earl of Oxford, one of
the most devoted adherents of the Lancastrian cause, the
King found two long lines of liveried retainers drawn up
to receive him. "I thank you for your good cheer, my
Lord," said Henry as they parted, "but I may not endure
to have my laws broken in my sight. My attorney must
speak with you." The Earl was glad to escape with a
fine of 10,000. It was with a special view to the suppres-
sion of this danger that Henry employed the criminal ju-
risdiction of the royal Council. The King in his Council
had always asserted a right in the last resort to enforce
justice and peace by dealing with offenders too strong to
be dealt with by his ordinary courts. Henry systematized
this occasional jurisdiction by appointing in 1486 a com-
mittee of his Council as a regular court, to which the place
where it usually sat gave the name of the Court of Star
Chamber. The King's aim was probably little more than
a purpose to enforce order on the land by bringing the great
nobles before his own judgment seat; but the establish-
ment of the court as a regular and no longer an exceptional
tribunal, whose traditional powers were confirmed by Par-
liamentary statute, and where the absence of a jury can-
celled the prisoner's right to be tried by his peers, furnished
76 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK V.
his son with an instrument of tyranny which laid justice
at the feet of the monarchy.
In his foreign policy Henry like Edward clung to a
system of peace. His aim was to keep England apart,
independent of the two great continental powers which
during the Wars of the Roses had made revolutions at
their will. Peace indeed was what Henry needed, whether
for the general welfare of the land, or for the building up
of his own system of rule. Peace, however, was hard to
win. The old quarrel with France seemed indeed at an
end ; for it was Henry's pledge of friendship which had
bought the French aid that enabled him to mount the
throne. But in England itself hatred of the French burned
fiercely as ever; and the growth of the French monarchy
in extent and power through the policy of Lewis the Elev-
enth, his extinction of the great feudatories, and the admin-
istrative centralization he introduced, made even the cool-
est English statesman look on it as a danger to the realm.
Only Brittany broke the long stretch of French coast which
fronted England ; and the steady refusal of Edward the
Fourth to suffer Lewis to attack the Duchy showed the
English sense of its value. Under its new King, however,
Charles the Eighth, France showed her purpose of annex-
ing Brittany. Henry contented himself for a while with
sending a few volunteers to aid in resistance; but when
the death of the Duke left Brittany and its heiress, Anne,
at the mercy of the French King the country called at
once for war. Henry was driven to find allies in the states
which equally dreaded the French advance, in the house
of Austria and in the new power of Spain, to call on Par-
liament for supplies, and to cross the Channel in 1492
with twenty-five thousand men. But his allies failed him ;
a marriage of Charles with Anne gave the Duchy irretriev-
ably to the French King; and troubles at home brought
Henry to listen to terms of peace on payment of a heavy
subsidy.
Both kings indeed were eager for peace. Charles was
CHAP. .] THE MONARCHY. 14611540. 77
anxious to free his hands for the designs he was forming
against Italy. What forced Henry to close the war was
the appearance of a new pretender. At the opening of
1492, at the moment when the King was threatening a de-
scent on the French coast, a youth calling himself Richard,
Duke of York, landed suddenly in Ireland. His story of
an escape from the Tower and of his bringing up in Por-
tugal was accepted by a crowd of partisans ; but he was
soon called by Charles to France, and his presence there
adroitly used to wring peace from the English King as the
price of his abandonment. At the conclusion of peace the
pretender found a new refuge with Duchess Margaret ; his
claims were recognized by the House of Austria and the
King of Scots; while Henry, who declared the youth's true
name to be Perkin Warbeck, weakened his cause by con-
flicting accounts of his origin and history. Fresh York-
ist plots sprang up in England. The Duchess gathered a
fleet, Maximilian sent soldiers to the young claimant's aid,
and in 1495 he sailed for England with a force as large as
that which had followed Henry ten years before. But he
found a different England. Though fierce outbreaks still
took place in the north, the country at large had tasted the
new s weets of order and firm government, and that reac-
tion of feeling, that horror of civil wars, which gave their
strength to the Tudors had already begun to show its force.
The pretender's troops landed at Deal, only to be seized by
the country folk and hung as pirates. Their leader sailed
on to Ireland. Here too, however, iie found a new state of
things. Since the recall of Richard and his army in 1399
English sovereignty over the island had dwindled to a
shadow. For a hundred years the native chieftains had
ruled without check on one side the Pale, and the lords of
the Pale had ruled with but little check on the other. But
in 1494 Henry took the country in hand. Sir Edward
Poynings, a tried soldier, was dispatched as deputy to
Ireland with troops at his back. English officers, English
judges were quietly sent over. The lords of the Pale were
78 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK V.
scared by the seizure of their leader, the Earl of Kildare.
The Parliament of the Pale was bridled by a statute passed
at the Deputy's dictation ; the famous Poynings' Act, by
which it was forbidden to treat of any matters save those
first approved of by the English King and his Council.
It was this new Ireland that the pretender found when he
appeared off its coast. He withdrew in despair, and Henry
at once set about finishing his work. The time had not
yet come when England was strong enough to hold Ireland
by her own strength. For a while the Lords of the Pale
must still serve as the English garrison against the uncon-
quered Irish, and Henry called his prisoner Kildare to his
presence. "All Ireland cannot rule this man," grumbled
his ministers. "Then shall he rule all Ireland," laughed
the King, and Kildare returned as Lord Deputy to hold
the country loyally in Henry's name.
The same political forecast, winning from very danger
the elements of future security, was seen in the King's
dealings with Scotland. From the moment when England
finally abandoned the fruitless effort to subdue it the story
of Scotland had been a miserable one. Whatever peace
might be concluded, a sleepless dread of the old danger
from the south tied the country to an alliance with France,
and this alliance dragged it into the vortex of the Hundred
Years' War. But after the final defeat and capture of
David on the field of Neville's Cross the struggle died down
on both sides into marauding forays and battles, like those
of Otterburn and Homildon Hill, in which alternate victo-
ries were won by the feudal lords of the Scotch or English
border. The ballad of " Chevy Chase" brings home to us
the spirit of the contest, the daring and defiance which
stirred Sidney's heart "like a trumpet." But the effect
of the struggle on the internal development of Scotland
was utterly ruinous. The houses of Douglas and of March
which it raised into supremacy only interrupted their strife
with England to battle fiercely with one another or to co-
erce their King. The power of the Crown sank in fact
CHAP. 2.] THE MONARCHY. 14611540. 79
into insignificance under the earlier sovereigns of the line
of Stuart which succeeded to the throne on the extinction
of the male line of Bruce in 1371. Invasions and civil
feuds not only arrested but even rolled back the national
industry and prosperity. The country was a chaos of dis-
order and misrule, in which the peasant and the trader
were the victims of feudal outrage. The Border became
a lawless land, where robbery and violence reigned utterly
without check. So pitiable seemed the state of the king-
dom that at the opening of the fifteenth century the clans
of the Highlands drew together to swoop upon it as a cer-
tain prey ; but the common peril united the factions of the
nobles, and the victory of Harlaw saved the Lowlands
from the rule of the Celt.
A great ns*me at last broke the line of the Scottish kings.
Schooled by a long captivity in England, James the First
returned to his realm in 1424 to be the ablest of her rulers
as he was th first of her poets. In the twelve years of a
wonderful r*.ign justice and order were restored for the
while, the !3otch Parliament organized, the clans of the
Highlands assailed in their own fastnesses and reduced
to swear fealty to the " Saxon" king. James turned to as-
sail the great houses ; but feudal violence was still too strong
for the hand of the law, and a band of ruffians who burst
into his chamber left the King lifeless with sixteen stabs
in his body. His death in 1437 was the signal for a strug-
gle between the House of Douglas and the Crown which
lasted through half a century. Order however crept grad-
ually in ; the exile of the Douglases left the Scottish mon-
arch supreme in the Lowlands; while their dominion over
the Highlands was secured by the ruin of the Lords of
the Isles. But in its outer policy the country still followed
in the wake of France ; every quarrel between French King
and English King brought danger with it on the Scottish
border; and the war of Brittany at once set James the
Fourth among Henry's foes. James welcomed the fugitive
pretender at his court after his failure in Ireland, wedded
80 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK V.
him to his cousin, and in 1497 marched with him to the
south. Not a man however greeted the Yorkist claimant,
the country mustered to fight him ; and an outbreak among
his nobles, many of whom Henry had in his pay, called
the Scot-King back again. Abandonment of the pretender
was the first provision of peace between the two countries.
Forced to quit Scotland the youth threw himself on the
Cornish coast, drawn there by a revolt in June, only two
months before his landing, which had been stirred up by
the heavy taxation for the Scotch war, and in which a force
of Cornishmen had actually pushed upon London and only
been dispersed by the King's artillery on Blackheath.
His temper however shrank from any real encounter; and
though he succeeded in raising a body of Cornishmen and
marched on Taunton, at the approach of the royal forces
he fled from his army, took sanctuary at Beaulieu, and
surrendered on promise of life. But the close of this dan-
ger made no break in Henry's policy of winning Scotland
to a new attitude toward his realm. The lure to James
was the hand of the English King's daughter, Margaret
Tudor. For five years the negotiations dragged wearily
along. The bitter hate of the two peoples blocked the way,
and even Henry's ministers objected that the English
crown might be made by the match the heritage of a Scot-
tish king. " Then," they said, " Scotland will annex Eng-
land. " " No," said the King with shrewd sense ; " in such
a case England would annex Scotland, for the greater al-
ways draws to it the less. " His steady pressure at last won
the day. In 1502 the marriage treaty with the Scot- King
was formally concluded ; and quiet, as Henry trusted, se-
cured in the north.
The marriage of Margaret was to bring the House of
Stuart at an after time to the English throne. But results
as momentous and far more immediate followed on the
marriage of Henry's sons. From the outset of his reign
Henry had been driven to seek the friendship and alliance
of Spain. Though his policy to the last remained one of
CHAP. 2.] THE MONARCHY. 14611540. 81
peace, yet the acquisition of Brittany forced him to guard
against attack from France and the mastery of the Channel
which the possession of the Breton ports was likely to give
to the French fleet. The same dread of French attack
drew Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabel of Castile, whose
marriage was building up the new monarchy of Spain, to
the side of the English King; and only a few years after
his accession they offered the hand of their daughter Cath-
arine for his eldest son. But the invasion of Italy by
Charles the Eighth drew French ambition to a distant
strife, and once delivered from the pressure of immediate
danger Henry held warily back from a close connection
with the Spanish realms which might have involved him
in continental wars. It was not till 1501 that the mar-
riage-treaty was really carried out. The Low Countries
had now passed to the son of Mary of Burgundy by her
husband Maximilian, the Austrian Archduke Philip. The
Yorkist sympathies of the Duchess Margaret were shared
by Philip, and Flanders had till now been the starting-
point of the pretenders who had threatened Henry's crown
But Philip's marriage with Juana, the daughter of Ferdi-
nand and Isabel, bound him to the cause of Spain, and it
was to secure his throne by winning Philip's alliance, as
well as to gain in the friendship of the Low Countries a
fresh check upon French attack, that Henry yielded to Fer-
dinand's renewed demand for the union of Arthur and
Catharine. The match was made in blood. Henry's own
temper was merciful and even generous; he punished re-
bellion for the most part by fines rather than bloodshed,
and he had been content to imprison or degrade his rivals.
But the Spanish ruthlessness would see no living claimant
left to endanger Catharine's throne, and Perkin Warbeck
and the Earl of Warwick were put to death on a charge
of conspiracy before the landing of the bride.
Catharine, however, was widow almost as soon as wife,
for only three months after his wedding Arthur sickened
and died. But a contest with France for Southern Italy,
82 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK V.
which Ferdinand claimed as king of Aragon, now made
the friendship of England more precious than ever to the
Spanish sovereigns; and Isabel at once pressed for her
daughter's union with the King's second son, Henry,
whom his brother's death left heir to the throne. Such
a union with a husband's brother startled the English sov-
ereign. In his anxiety, however, to avoid a breach with
Spain he suffered Henry to be betrothed to Catharine, and
threw the burden of decision on Rome. As he expected,
Julius the Second declared that if the first marriage had
been completed to allow the second was beyond even the
Papal power. But the victories of Spain in Southern Italy
enabled Isabel to put fresh pressure on the Pope, and on a
denial being given of the consummation of the earlier mar-
riage Julius was at last brought to sign a bull legitimating
the later one. Henry, however, still shrank from any real
union. His aim was neither to complete the marriage,
which would have alienated France, nor to wholly break
it off and so alienate Spain. A balanced position between
the two battling powers allowed him to remain at peace, to
maintain an independent policy, and to pursue his system
of home-government. He met the bull therefore by com-
pelling his son to enter a secret protest against the validity
of his betrothal ; and Catharine remained through the later
years of his reign at the English court betrothed but un-
married, sick with love-longing and baffled pride.
But great as were the issues of Henry's policy, it shrinks
into littleness if we turn from it to the weighty movements
which were now stirring the minds of men. The world
was passing through changes more momentous than any
it had witnessed since the victory of Christianity and the
fall of the Roman Empire. Its physical bounds were sud-
denly enlarged. The discoveries of Copernicus revealed to
man the secret of the universe. Portuguese mariners
doubled the Cape of Good Hope 'and anchored their mer-
chant fleets in the harbors of India. Columbus crossed
ths untraversed ocean to add a New World to the Old,
CHAP. 2.] THE MONARCHY. 14611540. 83
Sebastian Cabot, starting from the port of Bristol, threaded
his way among the icebergs of Labrador. This sudden
contact with new lands, new faiths, new races of men
quickened the slumbering intelligence of Europe into a
strange curiosity. The first book of voyages that told of
the Western World, the travels of Amerigo Vespucci,
were soon "in everybody's hands." The "Utopia" of
More, in its wide range of speculation on every subject of
human thought and action, tells us how roughly and ut-
terly the narrowness and limitation of human life had been
broken up. At the very hour when the intellectual energy
of the Middle Ages had sunk into exhaustion the capture
of Constantinople by the Turks and the flight of its Greek
scholars to the shores of Italy opened anew the science and
literature of an older world. The exiled Greek scholars
were welcomed in Italy ; and Florence, so long the hom
of freedom and of art, became the home of an intellectual
Kevival. The poetry of Homer, the drama of Sophocles,
the philosophy of Aristotle and of Plato woke again to life
beneath the shadow of the mighty dome with which Bru-
nelleschi had just crowned the City by the Arno. All the
restless energy which Florence had so long thrown into
the cause of liberty she flung, now that her liberty was
reft from her, into the cause of letters. The galleys of her
merchants brought back manuscripts from the East as the
most precious portion of their freight. In the palaces of
her nobles fragments of classic sculpture ranged themselves
beneath the frescoes of Ghirlandajo. The recovery of a
treatise of Cicero's or a tract of Sallust's from the dust of a
monastic library was welcomed by the group of statesmen
and artists who gathered in the Rucellai gardens with a
thrill of enthusiasm. Foreign scholars soon flocked over
the Alps to learn Greek, the key of the new knowledge, from
the Florentine teachers. Grocyn, a fellow of New College,
was perhaps the first Englishman who studied under the
Greek exile, Chancondylas ; and the Greek lectures which
he delivered in Oxford on his return in 1491 mark the open-
84 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK V.
ing of a new period in our history. Physical as well as
literary activity awoke with the re-discovery of the teach-
ers of Greece; and the continuous progress of English sci-
ence may be dated from the day when Linacre, another
Oxford student, returned from the lectures of the Florentine
Politian to revive the older tradition of medicine by his
translation of Galen.
But from the first it was manifest that the revival of let-
ters would take a tone in England very different from the
tone it had taken in Italy, a tone less literary, less largely
human, but more moral, more religious, more practical in
its bearings both upon society and politics. The awaken-
ing of a rational Christianity, whether in England or in
the Teutonic world at large, begins with the Italian studies
of John Colet ; and the vigor and earnestness of Colet were
the best proof of the strength with which the new move-
ment was to affect English religion. He came back to
Oxford utterly untouched by the Platonic mysticism or
the semi -serious infidelity which characterized the group
of scholars round Lorenzo the Magnificent. He was hardly
more influenced by their literary enthusiasm. The knowl-
edge of Greek seems to have had one almost exclusive end
for him, and this was a religious end. Greek was the key
by which he could unlock the Gospels and the New Testa-
ment, and in these he thought that he could find a new
religious standing-ground. It was this resolve of Colet to
throw aside the traditional dogmas of his day and to dis-
cover a rational and practical religion in the Gospels them-
selves which gave its peculiar stamp to the theology of the
Renascence. His faith stood simply on a vivid realization
of the person of Christ. In the prominence which such a
view gave to the moral life, in his free criticism of the
earlier Scriptures, in his tendency to simple forms of doc-
trine and confessions of faith, Colet struck the keynote of
a mode of religious thought as strongly in contrast with
that of the later Reformation as with that of Catholicism
itself. The allegorical and mystical theology on which
CHAP. 2.] THE MONARCHY. 14611540. 85
the Middle Ages had spent their intellectual vigor to such
little purpose fell before his rejection of all but the histori-
cal and grammatical sense of the Biblical text. In his
lectures on the Romans we find hardly a single quotation
from the Fathers or the scholastic teachers. The great
fabric of belief built up by the mediaeval doctors seemed
to him simply "the corruptions of the Schoolmen." In
the life and sayings of its Founder he saw a simple and
rational Christianity, whose fittest expression was the
Apostles' creed. "About the rest," he said with charac-
teristic impatience, "let divines dispute as they will."
Of his attitude toward the coarser aspects of the current re-
ligion his behavior at a later time before the famous shrine
of St. Thomas at Canterbury gives us a rough indication.
As the blaze of its jewels, its costly sculptures, its elabo-
rate metal- work burst on Colet's view, he suggested with
bitter irony that a saint so lavish to the poor in his life-
time would certainly prefer that they should possess the
wealth heaped round him since his death. With petulant
disgust he rejected the rags of the martyr which were
offered for his adoration and the shoe which was offered
for his kiss. The earnestness, the religious zeal, the very
impatience and want of sympathy with the past which we
see in every word and act of the man burst out in the lec-
tures on St. Paul's Epistles which he delivered at Oxford
in 1496. Even to the most critical among his hearers he
seemed " like one inspired, raised in voice, eye, his whole
countenance and mien, out of himself."
Severe as was the outer life of the new teacher, a severity
marked by his plain black robe and the frugal table which
he preserved amidst his later dignities, his lively conver-
sation, his frank simplicity, the purity and nobleness of
his life, even the keen outbursts of his troublesome temper,
endeared him to a group of scholars, foremost among whom
stood Erasmus and Thomas More. " Greece has crossed
the Alps," cried the exiled Argyropulos on hearing a trans-
lation of Thucydides by the German Reuchlin; but the
86 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK V.
glory, whether of Reuchlin or of the Teutonic scholars
who followed him, was soon eclipsed by that of Erasmus.
His enormous industry, the vast store of classical learning
which he gradually accumulated, Erasmus shared with
others of his day. In patristic study he may have stood
beneath Luther ; in originality and profoundness of thought
he was certainly inferior to More. His theology, though
he made a greater mark on the world by it than even by
his scholarship, he derived almost without change from
Colet. But his combination of vast learning with keen
observation, of acuteness of remark with a lively fancy, of
genial wit with a perfect good sense his union of as sin-
cere a piety and as profound a zeal for rational religion as
Colet's with a dispassionate fairness towards older faiths,
a large love of secular culture, and a genial freedom and
play of mind this union was his own, and it was through
this that Erasmus embodied for the Teutonic peoples the
quickening influence of the New Learning during the long
scholar life which began at Paris and ended amid sorrow
and darkness at Basle. At the time of Colet's return from
Italy Erasmus was young and comparatively unknown,
but the chivalrous enthusiasm of the new movement breaks
out in his letters from Paris, whither he had wandered as
a scholar. " I have given up my whole soul to Greek
learning," he writes, "and as soon as I get any money I
shall buy Greek books and then I shall buy some clothes."
It was in despair of reaching Italy that the young scholar
made his way in 1499 to Oxford, as the one place on this
side the Alps where he would be enabled through the teach-
ing of Grocyn to acquire a knowledge of Greek. But he
had no sooner arrived there than all feeling of regret van-
ished away. "I have found in Oxford," he writes, "so
much polish and learning that now I hardly care about
going to Italy at all, save for the sake of having been there.
When I listen to my friend Colet it seems like listening to
Plato himself. Who does not wonder at the wide range
of Grocyn's knowledge? What can be more searching,
CHAP. 2.] THE MONARCHY. 14611540. 87
deep, and refined than the judgment of Linacre? When
did Nature mould a temper more gentle, endearing, and
happy than the temper of Thomas More?"
But the new movement was far from being bounded by
the walls of Oxford. The printing press was making let-
ters the common property of all. In the last thirty years
of the fifteenth century ten thousand editions of books and
pamphlets are said to have been published throughout
Europe, the most important half of them of course in Italy.
All the Latin authors were accessible to every student be-
fore the century closed. Almost all the more valuable
authors of Greece were published in the twenty years that
followed. The profound influence of this burst of the two
great classic literatures on the world at once made itself
felt. "For the first time," to use the picturesque phrase
of M. Taine, " men opened their eyes and saw. " The hu-
man mind seemed to gather new energies at the sight of
the vast field which opened before it. It attacked every
province of knowledge, and in a few years it transformed
all. Experimental science, the science of philology, the
science of politics, the critical investigation of religious
truth, all took their origin from this Renascence this
" New Birth" of the world. Art, if it lost much in purity
and propriety, gained in scope and in the fearlessness of
its love of Nature. Literature if crushed for the moment
by the overpowering attraction of the great models of
Greece and Rome, revived with a grandeur of form, a large
spirit of humanity, such as it has never known since their
day. In England the influence of the new movement ex-
tended far beyond the little group in which it had a few
years before seemed concentrated. The great churchmen
became its patrons. Langton, Bishop of Winchester, took
delight in examining the young scholars of his episcopal
family every evening, and sent all the most promising of
them to study across the Alps. Learning found a yet
warmer friend in the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Immersed as Archbishop Warham was in the business
88 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK V.
of the state, he was no mere politician. The eulogies
which Erasmus lavished on him while he lived, his praises
of the Primate's learning, of his ability in business, his
pleasant humor, his modesty, his fidelity to friends, may
pass for what eulogies of living men are commonly worth.
But it is difficult to doubt the sincerity of the glowing pic-
ture which he drew of him when death had destroyed all
interest in mere adulation. The letters indeed which passed
between the great churchman and the wandering scholar,
the quiet, simple-hearted grace which amid constant in-
stances of munificence preserved the perfect equality of lit-
erary friendship, the enlightened piety to which Erasmus
could address the noble words of his preface to St. Jerome,
confirm the judgment of every good man of Warham's
day. The Archbishop's life was a simple one; and an
hour's pleasant reading, a quiet chat with some learned
new-comer, alone broke the endless round of civil and ec-
clesiastical business. Few men realized so thoroughly as
Warham the new conception of an intellectual and moral
equality before which the old social distinctions of the
world were to vanish away. His favorite relaxation was
to sup among a group of scholarly visitors, enjoying their
fun and retorting with fun of his own. Colet, who had
now become Dean of St. Pauls and whose sermons were
stirring all London, might often be seen with Grocyn and
Linacre at the Primate's board. There too might proba-
bly have been seen Thomas More, who, young as he was,
was already famous through his lectures at St. Lawrence
on " The City of God." But the scholar- world found more
than supper or fun at the Primate's board. His purse was
ever open to relieve their poverty. " Had I found such a
patron in my youth," Erasmus wrote long after, "I too
might have been counted among the fortunate ones." It
was with Grocyn that Erasmus on a second visit to Eng-
land rowed up the river to Warham's board at Lambeth,
and in spite of an unpromising beginning the acquaintance
turned out wonderfully well. The Primate loved him,
CHAP. 2.] THE MONARCHY. 14611540. 89
Erasmus wrote home, as if he were his father or his brother,
and his generosity surpassed that of all his friends. He
offered him a sinecure, and when he declined it he be-
stowed on him a pension of a hundred crowns a year.
When Erasmus wandered to Paris it was Warham's invi-
tation which recalled him to England. When the rest of
his patrons left him to starve on the sour beer of Cambridge
it was Warham who sent him fifty angels. " I wish there
were thirty legions of them," the Primate puns in his good-
humored way.
Real however as this progress was, the group of schol-
ars who represented the New Learning in England still re-
mained a little one through the reign of Henry the Seventh.
But the King's death in 1509 wholly changed their position.
A "New Order," to use their own enthusiastic phrase,
dawned on them in the accession of his son. Henry the
Eighth had hardly completed his eighteenth year when
he mounted the throne; but his manly beauty, his bodily
vigor, and skill in arms, seemed matched by a frank and
generous temper and a nobleness of political aims. Pole,
his bitterest enemy, owned in later days that at the begin-
ning of his reign Henry's nature was one " from which all
excellent things might have been hoped. " Already in stat-
ure and strength a king among his fellows, taller than
any, bigger than any, a mighty wrestler, a mighty hunter,
an archer of the best, a knight who bore down rider after
rider in the tourney, the young monarch combined with
this bodily lordliness a largeness and versatility of mind
which was to be the special characteristic of the age that
had begun. His fine voice, his love of music, his skill on
lute or organ, the taste for poetry that made him delight
in Surrey's verse, the taste for art which made him delight
in Holbein's canvas, left room for tendencies of a more
practical sort, for dabbling in medicine, or for a real skill
in shipbuilding. There was a popular fibre in Henry's
nature which made him seek throughout his reign the love
of his people; and at its outset he gave promise of a more
90 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK V.
popular system of government by checking the extortion
which had been practised under color of enforcing forgot-
ten laws, and by bringing his father's financial ministers,
Empson and Dudley, to trial on a charge of treason. His
sympathies were known to be heartily with the New Learn-
ing; he was a clever linguist, he had a taste that never left
him for theological study, he was a fair scholar. Even
as a boy of nine he had roused by his wit and attainments
the wonder of Erasmus, and now that he mounted the
throne the great scholar hurried back to England to pour
out his exultation in the "Praise of Folly," a song of tri-
umph over the old world of ignorance and bigotry that
was to vanish away before the light and knowledge of the
new reign. Folly in his amusing little book mounts a pul-
pit in cap and bells, and pelts with her satire the absurdi-
ties of the world around her, the superstition of the monk,
the pedantry of the grammarian, the dogmatism of the
doctors of the schools, the selfishness and tyranny of Kings.
The irony of Erasmus was backed by the earnest effort
of Colet. He seized the opportunity to commence the work
of educational reform by devoting in 1510 his private for-
tune to the foundation of a Grammar School beside St.
Pauls. The bent of its founder's mind was shown by the
image of the Child Jesus over the master's chair with the
words " Hear ye Him" graven beneath it. " Lift up your
little white hands for me," wrote the Dean to his scholars
in words which prove the tenderness that lay beneath the
stern outer seeming of the man, "for me which prayeth
for you to God." All the educational designs of the re-
formers were carried out in the new foundation. The old
methods of instruction were superseded by fresh grammars
com posed by Erasmus and other scholars for its use. Lilly,
an Oxford student who had studied Greek in the East,
was placed at its head. The injunctions of the founder
aimed at the union of rational religion with sound learn-
ing, at the exclusion of the scholastic logic, and at the
steady diffusion of the two classical literatures. The more
CHAP. 2.] THE MONARCHY. 14611540. 91
bigoted of the clergy were quick to take alarm. "No
wonder," More wrote to the Dean, "your school raises a
storm, for it is like the wooden horse in which armed
Greeks were hidden for the ruin of barbarous Troy." But
the cry of alarm passed helplessly away. Not only did
the study of Greek creep gradually into the schools which
existed, but the example of Colet was followed by a crowd
of imitators. More grammar schools, it has been said,
were founded in the latter years of Henry than in the three
centuries before. The impulse only grew the stronger as
the direct influence of the New Learning passed away.
The grammar schools of Edward the Sixth and of Eliza-
beth, in a word the system of middle-class education which
by the close of the century had changed the very face of
England, were the outcome of Colet's foundation of St.
Pauls.
But the " armed Greeks" of More's apologue found a yet
wider field in the reform of the higher education of the
country. On the Universities the influence of the New
Learning was like a passing from death to life. Erasmus
gives us a picture of what happened in 1516 at Cambridge
where he was himself for a time a teacher of Greek.
" Scarcely thirty years ago nothing was taught here but
the Parva Logicalia, Alexander, those antiquated exer-
cises from Aristotle, and the Qucestiones of Scotus. As
time went on better studies were added, mathematics, a
new, or at any rate a renovated, Aristotle, and a knowl-
edge of Greek Literature. What has been the result? The
University is now so flourishing that it can compete with
the best universities of the age." William Latimer and
Croke returned from Italy and carried on the work of Eras-
mus at Cambridge, where Fisher, Bishop of Rochester,
himself one of the foremost scholars of the new movement,
lent it his powerful support. At Oxford the Revival met
with a fiercer opposition. The contest took the form of
boyish frays, in which the youthful partisans and oppo-
nents of the New Learning took sides as Greeks and Tro-
93 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK V.
jans. The young King himself had to summon one of its
fiercest enemies to Woodstock, and to impose silence on the
tirades which were delivered from the University pulpit.
The preacher alleged that he was carried away by the
Spirit. "Yes," retorted the King, "by the spirit, not of
wisdom, but of folly." But even at Oxford the contest
was soon at an end. Fox, Bishop of Winchester, estab-
lished the first Greek lecture there in his new college of
Corpus Christi, and a Professorship of Greek was at a later
time established by the Crown. " The students," wrote an
eye-witness in 1520, "rush to Greek letters, they endure
watching, fasting, toil, and hunger in the pursuit of them."
The work was crowned at last by the munificent founda-
tion of Cardinal College, to share in whose teaching Wol-
sey invited the most eminent of the living scholars of Eu-
rope, and for whose library he promised to obtain copies of
all the manuscripts in the Vatican.
From the reform of education the New Learning pressed
on to the reform of the Church. It was by Warham's
commission that Colet was enabled in 1512 to address the
Convocation of the Clergy in words which set before them
with unsparing severity the religious ideal of the new
movement. "Would that for once," burst forth the fiery
preacher, " you would remember your name and profession
and take thought for the reformation of the Church!
Never was it more necessary, and never did the state of
the Church need more vigorous endeavors." "We are
troubled with heretics," he went on, "but no heresy of
theirs is so fatal to us and to the people at large as the vi-
cious and depraved lives of the clergy. That is the worst
heresy of all. " It was the reform of the bishops that must
precede that of the clergy, the reform of the clergy that
would lead to a general revival of religion in the people at
large. The accumulation of benefices, the luxury and
worldliness of the priesthood, must be abandoned. The
prelates ought to be busy preachers, to forsake the Court
and labor in their own dioceses. Care should be taken for
CHAP. 2.] THE MONARCHY. 14611540. 93
the ordination and promotion of worthy ministers, resi-
dence should be enforced, the low standard of clerical mo-
rality should be raised. It is plain that the men of the
New Learning looked forward, not to a reform of doctrine
but to a reform of life, not to a revolution which should
sweep away the older superstitions which they despised
but to a regeneration of spiritual feeling before which these
superstitions would inevitably fade away. Colet was soon
charged with heresy by the Bishop of London. Warham
however protected him, and Henry to whom the Dean was
denounced bade him go boldly on. " Let every man have
his own doctor," said the young King after a long inter-
view, " but this man is the doctor for me !"
But for the success of the new reform, a reform which
could only be wrought out by the tranquil spread of knowl-
edge and the gradual enlightenment of the human con-
science, the one thing needful was peace; and peace was
already vanishing away. Splendid as were the gifts with
which Nature had endowed Henry the Eighth, there lay
beneath them all a boundless selfishness. " He is a prince, "
said Wolsey as he lay dying, " of a most royal courage ;
sooner than miss any part of his will he will endanger one-
half of his kingdom, and I do assure you I have often
kneeled to him, sometimes for three hours together, to
persuade him from his appetite and could not prevail. " It
was this personal will and appetite that was in Henry the
Eighth to shape the very course of English history, to over-
ride the highest interests of the state, to trample under foot
the wisest counsels, to crush with the blind ingratitude of
a fate the servants who opposed it. Even Wolsey, while
he recoiled from the monstrous form which had revealed
itself, could hardly have dreamed of the work which that
royal courage and yet more royal appetite was to accom-
plish in the years to come. As yet however Henry was
far from having reached the height of self-assertion which
bowed all constitutional law and even the religion of his
realm beneath his personal will. But one of the earliest
94 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK V.
acts of his reign gave an earnest of the part which the new
strength of the crown was to enable an English king to
play. Through the later years of Henry the Seventh Cath-
arine of Aragon had been recognized at the English court
simply as Arthur's widow and Princess Dowager of Wales.
Her betrothal to Prince Henry was looked upon as cancelled
by his protest, and though the King was cautious not to
break openly with Spain by sending her home, he was res-
olute not to suffer a marriage which would bring a break
with France and give Ferdinand an opportunity of drag-
ging England into the strife between the two great powers
of the west.
But with the young King's accession this policy of cau-
tious isolation was at once put aside. There were grave
political reasons indeed for the quick resolve which bore
down the opposition of counsellors like Warham. As cool
a head as that of Henry the Seventh was needed to watch
without panic the rapid march of French greatness. In
mere extent France had grown with a startling rapidity
since the close of her long strife with England. Guienne
had fallen to Charles the Seventh. Provence, Rousillon,
and the Duchy of Burgundy had successively swelled the
realm of Lewis the Eleventh. Brittany had been added
to that of Charles the Eighth. From Calais to Bayonne,
from the Jura to the Channel, stretched a wide and highly
organized realm, whose disciplined army and unrivalled
artillery lifted it high above its neighbors in force of war.
The efficiency of its army was seen in the sudden invasion
and conquest of Italy while England was busy with the
pretended Duke of York. The passage of the Alps by
Charles the Eighth shook the whole political structure of
Europe. In wealth, in political repute, in arms, in let-
ters, in arts, Italy at this moment stood foremost among
the peoples of Western Christendom, and the mastery
which Charles won over it at a single blow lifted France at
once above the states around her. Twice repulsed from
Naples, she remained under the successor of Charles, Lewis
CHAP. 2.] THE MONARCHY. 14611540. 95
the Twelfth, mistress of the Duchy of Milan and of the
bulk of northern Italy ; the princes and republics of central
Italy grouped themselves about her; and at the close of
Henry the Seventh's reign the ruin of Venice in the League
of Cambray crushed the last Italian state which could op-
pose her designs on the whole peninsula. It was this new
and mighty power, a France that stretched from the At-
lantic to the Mincio, that fronted the young King at his
accession and startled him from his father's attitude of
isolation. He sought Ferdinand's alliance none the less
that it meant war, for his temper was haughty and adven-
turous, his pride dwelt on the older claims of England to
Normandy and Guienne, and his devotion to the papacy
drew him to listen to the cry of Julius the Second and to
long like a crusader to free Rome from the French pres-
sure. Nor was it of less moment to a will such as the
young King's that Catharine's passionate love for him had
roused as ardent a love in return.
Two months therefore after his accession the Infanta
became the wife of Henry the Eighth. The influence of
the King of Aragon became all-powerful in the English
council chamber. Catharine spoke of her husband and
herself as Ferdinand's subjects. The young King wrote
that he would obey Ferdinand as he had obeyed his own
father. His obedience was soon to be tested. Ferdinand
seized on his new ally as a pawn in the great game which
he was playing on the European chess-board, a game
which left its traces on the political and religious map of
Europe for centuries after him. It was not without good
ground that Henry the Seventh faced so coolly the menac-
ing growth of France. He saw what his son failed to see,
that the cool, wary King of Aragon was building up as
quickly a power which was great enough to cope with it,
and that grow as the two rivals might they were matched
too evenly to render England's position a really dangerous
one. While the French Kings aimed at the aggrandize-
ment of a country, Ferdinand aimed at the aggrandizement
5 VOL. 2
96 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK V.
of a House. Through the marriage of their daughter and
heiress Juana with the son of the Emperor Maximilian,
the Archduke Philip, the blood of Ferdinand and Isabel
had merged in that of the House of Austria, and the aim
of Ferdinand was nothing less than to give to the Austrian
House the whole world of the west. Charles of Austria,
the issue of Philip's marriage, had been destined from his
birth by both his grandfathers, Maximilian and Ferdinand,
to succeed to the Empire; Franche Comte and the state
built up by the Burgundian Dukes in the Netherlands had
already passed into his hands at the death of his father ;
the madness of his mother left him next heir of Castile ;
the death of Ferdinand would bring him Aragon and the
dominion of the Kings of Aragon in southern Italy; that
of Maximilian would add the Archduchy of Austria, with
the dependencies in the south and its hopes of increase by
the winning through marriage of the realms of Bohemia
and Hungary. A share in the Austrian Archduchy indeed
belonged to Charles's brother, the Archduke Ferdinand;
but a kingdom in northern Italy would at once compensate
Ferdinand for his abandonment of this heritage and extend
the Austrian supremacy over the Peninsula, for Rome and
central Italy would be helpless in the grasp of the power
which ruled at both Naples and Milan. A war alone could
drive France from the Milanese, but such a war might be
waged by a league of European powers which would re-
main as a check upon France, should she attempt to hinder
this vast union of states in the hand of Charles or to wrest
from him the Imperial Crown. Such a league, the Holy
League as it was called from the accession to it of the
Pope, Ferdinand was enabled to form at the close of 1511
by the kinship of the Emperor, the desire of Venice and
Julius the Second to free Italy from the stranger, and the
warlike temper of Henry the Eighth.
Dreams of new Cregys and Agincourts roused the ardor
of the young King ; and the campaign of 1512 opened with
his avowal of the old claims on his "heritage of France.**
CHAP. 2.] THE MONARCHY. 14611540. 97
But the subtle intriguer in whose hands he lay pushed
steadily to his own great ends. The League drove the
French from the Milanese. An English army which landed
under the Marquis of Dorset at Fontarabia to attack Gui-
enne found itself used as a covering force to shield Ferdi-
nand's seizure of Navarre, the one road through which
France could attack his grandson 's heritage of Spain . The
troops mutinied and sailed home ; Scotland, roused again
by the danger of France, threatened invasion ; the world
scoffed at Englishmen as useless for war. Henry's spirit,
however, rose with the need. In 1513 he landed in person
in the north of France, and a sudden rout of the French
cavalry in an engagement near Guinegate, which received
from its bloodless character the name of the Battle of the
Spurs, gave him the fortresses of Terouenne and Tournay.
A victory yet more decisive awaited his arms at home.
A Scotch army crossed the border, with James the Fourth
at its head ; but on the ninth of September it was met by an
English force under the Earl of Surrey at Flodden in Nor-
thumberland. James " fell near his banner, " and his army
was driven off the field with heavy loss. Flushed with
this new glory, the young King was resolute to continue
the war when in the opening of 1514 he found himself left
alone by the dissolution of the League. Ferdinand had
gained his ends, and had no mind to fight longer simply
to realize the dreams of his son-in-law. Henry had indeed
gained much. The might of France was broken. The
Papacy was restored to freedom. England had again fig-
ured as a great power in Europe. But the millions left by
his father were exhausted, his subjects had been drained
by repeated subsidies, and, furious as he was at the treach-
ery of his Spanish ally, Henry was driven to conclude a
To the hopes of the New Learning this sudden outbreak
of the spirit of war, this change of the monarch from whom
they had looked for a " new order" into a vulgar conqueror,
proved a bitter disappointment. Colet thundered from the
98 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK V.
pulpit of St. Pauls that " an unjust peace is better than the
justest war," and protested that "when men out of hatred
and ambition fight with and destroy one another, they fight
under the banner, not of Christ, but of the Devil." Eras-
mus quitted Cambridge with a bitter satire against the
"madness" around him. "It is the people," he said, in
words which must have startled his age, "it is the people
who build cities, while the madness of princes destroys
them." The sovereigns of his time appeared to him like
ravenous birds pouncing with beak and claw on the hard-
won wealth and knowledge of mankind. " Kings who are
scarcely men," he exclaimed in bitter irony, "are called
'divine;' they are 'invincible' though they fly from every
battle-field; 'serene' though they turn the world upside
down in a storm of war; 'illustrious' though they grovel
in ignorance of all that is noble; 'Catholic' though they
follow anything rather than Christ. Of all birds the Eagle
alone has seemed to wise men the type of royalty, a bird
neither beautiful nor musical nor good for food, but mur-
derous, greedy, hateful to all, the curse of all, and with its
great powers of doing harm only surpassed by its desire to
do it." It was the first time in modern history that reli-
gion had formally dissociated itself from the ambition of
princes and the horrors of war, or that the new spirit of
criticism had ventured not only to question but to deny
what had till then seemed the primary truths of political
order.
But the indignation of the New Learning was diverted
to more practical ends by the sudden peace. However he
had disappointed its hopes, Henry still remained its friend.
Through all the changes of his terrible career his home
was a home of letters. His boy, Edward the Sixth, was a
fair scholar in both the classical languages. His daughter
Mary wrote good Latin letters. Elizabeth began every
day with an hour's reading in the Greek Testament, the
tragedies of Sophocles, or the orations of Demosthenes.
The ladies of the court caught the royal fashion and were
CHAP. 2.] THE MONARCHY. 14611540. 99
found poring over the pages of Plato. Widely as Henry's
ministers differed from each other, they all agreed in shar-
ing and fostering the culture around them. The panic of
the scholar-group therefore soon passed away. Colet toiled
on with his educational efforts; Erasmus forwarded to
England the works which English liberality was enabling
him to produce abroad. Warham extended to him as gen-
erous an aid as the protection he had afforded to Colet.
His edition of the works of St. Jerome had been begun
under the Primate's encouragement during the great schol-
ar's residence at Cambridge, and it appeared with a dedi-
cation to the Archbishop on its title-page. That Erasmus
could find protection in Warham 's name for a work which
boldly recalled Christendom to the path of sound Biblical
criticism, that he could address him in words so outspoken
as those of his preface, shows how fully the Primate sym-
pathized with the highest efforts of the New Learning.
Nowhere had the spirit of inquiry so firmly set itself against
the claims of authority. " Synods and decrees, and even
councils," wrote Erasmus, "are by no means in my judg-
ment the fittest modes of repressing error, unless truth de-
pend simply on authority. But on the contrary, the more
dogmas there are, the more fruitful is the ground in pro-
ducing heresies. Never was the Christian faith purer or
more undefiled than when the world was content with a
single creed, and that the shortest creed we have." It is
touching even now to listen to such an appeal of reason and
of culture against the tide of dogmatism which was soon
to flood Christendom with Augsburg Confessions and
Creeds of Pope Pius and Westminster Catechisms and
Thirty-nine Articles.
But the principles which Erasmus urged in his " Jerome"
were urged with far greater clearness and force in a work
that laid the foundation of the future Reformation, the
edition of the Greek Testament on which he had been en-
gaged at Cambridge and whose production was almost
wholly due to the encouragement and assistance he re-
100 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK V.
ceived from English scholars. In itself the book was a
bold defiance of theological tradition. It set aside the
Latin version of the Vulgate which had secured universal
acceptance in the Church. Its method of interpretation
was based, not on received dogmas, but on the literal mean-
ing of the text. Its real end was the end at which Colet
had aimed in his Oxford lectures. Erasmus desired to set
Christ himself in the place of the Church, to recah 1 men
from the teaching of Christian theologians to the teach-
ing of the Founder of Christianity. The whole value of
the Gospels to him lay in the vividness with which they
brought home to their readers the personal impression of
Christ himself. "Were we to have seen him with our
own eyes, we should not have so intimate a knowledge as
they give us of Christ, speaking, healing, dying, rising
again, as it were in our very presence." All the supersti-
tions of mediaeval worship faded away in the light of this
personal worship of Christ. " If the footprints of Christ
are shown us in any place, we kneel down and adore them.
Why do we not rather venerate the living and breathing
picture of him in these books? We deck statues of wood
and stone with gold and gems for the love of Christ. Yet
they only profess to represent to us the outer form of his
body, while these books present us with a living picture of
his holy mind." In the same way the actual teaching of
Christ was made to supersede the mysterious dogmas of the
older ecclesiastical teaching. " As though Christ taught
such subtleties," burst out Erasmus: "subtleties that can
scarcely be understood even by a few theologians or as
though the strength of the Christian religion consisted in
man's ignorance of it! It may be the safer course," he
goes on with characteristic irony, "to conceal the state
mysteries of kings, but Christ desired his mysteries to be
spread abroad as openly as was possible." In the diffu-
sion, in the universal knowledge of the teaching of Christ
the foundation of a reformed Christianity had still, he
Urged, to be laid. With the tacit approval of the Pri-
CHAP. 2.] THE MONARCHY. 14611540. 101
mate of a Church which from the time of Wyclif had held
the translation and reading of the Bible in the common
tongue to be heresy and a crime punishable with the fire,
Erasmus boldly avowed his wish for a Bible open and in-
telligible to all. " I wish that even the weakest woman
might read the Gospels and the Epistles of St. Paul. I
wish that they were translated into all languages, so as to
be read and understood not only by Scots and Irishmen,
but even by Saracens and Turks. But the first step to their
being read is to make them intelligible to the reader. I
long for the day when the husbandman shall sing portions
of them to himself as he follows the plough, when the
weaver shall hum them to the tune of his shuttle, when
the traveller shall while away with their stories the weari-
ness of his journey. " From the moment of its publication
in 1516 the New Testament of Erasmus became the topic
of the day; the Court, the Universities, every household
to which the New Learning had penetrated, read and dis-
cussed it. But bold as its language may have seemed,
Warham not only expressed his approbation, but lent the
work as he wrote to its author "to bishop after bishop."
The most influential of his suffragans, Bishop Fox of Win-
chester, declared that the mere version was worth ten com-
mentaries ; one of the most learned, Fisher of Rochester,
entertained Erasmus at his house.
Daring and full of promise as were these efforts of the
New Learning in the direction of educational and relig-
ious reform, its political and social speculations took a far
wider rage in the f their chiefs to trust to time and steady govern-
ment for the gradual reformation of the country, was a
182 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK V.
policy safer, cheaper, more humane, and more statesman-
like.
It was this system which, even before the fall of the
Geraldines, Henry had resolved to adopt ; and it was this
that he pressed on Ireland when the conquest laid it at his
feet. The chiefs were to be persuaded of the advantages
of justice and legal rule. Their fear of any purpose to
" expel them from their lands and dominions lawfully pos-
sessed" was to be dispelled by a promise " to conserve them
as their own." Even their remonstrances against the in-
troduction of English law were to be regarded, and the
course of justice to be enforced or mitigated according to
the circumstances of the country. In the resumption of
lands or rights which clearly belonged to the Crown " sober
ways, politic shifts, and amiable persuasions" were to be
preferred to rigorous dealing. It was this system of con-
ciliation which was in the main carried out by the English
Government under Henry and his two successors. Chief-
tain after chieftain was won over to the acceptance of the
indenture which guaranteed him in the possession of his
lands and left his authority over his tribesmen untouched
on condition of a pledge of loyalty, of abstinence from ille-
gal wars and exactions on his fellow-subjects, and of ren-
dering a fixed tribute and service in war-time to the
Crown. The sole test of loyalty demanded was the ac-
ceptance of an English title and the education of a son at
the English court; though in some cases, like that of the
O'Neills, a promise was exacted to use the English lan-
guage and dress, and to encourage tillage and husbandry.
Compliance with conditions such as these was procured
not merely by the terror of the royal name but by heavy
bribes. The chieftains in fact profited greatly by the
change. Not only were the lands of the suppressed abbeys
granted to them on their assumption of their new titles,
but the English law-courts, ignoring the Irish custom by
which the land belonged to the tribe at large, regarded the
chiefs as the sole proprietors of the soil. The merits of
CHAP. 4.'] THE MONARCHY. 1461-1540. 183
the system were unquestionable ; its faults were such as
a statesman of that day could hardly be expected to per-
ceive. The Tudor politicians held that the one hope for
the regeneration of Ireland lay in its absorbing the civili-
zation of England. The prohibition of the national dress,
customs, laws, and language must have seemed to them
merely the suppression of a barbarism which stood in the
way of all improvement.
With England and Ireland alike at his feet Cromwell
could venture on a last and crowning change. He could
claim for the monarchy the right of dictating at its pleasure
the form of faith and doctrine to be taught throughout the
land. Henry had remained true to the standpoint of the
New Learning; and the sympathies of Cromwell were
mainly with those of his master. They had no wish for
any violent break with the ecclesiastical forms of the past.
They desired religious reform rather than religious revo-
lution, a simplification of doctrine rather than any radical
change in it, the purification of worship rather than the
introduction of any wholly new ritual. Their theology
remained, as they believed, a Catholic theology, but a the-
ology cleared of the superstitious growths which obscured
the true Catholicism of the early Church. In a word their
dream was the dream of Erasmus and Colet. The spirit
of Erasmus was seen in the Articles of religion which
were laid before Convocation in 1536, in the acknowledg-
ment of Justification by Faith, a doctrine for which the
founders of the New Learning, such as Contarini and Pole,
were struggling at Rome itself, in the condemnation of pur-
gatory, of pardons, and of masses for the dead, as it was
seen in the admission of prayers for the dead and in the
retention of the ceremonies of the church without material
change. A series of royal injunctions which followed
carried out the same policy of reform. Pilgrimages were
suppressed ; the excessive number of holy days was cur-
tailed ; the worship of images and relics was discouraged
in words which seem almost copied from the protest of
184 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK V.
Erasmus. His appeal for a translation of the Bible which
weavers might repeat at their shuttle and ploughmen sing
at their plough received at last a reply. At the outset of
the ministry of Norfolk and More the King had promised
an English version of the scriptures, while prohibiting the
circulation of Tyndale's Lutheran translation. The work
however lagged in the hands of the bishops ; and as a pre-
liminary measure the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the
Ten Commandments were now rendered into English, and
ordered to be taught by every schoolmaster and father of
a family to his children and pupils. But the bishops' ver-
sion still hung on hand ; till in despair of its appearance a
friend of Archbishop Cranmer, Miles Coverdale, was em-
ployed to correct and revise the translation of Tyndale ;
and the Bible which he edited was published in 1538 under
the avowed patronage of Henry himself.
But the force of events was already carrying England
far from the standpoint of Erasmus or More. The dream
of the New Learning was to be wrought out through the
progress of education and piety. In the policy of Crom-
well reform was to be brought about by the brute force of
the Monarchy. The story of the royal supremacy was
graven even on the titlepage of the new Bible. It is
Henry on his throne who gives the sacred volume to Cran-
mer, ere Cranmer and Cromwell can distribute it to the
throng of priests and laymen below. Hitherto men had
looked on religious truth as a gift from the Church. They
were now to look on it as a gift from the King. The very
gratitude of Englishmen for fresh spiritual enlightenment
was to tell to the profit of the royal power. No conception
could be further from that of the New Learning, from the
plea for intellectual freedom which runs through the life
of Erasmus or the craving for political liberty which gives
nobleness to the speculations of More. Nor was it possible
for Henry himself to avoid drifting from the standpoint he
had chosen. He had written against Luther ; he had per-
sisted in opposing Lutheran doctrine; he had passed new
CHAP. 4.] THE MONARCHY. 1481-1540. 185
laws to hinder the circulation of Lutheran books in his
realm. But influences from without as from within drove
him nearer to Lutheranism. If the encouragemsnt of
Francis had done somewhat to bring about his final Dreach
with the Papacy, he soon found little will in the French
King to follow him in any course of separation from
Rome ; and the French alliance threatened to become use-
less as a shelter against the wrath of the Emperor.
Charles was goaded into action by the bill annulling
Mary's right of succession; and in 1535 he proposed to
unite his house with that of Francis by close intermarriage
and to sanction Mary's marriage with a son of the French
King, if Francis would join in an attack on England.
Whether such a proposal was serious or no, Henry had to
dread attack from Charles himself and to look for new
allies against it. He was driven to offer his alliance to
the Lutheran princes of North Germany, who dreaded
like himself the power of the Emperor, and who were now
gathering in the League of Schmalkald.
But the German Princes made agreement as to doctrine
a condition of their alliance ; and their pressure was backed
by Henry's partisans among the clergy at home. In
Cromwell's scheme for mastering the priesthood it had
been needful to place men on whom the King could rely
at their head. Cranmer became Primate, Latimer became
Bishop of Worcester, Shaxton and Barlow were raised to
the sees of Salisbury and St. David's, Hilsey to that of
Rochester, Goodrich to that of Ely, Fox to that of Here-
ford. But it was hard to find men among the clergy who
paused at Henry's theological resting-place; and of these
prelates all except Latimer were known to sympathize
with Lutheranism, though Cranmer lagged far behind his
fellows in their zeal for reform. The influence of these
men as well as of an attempt to comply at least partly with
the demand of the German Princes left its stamp on the
Articles of 1536. For the principle of Catholicism, of a
universal form of faith overspreading all temporal domin-
186 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK V.
ions, the Lutheran states had substituted the principle of
territorial religion, of the right of each sovereign or people
to determine the form of belief which should be held within
their bounds. The severance from Rome had already
brought Henry to this principle; and the Act of Supre-
macy was its emphatic assertion. In England too, as in
North Germany, the repudiation of the Papal authority as
a ground of faith, of the voice of the Pope as a declaration
of truth, had driven men to find such a ground and dec-
laration in the Bible ; and the Articles expressly based the
faith of the Church of England on the Bible and the three
Creeds. With such fundamental principles of agreement
it was possible to borrow from the Augsburg Confession
five of the ten articles which Henry laid before the Convo-
cation. If penance was still retained as a sacrament, bap-
tism and the Lord's Supper were alone maintained to be
sacraments with it; the doctrine of Tran substantiation
which Henry stubbornly maintained differed so little from
the doctrine maintained by Luther that the words of Lu-
theran formularies were borrowed to explain it; Confession
was admitted by the Lutheran Churches as well as by the
English. The veneration of saints and the doctrine of
prayer to them, though still retained, was so modified as
to present little difficulty even to a Lutheran.
However disguised in form, the doctrinal advance made
in the Articles of 1536 was an immense one; and a vehe-
ment opposition might have been looked for from those of
the bishops like Gardiner, who while they agreed with
Henry's policy of establishing a national Church remained
opposed to any change in faith. But the Articles had
been drawn up by Henry's own hand, and all whisper of
opposition was hushed. Bishops, abbots, clergy, not only
subscribed to them, but carried out with implicit obedience
the injunctions which put their doctrine roughly into
practice ; and the failure of the Pilgrimage of Grace in
the following autumn ended all thought of resistance
among the laity. But Cromwell found a different recep-
CHAP. 4.] THE MONARCHY. 14611540. 187
tion for his reforms when he turned to extend them to the
sister island. The religious aspect of Ireland was hardly
less chaotic than its political aspect had been. Ever since
Strongbow's landing there had been no one Irish Church,
simply because there had been no one Irish nation. There
was not the slightest difference in doctrine or discipline
between the Church without the Pale and the Church
within it. But within the Pale the clergy were exclu-
sively of English blood and speech, and without it they
were exclusively of Irish. Irishmen were shut out by law
from abbeys and churches within the English boundary ;
and the ill- will of the natives shut out Englishmen from
churches and abbeys outside it. As to the religious state
of the country, it was much on a level with its political
condition. Feuds and misrule told fatally on ecclesiastical
discipline. The bishops were political officers, or hard
fighters like the chiefs around them; their sees were
neglected, their cathedrals abandoned to decay. Through
whole dioceses the churches lay in ruins and without
priests. The only preaching done in the country was done
by the begging friars, and the results of the friars' preach-
ing were small. " If the King do not provide a remedy,"
it was said in 1525, "there will be no more Christentie
than in the middle of Turkey."
Unfortunately the remedy which Henry provided was
worse than the disease. Politically Ireland was one with
England, and the great revolution which was severing the
one country from the Papacy extended itself naturally to
the other. The results of it indeed at first seemed small
enough. The Supremacy, a question which had convulsed
England, passed over into Ireland to meet its only obstacle
in a general indifference. Everybody was ready to accept
it without a thought of the consequences. The bishops
and clergy within the Pale bent to the King's will as
easily as their fellows iH England, and their example was
followed by at least four prelates of dioceses without the
Pale. The native chieftains made no more scruple than
188 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK V.
the Lords of the Council in renouncing obedience to the
Bishop of Rome, and in acknowledging Henry as the
41 Supreme Head of the Church of England and Ireland
under Christ." There was none of the resistance to the
dissolution of the abbeys which had been witnessed on the
other side of the Channel, and the greedy chieftains showed
themselves perfectly willing to share the plunder of the
Church. But the results of the measure were fatal to the
little culture and religion which even the past centuries of
disorder had spared. Such as they were, the religious
houses were the only schools that Ireland contained. The
system of vicars, so general in England, was rare in Ire-
land ; churches in the patronage of the abbeys were for the
most part served by the religious themselves, and the dis-
solution of their houses suspended public worship over
large districts of the country. The friars, hitherto the
only preachers, and who continued to labor and teach in
spite of the efforts of the Government, were thrown neces-
sarily into a position of antagonism to the English rule.
Had the ecclesiastical changes which were forced on the
country ended here however, in the end little harm would
have been done. But in England the breach with Rome,
the destruction of the monastic orders, and the establish-
ment of the Supremacy, had roused in a portion of the
people itself a desire for theological change which Henry
shared and was cautiously satisfying. In Ireland ihe
spirit of the Reformation never existed among the people
at all. They accepted the legislative measures passed in
the English Parliament without any dream of theological
consequences or of any change in the doctrine or ceremo-
nies of the Church. Not a single voice demanded the
abolition of pilgrimages, or the destruction of images, or
the reform of public worship. The mission of Archbishop
Browne in 1535 "for the plucking down of idols and ex-
tinguishing of idolatry" was a first step in the long effort
of the English Government to force a new faith on a peo-
ple who to a man clung passionately to their old religion.
CHAP. 4.) THE MONARCHY. 14611540. 189
Browne's attempts at " tuning the pulpits" were met by a
sullen and significant opposition. " Neither by gentle ex-
hortation," the Archbishop wrote to Cromwell, "nor by
evangelical instruction, neither by oath of them solemnly
taken, nor yet by threats of sharp correction may I per-
suade or induce any whether religious or secular since my
coming over once to preach the Word of God nor the just
title of our illustrious Prince." Even the acceptance of
the Supremacy, which had been so quietly effected, was
brought into question when its results became clear. The
bishops abstained from compliance with the order to erase
the Pope's name out of their mass-books. The pulpits re-
mained steadily silent. When Browne ordered the de-
struction of the images and relics in his own cathedral, he
had to report that the prior and canons " find them so sweet
for their gain that they heed not my words." Cromwell
however was resolute for a religious uniformity between
the two islands, and the Primate borrowed some of his
patron's vigor. Recalcitrant priests were thrown into
prison, images were plucked down from the rood-loft, and
the most venerable of Irish relics, the staff of St. Patrick,
was burned in the market-place. But he found no sup-
port in his vigor save from across the Channel. The Irish
Council looked coldly on ; even the Lord Deputy still knelt
to say prayers before an image at Trim. A sullen dogged
opposition baffled Cromwell's efforts, and their only result
was to unite all Ireland against the Crown.
But Cromwell found it easier to deal with Irish inaction
than with the feverish activity which his reforms stirred
in England itself. It was impossible to strike blow after
blow at the Church without rousing wild hopes in the
party who sympathized with the work which Luther was
doing over-sea. Few as these " Lutherans " or " Protes-
tants " still were in numbers, their new hopes made them a
formidable force ; and in the school of persecution they had
learned a violence which delighted in outrages on the faith
which had so long trampled them under foot At the
190 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK V.
very outset of Cromwell's changes four Suffolk youths
broke into a church at Dovercourt, tore down a wonder-
working crucifix, and burned it in the fields. The sup-
pression of the lesser monasteries was the signal for a new
outburst of ribald insult to the old religion. The rough-
ness, insolence, and extortion of the Commissioners sent?
to effect it drove the whole monastic body to despair.
Their servants rode along the road with copes for doublets
or tunicles for saddle-cloths, and scattered panic among
the larger houses which were left. Some sold their jewels
and relics to provide for the evil day they saw approach-
ing. Some begged of their own will for dissolution. It
was worse when fresh ordinances of the Vicar-General
ordered the removal of objects of superstitious veneration.
Their removal, bitter enough to those whose religion twined
itself around the image or the relic which was taken away,
was embittered yet more by the insults with which it was
accompanied. A miraculous rood at Boxley, which bowed
its head and stirred its eyes, was paraded from market to
market and exhibited as a juggle before the Court. Im-
ages of the Virgin were stripped of their costly vestments
and sent to be publicly burned at London. Latimer for-
warded to the capital the figure of Our Lady, which he
had thrust out of his cathedral church at Worcester, with
rough words of scorn : " She with her old sister of Wal-
singham, her younger sister of Ipswich, and their two
other sisters of Doncaster and Penrice, would make a jolly
muster at Smithfield." Fresh orders were given to fling
all relics from their reliquaries, and to level every shrine
with the ground. In 1538 the bones of St. Thomas of
Canterbury were torn from the stately shrine which had
been the glory of his metropolitan church, and his name
was erased from the service-books as that of a traitor.
The introduction of the English Bible into churches
gave a new opening for the zeal of the Protestants. In
spite of royal injunctions that it should be read decently
and without comment, the young zealots of the party
CHAP. 4.] THE MONARCHY. 1461-1540. 191
prided themselves on shouting it out to a circle of excited
hearers during the service of mass, and accompanied their
reading with violent expositions. Protestant maidens
took the new English primer to church with them and
studied it ostentatiously during matins. Insult passed
into open violence when the Bishops' Courts were invaded
and broken up by Protestanft mobs ; and law and public
opinion were outraged at once when priests who favored
the new doctrines began openly to bring home wives to
their vicarages. A fiery outburst of popular discussion
compensated for the silence of the pulpits. The new
Scriptures, in Henry's bitter words of complaint, were
" disputed, rhymed, sung, and jangled in every tavern and
alehouse." The articles which dictated the belief of the
English Church roused a furious controversy. Above all,
the Sacrament of the Mass, the centre of the Catholic sys-
tem of faith and worship, and which still remained sacred
to the bulk of Englishmen, was attacked with a scurrility
and profaneness which passes belief. The doctrine of
Transubstantiation, which was as yet recognized by law,
was held up to scorn in ballads and mystery plays. In
one church a Protestant lawyer raised a dog in his hands
when the priest elevated the Host. The most sacred words
of the old worship, the words of consecration, " Hoc est
corpus," were travestied into a nickname for jugglery as
"Hocus-pocus."
It was by this attack on the Mass, even more than by
the other outrages, that the temper both of Henry and the
nation was stirred to a deep resentment. With the Prot-
estants Henry had no sympathy whatever. He was a
man of the New Learning; he was proud of his orthodoxy
and of his title of Defender of the Faith. And above all
he shared to the utmost his people's love of order, their
clinging to the past, their hatred of extravagance and ex-
cess. The first sign of reaction was seen in the Parliament
of 1539. Never had the Houses shown so little care for
political liberty. The Monarchy seemed to free itself from
9 VOL. 2
192 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK V.
all parliamentary restrictions whatever when a formal
statute gave the King's proclamations the force of parlia-
mentary laws. Nor did the Church find favor with them.
No word of the old opposition was heard when a bill was
introduced granting to the King the greater monasteries
which had been saved in 1536. More than six hundred
religious houses fell at a blow, and so great was the spoil
that the King promised never again to call on his people
for subsidies. But the Houses were equally at one in
withstanding the new innovations of religion, and an act
for "abolishing diversity of opinions in certain articles
concerning Christian religion" passed with general assent.
On the doctrine of Transubstantiation, which was re-
asserted by the first of six Articles to which the Act owes
its usual name, there was no difference of feeling or belief
between the men of the New Learning and the older Cath-
olics. But the road to a further instalment of even moder-
ate reform seemed closed by the five other articles which
sanctioned communion in one kind, the celibacy of the
clergy, monastic vows, private masses, and auricular con-
fession. A more terrible feature of the reaction was the
revival of persecution. Burning was denounced as the
penalty for a denial of transubstantiation ; on a second
offence it became the penalty for an infraction of the other
five doctrines. A refusal to confess or to attend Mass was
made felony. It was in vain that Cranmer, with the five
bishops who partially sympathized with the Protestants,
struggled against the bill in the Lords : the Commons were
"all of one opinion," and Henry himself acted as spokes-
man on the side of the articles. In London alone five
hundred Protestants were indicted under the new act.
Latimer and Shaxton were imprisoned, and the former
forced into a resignation of his see. Cranmer himself was
only saved by Henry's personal favor.
But the first burst of triumph was no sooner spent than
the hand of Cromwell made itself felt. Though his opin-
ions remained those of the New Learning and differed
CHAP. 4.] THE MONARCHY. 1461-1540. 193
little from the general sentiment which found itself repre-
sented in the act, he leaned instinctively to the one party
which did not long for his fall. His wish was to restrain
the Protestant excesses, but he had no mind to ruin the
Protestants. In a little time therefore the bishops were
quietly released. The London indictments were quashed.
The magistrates were checked in their enforcement of the
law, while a general pardon cleared the prisons of the
heretics who had been arrested under its provisions. A
few months after the enactment of the Six Articles we
find from a Protestant letter that persecution had wholly
ceased, "the Word is powerfully preached and books of
every kind may safely be exposed for sale." Never indeed
had Cromwell shown such greatness as in his last struggle
against Fate. "Beknaved" by the King, whose confi-
dence in him waned as he discerned the full meaning of
the religious changes which Cromwell had brought about,
met too by a growing opposition in the Council as his
favor declined, the temper of the man remained indomi-
table as ever. He stood absolutely alone. Wolsey, hated
as he had been by the nobles, had been supported by the
Church ; but Churchmen hated Cromwell with an even
fiercer hate than the nobles themselves. His only friends
were the Protestants, and their friendship was more fatal
than the hatred of his foes. But he showed no signs of
fear or of halting in the course he had entered on. So
long as Henry supported him, however reluctant his sup-
port might be, he was more than a match for his foes.
He was strong enough to expel his chief opponent, Bishop
Gardiner of Winchester, from the royal Council. He met
the hostility of the nobles with a threat which marked his
power. " If the lords would handle him so, he would give
them such a breakfast as never was made in England, and
that the proudest of them should know."
He soon gave a terrible earnest of the way in which he
could fulfil his threat. The opposition to his system
gathered above all round two houses which represented
194 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK V.
what yet lingered of the Yorkist tradition, the Courtenays
and the Poles. Courtenay, the Marquis of Exeter, was of
royal blood, a grandson through his mother of Edward the
Fourth. He was known to have bitterly denounced the
" knaves that ruled about the King ; " and his threats to
"give them some day a buffet" were formidable in the
mouth of one whose influence in the western counties was
supreme. Margaret, the Countess of Salisbury, a daugh-
ter of the Duke of Clarence by the heiress of the Earl of
Warwick, and a niece of Edward the Fourth, had married
Sir Richard Pole, and became mother of Lord Montacute
as of Sir Geoffry and Reginald Pole. The temper of her
house might be guessed from the conduct of the younger
of the three brothers. After refusing the highest favors
from Henry as the price of his approval of the divorce,
Reginald Pole had taken refuge at Rome, where he had
bitterly attacked the King in a book on " The Unity of the
Church." "There may be found ways enough in Italy,"
Cromwell wrote to him in significant words, " to rid a
treacherous subject. When Justice can take no place by
process of law at home, sometimes she may be enforced to
take new means abroad." But he had left hostages in
Henry's hands. " Pity that the folly of one witless fool,"
Cromwell wrote ominously, "should be the ruin of so
great a family. Let him follow ambition as fast as he
can, those that little have offended (saving that he is of
their kin), were it not for the great mercy and benignity
of the prince, should and might feel what it is to have such
a traitor as their kinsman." The "great mercy and be-
nignity of the prince" was no longer to shelter them. In
1538 the Pope, Paul the Third, published a bull of excom-
munication and deposition against Henry, and Pole
pressed the Emperor vigorously though ineffectually to
carry the bull into execution. His efforts only brought
about, as Cromwell had threatened, the ruin of his house.
His brother Lord Montacute and the Marquis of Exeter,
with other friends of the two great families, were arrested
CHAP. 4] THE MONARCHY. 1461-1540. 195
on a charge of treason and executed in the opening of 1539,
while the Countess of Salisbury was attainted in Parlia-
ment and sent to the Tower.
Almost as terrible an act of bloodshed closed the year.
The abbots of Glastonbury, Reading, and Colchester, men
who had sat as mitred abbots among the lords, were
charged with a denial of the King's supremacy and hanged
as traitors. But Cromwell relied for success on more than
terror. His single will forced on a scheme of foreign policy
whose aim was to bind England to the cause of the Refor-
mation while it bound Henry helplessly to his minister.
The daring boast which his enemies laid afterward to
Cromwell's charge, whether uttered or not, is but the ex-
pression of his system, " In brief time he would bring
things to such a pass that the King with all his power
should not be able to hinder him." His plans rested, like
the plan which proved fatal to Wolsey, on a fresh mar-
riage of his master; Henry's third wife, Jane Seymour,
had died in child-birth; and in the opening of 1540 Crom-
well replaced her by a German consort, Anne of Cleves, a
sister-in-law of the Lutheran elector of Saxony. He dared
even to resist Henry's caprice when the King revolted on
their first interview from the coarse features and unwieldy
form of his new bride. , For the moment Cromwell had
brought matters " to such a pass" that it was impossible
to recoil from the marriage, and the minister's elevation
to the Earldom of Essex seemed to proclaim his success.
The marriage of Anne of Cleves however was but the first
step in a policy which, had it been carried out as he de-
signed it, would have anticipated the triumphs of Riche-
lieu. Charles and the House of Austria could alone bring
about a Catholic reaction strong enough to arrest and roll
back the Reformation ; and Cromwell was no sooner united
with the princes of North Germany than he sought to
league them with France for the overthrow of the Emperor.
Had he succeeded, the whole face of Europe would have
been changed, Southern Germany would have been secured
196 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK V.
for Protestantism, and the Thirty Years' War averted.
But he failed as men fail who stand ahead of their age.
The German princes shrank from a contest with the Em-
peror, France from a struggle which would be fatal to
Catholicism ; and Henry, left alone to bear the resentment
of the House of Austria and chained to a wife he loathed,
turned savagely on his minister. In June the long strug-
gle came to an end. The nobles sprang on Cromwell with
a fierceness that told of their long-hoarded hate. Taunts
and execrations burst from the Lords at the Council table
as the Duke of Norfolk, who had been entrusted with the
minister's arrest, tore the ensign of the Garter from his
neck. At the charge of treason Cromwell flung his cap
on the ground with a passionate cry of despair. " This
then," he exclaimed, "is my guerdon for the services I
have done ! On your consciences, I ask you, am I a trai-
tor?" Then with a sudden sense that all was over he bade
his foes make quick work, and not leave him to languish
in prison. Quick work was made. A few days after his
arrest he was attainted in Parliament, and at the close of
July a burst of popular applause hailed his death on the
scaffold.
BOOK VI.
THE REFORMATION.
15401603.
AUTHORITIES FOR BOOK VL
15401603.
For the close of Henry the Eighth's reign as for the reigns of
Edward and Mary we possess copious materials. Strype covers this
period in his " Memorials" and in his lives of Cranmer, Cheke, and
Smith; Hayward's "Life of Edward the Sixth" may be supple-
mented by the young King's own Journal ; "Machyn's Diary" gives
us the aspect of affairs as they presented themselves to a common
Englishman ; while Holinshed is near enough to serve as a contem-
porary authority. The troubled period of the Protectorate is illus-
trated by Mr. Tytler in the correspondence which he has published
in his " England under Edward the Sixth and Mary, " while much
light is thrown on its close by Mr. Nicholls in the " Chronicle of
Queen Jane, " published by the Camden Society. In spite of count-
less errors, of Puritan prejudices, and some deliberate suppressions
of the truth, its mass of facts and wonderful charm of style will
always give importance to the " Acts and Monuments" or " Book of
Martyrs" of John Foxe, as a record of the Marian persecution.
Among outer observers, the Venetian Soranzo throws some light on
the Protectorate ; and the dispatches of Giovanni Michiel, published
by Mr. Friedmann, give us a new insight into the events of Mary's
reign.
For the succeeding reign we have a valuable contemporary ac-
count in Camden's "Life of Elizabeth." The "Annals" of Sir John
Hay ward refer to the first four years of the Queen's rule. Its polit-
ical and diplomatic side is only now being fully unveiled in the
Calendar of State Papers for this period, which are being issued by
the Master of the Rolls, and fresh light has yet to be looked for from
the Cecil Papers and the documents at Simancas, some of which are
embodied in the history of this reign by Mr. Froude. Among the
published materials for this time we have the Burleigh Papers, the
Sidney Papers, the Sadler State Papers, much correspondence in the
Hardwicke State Papers, the letters published by Mr. Wright in his
" Elizabeth and her Times, " the collections of Murdin, the Egerton
Papers, the "Letters of Elizabeth and James the Sixth" published
by Mr. Bruce. Harrington' s"Nugae Antiquse" contain some details
of value. Among foreign materials as yet published the " Papiers
d'Etat" of Cardinal Granvelle and the series of French dispatches
published by M. Teulet are among the more important. Mr. Motley
in his "Rise of the Dutch Republic" and "History of the United
Netherlands" has used the State Papers of the countries concerned in
this struggle to pour a flood of new light on the diplomacy and outer
policy of Burleigh and his mistress. His wide and independent re-
search among the same class of documents gives almost an original
200 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE.
value to Ranke's treatment of this period in his English History.
The earlier religious changes in Scotland have been painted with
wonderful energy, and on the whole with truthfulness, by Knox
himself in his "History of the Reformation." Among the contem-
porary materials for the history of Mary Stuart we have the well-
known works of Buchanan and Leslie, Lebanon's "Lettres et
Memoires de Marie Stuart, " the correspondence appended to Mignet's
biography, Stevenson's "Illustrations of the Life of Queen Mary,"
Melville's Memoirs, and the collections of Keith and Anderson.
For the religious history of Elizabeth's reign Strype, as usual,
gives us copious details in his " Annals, " his lives of Parker, Grin-
dal, and Whitgift. Some light is thrown on the Queen's earlier
steps by the Zurich Letters published by the Parker Society. The
strife with the later Puritans can only be fairly judged after reading
the Martin Marprelate Tracts, which have been reprinted by Mr.
Maskell, who has given a short abstract of the more important in
his "History of the Martin Marprelate Controversy." Her policy
toward the Catholics is set out in Burieigh's tract, " The Execution of
Justice in England, not for Religion, but for Treason, " which was
answered by Allen in his " Defence of the English Catholics. " On
the actual working of the penal laws much new information has
been given us in the series of contemporary narratives published by
Father Morris under the title of " The Troubles of our Catholic Fore-
fathers ;" the general history of the Catholics may be found in the
work of Dodd ; and the sufferings of the Jesuits in More's " Historia
Provincise Anglicanse Societatis Jesu. " To these may be added Mr.
Simpson's biography of Campion. For our constitutional history
during Elizabeth's reign we have D'Ewes' Journals and Townshend's
"Journal of Parliamentary Proceedings from 1580 to 1601," the
first detailed account we possess of the proceedings of the House of
Commons. Macpherson in his Annals of Commerce gives details of
the wonderful expansion of English trade during this period, and
Hackluyt's collection of Voyages tells of its wonderful activity.
Amid a crowd of biographers, whose number marks the new im-
portance of individual life and action at the time, we may note as
embodying information elsewhere inaccessible the lives of Hatton
and Davison by Sir Harris Nicolas, the three accounts of Raleigh by
Oldys, Tytler, and Mr. Edwards, the Lives of the two Devereux,
Earls of Essex, Mr. Spedding's "Life of Bacon," and Barrow's "Life
of Sir Francis Drake. "
CHAPTER I .
THE PROTESTANT REVOLUTION.
15401553.
AT the death of Cromwell the success of his policy wag
complete. The Monarchy had reached the height of its
power. The old liberties of England lay prostrate at the
feet of the King. The Lords were cowed and spiritless ;
the House of Commons was filled with the creatures of the
Court and degraded into an engine of tyranny. Royal
proclamations were taking the place of parliamentary leg-
islation ; royal benevolences were encroaching more and
more on the right of parliamentary taxation. Justice was
prostituted in the ordinary courts to the royal will, while
the boundless and arbitrary powers of the royal Council
were gradually superseding the slower processes of the
Common Law. The religious changes had thrown an
almost sacred character over the " majesty" of the King.
Henry was the Head of ,the Church. From the primate
to the meanest deacon every minister of it derived from him
his sole right to exercise spiritual powers. The voice of
its preachers was the echo of his will. He alone could
define orthodoxy or declare heresy. The forms of its wor-
ship and belief were changed and rechanged at the royal
caprice. Half of its wealth went to swell the royal treas-
ury, and the other half lay at the King's mercy. It was
this unprecedented concentration of all power in the hands
of a single man that overawed the imagination of Henry's
subjects. He was regarded as something high above the
laws which govern common men. The voices of states-
men and priests extolled his wisdom and authority as more
than human. The Parliament itself rose and bowed to
202 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Boos VI.
the vacant throne when his name was mentioned. An
absolute devotion to his person replaced the old loyalty to
the law. When the Primate of the English Church de-
scribed the chief merit of Cromwell, it was by asserting
that he loved the King "no less than he loved God."
It was indeed Cromwell who more than any man had
reared this fabric of King-worship. But he had hardly
reared it when it began to give way. The very success of
his measures indeed brought about the ruin of his policy.
One of the most striking features of Cromwell's system
had been his development of parliamentary action. The
great assembly which the Monarchy had dreaded and si-
lenced from the days of Edward the Fourth to the days of
Wolsey had been called to the front again at the Cardinal's
fall. Proud of his popularity, and conscious of his people's
sympathy with him in his protest against a foreign juris-
diction, Henry set aside the policy of the Crown to deal a
heavier blow at the Papacy. Both the parties represented
in the ministry that followed Wolsey welcomed the change,
for the nobles represented by Norfolk and the men of the
New Learning represented by More regarded Parliament
with the same favor. More indeed in significant though
almost exaggerated phrases set its omnipotence face to
face with the growing despotism of the Crown. The
policy of Cromwell fell in with this revival of the two
Houses. The daring of his temper led him not to dread
and suppress national institutions, but to seize them and
master them, and to turn them into means of enhancing
the royal power. As he saw in the Church a means of
raising the King into the spiritual ruler of the faith and
consciences of his people, so he saw in the Parliament a
means of shrouding the boldest aggressions of the mon-
archy under the veil of popular assent, and of giving to
the most ruthless acts of despotism the stamp and sem-
blance of law. He saw nothing to fear in a House of
Lords whose nobles cowered helpless before the might of
the Crown, and whose spiritual members his policy was
CHAP. 1.] THE REFORMATION. 1540-160a 203
degrading into mere tools of the royal will. Nor could he
find anything to dread in a House of Commons which was
crowded with members directly or indirectly nominated
by the royal Council. With a Parliament such as this
Cromwell might well trust to make the nation itself
through its very representatives an accomplice in the work
of absolutism.
His trust seemed more than justified by the conduct of
the Houses. It was by parliamentary statutes that the
Church was prostrated at the feet of the Monarchy. It
was by bills of attainder that great nobles were brought to
the block. It was under constitutional forms that freedom
was gagged with new treasons and oaths and questionings.
One of the first bills of Cromwell's Parliaments freed
Henry from the need of paying his debts, one of the last
gave his proclamations the force of laws. In the action
of the two Houses the Crown seemed to have discovered a
means of carrying its power into regions from which a
bare despotism has often had to shrink. Henry might
have dared single-handed to break with Rome or to send
Sir Thomas More to the block. But without Parliament
to back him he could hardly have ventured on such an
enormous confiscation of property as was involved in the
suppression of the monasteries or on such changes in the
national religion as were brought about by the Ten Arti-
cles and the Six. It was this discovery of the use to which
the Houses could be turned that accounts for the immense
development of their powers, the immense widening of
their range of action, which they owe to Cromwell. Now
that the great engine was at his own command he used it
as it had never been used before. Instead of rare and
short assemblies of Parliament, England saw it gathered
year after year. All the jealousy with which the Crown
had watched its older encroachments on the prerogative
was set aside. Matters which had even in the days of
their greatest influence been scrupulously withheld from
the cognizance of the Houses were now absolutely forced
204 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
on their attention. It was by Parliament that England
was torn from the great body of Western Christendom.
It was by parliamentary enactment that the English
Church was reft of its older liberties and made absolutely
subservient to the Crown. It was a parliamentary statute
that defined the very faith and religion of the land. The
vastest confiscation of landed property which England had
ever witnessed was wrought by Parliament. It regulated
the succession to the throne. It decided on the validity of
the King's marriages and the legitimacy of the King's
children. Former sovereigns had struggled against the
claim of the Houses to meddle with the royal ministers or
with members of the royal household. Now Parliament
was called on by the King himself to attaint his ministers
and his Queens.
The fearlessness and completeness of such a policy as
this brings home to us more than any other of his plans
the genius of Cromwell. But its success depended wholly
on the absolute servility of Parliament to the will of the
Crown, and Cromwell's own action made the continuance
of such a servility impossible. The part which the Houses
were to play in after years shows the importance of cling-
ing to the forms of constitutional freedom, even when
their life is all but lost. In the inevitable reaction against
tyranny they furnish centres for the reviving energies of
the people, while the returning tide of liberty is enabled
through their preservation to flow quietly and naturally
along its traditional channels. And even before Crom-
well passed to his doom the tide of liberty was returning.
On one occasion during his rule a " great debate" on the
suppression of the lesser monasteries showed that elements
of resistance still survived ; and these elements developed
rapidly as the power of the Crown declined under the
minority of Edward and the unpopularity of Mary. To
this revival of a spirit of independence the spoliation of
the Church largely contributed. Partly from necessity,
partly from a desire to build up a faction interested in the
CHAP. 1.] THE REFORMATION. 15401603. 205
maintenance of their ecclesiastical policy, Cromwell and
the King squandered the vast mass of wealth which flowed
into the Treasury from the dissolution of the monasteries
with reckless prodigality. Three hundred and seventy-
six smaller houses had been suppressed in 1536; six hun-
dred and forty-five greater houses were surrendered or
seized in 1539. Some of the spoil was devoted to the erec-
tion of six new bishoprics ; a larger part went to the for-
tification of the coast. But the bulk of these possessions
were granted lavishly away to the nobles and courtiers
about the King, and to a host of adventurers who " had
become gospellers for the abbey lands." Something like
a fifth of the actual land in the kingdom was in this way
transferred from the holding of the Church to that of no-
bles and gentry. Not only were the older houses enriched,
but a new aristocracy was erected from among the de-
pendants of the Court. The Russells and the Cavendishes
are familiar instances of families which rose from obscu-
rity through the enormous grants of Church-land made
to Henry's courtiers. The old baronage was thus hardly
crushed before a new aristocracy took its place. " Those
families within or without the bounds of the peerage,"
observes Mr. Hallam, " who are now deemed the most con-
siderable, will be found, with no great number of excep-
tions, to have first become conspicuous under the Tudor
line of kings and, if we could trace the title of their estates,
to have acquired no small portion of them mediately or
immediately from monastic or other ecclesiastical founda-
tions. " The leading part which these freshly created peers
took in the events which followed Henry's death gave
strength and vigor to the whole order. But the smaller
gentry shared in the general enrichment of the landed
proprietors, and the new energy of the Lords was soon
followed by a display of political independence among the
Commons themselves.
While the prodigality of Cromwell's system thus brought
into being a new check upon the Crown by enriching tho
206 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
nobles and the lesser gentry, the religious changes it
brought about gave fire and vigor to the elements of oppo-
sition which were slowly gathering. What did most to
ruin the King-worship that Cromwell set up was Crom-
well's ecclesiastical policy. In reducing the Church to
mere slavery beneath the royal power he believed himself
to be trampling down the last constitutional force which
could hold the Monarchy in check. What he really "did
was to give life and energy to new forces which were
bound from their very nature to battle with the Monarchy
for even more than the old English freedom. When
Cromwell seized on the Church he held himself to be seiz-
ing for the Crown the mastery which the Church had
wielded till now over the consciences and reverence of
men. But the very humiliation of the great religious
body broke the spell beneath which Englishmen had
bowed. In form nothing had been changed. The outer
constitution of the Church remained utterly unaltered.
The English bishop, freed from the papal control, freed
from the check of monastic independence, seemed greater
and more imposing than ever. The priest still clung to
rectory and church. If images were taken out of churches,
if here and there a rood-loft was pulled down or a saint's
shrine demolished, no change was made in form of ritual
or mode of worship. The mass was untouched. Every
hymn, every prayer was still in Latin; confession, pen-
ance, fastings and f eastings, extreme unction, went on as
before. There was little to show that any change had
taken place; and yet every ploughman felt that all was
changed. The bishop, gorgeous as he might be in mitre
and cope, was a mere tool of the King. The priest was
trembling before heretics he used to burn. Farmer or
shopkeeper might enter their church any Sunday morning
to find mass or service utterly transformed. The spell of
tradition, of unbroken continuance, was over ; and with it
the power which the Church had wielded over the souls of
men was in great part done away.
CHAP. 1.] THE REFORMATION. 15401603. 207
It was not that the new Protestantism was as yet for-
midable, for, violent and daring as they were, the adherents
of Luther were few in number, and drawn mostly from
the poorer classes among whom Wyclifite heresy had lin-
gered or from the class of scholars whose theological studies
drew their sympathy to the movement over sea. It was
that the lump was now ready to be leavened by this petty
leaven, that men's hold on the firm ground of custom was
broken and their minds set drifting and questioning, that
little as was the actual religious change, the thought of
religious change had become familiar to the people as a
whole. And with religious change was certain to come
religious revolt. The human conscience was hardly likely
to move everywhere in strict time to the slow advance of
Henry's reforms. Men who had been roused from im-
plicit obedience to the Papacy as a revelation of the Divine
will by hearing the Pope denounced in royal proclamations
as a usurper and an impostor were hardly inclined to take
up submissively the new official doctrine which substituted
implicit belief in the King for implicit belief in the
"Bishop of Rome." But bound as Church and King now
were together, it was impossible to deny a tenet of the one
without entering on a course of opposition to the other.
Cromwell had raised against the Monarchy the most fatal
of all enemies, the force of the individual conscience, the
enthusiasm of religious belief, the fire of religious fanati-
cism. Slowly as the area of the new Protestantism ex-
tended, every man that it gained was a possible opponent
of the Crown. And should the time come, as the time
was soon to come, when the Crown moved to the side of
Protestantism, then in turn every soul that the older faith
retained was pledged to a lifelong combat with the
Monarchy.
How irresistible was the national drift was seen* on
Cromwell's fall. Its first result indeed promised to be a
reversal of all that Cromwell had done. Norfolk returned
to power, and his influence over Henry seemed secured by
208 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
the King's repudiation of Anne of Cleves and his marriage
in the summer of 1540 to a niece of the Duke, Catharine
Howard. But Norfolk's temper had now become wholly
hostile to the movement about him. " I never read the
Scripture nor never will!" the Duke replied hotly to a
Protestant arguer. " It was merry in England afore the
new learning came up; yea, I would all things were as
hath been in times past." In his preference of an Impe-
rial alliance to an alliance with Francis and the Lutherans
Henry went warmly with his minister. Parted as he had
been from Charles by the question of the divorce, the
King's sympathies had remained true to the Emperor;
and at this moment he was embittered against France by
the difficulties it threw in the way of his projects for gain-
ing a hold upon Scotland. Above all the King still clung
to the hope of a purification of the Church by a Council,
as well as of a reconciliation of England with the general
body of this purified Christendom, and it was only by the
Emperor that such a Council could be convened or such a
reconciliation brought about. An alliance with him was
far from indicating any retreat from Henry's position of
independence or any submission to the Papacy. To the
men of his own day Charles seemed no Catholic bigot.
On the contrary the stricter representatives of Catholicism
such as Paul the Fourth denounced him as a patron of her-
etics, and attributed the upgrowth of Lutheranism to his
steady protection and encouragement. Nor was the charge
without seeming justification. The old jealousy between
Pope and Emperor, the more recent hostility between
them as rival Italian powers, had from the beginning
proved Luther's security. At the first appearance of the
reformer Maximilian had recommended the Elector of
Saxony to suffer no harm to be done to him ; " there might
come a time," said the old Emperor, "when he would be
needed." Charles had looked on the matter mainly in the
same political way. In his earliest years he bought Leo's
aid in his recovery of Milan from the French king by
CHAP. 1.] THE REFORMATION. 15401603. 209
issuing the ban of the Empire against Luther in the Diet
of Worms ; but every Italian held that in suffering the re-
former to withdraw unharmed Charles had shown not so
much regard to his own safe-conduct as a purpose still " to
keep the Pope in check with that rein." And as Charles
dealt with Luther so he dealt with Lutheranism. The
new faith profited by the Emperor's struggle with Clement
the Seventh for the lordship over Italy. It was in the
midst of this struggle that his brother and representative,
Ferdinand, signed in the Diet of Spires an Imperial decree
by which the German States were left free to arrange their
religious affairs " as each should best answer to God and
the Emperor." The decree gave a legal existence to the
Protestant body in the Empire which it never afterward
lost.
Such a step might well encourage the belief that Charles
was himself inclining to Lutheranism; and the belief
gathered strength as he sent Lutheran armies over the
Alps to sack Rome and to hold the Pope a prisoner. The
belief was a false one, for Charles remained utterly un-
touched by the religious movement about him ; but even
when his strife with the Papacy was to a great extent
lulled by Clement's submission, he still turned a deaf ear
to the Papal appeals for dealing with Lutheranism by fire
and sword. His political interests and the conception
which he held of his duty as Emperor alike swayed him
to milder counsels. He purposed indeed to restore relig-
ious unity. His political aim was to bring Germany to
his feet as he had brought Italy ; and he saw that the relig-
ious schism was the great obstacle in the way of his real-
izing this design. As the temporal head of the Catholic
world he was still more strongly bent to heal the breaches
of Catholicism. But he had no wish to insist on an un-
conditional submission to the Papacy. He believed that
there were evils to be cured on the one side as on the
other ; and Charles saw. the high position which awaited
him if as Emperor he could bring about a reformation of
210 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK Vt
the Church and a reunion of Christendom. Violent as
Luther's words had been, the Lutheran princes and the
bulk of Lutheran theologians had not yet come to look on
Catholicism as an irreconcilable foe. Even on the papal
side there was a learned and active party, a party headed
by Contarini and Pole, whose theological sympathies went
in many points with the Lutherans, and who looked to the
winning back of the Lutherans as the needful prelude to
any reform in the doctrine and practice of the Church ;
while Melancthon was as hopeful as Contarini that such a
reform might be wrought and the Church again become
universal. In his proposal of a Council to carry on the
double work of purification and reunion therefore Charles
stood out as the representative of the larger part both of
the Catholic and the Protestant world. Against such a
proposal however Rome struggled hard. All her tradition
was against Councils, where the assembled bishops had in
earlier days asserted their superiority to the Pope, and
where the Emperor who convened the assembly and car-
ried out its decrees rose into dangerous rivalry with the
Papacy. Crushed as he was, Clement the Seventh
throughout his lifetime held the proposal of a Council
stubbornly at bay. But under his successor, Paul the
Third, the influence of Contarini and the moderate Catho-
lics secured a more favorable reception of plans of recon-
ciliation. In April, 1541, conferences for this purpose
were in fact opened at Augsburg in which Contarini, as
Papal legate, accepted a definition of the moot question of
justification by faith which satisfied Bucer and Melanc-
thon. On the other side, the Landgrave of Hesse and the
Elector of Brandenburg publicly declared that they be-
lieved it possible to come to terms on the yet more vexed
questions of the Mass and the Papal supremacy.
Never had the reunion of the world seemed so near; and
the hopes that were stirring found an echo in England as
well as in Germany. We can hardly doubt indeed that it
was the revival of these hopes which had brought about
CHAP. 1.] THE REFORMATION. 15401603. 211
the fall of Cromwell and the recall of Norfolk to power.
Norfolk, like his master, looked to a purification of the
Church by a Council as the prelude to a reconciliation of
England with the general body of Catholicism ; and both
saw that it was by the influence of the Emperor alone that
such a Council could be brought about. Charles on the
other hand was ready to welcome Henry's advances. The
quarrel over Catharine had ended with her death ; and the
wrong done her had been in part atoned for by the fall of
Anne Boleyn. The aid of Henry too was needed to hold
in check the opposition of France. The chief means
which France still possessed of holding the Emperor at
bay lay in the disunion of the Empire, and it was resolute
to preserve this weapon against him at whatever cost
to Christendom. While Francis remonstrated at Rome
against the concessions made to the Lutherans by the
Legates, he urged the Lutheran princes to make no terms
with the Papacy. To the Protestants he held out hopes
of his own conversion, while he promised Pope Paul that
he would defend him with his life against Emperor and
heretics. His intrigues were aided by the suspicions of
both the religious parties. Luther refused to believe in
the sincerity of the concessions made by the Legates ; Paul
the Third held aloof from them in sullen silence. Mean-
while Francis was preparing to raise more material obsta-
cles to the Emperor's designs. Charles had bought his
last reconciliation with the King by a promise of restoring
the Milanese, but he had no serious purpose of ever fulfil-
ling his pledge, and his retention of the Duchy gave the
French King a fair pretext for threatening a renewal of
the war.
England, as Francis hoped, he could hold in check
through his alliance with the Scots. After the final ex-
pulsion of Albany in 1524 Scottish history became little
more than a strife between Margaret Tudor and her hus-
band, the Earl of Angus, for power; but the growth of
James Uhe Fifth to manhood at last secured rest for the
212 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI
land. James had all the varied ability of his race, and he
carried out with vigor its traditional policy. The High-
land chieftains, the great lords of the Lowlands, were
brought more under the royal sway; the Church was
strengthened to serve as a check on the feudal baronage ;
the alliance with France was strictly preserved, as the one
security against English aggression. Nephew as he was
indeed of the English King, James from the outset of his
reign took up an attitude hostile to England. He was
jealous of the influence which the two Henries had estab-
lished in his realm by the marriage of Margaret and by
the building up of an English party under the Douglases ;
the great Churchmen who formed his most trusted advisers
dreaded the influence of the religious changes across the
border ; while the people clung to their old hatred of Eng-
land and their old dependence on France. It was only by
two inroads of the border lords that Henry checked the
hostile intrigues of James in 1532; his efforts to influence
his nephew by an interview and alliance were met by the
King's marriage with two French wives in succession,
Magdalen of Valois, a daughter of Francis, and Mary, a
daughter of the Duke of Guise. In 1539 when the pro-
jected coalition between France and the Empire threatened
England, it had been needful to send Norfolk with an
army to the Scotch - frontier, and now that France was
again hostile Norfolk had to move anew to the border in
the autumn of 1541.
While the Duke was fruitlessly endeavoring to bring
James to fresh friendship a sudden blow at home weakened
his power. At the close of the year Catharine Howard
was arrested on a charge of adultery ; a Parliament which
assembled in January, 1542, passed a Bill of Attainder;
and in February the Queen was sent to the block. She
was replaced by the widow of Lord Latimer, Catharine
Parr; and the influence of Norfolk in the King's counsels
gradually gave way to that of Bishop Gardiner of Win-
chester. But Henry clung to the policy which the Duke
CHAP. 1.] THE REFORMATION. 1540-1603. 213
favored. At the end of 1541 two great calamities, the loss
of Hungary after a victory of the Turks and a crushing
defeat at Algiers, so weakened Charles that in the summer
of the following year Francis ventured to attack him.
The attack served only to draw closer the negotiations be-
tween England and the Emperor; and Francis was forced,
as he had threatened, to give Henry work to occupy him
at home. The busiest counsellor of the Scotch King,
Cardinal Beaton, crossed the seas to negotiate a joint at-
tack, and the attitude of Scotland became so menacing
that in the autumn of 1542 Norfolk was again sent to the
border with twenty thousand men. But terrible as were
his ravages, he could not bring the Scotch army to an en-
gagement, and want of supplies soon forced him to fall
back over the border. It was in vain that James urged
his nobles to follow him in a counter-invasion. They
were ready to defend their country ; but the memory of
Flodden was still fresh, and success in England would
only give dangerous strength to a King in whom they
saw an enemy. But James was as stubborn in his pur-
pose as the lords. Anxious only to free himself from their
presence, he waited till the two armies had alike with-
drawn, and then suddenly summoned his subjects to meet
him in arms on the western border. A disorderly host
gathered at Lochmaben and passed into Cumberland ; but
the English borderers followed on them fast, and were
preparing to attack when at nightfall on the twenty-fifth
of November a panic seized the whole Scotch force. Lost
in the darkness and cut off from retreat by the Solway
Firth, thousands of men with all the baggage and guns
fell into the hands of the pursuers. The news of this rout
fell on the young King like a sentence of death. For a
while he wandered desperately from palace to palace till at
the opening of December the tidings met him at Falkirk
that his queen, Mary of Guise, had given birth to a child.
His two boys had both died in youth, and he was longing
passionately for an heir to the crown which was slipping
214 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
from his grasp. But the child was a daughter, the Mary
Stuart of later history. "The deil go with it," muttered
the dying king, as his mind fell back to the close of the
line of Bruce and the marriage with Robert's daughter
which brought the Stuarts to the Scottish throne. " The
deil go with it! It will end as it began. It came with a
lass, and it will end with a lass." A few days later he
died.
The death of James did more than remove a formidable
foe. It opened up for the first time a prospect of that
union of the two kingdoms which was at last to close their
long hostility. Scotland, torn by factions and with a babe
for queen, seemed to lie at Henry's feet : and the King
seized the opportunity of completing his father's work by
a union of the realms. At the opening of 1543 he proposed
to the Scotch regent, the Earl of Arran, the marriage of
the infant Mary Stuart with his son Edward. To insure
this bridal he demanded that Mary should at once be sent
to England, the four great fortresses of Scotland be placed
in English hands, and a voice given to Henry himself in
the administration of the Scotch Council of Regency.
Arran and the Queen-mother, rivals as they were, vied
with each other in apparent good will to the marriage ;
but there was a steady refusal to break the league with
France, and the "English lords," as the Douglas faction
were called, owned themselves helpless in face of the na-
tional jealousy of English ambition. The temper of the
nation itself was seen in the answer made by the Scotch
Parliament which gathered in the spring. If they con-
sented to the young Queen's betrothal, they not only re-
jected the demands which accompanied the proposal, but
insisted that in case of such a union Scotland should have
a perpetual regent of its own, and that this office should
be hereditary in the House of Arran. Warned by his
very partisans that the delivery of Mary was impossible,
that if such a demand were pressed " there was not so little
a boy but he would hurl stones against it, the wives would
CHAP. 1.] THE REFORMATION. 15401608. 215
handle their distaffs, and the commons would universally
die in it," Henry's proposals dropped in July to a treaty
of alliance, offensive and defensive, he suffered France to
be included among the allies of Scotland named in it, he
consented that the young Queen should remain with her
mother till the age of ten, and offered guarantees for the
maintenance of Scotch independence.
But modify it as he might, Henry knew that such a
project of union could only be carried out by a war with
Francis. His negotiations for a treaty with Charles had
long been delayed through Henry's wish to drag the Em-
peror into an open breach with the Papacy, but at the mo-
ment of the King's first proposals for the marriage of Mary
Stuart with his son the need of finding a check upon France
forced on a formal alliance with the Emperor in February,
1543. The two allies agreed that the war should be con-
tinued till the Duchy of Burgundy had been restored to
the Emperor and till England had recovered Normandy
and Guienne ; while the joint fleets of Henry and Charles
held the Channel and sheltered England from any danger
of French attack. The main end of this treaty was doubt-
less to give Francis work at home which might prevent
the dispatch of a French force into Scotland and the over-
throw of Henry's hopes of a Scotch marriage. These
hopes were strengthened as the summer went on by the
acceptance of his later proposals in a Parliament which
was packed by the Regent, and by the actual conclusion
of a marriage treaty. But if Francis could spare neither
horse nor man for action in Scotland his influence in the
northern kingdom was strong enough to foil Henry's plans.
The Churchmen were as bitterly opposed to such a marriage
as the partisans of France; and their head, Cardinal
Beaton, who had held aloof from the Regent's Parliament,
suddenly seized the Queen-mother and her babe, crowned
the infant Mary, called a Parliament in December which
annulled the marriage treaty, and set Henry at defiance.
The King's wrath at this overthrow of his hopes showed
AO VOL. 5
216 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
itself in a brutal and impolitic act of vengeance. He was
a skilful shipbuilder; and among the many enterprises
which the restless genius of Cromwell undertook there was
probably none in which Henry took so keen an interest as
in his creation of an English fleet. Hitherto merchant
ships had been impressed when a fleet was needed; but
the progress of naval warfare had made the maintenance
of an armed force at sea a condition of maritime power,
and the resources furnished by the dissolution of the ab-
beys had been devoted in part to the building of ships of
war, the largest of which, the Mary Rose, carried a crew
of seven hundred men. The new strength which England
was to wield in its navy was first seen in 1544. An army
was gathered under Lord Hertford; and while Scotland
was looking for the usual advance over the border the
Earl's forces were quietly put on board and the English
fleet appeared on the third of May in the Frith of Forth.
The surprise made resistance impossible. Leith was seized
and sacked; Edinburgh, then a town of wooden houses,
was given to the flames, and burned for three days and
three nights. The country for seven miles round was
harried into a desert. The blow was a hard one, but it
was little likely to bring Scotchmen round to Henry's
projects of union. A brutal raid of the English borderers
on Melrose and the destruction of his ancestors' tombs es-
tranged the Earl of Angus, and was quickly avenged by
his overthrow of the marauders at Ancrum Moor. Henry
had yet to learn the uselessness of mere force to compass
his ends. " I shall be glad to serve the King of England,
with my honor," said the Lord of Buccleugh to an Eng-
lish envoy, " but I will not be constrained thereto if all
Teviotdale be burned to the bottom of hell."
Hertford's force returned in good time to join the army
which Henry in person was gathering at Calais to co-oper-
ate with the forces assembled by Charles on the north-
eastern frontier of France. Each sovereign found himself
at the head of forty thousand men, and the Emperor's
CHAP. 1.] THE REFORMATION. 15401603. 217
military ability was seen in his proposal for an advance of
both armies upon Paris. But though Henry found no
French force in his front, his cautious temper shrank from
the risk of leaving fortresses in his rear ; and while their
allies pushed boldly past Chalons on the capital, the Eng-
lish troops were detained till September in the capture of
Boulogne, and only left Boulogne to form the siege of
Montreuil. The French were thus enabled to throw then
whole force on the Emperor, and Charles found himself in
a position from which negotiation alone could extricate
him.
His ends were in fact gained by the humiliation of
France, and he had as little desire to give England a
strong foothold in the neighborhood of his own Nether-
lands as in Wolsey's days. The widening of English ter-
ritory there could hardly fail to encourage that upgrowth
of heresy which' the Emperor justly looked upon as the
greatest danger to the hold of Spain upon the Low Coun-
tries, while it would bring Henry a step nearer to the chain
of Protestant states which began on the Lower Rhine.
The plans which Charles had formed for uniting the Cath-
olics and Lutherans in the conferences of Augsburg had
broken down before the opposition both of Luther and the
Pope. On both sides indeed the religious contest was
gathering new violence. A revival had begun in the
Church itself, but it was the revival of a militant and un-
compromising orthodoxy. In 1542 the fanaticism of Car-
dinal Caraffa forced on the establishment of a supreme
Tribunal of the Inquisition at Rome. The next year saw
the establishment of the Jesuits. Meanwhile Lutheran-
ism took a new energy. The whole north of Germany be-
came Protestant. In 1539 the younger branches of the
house of Saxony joined the elder in a common adherence
to Lutheranism ; and their conversion had been followed
by that of the Elector of Brandenburg. Southern Ger-
many seemed bent on following the example of the north.
The hereditary possessions of Charles himself fell away
218 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VL
from Catholicism. The Austrian duchies were overrun
with heresy. Bohemia promised soon to become Hussite
again. Persecution failed to check the triumph of the new
opinions in the Low Countries. The Empire itself threat-
ened to become Protestant. In 1540 the accession of the
Elector Palatine robbed Catholicism of Central Germany
and the Upper Rhine ; and three years later, at the open-
ing of the war with France, that of the Archbishop of
Koln gave the Protestants not only the Central Rhineland
but a majority in the College of Electors. It seemed im-
possible for Charles to prevent the Empire from repudiat-
ing Catholicism in his lifetime, or to hinder the Imperial
Crown from falling to a Protestant at his death.
The great fabric of power which had been built up by
the policy of Ferdinand of Aragon was thus threatened
with utter ruin, and Charles saw himself forced into the
struggle he had so long avoided, if not for the interests of
religion, at any rate for the interests of the House of Aus-
tria. He still hoped for a reunion from the Council which
was assembled at Trent, and from which a purified Cath-
olicism was to come. But he no longer hoped that the
Lutherans would yield to the mere voice of the Council.
They would yield only to force, and the first step in such
a process of compulsion must be the breaking up of their
League of Schmalkald. Only France could save them;
and it was to isolate them from France that Charles availed
himself of the terror his march on Paris had caused, and
concluded a treaty with that power in September, 1544.
The progress of Protestantism had startled even France
itself ; and her old policy seemed to be abandoned in her
promises of co-operation in the task of repressing heresy in
the Empire. But a stronger security against French in-
tervention lay in the unscrupulous dexterity with which,
while withdrawing from the struggle, Charles left Henry
and Francis still at strife. Henry would not cede Bou-
logne, and Francis saw no means of forcing him to a peace
save by a threat of invasion. While an army closed round
CHAP. 1.] THE REFORMATION. 1540--1608. 219
Boulogne, and a squadron carried troops to Scotland, a
hundred and fifty French ships were gathered in the Chan-
nel and crossed in the summer of 1545 to the Isle of Wight.
But their attacks were feebly conducted, and the fleet at
last returned to its harbors without striking any serious
blow, while the siege of Boulogne dragged idly on through
the year. Both kings however drew to peace. In spite of
the treaty of Crepy it was impossible for France to abandon
the Lutherans, and Francis was eager to free his hands
for action across the Rhine. Henry, on the other hand, de-
serted by his ally and with a treasury ruined by the cost of
the war, was ready at last to surrender his gains in it. In
June, 1546, a peace was concluded by which England en-
gaged to surrender Boulogne on payment of a heavy ran-
som, and France to restore the annual subsidy which had
been promised in 1525.
What aided in the close of the war was a new aspect of
affairs in Scotland. Since the death of James the Fifth
the great foe of England in the north had been the Arch-
bishop of St. Andrews, Cardinal Beaton. In despair of
shaking his power his rivals had proposed schemes for his
assassination to Henry, and these schemes had been ex-
pressly approved. But plot after plot broke down ; and it
was not till May, 1546, that a group of Scotch nobles who
favored the Reformation surprised his castle at St. An-
drews. Shrieking miserably, " I am a priest ! I am a
priest ! Fie ! Fie ! All is gone !" the Cardinal was brutally
murdered, and his body hung over the castle walls. His
death made it easy to include Scotland in the peace with
France which was concluded in the summer. But in
England itself peace was a necessity. The Crown was
penniless. In spite of the confiscation of the abbey lands
in 1539 the treasury was found empty at the very opening
of the war : the large subsidies granted by the parliament
were expended; and conscious that a fresh grant could
hardly be expected even from the servile Houses the gov-
ernment in 1545 fell back on its old resource of benevo-
820 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI
lences. Of two London merchants who resisted this
demand as illegal, one was sent to the Fleet, the second
ordered to join the army on the Scotch border; but it was
significant that resistance had been offered, and the failure
of the war-taxes which were voted at the close of the year
to supply the royal needs drove the Council to fresh acts
of confiscation. A vast mass of Church property still re-
mained for the spoiler, and by a bill of 1545 more than
two thousand chantries and chapels, with a hundred and
ten hospitals, were suppressed to the profit of the Crown.
Enormous as this booty was, it could only be slowly real-
ized; and the immediate pressure forced the Council to
take refuge in the last and worst measure any government
can adopt, a debasement of the currency. The evils of
such a course were felt till the reign of Elizabeth. But it
was a course that could not be repeated ; and financial ex-
haustion played its part in bringing the war to an end.
A still greater part was played by the aspect of affairs
in the Empire. Once freed from the check of the war
Charles had moved fast to his aim. In 1545 he had ad-
justed all minor differences with Paul the Third, and Pope
and Emperor had resolved on the immediate convocation
of the Council, and on the enforcement of its decisions by
weight of arms. Should the Emperor be driven to war
with the Lutheran princes, the Pope engaged to support
him with all his power. " Were it needful, " Paul promised,
"he would sell his very crown in his service." In De-
cember the Council was actually opened at Trent, and its
proceedings soon showed that no concessions to the Luther-
ans could be looked for. The Emperor's demand that the
reform of the Church should first be taken in hand was
evaded ; and on the two great questions of the authority
of the Bible as a ground of faith, and of justification, the
sentence of the Council directly condemned the Protestant
opinions. The Lutherans showed their resolve to make
no submission by refusing to send representatives to Trent ;
and Charles carried out his pledges to the papacy by tak-
CHAP. 1.] THE REFORMATION. 1540-1603. 221
ing the field in the spring of 1546 to break up the League
of Schmalkald. But the army gathered under the Elector
of Saxony and the Landgrave of Hesse so far outnumbered
the Imperial forces that the Emperor could not venture on
a battle. Henry watched the course of Charles with a
growing anxiety. The hopes of a purified and united
Christendom which has drawn him a few years back to
the Emperor's side faded before the stern realities of th*
Council. The highest pretensions of the Papacy had been
sanctioned by the bishops gathered at Trent ; and to the
pretensions of the Papacy Henry was resolved not to bow.
He was driven, whether he would or no, on the policy of
Cromwell ; and in the last months of his life he offered aid
to the League of Schmalkald. His offers were rejected ;
for the Lutheran princes had no faith in his sincerity, and
believed themselves strong enough to deal with the Em-
peror without foreign help.
But his attitude without told on his policy at home. To
the hotter Catholics as to the hotter Protestants the years
since Cromwell's fall had seemed years of a gradual return
to Catholicism. There had been a slight sharpening of
persecution for the Protestants, and restrictions had been
put on the reading of the English Bible. The alliance
with Charles and the hope of reconciling England anew
with a pacified Christendom gave fresh cause for suppress-
ing heresy. Neither Norfolk nor his master indeed de-
sired any rigorous measure of reaction, for Henry re-
mained proud of the work he had done. His bitterness
against the Papacy only grew as the years went by ; and
at the very moment that heretics were suffering for a de-
nial of the mass, others were suffering by their side for a
denial of the supremacy. But strange and anomalous as
its system seemed, the drift of Henry's religious govern-
ment had as yet been in one direction, that of a return to
and reconciliation with the body of the Catholic Church.
With the decision of the Council and the new attitude of
the Emperor this drift was suddenly arrested. It was not
222 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
that Henry realized the revolution that was opening before
him or the vast importance of the steps which his policy
now led him to take. His tendency, like that of his peo-
ple, was religious rather than theological, practical rather
than speculative. Of the immense problems which were
opening in the world neither he nor England saw any-
thing. The religious strife which was to break Europe
asunder was to the King as to the bulk of Englishmen a
quarrel of words and hot temper ; the truth which Chris-
tendom was to rend itself to pieces in striving to discover
was a thing that could easily be found with the aid of
God. There is something humorous as there is something
pathetic in the warnings which Henry addressed to the
Parliament at the close of 1545. The shadow of death as
it fell over him gave the King's words a new gentleness
and tenderness. " The special foundation of our religion
being charity between man and man, it is so refrigerate
as there never was more dissension and lack of love be-
tween man and man, the occasions whereof are opinions
only and names devised for the continuance of the same.
Some are called Papists, some Lutherans, and some Ana-
baptists; names devised of the devil, and yet not fully
without ground, for the severing of one man's heart by
conceit of opinion from the other." But the remedy was
a simple one. Every man was "to travail first for his
own amendment." Then the bishops and clergy were to
agree in their teaching, " which, seeing there is but one
truth and verity, they may easily do, calling therein for
the grace of God." Then the nobles and laity were to be
pious and humble, to read their new Bibles "reverently
and humbly . . . and in any doubt to resort to the learned
or at best the higher powers." " I am very sorry to know
and hear how unreverendly that precious jewel, the Word
of God, is disputed, rhymed, sung, and jangled in every
alehouse and tavern. This kind of man is depraved and
that kind of man, this ceremony and that ceremony." All
this controversy might be done away by simple charity.
CHAP. 1.] THE REFORMATION. 15401603. 223
" Therefore be in charity one with another like brother and
brother. Have respect to the pleasing of God ; and then
I doubt not that love I spoke of shall never be dissolved
between us."
There is something wonderful in the English coolness
and narrowness, in the speculative blindness and practical
good sense which could look out over such a world at such
a moment, and could see nothing in it save a quarrel of
"opinions, and of names devised for the continuance of
the same." But Henry only expressed the general feeling
of his people. England indeed was being slowly leavened
with a new spirit. The humiliation of the clergy, the
Lutheran tendencies of half the bishops, the crash of the
abbeys, the destruction of chantries and mass-chapels, a
measure which told closely on the actual worship of the
day, the new articles of faith, the diffusion of bibles, the
"jangling" and discussion which followed on every step
in the King's course, were all telling on the thoughts of
men. But the temper of the nation as a whole remained
religiously conservative. It drifted rather to the moderate
reforms of the New Learning than to any radical recon-
struction of the Church. There was a general disinclina-
tion indeed to push matters to either extreme, a general
shrinking from the persecution which the Catholic called
for as from the destruction which the Protestant was de-
siring. It was significant that a new heresy bill which
passed through the Lords in 1545 quietly disappeared when
it reached the Commons. But this shrinking rested rather
on national than on theological grounds, on a craving for
national union which Henry expressed in his cry for
"brotherly love," and on an imperfect appreciation of the
real nature or consequence of the points at issue which
made men shrink from burning their neighbors for " opin-
ions and names devised for the continuance of the same."
What Henry and what the bulk of Englishmen wanted
was, not indeed wholly to rest in what had been done, but
to do little more save the remedying of obvious abuses or
224 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
the carrying on of obvious improvements. One such im-
provement was the supplying men with the means of pri-
vate devotion in their own tongue, a measure from which
none but the fanatics of either side dissented. This pro-
cess went slowly on in the issuing of two primers in 1535
and 1539, the rendering into English of the Creed, the
Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments, the publica-
tion of an English Litany for outdoor processions in 1544,
and the adding to this of a collection of English prayers
in 1545.
But the very tone of Henry shows his consciousness
that this religious truce rested on his will alone. Around
him as he lay dying stood men who were girding them-
selves to a fierce struggle for power, a struggle that could
not fail to wake the elements of religious discord which he
had striven to lull asleep. Adherents of the Papacy, ad-
vocates of a new submission to a foreign spiritual juris-
diction there were few or none ; for the most conservative
of English Churchmen or nobles had as yet no wish to re-
store the older Roman supremacy. But Norfolk and Gar-
diner were content with this assertion of national and
ecclesiastical independence; in all matters of faith they
were earnest to conserve, to keep things as they were, and
in front of them stood a group of nobles who were bent on
radical change. The marriages, the reforms, the profu-
sion of Henry had aided him in his policy of weakening
the nobles by building up a new nobility which sprang
from the Court and was wholly dependent on the Crown.
Such were the Russells, the Cavendishes, the Wriothesieys,
the Fitzwilliams. Such was John Dudley, a son of the
Dudley who had been put to death for his financial oppres-
sion in Henry the Seventh's days, but who had been re-
stored in blood, attached to the court, raised to the peerage
as Lord Lisle, and who, whether as adviser or general,
had been actively employed in high stations at the close
of this reign. Such above all were the two brothers of
Jane Seymour. The elder of the two, Edward Seymour,
CHAP. 1.] THE REFORMATION. 15401603. 225
had been raised to the earldom of Hertford, and entrusted
with the command of the English army in its operations
against Scotland. As uncle of Henry's boy Edward, he
could not fail to play a leading part in the coming reign ;
and the nobles of the "new blood," as their opponents
called them in disdain, drew round him as their head.
Without any historical hold on the country, raised by the
royal caprice, and enriched by the spoil of the monasteries,
tbese nobles were pledged to the changes from which they
had sprung and to the party of change. Over the mass of
the nation their influence was small ; and in the strife for
power with the older nobles which they were anticipating
they were forced to look to the small but resolute body of
men who, whether from religious enthusiasm or from greed
of wealth or power, were bent on bringing the English
Church nearer to conformity with the reformed Churches
of the Continent. As Henry drew to his grave the two
factions faced each other with gathering dread and gather-
ing hate. Hot words betrayed their hopes. "If God
should call the King to his mercy," said Norfolk's son,
Lord Surrey, " who were so meet to govern the Prince as
my lord my father?" "Rather than it should come to
pass," retorted a partisan of Hertford's, "that the Prince
should be under the governance of your father or you, I
would abide the adventure to thrust a dagger in you !"
In the history of English poetry the name of Lord
Surrey takes an illustrious place. An Elizabethan writer
tells us how at this time " sprang up a new company of
courtly makers, of whom Sir Thomas Wyatt the elder and
Henry, Earl of Surrey, were the two chieftains; who
having travelled to Italy, and there tasted the sweet and
stately measures and style of the Italian poesy, as novices
newly crept out of the schools of Dante, Ariosto, and Pe-
trarch, they greatly polished our rude and homely manner
of vulgar poesy from what it had been before, and for that
cause may justly be said to be the first reformers of our
English metre and style." The dull moralizings of the
226 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
rhymers who followed Chaucer, the rough but vivacious
doggerel of Skelton, made way in the hands of Wyatt and
Surrey for delicate imitations of the songs, sonnets, and
rondels of Italy and France. With the Italian conceits
came an Italian refinement whether of words or of thought ;
and the force and versatility of Surrey's youth showed it-
self in whimsical satires, in classical translations, in love-
sonnets, and in paraphrases of the Psalms. In his version
of two books of the Mneid he was the first to introduce into
England the Italian blank verse which was to play so
great a part in our literature. But with the poetic taste
of the Renascence Surrey inherited its wild and reckless
energy. Once he was sent to the Fleet for challenging a
gentleman to fight. Release enabled him to join his father
in an expedition against Scotland, but he was no sooner
back than the Londoners complained how at Candlemas
the young lord and his comrades " went out with stone
bows at midnight," and how next day "there was great
clamor of the breaking of many glass windows both of
houses and churches, and shooting at men that might be
in the streets." In spite of his humorous excuse that the
jest only purposed to bring home to men that " from jus-
tice's rod no fault is free, but that all such as work unright
in most quiet are next unrest," Surrey paid for this out-
break with a fresh arrest which drove him to find solace
in paraphrases of Ecclesiastes and the Psalms. Soon he
was over sea with the English troops in Flanders, and in
1544 serving as marshal of the camp to conduct the retreat
after the siege of Montreuil. Sent to relieve Boulogne,
he remained in charge of the town till the spring of 1546,
when he returned to England to rhyme sonnets to a fair
Geraldine, the daughter of the Earl of Kildare, and to
plunge into the strife of factions around the dying King.
All moral bounds had been loosened by the spirit of the
Renascence, and, if we accept the charge of his rivals,
Surrey now aimed at gaining a hold on Henry by offering
him his sister as a mistress. It is as possible that the
CHAP. 1.] THE REFORMATION. 15401603. 227
young Earl was aiming simply at the displacement of
Catharine Parr, and at the renewal by his sister's eleva-
tion to the throne of that matrimonial hold upon Henry
which the Howards had already succeeded in gaining
through the unions with Anne Boleyn and Catharine
Howard. But a temper such as Surrey's was ill-matched
against the subtle and unscrupulous schemers who saw
their enemy in a pride that scorned the " new men" about
him and vowed that when once the King was dead " they
should smart for it." The turn of foreign affairs gave a
fresh strength to the party which sympathized with the
Protestants and denounced that alliance with the Emperor
which had been throughout the policy of the Howards.
Henry's offer of aid to the Lutheran princes marked the
triumph of this party in the royal councils ; and the new
steps which Cranmer was suffered to make toward an
English Liturgy showed that the religious truce of Henry's
later years was at last abandoned. Hertford, the head of
the "new men," came more to the front as the waning
health of the King brought Jane Seymour's boy, Edward,
nearer to the throne. In the new reign Hertford, as the
boy's uncle, was sure to play a great part; and he used his
new influence to remove the only effective obstacle to his
future greatness. Surrey's talk of his royal blood, the
Duke's quartering of the royal arms to mark his Planta-
genet descent, and some secret interviews with the French
ambassador were adroitly used to wake Henry's jealousy
of the dangers which might beset the throne of his child.
Norfolk and his son were alike committed to the Tower
at the close of 1546. A month later Surrey was condemned
and sent to the block, and his father was only saved by
the sudden death of Henry the Eighth in January, 1547.
By an Act passed in the Parliament of 1544 it had been
provided that the crown should pass to Henry's son Ed-
ward, and on Edward's death without issue to his sister
Mary. Should Mary prove childless it was to go to Eliza-
beth, the child of Anne Boleyn. Beyond this point the
228 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
Houses would make no provision, but power was given to
the King to make further dispositions by will. At his
death it was found that Henry had passed over the line of
his sister Margaret of Scotland, and named as next in the
succession to Elizabeth the daughters of his younger sis-
ter Mary by her marriage with Charles Brandon, Duke of
Suffolk. As Edward was but nine years old Henry had
appointed a carefully balanced Council of Regency ; but
the will fell into Hertford's keeping, and when the list of
regents was at last disclosed Gardiner, who had till now
been the leading minister, was declared to have been ex-
cluded from the number of executors. Whether the ex-
clusion was Henry's act or the act of the men who used
his name, the absence of the bishop with the imprisonment
of Norfolk threw the balance of power on the side of the
" new men" who were represented by Hertford and Lisle.
Their chief opponent, the Chancellor Wriothesley, strug-
gled in vain against their next step toward supremacy, the
modification of Henry's will by the nomination of Hert-
ford as Protector of the realm and governor of Edward's
person. Alleged directions from the dying King served
as pretexts for the elevation of the whole party to higher
rank in the state. It was to repair " the decay of the old
English nobility" that Hertford raised himself to the
dukedom of Somerset and his brother to the barony of
Seymour, the queen's brother Lord Parr to the marquisate
of Northampton, Lisle to the earldom of Warwick, Russell
to that of Bedford, Wriothesley to that of Southampton.
Ten of their partisans became barons, and as the number
of peers in spite of recent creations still stood at about
fifty such a group constituted a power in the Upper House.
Alleged directions of the King were conveniently remem-
bered to endow the new peers with public money, though
the treasury was beggared and the debt pressing. The
expulsion of Wriothesley from the Chancellorship and
Council soon left the "new men" without a check; but
they were hardly masters of the royal power when & bold
CHAP. 1.] THE REFORMATION. 15401608. 229
stroke of Somerset laid all at his feet. A new patent of
Protectorate, drawn out in the boy-King's name, em-
powered his uncle to act with or without the consent of
his fellow executors, and left him supreme in the realm.
Boldly and adroitly as the whole revolution had been
managed, it was none the less a revolution. To crush
their opponents the Council had first used, and then set
aside, Henry's will. Hertford in turn by the use of his
nephew's name set aside both the will and the Council.
A country gentleman, who had risen by the accident of his
sister's queenship to high rank at the Court, had thus by
sheer intrigue and self-assertion made himself ruler of the
realm. But daring and self-confident as he was, Somerset
was forced by his very elevation to seek support for the
power he had won by this surprise in measures which
marked the retreat of the Monarchy from that position of
pure absolutism which it had reached at the close of
Henry's reign. The Statute that had given to royal proc-
lamations the force of law was repealed, and several of the
new felonies and treasons which Cromwell had created
and used with so terrible an effect were erased from the
Statute Book. The popularity however which such meas-
ures won was too vague a force to serve in the strife of the
moment. Against the pressure of the conservative party
who had so suddenly found themselves jockeyed out of
power Somerset and the " new men" could look for no help
but from the Protestants. The hope of their support
united with the new Protector's personal predilections in
his patronage of the innovations against which Henry had
battled to the last. Cranmer had now drifted into a purely
Protestant position; and his open break with the older
system followed quickly on Seymour's rise to power.
"This year," says a contemporary, "the Archbishop of
Canterbury did eat meat openly in Lent in the Hall of
Lambeth, the like of which was never seen since England
was a Christian country." This notable act was followed
by a rapid succession of sweeping changes. The legal
230 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
prohibitions of Lollardry were rescinded ; the Six Articles
were repealed ; a royal injunction removed all pictures and
images from the churches. A formal Statute gave priests
the right to many. A resolution of convocation which
was confirmed by Parliament brought about the significant
change which first definitely marked the severance of the
English Church in doctrine from the Roman, by ordering
that the sacrament of the altar should be administered in
both kinds.
A yet more significant change followed. The old tongue
of the Church was not to be disused in public worship.
The universal use of Latin had marked the Catholic and
European character of the older religion ; the use of Eng-
lish marked the strictly national and local character of the
new system. In the spring of 1548 a new Communion
Service in English took the place of the Mass ; an English
book of Common Prayer, the Liturgy which with slight
alterations is still used in the Church of England, soon re-
placed the Missal and Breviary from which its contents
are mainly drawn. The name "Common Prayer," which
was given to the new Liturgy, marked its real import.
The theory of worship which prevailed through Medieval
Christendom, the belief that the worshipper assisted only
at rites wrought for him by priestly hands, at a sacrifice
wrought through priestly intervention, at the offering of
prayer and praise by priestly lips, was now set at naught.
" The laity," it has been picturesquely said, " were called up
into the Chancel. " The act of devotion became a " common
prayer" of the whole body of worshippers. The Mass be-
came a " communion" of the whole Christian fellowship.
The priest was no longer the offerer of a mysterious sacri-
fice, the mediator between God and the worshipper; he
was set on a level with the rest of the Church, and brought
down to be the simple mouthpiece of the congregation.
What gave a wider importance to these measures was
their bearing on the general politics of Christendom. The
adhesion of England to the Protestant cause came at a
CHAP. 1.] THE REFORMATION. 15401608. 231
moment when Protestantism seemed on the verge of ruin.
The confidence of the Lutheran princes in their ability to
resist the Emperor had been seen in their refusal of succor
from Henry the Eighth. But in the winter of Henry's
death the secession of Duke Maurice of Saxony with many
of his colleagues from the League of Schmalkald so weak-
ened the Protestant body that Charles was able to put its
leaders to the ban of the Empire. Hertford was hardly
Protector when the German princes called loudly for aid ;
but the fifty thousand crowns which were secretly sent by
the English Council could scarcely have reached them
when in April, 1547, Charles surprised their camp at Muhl-
berg and routed their whole army. The Elector of Saxony
was taken prisoner; the Landgrave of Hesse surrendered
in despair. His victory left Charles master of the Empire.
The jealousy of the Pope indeed at once revived with the
Emperor's success, and his recall of the bishops from Trent
forced Charles to defer his wider plans for enforcing relig-
ious unity ; while in Germany itself he was forced to reckon
with Duke Maurice and the Protestant princes who had
deserted the League of Schmalkald, but whose one object
in joining the Emperor had been to provide a check on his
after movements. For the moment therefore he was driven
to prolong the religious truce by an arrangement called the
"Interim." But the Emperor's purpose was now clear.
Wherever his power was actually felt the religious reaction
began; and the Imperial towns which held firmly to the
Lutheran creed were reduced by force of arms. It was of
the highest moment that in this hour of despair the Prot-
estants saw their rule suddenly established in a new quarter,
and the Lutheranism which was being trampled under foot
in its own home triumphant in England. England became
the common refuge of the panic-struck Protestants. Bucer
and Fagius were sent to lecture at Cambridge, Peter
Martyr advocated the anti-sacrarnentarian views of Cal-
vin at Oxford. Cranmer welcomed refugees from every
country, Germans, Italians, French, Poles, and Swiss, to
232 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
his palace at Lambeth. When persecution broke out in
the Low Countries the fugitive Walloons were received at
London and Canterbury, and allowed to set up in both
places their own churches.
But Somerset dreamed of a wider triumph for " the re-
ligion." On his death-bed Henry was said to have en-
forced on the Council the need of carrying out his policy
of a union of Scotland with England through the marriage
of its Queen with his boy. A wise statesmanship would
have suffered the Protestant movement which had been
growing stronger in the northern kingdom since Beaton's
death to run quietly its course ; and his colleagues warned
Somerset to leave Scotch affairs untouched till Edward was
old enough to undertake them in person. But these coun-
sels were set aside ; and a renewal of the border warfare
enforced the Protector's demands for a closer union of the
kingdoms. The jealousy of France was roused at once,
and a French fleet appeared off the Scottish coast to reduce
the castle of St. Andrews, which had been held since
Beaton's death by the English partisans who murdered
him. The challenge called Somerset himself to the field ;
and crossing the Tweed with a fine army of eighteen
thousand men in the summer of 1547 the Protector pushed
along the coast till he found the Scots encamped behind
the Esk on the slopes of Musselburgh, six miles eastward
of Edinburgh. The English invasion had drawn all the
factions of the kingdom together against the stranger, and
a body of " Gospellers" under Lord Angus formed the ad-
vance-guard of the Scotch army as it moved by its right
on the tenth of September to turn the English position and
drive Somerset into the sea. The English horse charged
the Scottish front, only to be flung off by it spikemen ; but
their triumph threw the Lowlanders into disorder, and as
they pushed forward in pursuit their advance was roughly
checked by the fire of a body of Italian musketeers whom
Somerset had brought with him. The check was turned
into a defeat by a general charge of the English line, a
CHAP. 1.] THE REFORMATION. 1540-1603. 233
fatal panic broke the Scottish host, and ten thousand men
fell in its headlong flight beneath the English lances.
Victor as he was at Pinkie Cleugh, Somerset was soon
forced by famine to fall back from the wasted country.
His victory had been more fatal to the interests of England
than a defeat. The Scots in despair turned as of old to
France, and bought its protection by consenting to the
child-queen's marriage with the son of Henry the Second,
who had followed Francis on the throne. In the summer
of 1548 Mary Stuart sailed under the escort of a French
fleet and landed safely at Brest. Not only was the Tudor
policy of union foiled, as it seemed, forever, but Scotland
was henceforth to be a part of the French realm. To north
as to south England would feel the pressure of the French
King. Nor was Somerset's policy more successful at home.
The religious changes he was forcing on the land were car-
ried through with the despotism, if not with the vigor, of
Cromwell. In his acceptance of the personal supremacy
of the sovereign, Gardiner was ready to bow to every
change which Henry had ordered, or which his son, when
of age to be fully King, might order in the days to come.
But he denounced all ecclesiastical changes made during
the King's minority as illegal and invalid. Untenable as
it was, this protest probably represented the general mind
of Englishmen ; but the bishop was committed by Council
to prison in the Fleet, and though soon released was sent
by the Protector to the Tower. The power of preaching
was restricted by the issue of licenses only to the friends of
the Primate. While all counter arguments were rigidly
suppressed, a crowd of Protestant pamphleteers flooded the
country with vehement invectives against the Mass and its
superstitious accompaniments. The suppression of chan-
tries and religious guilds which was now being carried out
enabled Somerset to buy the assent of noble and landowner
to his measures by glutting their greed with the last spoils
of the Church.
But it was impossible to buy off the general aversion of
234 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
the people to the Protector's measures ; and German and
Italian mercenaries had to be introduced to stamp out the
popular discontent which broke out in the east, in the west,
and in the midland counties. Everywhere men protested
against the new changes and called for the maintenance of
the system of Henry the Eighth. The Cornishmen refused
to receive the new service " because it is like a Christmas
game." In 1549 Devonshire demanded by open revolt the
restoration of the Mass and the Six Articles as well as a
partial re-establishment of the suppressed abbeys. The
agrarian discontent woke again in the general disorder.
Enclosures and evictions were going steadily on, and the
bitterness of the change was being heightened by the re-
sults of the dissolution of the abbeys. Church lands had
always been underlet, the monks were easy landlords, and
on no estates had the peasantry been as yet so much ex-
empt from the general revolution in culture. But the new
lay masters to whom the abbey lands fell were quick to
reap their full value by a rise of rents and by the same
processes of eviction and enclosure as went on elsewhere.
The distress was deepened by the change in the value of
money which was now beginning to be felt from the mass
of gold and silver which the New World was yielding to
the Old, and still more by a general rise of prices that fol-
lowed on the debasement of the coinage which had begun
with Henry and went on yet more unscrupulously under
Somerset. The trouble came at last to a head in the man-
ufacturing districts of the eastern counties. Twenty thou-
sand men gathered round an " oak of Reformation" near
Norwich, and repulsing the royal troops in a desperate
engagement renewed the old cries for a removal of evil
counsellors, a prohibition of enclosures, and redress for the
grievances of the poor.
The revolt of the Norfolk men was stamped out in blood
by the energy of Lord Warwick, as the revolt in the west
had been put down by Lord Russell, but the risings had
given a fatal blow to Somerset's power. It had already
CHAP. 1.] THE REFORMATION. 15401603. 235
been weakened by strife within his own family. His
brother Thomas had been created Lord Seymour and raised
to the post of Lord High Admiral ; but glutted as he was
with lands and honors, his envy at Somerset's fortunes
broke out in a secret marriage with the Queen-dowager,
Catharine Parr, in an attempt on her death to marry Eliza-
beth, and in intrigues to win the confidence of the young
King and detach him from his brother. Seymour's dis-
content was mounting into open revolt when in the Janu-
ary of 1549 he was arrested, refused a trial, attainted, and
sent to the block. The stain of a brother's blood, however
justly shed, rested from that hour on Somerset, while the
nobles were estranged from him by his resolve to enforce
the laws against enclosures and evictions, as well as by the
weakness he had shown in the presence of the revolt.
Able indeed as Somerset was, his temper was not that of a
ruler of men ; and his miserable administration had all but
brought government to a standstill. While he was dream-
ing of a fresh invasion of Scotland the treasury was empty,
not a servant of the state was paid, and the soldiers he had
engaged on the Continent refused to cross the Channel in
despair of receiving their hire. It was only by loans raised
at ruinous interest that the Protector escaped sheer bank-
ruptcy when the revolts in east and west came to swell the
royal expenses. His weakness in tampering with the
popular demands completed his ruin. The nobles dreaded
a communistic outbreak like that of the Suabian peasantry,
and their dread was justified by prophecies that monarchy
and nobility were alike to be destroyed and a new rule set
up under governors elected by the people. They dreaded
yet more the being forced to disgorge their spoil to appease
the discontent. At the close of 1549 therefore the Council
withdrew openly from Somerset, and forced the Protector
to resign.
His office passed to the Earl of Warwick, to whose ruth-
less severity the suppression of the revolt was mainly due.
The change of governors however brought about no change
236 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Boos VI.
of system. Peace indeed was won from France by the
immediate surrender of Boulogne ; but the misgovernment
remained as great as ever, the currency was yet further
debased, and a wild attempt made to remedy the effects of
this measure by a royal fixing of prices. It was in vain
that Latimer denounced the prevailing greed, and bade the
Protestant lords choose " either restitution or else damna-
tion." Their sole aim seemed to be that of building up
their own fortunes at the cost of the state. All pretence
of winning popular sympathy was gone, and the rule of
the upstart nobles who formed the Council of Regency be-
came simply a rule of terror. " The grea part of the peo-
ple," one of their creatures, Cecil, avowed, "is not in favor
of defending this cause, but of aiding its adversaries ; on
that side are the greater part of the nobles, who absent
themselves from Court, ah 1 the bishops save three or four,
almost all the judges and lawyers, almost all the justices
of the peace, the priests who can move their flocks any
way, for the whole of the commonalty is in such a state of
irritation that it will easily follow any stir toward
change." But united as it was in its opposition the na-
tion was helpless. The system of despotism which Crom-
well built up had been seized by a knot of adventurers, and
with German and Italian mercenaries at their disposal
they rode roughshod over the land.
At such a moment it seemed madness to provoke foes
abroad as well as at home, but the fanaticism of the young
King was resolved to force on his sister Mary a compliance
with the new changes, and her resistance was soon backed
by the remonstrances of her cousin, the Emperor. Charles
was now at the height of his power, master of Germany,
preparing to make the Empire hereditary in the person of
his son, Philip, and . preluding a wider effort to suppress
heresy throughout the world by the establishment of the
Inquisition in the Netherlands and a fiery persecution
which drove thousands of Walloon heretics to find a refuge
in England. But heedless of dangers from without or of
CHAP. 1.] THE REFORMATION. 15401608. 237
dangers from within Cranmer and his colleagues advanced
more boldly than ever in the career of innovation. Four
prelates who adhered to the older system were deprived of
their sees and committed on frivolous pretexts to the Tower.
A new Catechism embodied the doctrines of the reformers,
and a book of Homilies which enforced the chief Protes-
tant tenets was ordered to be read in Churches. A
crowning defiance was given to the doctrine of the Mass
by an order to demolish the stone altars and replace them
by wooden tables, which were stationed for the most part
in the middle of the church. In 1 552 a revised Prayer-book
was issued, and every change made in it leaned directly
toward the extreme Protestantism which was at this time
finding a home at Geneva. On the cardinal point of dif-
ference, the question of the sacrament, the new formularies
broke away not only from the doctrine of Rome but from
that of Luther, and embodied the anti-sacramentarian
tenets of Zuingli and Calvin. Forty-two Articles of Re-
ligion were introduced; and though since reduced by
omissions to thirty-nine these have remained to this day
the formal standard of doctrine in the English Church.
Like the Prayer-book, they were mainly the work of Cran-
mer ; and belonging as they did to the class of Confessions
which were now being framed in Germany to be presented
to the Council of Christendom which Charles was still
resolute to re-assemble, they marked the adhesion of Eng-
land to the Protestant movement on the Continent. Even
the episcopal mode of government which still connected the
English Church with the old Catholic Communion was
reduced to a form ; in Cranmer's mind the spiritual powers
of the bishops were drawn simply from the King's com-
mission as their temporal jurisdiction was exercised in the
King's name. They were reduced therefore to the position
of royal officers, and called to hold their offices simply at the
royal pleasure. The sufferings of the Protestants had failed
to teach them the worth of religious liberty ; and a new code
of ecclesiastical laws, which was ordered to be drawn up
238 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
by a body of Commissioners as a substitute for the Canon
Law of the Catholic Church, although it shrank from the
penalty of death, attached that of perpetual imprisonment
or exile to the crimes of heresy, blasphemy, and adultery,
and declared excommunication to involve a severance of
the offender from the mercy of God and his deliverance into
the tyranny of the devil. Delays in the completion of this
Code prevented its legal establishment during Edward's
reign ; but the use of the new Liturgy and attendance at
the new service was enforced by imprisonment, and sub-
scription to the Articles of Faith was demanded by royal
authority from all clergymen, churchwardens, and school-
masters.
The distaste for changes so hurried and so rigorously
enforced was increased by the daring speculations of the
more extreme Protestants. The real value of the religious
revolution of the sixteenth century to mankind lay, not in
its substitution of one creed for another, but in the new
spirit of inquiry, the new freedom of thought and of dis-
cussion, which was awakened during the process of change.
But however familiar such a truth may be to us, it was
absolutely hidden from the England of the time. Men
heard with horror that the foundations of faith and morality
were questioned, polygamy advocated, oaths denounced as
unlawful, community of goods raised into a sacred obliga-
tion, the very Godhead of the Founder of Christianity de-
nied. The repeal of the Statute of Heresy left indeed the
powers of the Common Law intact, and Cranmer availed
himself of these to send heretics of the last class without
mercy to the stake. But within the Church itself the
Primate's desire for uniformity was roughly resisted by
the more ardent members of his own party. Hooper, who
had been named Bishop of Gloucester, refused to wear the
episcopal habits, and denounced them as the livery of the
"harlot of Babylon," a name for the Papacy which was
supposed to have been discovered in the Apocalypse. Ec-
clesiastical order came almost to an end. Priests flung
CHAP. 1.] THE REFORMATION. 1540-1603. 239
aside the surplice as superstitious. Patrons of livings pre-
sented their huntsmen or gamekeepers to the benefices in
their gift, and kept the stipend. All teaching of divinity
ceased at the Universities : the students indeed had fallen
off in numbers, the libraries were in part scattered or
burned, the intellectual impulse of the New Learning died
away. One noble measure indeed, the foundation of
eighteen Grammar Schools, was destined to throw a lustre
over the name of Edward, but it had no time to bear fruit
in his reign.
While the reckless energy of the reformers brought
England to the verge of chaos, it brought Ireland to the
brink of rebellion. The fall of Cromwell had been followed
by a long respite in the religious changes which he was
forcing on the conquered dependency ; but with the acces-
sion of Edward the Sixth the system of change was re-
newed with all the energy of Protestant zeal. In 1551 the
bishops were summoned before the deputy, Sir Anthony
St. Leger, to receive the new English Liturgy which,
though written in a tongue as strange to the native Irish
as Latin itself, was now to supersede the Latin service-
book in every diocese. The order was the signal for an
open strife. " Now shall every illiterate fellow read mass,"
burst forth Dowdall, the Archbishop of Armagh, as he
flung out of the chamber with all but one of his suffragans
at his heels. Archbishop Browne of Dublin on the other
hand was followed in his profession of obedience by the
Bishops of Meath, Limerick, and Kildare. The govern-
ment however was far from quailing before the division of
the episcopate. Dowdall was driven from the country;
and the vacant sees were filled with Protestants, like Bale,
of the most advanced type. But no change could be
wrought by measures such as these in the opinions of the
people themselves. The new episcopal reformers spoke no
Irish, and of their English sermons not a word was un-
derstood by the rude kernes around the pulpit. The native
priests remained silent. " As for preaching we have nona, "
U VOL. 2
240 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
reports a zealous Protestant, " without which the ignorant
can have no knowledge. " The prelates who used the new
Prayer-book were simply regarded as heretics. The B ishop
of Meath was assured by one of his flock that, "if the
country wist how, they would eat you." Protestantism
had failed to wrest a single Irishman from his older con-
victions, but it succeeded in uniting all Ireland against
the Crown. The old political distinctions which had been
produced by the conquest of Strongbow faded before the
new struggle for a common faith. The population within
the Pale and without it became one, " not as the Irish na-
tion," it has been acutely said, " but as Catholics." A new
sense of national identity was found in the identity of re-
ligion. "Both English and Irish begin to oppose your
Lordship's orders," Browne had written to Cromwell at
the very outset of these changes, " and to lay aside their
national old quarrels."
Oversea indeed the perils of the new government passed
suddenly away. Charles had backed Mary's resistance
with threats, and as he moved forward to that mastery of
the world to which he confidently looked his threats might
any day become serious dangers. But the peace with
England had set the French government free to act in
Germany, and it found allies in the great middle party of
princes whose secession from the League of Schmalkald
had seemed to bring ruin to the Protestant cause. The
aim of Duke Maurice in bringing them to desert the
League had been to tie the Emperor's hands by the very
fact of their joining him, and for a while this policy had
been successful. But the death of Paul the Third, whose
jealousy had till now foiled the Emperor's plans, and the
accession of an Imperial nominee to the Papal throne, en-
abled Charles to move more boldly to his ends, and at the
close of 1551 a fresh assembly of the Council at Trent, and
an Imperial summons of the Lutheran powers to send di-
vines to its sessions and to submit to its decisions, brought
matters to an issue. Maurice was forced to accept the aid
CHAP. 1.] THE REFORMATION. 15401603. 241
of the stranger and to conclude a secret treaty with France.
He was engaged as a general of Charles in the siege of Mag-
deburg; but in the spring of 1552 the army he had then at
command was suddenly marched to the south, and through
the passes of the Tyrol the Duke moved straight on the
Imperial camp at Innspruck. Charles was forced to flee
for very life while the Council at Trent broke hastily up,
and in a few months the whole Imperial design was in
ruin. Henry the Second was already moving on the Rhine ;
to meet the French King Charles was forced to come to terms
with the Lutheran princes ; and his signature in the sum-
mer of a Treaty at Passau secured to their states the free
exercise of the reformed religion and gave the Protestant
princes their due weight in the tribunals of the empire.
The humiliation of the Emperor, the fierce warfare
which now engaged both his forces and those of France,
removed from England the danger of outer interference.
But within the misrule went recklessly on. All that men
saw was a religious and political chaos, in which ecclesi-
astical order had perished and in which politics were dy<
ing down into the squabbles of a knot of nobles over the
spoils of the Church and the Crown. Not content with
Somerset's degradation, the Council charged him in 1551
with treason, and sent him to the block. Honors and
lands were lavished as ever on themselves and their ad-
herents. Warwick became Duke of Northumberland,
Lord Dorset was made Duke of Suffolk, Paulet rose to the
Marquisate of Winchester, Sir William Herbert was
created Earl of Pembroke. The plunder of the chantries
and the gilds failed to glut the appetite of this crew of
spoilers. Half the lands of every see were flung to them
in vain; an attempt was made to satisfy their greed by a
suppression of the wealthy see of Durham ; and the whole
endowments of the Church were threatened with confisca-
tion. But while the courtiers gorged themselves with
manors, the Treasury grew poorer. The coinage was
again debased. Crown lands to the value of five millions
242 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
of our modern money had been granted away to the friends
of Somerset and Warwick. The royal expenditure
mounted in seventeen years to more than four times its
previous total. In spite of the brutality and bloodshed
with which revolt had been suppressed, and of the foreign
soldiery on whom the Council relied, there were signs of
resistance which would have made less reckless statesmen
pause. The temper of the Parliament had drifted far from
the slavish subservience which it showed at the close of
Henry's reign. The House of Commons met Northumber-
land's project for the pillage of the bishopric of Durham
with opposition, and rejected a new treason bill. In 1552
the Duke was compelled to force nominees of his own on
the constituencies by writs from the Council before he
could count on a house to his mind. Such writs had been
often issued since the days of Henry the Seventh ; but the
ministers of Edward were driven to an expedient which
shows how rapidly the temper of independence was grow-
ing. The summons of new members from places hitherto
unrepresented was among the prerogatives of the Crown,
and the Protectorate used this power to issue writs to
small villages in the west which could be trusted to retain
members to its mind.
This " packing of Parliament" was to be largely extended
in the following reigns; but it passed as yet with little
comment. What really kept England quiet was a trust
that the young King, who would be of age in two or three
years, would then set all things right again. " When he
comes of age," said a Hampshire squire, "he will see an-
other rule, and hang up a hundred heretic knaves." Ed-
ward's temper was as lordly as that of his father, and had
he once really reigned he would probably have dealt as
roughly with the plunderers who had used his name as
England hoped. But he was a fanatical Protestant, and
his rule would almost certainly have forced on a religious
strife as bitter and disastrous as the strife which broke the
strength of Germany and France. From this calamity
CHAP. 1.) THE REFORMATION. 15401603. 243
the country was saved by his waning health. Edward
was now fifteen, but in the opening of 1553 the signs
of coming death became too clear for Northumberland
and his fellows to mistake them. By the Statute of
the Succession the death of the young King would bring
Mary to the throne ; and as Mary was known to have re-
fused acceptance of all changes in her father's system, and
was looked on as anxious only to restore it, her accession
became a subject of national hope. But to Northumberland
and his fellows her succession was fatal. They had per-
sonally outraged Mary by their attempts to force her into
compliance with their system. Her first act would be to
free Norfolk and the bishops whom they held prisoners in
the Tower, and to set these bitter enemies in power. With
ruin before them the Protestant lords were ready for a fresh
revolution ; and the bigotry of the young King fell in with
their plans.
In his zeal for "the religion," and in his absolute faith
in his royal autocracy, Edward was ready to override will
and statute and to set Mary's rights aside. In such a case
the crown fell legally to Elizabeth, the daughter of Anne
Boleyn, who had been placed by the Act next in succession
to Mary, and whose training under Catharine Parr and the
Seymours gave good hopes of her Protestant sympathies.
The cause of Elizabeth would have united the whole of the
11 new men" in its defence, and might have proved a for-
midable difficulty in Mary's way. But for the mainte-
nance of his personal power Northumberland could as little
count on Elizabeth as on Mary ; and in Edward's death
the Duke saw a chance of raising, if not himself, at any
rate his own blood to the throne. He persuaded the young
King that he possessed as great a right as his father to
settle the succession of the Crown by will. Henry had
passed by the children of his sister Margaret of Scotland,
and had placed next to Elizabeth in the succession the chil-
dren of his younger sister Mary, the wife of Charles Bran-
don, the Duke of Suffolk. Frances, Mary's child by this
244 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
marriage, was still living, the mother of three daughters
by her marriage with Grey, Lord Dorset, a hot partisan
of the religious changes, who had been raised under the
Protectorate to the Dukedom of Suffolk. Frances was a
woman of thirty-seven; but her accession to the Crown
squared as little with Northumberland's plans as that of
Mary or Elizabeth. In the will therefore which the young
King drew up Edward was brought to pass over Frances,
and to name as his successor her eldest daughter, the Lady
Jane Grey. The marriage of Jane Grey with Guildford
Dudley, the fourth son of Northumberland, was all that
was needed to complete the unscrupulous plot. It was the
celebration of this marriage in May which first woke a
public suspicion of the existence of such designs, and the
general murmur which followed on the suspicion might
have warned the Duke of his danger. But the secret was
closely kept, and it was only in June that Edward's " plan"
was laid in the same strict secrecy before Northumberland's
colleagues. A project which raised the Duke into a virtual
sovereignty over the realm could hardly fail to stir resist-
ance in the Council. The King however was resolute,
and his will was used to set aside all scruples. The judges
who represented that letters patent could not override a
positive statute were forced into signing their assent by
Edward's express command. To their signatures were
added those of the whole Council with Cranmer at its
head. The primate indeed remonstrated, but his remon-
strances proved as fruitless as those of his fellow councillors.
The deed was hardly done when on the sixth of July
the young King passed away. Northumberland felt little
anxiety about the success of his design. He had won over
Lord Hastings to his support by giving him his daughter
in marriage, and had secured the help of Lord Pembroke
by wedding Jane's sister, Catharine, to his son. The
army, the fortresses, the foreign soldiers, were at his com-
mand; the hotter Protestants were with him; France, in
dread of Mary's kinship with the Emperor, offered sup-
CHAP. 1.] THE REFORMATION. 15401603. 245
port to his plans. Jane therefore was at once proclaimed
Queen on Edward's death, and accepted as their sovereign
by the Lords of the Council. But the temper of the whole
people rebelled against so lawless a usurpation. The eastern
counties rose as one man to support Mary; and when
Northumberland marched from London with ten thousand
at his back to crush the rising, the Londoners, Protestant as
they were, showed their ill-will by a stubborn silence. " The
people crowd to look upon us," the Duke noted gloomily,
" but not one calls 'God speed ye. ' " While he halted for
reinforcements his own colleagues struck him down.
Eager to throw from their necks the yoke of a rival who
had made himself a master, the Council no sooner saw
the popular reaction than they proclaimed Mary Queen ;
and this step was at once followed by a declaration of the
fleet in her favor, and by the announcement of the levies
in every shire that they would only fight in her cause. As
the tidings reached him the Duke's courage suddenly gave
way. His retreat to Cambridge was the signal for a general
defection. Northumberland himself threw his cap into
the air and shouted with his men for Queen Mary. But
his submission failed to avert his doom ; and the death of
the Duke drew with it the imprisonment in the Tower of
the hapless girl whom he had made the tool of his ambi-
tion
CHAPTER II.
THE CATHOLIC REACTION.
15531558.
THE triumph of Mary was a fatal blow at the system of
despotism which Henry the Eighth had established. It
was a system that rested not so much on the actual strength
possessed by the Crown as on the absence of any effective
forces of resistance. At Henry's death the one force of
opposition which had developed itself was that of the
Protestants, but whether in numbers or political weight
the Protestants were as yet of small consequence, and their
resistance did little to break the general drift of both nation
and King. For great as were the changes which Henry
had wrought in the severance of England from the Papacy
and the establishment of the ecclesiastical supremacy of
the Crown, they were wrought with fair assent from the
people at large ; and when once the discontent roused by
Cromwell's violence had been appeased by his fall England
as a whole acquiesced in the conservative system of the
King. This national union however was broken by the
Protectorate. At the moment when it had reached its
height the royal authority was seized by a knot of nobles
and recklessly used to further the revolutionary projects of
a small minority of the people. From the hour of this
revolution a new impulse was given to resistance. The
older nobility, the bulk of the gentry, the wealthier mer-
chants, the great mass of the people, found themselves
thrown by the very instinct of conservatism into opposi-
tion to the Crown. It was only by foreign hirelings that
revolt was suppressed ; it was only by a reckless abuse of
the system of packing the Houses that Parliament could
CHAP. 3.] THE REFORMATION. 15401603. 347
be held in check. At last the Government ventured on an
open defiance of law ; and a statute of the realm was set
aside at the imperious bidding of a boy of fifteen. Master
of the royal forces, wielding at his will the royal authority,
Northumberland used the voice of the dying Edward to
set aside rights of succession as sacred as his own. But
the attempt proved an utter failure. The very forces on
which the Duke relied turned against him. The whole
nation fronted him in arms. The sovereign whom tke
voice of the young King named as his successor passed
from the throne to the Tower, and a sovereign whose title
rested on parliamentary statute took her place.
At the opening of August Mary entered London in
triumph. Short and thin in figure, with a face drawn
and colorless that told of constant ill-health, there was
little in the outer seeming of the new queen to recall her
father; but her hard, bright eyes, her manlike voice, her
fearlessness and self-will, told of her Tudor blood, as her
skill in music, her knowledge of languages, her love of
learning, spoke of the culture and refinement of Henry's
Court. Though Mary was thirty-seven years old, the strict
retirement in which she had lived had left her as ignorant
of the actual temper of England as England was ignorant
of her own. She had founded her resistance to the changes
of the Protectorate on a resolve to adhere to her father's
system till her brother came of age to rule, and England
believed her to be longing like itself simply for a restora-
tion of what Henry had left. The belief was confirmed
by her earlier actions. The changes of the Protectorate
were treated as null and void. Gardiner, Henry's minis-
ter, was drawn from the Tower to take the lead as Chan-
cellor at the Queen's Council-board. Bonner and the de-
posed bishops were restored to their sees. Ridley with the
others who had displaced them were again expelled. Lati-
mer, as a representative of the extreme Protestants, was
sent to the Tower; and the foreign refugees, as anti-sacra-
mentarians, were ordered to leave England. On an indig-
248 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. ' m [BOOK VI.
nant protest from Cranmer against reports that he was
ready to abandon the new reforms the Archbishop was sent
for his seditious demeanor to the Tower, and soon put on
his trial for treason with Lady Jane Grey, her husband,
and two of his brothers. Each pleaded guilty; but no at-
tempt was made to carry out the sentence of death. In all
this England went with the Queen. The popular enthusi-
asm hardly waited in fact for the orders of the Govern-
ment. The whole system which had been pursued during
Edward's reign fell with a sudden crash. London indeed
retained much of its Protestant sympathy, but over the
rest of the country the tide of reaction swept without
a check. The married priests were driven from their
churches, the images were replaced. In many parishes
the new Prayer-book was set aside and the mass restored.
The Parliament which met in October annulled the laws
made respecting religion during the past reign, and re-
established the form of service as used in the last year of
Henry the Eighth.
Up to this point the temper of England went fairly with
that of the Queen. But there were from the first signs of
a radical difference between the aim of Mary and that of
her people. With the restoration of her father's system
the nation as a whole was satisfied. Mary on the other
hand looked on such a restoration simply as a step toward
a complete revival of the system which Henry had done
away. Through long years of suffering and peril her
fanaticism had been patiently brooding over the hope of
restoring to England its older religion. She believed, as
she said at a later time to the Parliament, that " she had
been predestiaed and preserved by God to the succession of
the Crown for no other end save that He might make use
of her above all else in the bringing back of the realm to
the Catholic faith." Her zeal however was checked by the
fact that she stood almost alone in her aim, as well as by
cautious advice from her cousin, the Emperor; and she
assured the Londoners that "albeit her own conscience
CHAP. 3.] THE REFORMATION. 15401603. 242
was stayed in matters of religion, yet she meant not to
compel or strain men's consciences otherwise than God
should, as she trusted, put in their hearts a persuasion of
the truth that she was in, through the opening of his word
unto them by godly, and virtuous, and learned preachers."
She had in fact not ventured as yet to refuse the title of
" Head of the Church next under God" or to disclaim the
powers which the Act of Supremacy gave her; on the
contrary she used these powers in the regulation of preach-
ing as her father had used them. The strenuous resistance
with which her proposal to set aside the new Prayer Book
was met in Parliament warned her of the difficulties that
awaited any projects of radical change. The proposal was
carried, but only after a hot conflict which lasted over six
days and which left a third of the Lower House still op-
posed to it. Their opposition by no means implied ap-
proval of the whole series of religious changes of which
the Prayer Book formed a part, for the more moderate
Catholics were pleading at this time for prayers in the
vulgar tongue, and on this question followers of More and
Colet might have voted with the followers of Cranmer.
But it showed how far men's minds were from any spirit
of blind reaction or blind compliance with the royal will.
The temper of the Parliament indeed was very different
from that of the Houses which had knelt before Henry the
Eighth. If it consented to repeal the enactment which
rendered her mother's marriage invalid and to declare
Mary "born in lawful matrimony," it secured the aboli-
tion of all the new treasons and felonies created in the two
last reigns. The demand for their abolition showed that
jealousy of the growth of civil tyranny had now spread
from the minds of philosophers like More to the minds of
common Englishmen. Still keener was the jealousy of
any marked revolution in the religious system which
Henry had established. The wish to return to the obedi-
ence of Rome lingered indeed among some of the clergy
and in the northern shires. But elsewhere the system of
250 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
a national Church was popular, and it was backed by the
existence of a large and influential class who had been en-
riched by the abbey lands. Forty thousand families had
profited by the spoil, and watched anxiously any approach
of danger to their new possessions, such as submission to
the Papacy was likely to bring about. On such a submis-
sion however Mary was resolved: and it was to gain
strength for such a step that she determined to seek a hus-
band from her mother's house. The policy of Ferdinand
of Aragon, so long held at bay by adverse fortune, was
now to find its complete fulfilment. To one line of the
house of Austria, that of Charles the Fifth, had fallen not
only the Imperial Crown but the great heritage of Bur-
gundy, Aragon, Naples, Castile, and the Castilian de-
pendencies in the New World. To a second, that of the
Emperor's brother Ferdinand, had fallen the Austrian
duchies, Bohemia and Hungary. The marriage of Cath-
arine was now, as it seemed, to bear its fruits by the union
of Mary with a son of Charles, and the placing a third
Austrian line upon the throne of England. The gigantic
scheme of bringing all western Europe together under the
rule of a single family seemed at last to draw to its realiza-
tion.
It was no doubt from political as well as religious mo-
tives that Mary set her heart on this union. Her rejection
of Gardiner's proposal that she should marry the young
Courtenay, Earl of Devon, a son of the Marquis of Exeter
whom Henry had beheaded, the resolve which she ex-
pressed to wed "no subject, no Englishman," was founded
in part on the danger to her throne from the pretensions of
Mary Stuart, whose adherents cared little for the exclusion
of the Scotch line from the succession by Henry's will and
already alleged the illegitimate births of both Mary Tudor
and Elizabeth through the annulling of their mothers'
marriages as a ground for denying their right to the throne.
Such claims became doubly formidable through the mar-
riage of Mary Stuart with the heir of the French Crown.
CHAP. 2.] THE REFORMATION. 15401608. 251
and the virtual union of both Scotland and France in this
claimant's hands. It was only to Charles that the Queen
could look for aid against such a pressure as this, and
Charles was forced to give her aid. His old dreams of a
mastery of the world had faded away before the stern
realities of the Peace of Passau and his repulse from the
walls of Metz. His hold over the Empire was broken.
France was more formidable than ever. To crown his
difficulties the growth of heresy and of the spirit of inde^
pendence in the Netherlands threatened to rob him of the
finest part of the Burgundian heritage. With Mary Stu-
art once on the English throne, and the great island of the
west knit to the French monarchy, the balance of power
would be utterly overthrown, the Low Countries lost, and
the Imperial Crown, as it could hardly be doubted, reft
from the house of Austria. He was quick therefore to
welcome the Queen's advances, and to offer his son Philip,
who though not yet thirty had been twice a widower, as a
candidate for her hand.
The offer came weighted with a heavy bribe. The keen
foresight of the Emperor already saw the difficulty of hold-
ing the Netherlands in union with the Spanish monarchy ;
and while Spain, Naples, and Franche Comte descended to
Philip's eldest son, Charles promised the heritage of the
Low Countries with England to the issue of Philip and
Mary. He accepted too the demand of Gardiner and the
Council that in the event of such a union England should
preserve complete independence both of policy and action.
In any case the marriage would save England from the
grasp of France, and restore it, as the Emperor hinted, to
the obedience of the Church. But the project was hardly
declared when it was met by an outburst of popular in-
dignation. Gardiner himself was against a union that
would annul the national independence which had till now
been the aim of Tudor policy, and that would drag Eng-
land helplessly in the wake of the House of Austria. The
mass of conservative Englishmen shrank from the relig-
252 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
ious aspects of the marriage. For the Emperor had now
ceased to be an object of hope of confidence as a mediator
who would at once purify the Church from abuses, and
restore the unity of Christendom ; he had ranged himself
definitely on the side of the Papacy and of the Council of
Trent ; and the cruelties of the Inquisition which he had
introduced into Flanders gave a terrible indication of the
bigotry which he was to bequeath to his House. The
marriage with Philip meant, it could hardly be doubted, a
submission to the Papacy, and an undoing not only of the
religious changes of Edward but of the whole system of
Henry. Loyal and conservative as was the temper of the
Parliament, it was at one in its opposition to a Spanish
marriage and in the request which it made through a
deputation of its members to the Queen that she would
marry an Englishman. The request was a new step for-
ward on the part of the Houses to the recovery of their older
rights. Already called by Cromwell's policy to more than
their old power in ecclesiastical matters, their dread of
revolutionary change pushed them to an intervention in
matters of state. Mary noted the advance with all a
Tudor's jealousy. She interrupted the speaker; she re-
buked the Parliament for taking too much on itself ; she
declared she would take counsel on such a matter " with
God and with none other." But the remonstrance had
been made, the interference was to serve as a precedent in
the reign to come, and a fresh proof had been given that
Parliament was no longer the slavish tool of the Crown.
But while the nation grumbled and the Parliament re-
monstrated, one party in the realm was filled with absolute
panic by the news of the Spanish match. The Protestants
saw in the marriage not only the final overthrow of their re-
ligious hopes, but a close of the religious truce, and an open-
ing of persecution. The general opposition to the match,
with the dread of the holders of Church lands that their
possessions were in danger, encouraged the more violent to
plan a rising; and France, naturally jealous of an increase
CHAP. 2.] THE REFORMATION. 15401603. 253
of power by its great opponent, promised to support them
by an incursion from Scotland and an attack on Calais.
The real aim of the rebellion was, no doubt, the displace-
ment of Mary, and the setting either of Jane Grey, or, as
the bulk of the Protestants desired, of Elizabeth, on the
throne. But these hopes were cautiously hidden ; and the
conspirators declared their aim to be that of freeing the
Queen from evil counsellors, and of preventing her union
with the Prince of Spain. The plan combined three simul-
taneous outbreaks of revolt. Sir Peter Carew engaged to
raise the west, the Duke of Suffolk to call the midland coun-
ties to arms, while Sir Thomas Wyatt led the Kentishmen
on London. The rising was planned for the spring of
1554. But the vigilance of the Government drove it to a
premature explosion in January, and baffled it in the centre
and the west. Carew fled to France; Suffolk, who ap*
peared in arms at Leicester, found small response from
the people and was soon sent prisoner to the Tower. The
Kentish rising however proved a more formidable danger.
A cry that the Spaniards were coming "to conquer the
realm" drew thousands to Wyatt's standard. The ships
in the Thames submitted to be seized by the insurgents.
A party of the train-bands of London, who marched with
the royal guard under the old Duke of Norfolk against
them, deserted to the rebels in a mass with shouts of " A
Wyatt ! a Wyatt ! we are all Englishmen !"
Had the Kentishmen moved quickly on the capital, its
gates would have been flung open and success would have
been assured. But at the critical moment Mary was saved
by her queenly courage. Riding boldly to the Guildhall
she appealed with " a man's voice" to the loyalty of the
citizens, and denounced the declaration of Wyatt's follow-
ers as " a Spanish cloak to cover their purpose against our
religion." She pledged herself, "on the word of a Queen,
that if it shall not probably appear to all the nobility and
commons in the high court of Parliament that this mar-
riage shall be for the high benefit and commodity of all the
254 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
whole realm, then will I abstain from marriage while I
live." The pledge was a momentous one, for it owned the
very claim of the two Houses which the Queen had till now
haughtily rejected ; and with the remonstrance of the Par-
liament still fresh in their ears the Londoners may well
have believed that the marriage-project would come quietly
to an end. The dread too of any change in religion by the
return of the violent Protestantism of Edward's day could
hardly fail to win Mary support among the citizens. The
mayor answered for their loyalty, and when Wyatt ap-
peared on the Southwark bank the bridge was secured
against him. But the rebel leader knew that the issue of
the revolt hung on the question which side London would
take, and that a large part of the Londoners favored his
cause. Marching therefore up the Thames he seized a
bridge at Kingston, threw his force across the river, and
turned rapidly back on the capital. But a night march
along miry roads wearied and disorganized his men ; the
bulk of them were cut off from their leader by a royal fore
which had gathered in the fields at what is now Hyde
Park Corner, and only Wyatt himself with a handful of
followers pushed desperately on past the palace of St.
James, whence the Queen refused to fly even while the
rebels were marching beneath its walls, along the Strand
to Ludgate. " I have kept touch," he cried as he sank ex-
hausted at the gate. But it was closed: his adherents
within were powerless to effect their promised diversion in
his favor ; and as he fell back the daring leader was sur-
rounded at Temple Bar and sent to the Tower.
The failure of the revolt was fatal to the girl whom par]
at least of the rebels would have placed on the throne.
Lady Jane Grey, who had till now been spared and treated
with great leniency, was sent to the block ; and her father,
her husband, and her uncle, atoned for the ambition of the
House of Suffolk by the death of traitors. Wyatt and his
chief adherents followed them to execution, while the
bodies of the poorer insurgents were dangling on gibbets
CHAP. 2.] THE REFORMATION. 15401608. 255
round London. Elizabeth, who had with some reason
been suspected of complicity in the insurrection, was sent
to the Tower ; and only saved from death by the interposi-
tion of the Council. The leading Protestants fled in terror
over sea. But the failure of the revolt did more than crush
the Protestant party ; it enabled the Queen to lay aside the
mask of moderation which had been forced on her by the
earlier difficulties of her reign. An order for the expulsion
of all married clergy from their cures, with the deprivation
of nine bishops who had been appointed during the Pro-
tectorate and who represented its religious tendencies,
proved the Queen's resolve to enter boldly on a course of
reaction. ^Her victory secured the Spanish marriage. It
was to prevent Philip's union to Mary that Wyatt had
risen, and with his overthrow the Queen's policy stood
triumphant. The whole strength of the conservative op-
position was lost when opposition could be branded as dis-
loyalty. Mary too was true to the pledge she had given
that the match should only be brought about with the as-
sent of Parliament. But pressure was unscrupulously used
to secure compliant members in the new elections, and
a reluctant assent to the marriage was wrung from the
Houses when they assembled in the spring. Philip was
created king of Naples by his father to give dignity to his
union ; and in the following July Mary met him at Win-
chester and became his wife.
As he entered London with the Queen, men noted curi-
ously the look of the young King whose fortunes were to
be so closely linked with those of England for fifty years
to come. Far younger than his bride, for he was but
twenty-six, there was little of youth in the small and
fragile frame, the sickly face, the sedentary habits, the
Spanish silence and reserve, which estranged Englishmen
from Philip as they had already estranged his subjects in
Italy and his future subjects in the Netherlands. Here
however he sought by an unusual pleasantness of demeanor
as well as by profuse distributions of gifts to win the na-
256 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
tional good will, for it was only by winning it that he could
accomplish the work he came to do. His first aim was to
reconcile England with the Church. The new Spanish
marriage was to repair the harm which the earlier Spanish
marriage had brought about by securing that submission
to Rome on which Mary was resolved. Even before
Philip's landing in England the great obstacle to reunion
had been removed by the consent of Julius the Third un-
der pressure from the Emperor to waive the restoration of
the Church-lands in the event of England's return to
obedience. Other and almost as great obstacles indeed
seemed to remain. The temper of the nation had gone
with Henry in his rejection of the Papal jurisdiction.
Mary's counsellors had been foremost among the men who
advocated the change. Her minister, Bishop Gardiner,
seemed pledged to oppose any submission to Rome. As
secretary of state after Wolsey's fall he had taken a promi-
nent part in the measures which brought about a severance
between England and the Papacy ; as Bishop of Winchester
he had written a famous tract " On True Obedience" in
which the Papal supremacy had been expressly repudiated ;
and to the end of Henry's days he had been looked upon
as the leading advocate of the system of a national and in-
dependent Church. Nor had his attitude changed in Ed-
ward's reign. In the process for his deprivation he avowed
himself ready as ever to maintain as well " the supremacy
and supreme authority of the King's majesty that now is
as the abolishing of the usurped power of the Bishop of
Rome."
But with the later changes of the Protectorate Gardiner
had seen his dream of a national yet orthodox Church
vanish away. He had seen how inevitably severance
from Rome drew with it a connection with the Protestant
Churches and a repudiation of Catholic belief. In the
hours of imprisonment his mind fell back on the old ec-
clesiastical order with which the old spiritual order seemed
inextricably entwined, and he was ready now to submit to
CHA1-. 2.] THE REFORMATION. 1540-1608. 257
the Papacy as the one means of preserving the faith to
which he clung. His attitude was of the highest signifi-
cance, for Gardiner more than any one was a representative
of the dominant English opinion of his day. As the
moderate party which had supported the policy of Henry
the Eighth saw its hopes disappear, it ranged itself, like
the Bishop, on the side of a unity which could now only
be brought about by reconciliation with Rome. The effort
of the Protestants in Wyatt's insurrection to regain their
power and revive the system of the Protectorate served
only to give a fresh impulse to this drift of conservative
opinion. Mary therefore found little opposition to her
plans. The peers were won over by Philip through the
pensions he lavished among them, while pressure was un-
scrupulously used by the Council to secure a compliant
House of Commons. When the Parliament met in No-
vember these measures were found to have boen successful.
The attainder of Reginald Pole, who had been appointed
by the Pope to receive the submission of the realm, was
reversed ; and the Legate entered London by the river with
his cross gleaming from the prow of his barge. He was
solemnly welcomed in full Parliament. The two Houses
decided by a formal vote to return to the obedience of the
Papal See; on the assurance of Pole in the Pope's name
that holders of church-lands should not be disturbed in
their possession the statutes abolishing Papal jurisdiction
in England were repealed ; and Lords and Commons re-
ceived on their knees an absolution which freed the realm
from the guilt incurred by its schism and heresy.
But, even in the hour of her triumph, the temper both
of Parliament and the nation warned the Queen of the
failure of her hope to bind England to a purely Catholic
policy. The growing independence of the two Houses was
seen in the impossibility of procuring from them any
change in the order of succession. The victory of Rome
was incomplete so long as its right of dispensation was
implicitly denied by a recognition of Elizabeth's legiti-
258 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
macy, and Mary longed to avenge her mother by humbling
the child of Anne Boleyn. But in spite of Pole's efforts
and the Queen's support a proposal to oust her sister from
the line of succession could not even be submitted to the
Houses, nor could their assent be won to the postponing
the succession of Elizabeth to that of Philip. The temper
of the nation at large was equally decided. In the first
Parliament of Mary a proposal to renew the laws against
heresy had been thrown out by the Lords, even after the
failure of Wyatt's insurrection. Philip's influence secured
the re-enactment of the statute of Henry the Fifth in the
Parliament which followed his arrival ; but the sullen dis-
content of London compelled its Bishop, Bonner, to with-
draw a series of articles of inquiry, by which he hoped to
purge his diocese of heresy, and even the Council was di-
vided on the question of persecution. In the very interests
of Catholicism the Emperor himself counselled prudence
and delay. Philip gave the same counsel. From the mo-
ment of his arrival the young King exercised a powerful
influence over the Government, and he was gradually
drawing into his hands the whole direction of affairs. But
bigot as he was in matters of faith, Philip's temper was
that of a statesman, not of a fanatic. If he came to Eng-
land resolute to win the country to union with the Church
his conciliatory policy was already seen in the concessions
he wrested from the Papacy in the matter of the Church-
lands, and his aim was rather to hold England together
and to give time for a reaction of opinion than to revive
the old discord by any measures of severity. It was in-
deed only from a united and contented England that he
could hope for effective aid in the struggle of his house
with France, and in spite of his pledges Philip's one aim
in marrying Mary was to secure that aid.
But whether from without or from within warning was
wasted on the fierce bigotry of the Queen. It was, as
Gardiner asserted, not at the counsel of her ministers but
by her own personal will that the laws against heresy had
CHAP. 2.] THE REFORMATION. 1540-1603. 259
been laid before Parliament ; ar.d now that they were en-
acted Mary pressed for their execution. Her resolve was
probably quickened by the action of the Protestant zealots.
The failure of Wyatt's revolt was far from taming the en-
thusiasm of the wilder reformers. The restoration of the
old worship was followd by outbreaks of bold defiance. A
tailor of St. Giles in the Fields shaved a dog with a priestly
tonsure. A cat was found hanging in the Cheap " with
her head shorn, and the likeness of a vestment cast over
her, with her forefeet tied together and a round piece of
paper like a singing cake between them." Yet more gall-
ing were the ballads which were circulated in mockery of
the mass, the pamphlets which came from the exiles over
sea, the seditious broadsides dropped in, the streets, the in-
terludes in which the most sacred acts of the old religion
were flouted with ribald mockery. All this defiance only
served to quicken afresh the purpose of the Queen. But it
was not till the opening of 1555, when she had already
been a year and a half on the throne, that the opposition
of her councillors was at last mastered and the persecution
began. In February the deprived bishop of Gloucester,
Hooper, was burned in his cathedral city, a London vicar,
Lawrence Saunders, at Coventry, and Rogers, a preben-
dary of St. Paul's, at London. Ferrar, the deprived
bishop of St. David's, who was burned at Caermarthen,
was one of eight victims who suffered in March. Four
followed in April and May, six in June, eleven in July,
eighteen in August, eleven in September. In October
Ridley, the deprived bishop of London, was drawn with
Latimer from their prison at Oxford. "Play the man,
Master Ridley !" cried the old preacher of the Reformation
as the flames shot up around him; "we shall this day
light up such a candle by God's grace in England as I
trust shall never be put out."
If the Protestants had not known how to govern indeed
they knew how to die ; and the cause which prosperity had
ruined revived in the dark hour of persecution. The
260 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
memory of their violence and greed faded away as they
passed unwavering to their doom. Such a story as that
of Rowland Taylor, the Vicar of Hadleigh, tells us more
of the work which was now begun, and of the effect it was
likely to produce, than pages of historic dissertation.
Taylor, who as a man of mark had been one of the first vic-
tims chosen for execution, was arrested in London, and con-
demned to suffer in his own parish. His wife, " suspect-
ing that her husband should that night be carried away,"
had waited through the darkness with her children in the
porch of St. Botolph's beside Aldgate. " Now when the
sheriff his company came against St. Botolph's Church
Elizabeth cried, saying, 'O my dear father! Mother!
mother ! here is my father led away !' Then cried his wife,
* Rowland, Rowland, where art thou?' for it was a very
dark morning, that the one could not see the other. Dr.
Taylor answered, 'lam here, dear wife,' and stayed. The
sheriff's men would have led him forth, but the sheriff said,
'Stay a little, masters, I pray you, and let him speak to his
wife.' Then came she to him, and he took his daughter
Mary in his arms, and he and his wife and Elizabeth knelt
down and said the Lord's prayer. At which sight the
sheriff wept apace, and so did divers others of the com-
pany. Aftei they had prayed he rose up and kissed his
wife and shook her by the hand, and said, 'Farewell, my
dear wife, be of good comfort, for I am quiet in my con-
science! God shall still be a father to my children. ' . . .
Then said his wife, 'God be with thee, dear Rowland! I
will, with God's grace, meet thee at Hadleigh.'
" All the way Dr. Taylor was merry and cheerful as one
that accounted himself going to a most pleasant banquet
or bridal. . . . Coming within two miles of Hadleigh he
desired to light off his horse, which done he leaped and set
a frisk or twain as men commonly do for dancing. 'Why,
master Doctor,' quoth the Sheriff, 'how do you now?' He
answered, 'Well, God be praised, Master Sheriff, never
better; for now I know I am almost at home. I lack not
CHAP. 2.] THE REFORMATION. 1540-1603. 261
past two stiles to go over, and I am even at my Father's
house!' . . . The streets of Hadleigh were beset on both
sides with men and women of the town and country who
waited to see him ; whom when they beheld so led to death*
with weeping eyes and lamentable voices, they cried, 'Ah,
good Lord! there goeth our good shepherd from us!'" The
journey was at last over. " 'What place is this, ' he asked,
'and what meaneth it that so much people are gathered to-
gether?' It was answered, 'It is Oldham Common, the
place where you must suffer, and the people are come to
look upon you.' Then said he, 'Thanked be God, I am
even at home!' . . . But when the people saw his rev-
erend and ancient face, with a long white beard, they burst
out with weeping tears and cried, saying, 'God save thee,
good Dr. Taylor ; God strengthen thee and help thee ; the
Holy Ghost comfort thee!' He wished, but was not suf-
fered, to speak. When he had prayed, he went to the
stake and kissed it, and set himself into a pitch -barrel
which they had set for him to stand on, and so stood with
his back upright against the stake, with his hands folded
together and his eyes toward heaven, and so let himself
be burned." One of the executioners " cruelly cast a fagot
at him, which hit upon his head and brake his face that
the blood ran down his visage. Then said Dr. Taylor, 'O
friend, I have harm enough what needed that?' " One
more act of brutality brought his sufferings to an end.
" So stood he still without either crying or moving, with
his hands folded together, till Soyce with a halberd struck
him on the head that the brains fell out, and the dead
corpse fell down into the fire."
The terror of death was powerless against men like these.
Bonner, the Bishop of London, to whom, as bishop of the
diocese in which the Council sat, its victims were gener-
ally delivered for execution, but who, in spite of the nick-
name and hatred which his official prominence in the work
of death earned him, seems to have been naturally a good-
humored and merciful man, asked a youth who was brought
262 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
before him whether he thought he could bear the fire. The
boy at once held his hand without flinching in the flame
of a candle that stood by. Rogers, a fellow- worker with
Tyndale in the translation of the Bible, and one of the
foremost among the Protestant preachers, died bathing his
hands in the flame " as if it had been in cold water. " Even
the commonest lives gleamed for a moment into poetry at
the stake. "Pray for me," a boy, William Brown, who
had been brought home to Brentwood to suffer, asked of
the bystanders. "I will pray no more for thee," one of
them replied, "than I will pray for a dog." " 'Then,' said
William, 'Son of God, shine upon me;' and immediately
the sun in the elements shone out of a dark cloud so full in
his face that he was constrained to look another way;
whereat the people mused because it was so dark a little
time before." Brentwood lay within a district on which
the hand of the Queen fell heavier than elsewhere. The
persecution was mainly confined to the more active and
populous parts of the country, to London, Kent, Sussex,
and the Eastern Counties. Of the two hundred and eighty
whom we know to have suffered during the last three years
and a half of Mary's reign more than forty were burned
in London, seventeen in the neighboring village of Strat-
ford-le-Bow, four in Islington, two in Southwark, and one
each at Barnet, St. Albans, and Ware. Kent, at that time
a home of mining and manufacturing industry, suffered
as heavily as London. Of its sixty martyrs more than forty
were furnished by Canterbury, which was then but a city
of some few thousand inhabitants, and seven by Maidstone.
The remaining eight suffered at Rochester, Ashford, and
Dartford. Of the twenty -five who died in Sussex the little
town of Lewes sent seventeen to the fire. Seventy were
contributed by the Eastern Counties, the seat of the woollen
manufacture. Beyond these districts executions were
rare. Westward of Sussex we find the record of but a
dozen martyrdoms, six of which were at Bristol, and four
at Salisbury. Chester and Wales contributed but four
CHAP. 2.] THE REFORMATION. 15401603. 263
sufferers to the list. In the Midland Counties between
Thames and the Humber only twenty-four suffered martyr-
dom. North of the Humber we find the names of but two
Yorkshiremen burned at Bedale.
But heavily as the martyrdoms fell on the district within
which they were practically confined, and where as we
may conclude Protestantism was more dominant than else
where, the work of terror failed in the very ends for which
it was wrought. The old spirit of insolent defiance, of
outrageous violence, rose into fresh life at the challenge of
persecution. A Protestant hung a string of puddings
round a priest's neck in derision of his beads. The restored
images were grossly insulted. The old scurrilous ballads
against the mass and relics were heard in the streets. Men
were goaded to sheer madness by the bloodshed and violence
about them. One miserable wretch, driven to frenzy,
stabbed the priest of St. Margaret's as he stood with the
chalice in his hand. It was a more formidable sign of the
times that acts of violence such as these no longer stirred
the people at large to their former resentment. The hor-
ror of the persecution swept away all other feelings. Every
death at the stake won hundreds to the cause for which
the victims died. " You have lost the hearts of twenty
thousands that were rank Papists within these twelve
months," a Protestant wrote triumphantly to Bonner.
Bonner indeed, who had never been a very zealous per-
secutor, was sick of his work ; and the energy of the bishops
soon relaxed. But Mary had no thought of hesitation in
the course she had entered on, and though the Imperial
ambassador noted the rapid growth of public discontent
"rattling letters" from the council pressed the lagging
prelates to fresh activity. Yet the persecution had hardly
begun before difficulties were thickening round the Queen.
In her passionate longing for an heir who would carry on
her religious work Mary had believed herself to be with
child ; but in the summer of 1555 all hopes of any child-
birth passed away, and the overthrow of his projects for
J 12 ^ J VOL. 2
264 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
the permanent acquisition of England to the House of
Austria at once disenchanted Philip with his stay in the
realm. But even had all gone well it was impossible for
the King to remain longer in England. He was needed in
the Netherlands to play his part in the memorable act
which was to close the Emperor's political life. Already
King of Naples and Lord of Milan, Philip received by his
father's solemn resignation on the twenty-fifth of October
the Burgundian heritage ; and a month later Charles ceded
to him the crowns of Castile and Aragon with their de-
pendencies in the New World and in the Old. The Em-
pire indeed passed to his uncle Ferdinand of Austria ; but
with this exception the whole of his father's vast domin-
ions lay now in the grasp of Philip. Of the realms which
he ruled, England was but one and far from the greatest
one, and even had he wished to return his continued stay
there became impossible.
He was forced to leave the direction of affairs to Car-
dinal Pole, who on the death of Gardiner in November
1555 took the chief place in Council. At once Papal Le-
gate and chief minister of the Crown, Pole carried on that
union of the civil and ecclesiastical authority which had
been first seen in Wolsey and had formed the groundwork
of the system of Cromwell. But he found himself ham-
pered by difficulties which even the ability of Cromwell
or Wolsey could hardly have met. The embassy which
carried to Rome the submission of the realm found a fresh
Pope, Paul the Fourth, on the throne. His accession
marked the opening of a new era in the history of the Pa-
pacy. Till now the fortunes of Catholicism had been
steadily sinking to a lower ebb. With the Peace of Pas-
sau the Empire seemed lost to it. The new Protestant
faith stood triumphant in the north of Germany, and it was
already advancing to the conquest of the south. The
nobles of Austria were forsaking the older religion. A
Venetian ambassador estimated the German Catholics at
little more than a tenth of the whole population of Ger-
CHAP. 2.] THE REFORMATION. 15401603. 265
many. Eastward the nobles of Hungary and Poland
became Protestants in a mass. In the west France was
yielding more and more to heresy, and England had hardly
been rescued from it by Mary's accession. Only where
the dead hand of Spain lay heavy, in Castile, in Aragon,
or in Italy, was the Reformation thoroughly crushed out ;
and even the dead hand of Spain failed to crush heresy in
the Low Countries. But at the moment when ruin seemed
certain the older faith rallied to a new resistance. While
Protestantism was degraded and weakened by the prostitu-
tion of the Reformation to political ends, by the greed and
worthlessness of the German princes who espoused its
cause, by the factious lawlessness of the nobles in Poland
and the Huguenots in France, while it wasted its strength
in theological controversies and persecutions, in the bitter
and venomous discussions between the Churches which
followed Luther and the Churches which followed Zwingli
or Calvin, the great communion which it assailed felt at
last the uses of adversity. The Catholic world rallied
round the Council of Trent. In the very face of heresy
the Catholic faith was anew settled and denned. The
Papacy was owned afresh as the centre of Catholic union.
The enthusiasm of the Protestants was met by a counter
enthusiasm among their opponents. New religious orders
rose to meet the wants of the day; the Capuchins became
the preachers of Catholicism, the Jesuits became not only
its preachers but its directors, its schoolmasters, its mis-
sionaries, its diplomatists. Their organization, their blind
obedience, their real ability, their fanatical zeal, galvanized
the pulpit, the school, the confessional, into a new life.
It was this movement, this rally of Catholicism, which
now placed its representative on the Papal throne. At the
moment when Luther was first opening his attack on the
Papacy Giovanni Caraffa had laid down his sees of Chieti
and Brindisi to found the order of Theatines in a little
house on the Pincian Hill. His aim was the reformation
of the clergy, but the impulse which he gave told on the
266 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
growing fervor of the Catholic world, and its issue was
seen in the institution of the Capuchins and the Jesuits.
Created Cardinal by Paul the Third, he found himself face
to face with the more liberal theologians who were longing
for a reconciliation between Lutheranism and the Papacy,
such as Contarini and Pole, but his violent orthodoxy foiled
their efforts in the conference at Ratisbon, and prevailed
on the Pope to trust to the sterner methods of the Inqui-
sition. As Caraffa wielded its powers, the Inquisition
spread terror throughout Italy. At due intervals groups
of heretics were burned before the Dominican Church at
Rome ; scholars like Peter Martyr were driven over sea ;
and the publication of an index of prohibited books gave
a death-blow to Italian literature. On the verge of eighty
the stern Inquisitor became Pope as Paul the Fourth. His
conception of the Papal power was as high as that of
Hildebrand or Innocent the Third, and he flung con-
temptuously aside the system of compromise which his
predecessor had been brought to adopt by the caution of the
Emperor. " Charles," he said, was a " favorer of heretics,"
and he laid to his charge the prosperity of Lutheranism in
the Empire. That England should make terms for its re-
turn to obedience galled his pride, while his fanaticism
would hear of no surrender of the property of the Church.
Philip, who had wrested the concession from Julius the
Third, had no influence over a Pope who hoped to drive
the Spaniards from Italy, and Pole was suspected by Paul
of a leaning to heresy.
The English ambassadors found therefore a rough greet-
ing when the terms of the submission were laid before the
Pope. Paul utterly repudiated the agreement which had
been entered into between the Legate and the Parliament ;
he demanded the restoration of every acre of Church prop-
erty ; and he annulled all alienation of it by a general bull.
His attitude undid all that Mary had done. In spite of the
pompous reconciliation in which the Houses had knelt at
the feet of Pole, England was still unreconciled to the
CHAP. 2.] THE REFORMATION. 1540-1603. 267
Papacy, for the country and the Pope were at issue on a
matter where concession was now impossible on either side.
The Queen's own heart went with the Pope's demand.
' But the first step on which she ventured toward a compli-
ance with it showed the difficulties she would have to meet. ,
The grant of the first-fruits to Henry the Eighth had un-
doubtedly rested on his claim of supremacy over the
Church ; and now that this was at an end Mary had grounds
for proposing their restoration to church purposes. But
the proposal was looked on as a step toward the resump-
tion of the monastic lands, and after a hot and prolonged
debate at the close of 1555 the Commons only assented to
it by a small majority. It was plain that no hearing
would be given to the Pope's demand for a restoration of
all Church property; great lords were heard to threaten
that they would keep their lands so long as they had a
sword by their side ; and England was thus left at hopeless
variance with the Papacy.
But difficult as Mary's task became, she clung as tena-
ciously as ever to her work of blood. The martyrdoms went
steadily on, and at the opening of 1556 the sanction of
Rome enabled the Queen to deal with a victim whose death
woke all England to the reality of the persecution. Far as
he stood in character beneath many who had gone before
him to the stake, Cranmer stood high above all in his ec-
clesiastical position. To burn the Primate of the English
Church for heresy was to shut out meaner victims from
all hope of escape. And on the position of Cranmer none
cast a doubt. The other prelates who had suffered had
been placed in their sees after the separation from Rome,
and were hardly regarded as bishops by their opponents.
But, whatever had been his part in the schism, Cranmer
had received his Pallium from the Pope. He was, in the
eyes of all, Archbishop of Canterbury, the successor of St.
Augustine and of St. Thomas in the second see of Western
Christendom. Revenge however and religious zeal alike
urged the Queen to bring Cranmer to the stake. First
268 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
among the many decisions in which the Archbishop had
prostituted justice to Henry's will stood that by which he
had annulled the King's marriage with Catharine and de-
clared Mary a bastard. The last of his political acts had
been to join, whether reluctantly or no, in the shameless
plot to exclude Mary from the throne. His great position
too made Cranmer more than any man a representative of
the religious revolution which had passed over the land.
His figure stood with those of Henry and of Cromwell on
the frontispiece of the English Bible. The decisive change
which had been given to the character of the Reformation
under Edward was due wholly to Cranmer. It was his
voice that men heard and still hear in the accents of the
English Liturgy.
As an Archbishop, Cranmer's judgment rested with no
meaner tribunal than that of Rome, and his execution had
been necessarily delayed till its sentence could be given.
It was not till the opening of 1556 that the Papal see con-
victed him of heresy. As a heretic he was now condemned
to suffer at the stake. But the courage which Cranmer
had shown since the accession of Mary gave way the mo-
ment his final doom was announced. The moral cowardice
which had displayed itself in his miserable compliance
with the lust and despotism of Henry displayed itself again
in six successive recantations by which he hoped to pur-
chase pardon. But pardon was impossible ; and Cranmer's
strangely mingled nature found a power in its very weak-
ness when he was brought into the church of St. Mary at
Oxford on the twenty-first of March to repeat his recanta-
tion on the way to the stake. "Now," ended his address
to the hushed congregation before him, " now I come to
the great thing that troubleth my conscience more than
any other thing that ever I said or did in my life, and that
is the setting abroad of writings contrary to the truth;
which here I now renounce and refuse as things written
by my hand contrary to the truth which I thought in my
heart, and written for fear of death to save my life, i it
CHAP. 2.] THE REFORMATION. 15401603. 269
might be. And, forasmuch as my hand offended in writ-
ing contrary to my heart, my hand therefore shall be the
first punished; for if I come to the fire, it shall be the first
burned." "This was the hand that wrote it," he again
exclaimed at the stake, "therefore it shall suffer first pun-
ishment;" and holding it steadily in the flame "he never
stirred nor cried" till life was gone.
It was with the unerring instinct of a popular movement
that, among a crowd of far more heroic sufferers, the
Protestants fixed, in spite of his recantations, on the mar-
tyrdom of Cranmer as the death-blow to Catholicism in
England. For one man who felt within him the joy of
Rowland Taylor at the prospect of the stake, there were
thousands who felt the shuddering dread of Cranmer.
The triumphant cry of Latimer could reach only hearts as
bold as his own, while the sad pathos of the Primate's
humiliation and repentance struck chords of sympathy and
pity in the hearts of all. It is from that moment that we
may trace the bitter remembrance of the blood shed in the
cause of Rome; which, however partial and unjust it must
seem to an historic observer, still lies graven deep in the
temper of the English people. But the Queen struggled
desperately on. She did what was possible to satisfy the
unyielding Pope. In the face of the Parliament's signifi-
cant reluctance even to restore the first-fruits to the Church,
she refounded all she could of the abbeys which had been
suppressed. One of the greatest of these, the Abbey of
Westminster, was re-established before the close of 1556,
and John Feckenham installed as its abbot. Such a step
could hardly fail to wake the old jealousy of any attempt
to reclaim the Church-lands, and thus to alienate the nobles
and gentry from the Queen. They were soon to be alien-
ated yet more by her breach of the solemn covenant on
which her marriage was based. Even the most reckless
of her counsellors felt the unwisdom of aiding Philip in
his strife with France. The accession of England to the
vast dominion which the Emperor had ceded to his son in
870 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VL
1555 alllrat realized the plans of Ferdinand the Catholic for
making the house of Austria master of Western Christen-
dom. France was its one effective foe; and the overthrow
of France in the war which was going on between the two
powers would leave Philip without a check. How keenly
this was felt at the English council-board was seen in the
resistance which was made to Philip's effort to drag his
new realm into the war. Such an effort was in itself a
crowning breach of faith, for the King's marriage had
been accompanied by a solemn pledge that England should
not be drawn into the strifes of Spain. But Philip knew
little of good faith when his interest was at stake. The
English fleet would give him the mastery of the seas,
English soldiers would turn the scale in Flanders, and at
the opening of 1557 the King again crossed the Channel
and spent three months in pressing his cause on Mary and
her advisers.
" He did more," says a Spanish writer of the time, " than
any one would have believed possible with that proud and
indomitable nation." What he was most aided by was
provocation from France. A body of refugees who had
found shelter there landed in Yorkshire in the spring : and
their leader, Thomas Stafford, a grandson of the late Duke
of Buckingham, called the people to rise against the tyranny
of foreigners and "the satanic designs of an unlawful
Queen." The French King hoped that a rising would
give the Queen work at home ; but the revolt was easily
crushed, and the insult enabled Mary to override her coun-
sellors' reluctance and to declare war against France. The
war opened with triumphs both on land and at sea. The
junction of the English fleet made Philip master of the
Channel. Eight thousand men, "all clad in their green,"
were sent to Flanders under Lord Pembroke, and joined
Philip's forces in August in time to take part in the great
victory of St. Quentin. In October the little army re-
turned home in triumph, but the gleam of success vanished
suddenly away. In the autumn of 1557 the English ships
CHAP. 2.] THE REFORMATION. 15401603. 271
were defeated in an attack on the Orkneys. In January
1558 the Duke of Guise flung himself with characteristic
secrecy and energy upon Calais and compelled it to sur-
render before succor could arrive. "The chief jewel of
the realm," as Mary herself called it, was suddenly reft
away ; and the surrender of Guisnes, which soon followed,
left England without a foot of land on the Continent.
Bitterly as the blow was felt, the Council, though pas-
sionately pressed by the Queen, could find neither money
nor men for any attempt to recover the town. The war
indeed went steadily for Spain and her allies ; and Philip
owed his victory at Gravelines in the summer of 1558
mainly to the opportune arrival of ten English ships of war
which opened fire on the flank of the French army that
lay open to the sea. But England could not be brought to
take further part in the contest. The levies which were
being raised mutinied and dispersed. The forced loan to
which Mary was driven to resort came in slowly. The
treasury was drained not only by the opening of the war
with France but by the opening of a fresh strife in Ireland.
To the struggle of religion which had begun there under
the Protectorate the accession of Mary had put an end.
The shadowy form of the earlier Irish Protestantism melted
quietly away. There were in fact no Protestants in Ireland
save the new bishops ; and when Bale had fled over sea
from his diocese of Ossory and his fellow-prelates had been
deprived the Irish Church resumed its old appearance. No
attempt indeed was made to restore the monasteries ; and
Mary exercised her supremacy, deposed or appointed
bishops, and repudiated Papal interference with her ec-
clesiastical acts as vigorously as her father. But the Mass
was restored, the old modes of religious worship were
again held in honor, and religious dissension between the
Government and its Irish subjects came for the time to an
end. With the close however of one danger came the rise
of another. England was growing tired of the policy of
conciliation which had been steadily pursued by Henry
272 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
the Eighth and his successor. As yet it had been'rewarded
with precisely the sort of success which Wolsey and Crom-
well anticipated. The chiefs had come quietly in to the
plan, and their septs had followed them in submission to
the new order. " The winning of the Earl of Desmond
was the winning of the rest of Munster with small charges.
The making O'Brien an Earl made all that country obedi-
ent." The Macwilliam became Lord Clanrickard, and the
Fitzpatricks Barons of Upper Ossory. A visit of the great
northern chief who had accepted the title of Earl of Tyrone
to the English Court was regarded as a marked step in the
process of civilization.
In the south, where the system of English law was
slowly spreading, the chieftains sat on the bench side by
side with the English justices of the peace ; and something
had been done to check the feuds and disorder of the wild
tribes between Limerick and Tipperary. " Men may pass
quietly throughout these countries without danger of rob-
bery or other displeasure." In the Clanrickard county,
once wasted with war, "ploughing increaseth daily." In
Tyrone and the north however the old disorder reigned
without a check ; and everywhere the process of improve-
ment tried the temper of the English Deputies by the slow-
ness of its advance. The only hope of any real progress
lay in patience ; and there were signs that the Government
at Dublin found it hard to wait. The " rough handling"
of the chiefs by Sir Edward Bellingham, a Lord Deputy
under the Protector Somerset, roused a spirit of revolt that
only subsided when the poverty of the Exchequer forced
him to withdraw the garrisons he had planted in the heart
of the country. His successor in Mary's reign, Lord Sus-
sex, made raid after raid to no purpose on the obstinate
tribes of the north, burning in one the Cathedral of Armagh
and three other churches. A far more serious breach in
the system of conciliation was made when the project of
English colonization which Henry had steadily rejected
was adopted by the same Lord Deputy, and when the
CHAP. 2.] THE REFORMATION. 15401603. 273
country of the O'Connors was assigned to English settlers
and made shire-land under the names of King's and
Queen's Counties in honor of Philip and Mary. A savage
warfare began at once between the planters and the dis-
possessed septs, a warfare which only ended in the follow-
ing reign in the extermination of the Irishmen, and com-
missioners were appointed to survey waste lands with the
aim of carrying the work of colonization into other dis-
tricts. The pressure of the war against France put an end
to these wider projects, but the strife in Meath went sav-
agely on and proved a sore drain to the Exchequer.
Nor was Mary without difficulties in the North. Re-
ligiously as well as politically her reign told in a marked
way on the fortunes of Scotland. If the Queen's policy
failed to crush Protestantism in England, it gave a new
impulse to it in the northern realm. In Scotland the wealth
and worldliness of the great churchmen had long ago spread
a taste for heresy among the people ; and Lollardry sur-
vived as a power north of the border long after it had al-
most died out to the south of it. The impulse of the Luth-
eran movement was seen in the diffusion of the new opin-
ions by a few scholars, such as Wishart and Hamilton ;
but though Henry the Eighth pressed his nephew James
the Fifth to follow him in the work he was doing in Eng-
land, it was plain that the Scotch reformers could look for
little favor from the Crown. The policy of the Scottish
kings regarded the Church as their ally against the turbu-
lent nobles, and James steadily held its enemies at bay.
The Regent, Mary of Guise, clung to the same policy.
But stoutly as the whole nation withstood the English
efforts to acquire a political supremacy, the religious revo-
lution in England told more and more on the Scotch nobles.
No nobility was so poor as that of Scotland, and nowhere
in Europe was the contrast between their poverty and the
riches of the Church so great. Each step of the vast
spoliation that went on south of the border, the confisca-
tion of the lesser abbeys, the suppression of the greater,
274 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
the secularization of chantries and hospitals, woke a fresh
greed in the baronage of the north. The new opinions
soon found disciples among them. It was a gronp of
Protestant nobles who surprised the Castle of St. Andrews
and murdered Cardinal Beaton. The " Gospellers" from the
Lowlands already formed a marked body in the army that
fought at Pinkie Cleugh. As yet however the growth of
the new opinions had been slow, and there had been till now
little public show of resistance to the religion of the State.
With the accession of Mary however all was changed.
Under Henry and Edward the Catholicism of Scotland had
profited by the national opposition to a Protestant England ;
but now that Catholicism was again triumphant in Eng-
land Protestantism became far less odious to the Scotch
statesmen. A still greater change was wrought by the
marriage with Philip. Such a match, securing as it did
to England the aid of Spain in any future aggression upon
Scotland, became a danger to the northern realm which not
only drew her closer to France but forced her to give shelter
and support to the sectaries who promised to prove a check
upon Mary. Many of the exiles therefore who left England
for the sake of religion found a refuge in Scotland. Among
these was John Knox. Knox had been one of the fol-
lowers of Wishart; he had acted as pastor to the Protest-
ants who after Beaton's murder held the Castle of St. An-
drews, and had been captured with them by a French force
in the summer of 1547. The Frenchmen sent the heretics
to the galleys ; and it was as a galley slave in one of their
vessels that Knox next saw his native shores. As the
vessel lay tossing in the bay of St. Andrews, a comrade
bade him look to the land, and asked him if he knew it.
" I know it well," was the answer; " for I see the steeple of
that place where God first in public opened my mouth to
His glory; and I am fully persuaded, how weak that ever
I now appear, I shall not depart this life till mv tongue
glorify His holy name in the same place !" It was long
however before he could return. Released at the opening
CHAP. 2.] THE REFORMATION. 15401603. 275
of 1549, Knox found shelter in England, where he became
one of the most stirring among the preachers of the day,
and was offered a bishopric by Northumberland. Mary's
accession drove him again to France. But the new policy
of the Regent now opened Scotland to the English refugees,
and it was as one of these that Knox returned in 1555 to
his own country. Although he soon withdrew to take
charge of the English congregation at Frankfort and
Geneva his energy had already given a decisive impulse to
the new movement. In a gathering at the house of Lord
Erskine he persuaded the assembly to " refuse all society
with idolatry, and bind themselves to the uttermost of their
power to maintain the true preaching of the Evangile, as
God should offer to their preachers an opportunity." The
confederacy woke anew the jealousy of the government,
and persecution revived. But some of the greatest nobles
now joined the reforming cause. The Earl of Morton, the
head of the house of Douglas, the Earl of Argyle, the
greatest chieftain of the west, and above all a bastard son
of the late King, Lord James Stuart, who bore as yet the
title of prior of St. Andrews, but who was to be better
known afterwards as the Earl of Murray, placed them-
selves at the head of the movement. The remonstrances
of Knox from his exile at Geneva stirred them to interfere
in behalf of the persecuted Protestants ; and at the close of
1557 these nobles united with the rest of the Protestant
leaders in an engagement which became memorable as the
first among those Covenants which were to give shape and
color to Scotch religion.
" We," ran this solemn bond, "perceiving how Satan in
his members, the Antichrists of our time, cruelly doth
rage, seeking to overthrow and to destroy the Evangel of
Christ, and His Congregation, ought according to out
bounden duty to strive in our Master's cause even unto the
death, being certain of our victory in Him. The which
our duty being well considered, we do promise before the
Majesty of God and His Congregation that we, by His
276 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VL
grace, shall with all diligence continually apply our whole
power, substance, and our very lives to maintain, set for-
ward, and establish the most blessed Word of God and His
Congregation, and shall labor at our possibility to have
faithful ministers, purely and truly to minister Christ's
Evangel and sacraments to His people. We shall main-
tain them, nourish them, and defend them, the whole Con-
gregation of Christ and every member thereof, at our whole
power and wearing of our lives, against Satan and all
wicked power that does intend tyranny or trouble against
the foresaid Congregation. Unto the which Holy Word
and Congregation we do join us, and also do forsake and
renounce the congregation of Satan with all the supersti-
tious abomination and idolatry thereof : and moreover shall
declare ourselves manifestly enemies thereto by this our
faithful promise before God, testified to His Congregation
by our subscription at these presents."
The Covenant of the Scotch nobles marked a new epoch
in the strife of religions. Till now the reformers had op-
posed the doctrine of nationality to the doctrine of Cathol-
icism. In the teeth of the pretensions which the Church
advanced to a uniformity of religion in every land, what-
ever might be its differences of race or government, the
first Protestants had advanced the principle that each prince
or people had alone the right to determine its form of faith
and worship. "Cujus regio" ran the famous phrase
which embodied their theory, "ejus religio." It was the
acknowledgment of this principle that the Lutheran
princes obtained at the Diet of Spires ; it was on this prin-
ciple that Henry based his Act of Supremacy. Its strength
lay in the correspondence of such a doctrine with the
political circumstances of the time. It was the growing
feeling of nationality which combined with the growing
development of monarchical power to establish the theory
that the political and religious life of each nation should
be one and that the religion of the people should follow the
faith of the prince. Had Protestantism, as seemed at one
CHAP. 2.] THE REFORMATION. 15401603. 277
time possible, secured the adhesion of all the European
princes, such a theory might well have led everywhere as
it led in England to the establishment of the worst of
tyrannies, a tyranny that claims to lord alike over both
body and soul. The world was saved from this danger by
the tenacity with which the old religion still held its power.
In half the countries of Europe the disciples of the new
opinions had soon to choose between submission to their
conscience and submission to their prince; and a move-
ment which began in contending for the religious suprem-
acy of Kings ended in those wars of religion which ar-
rayed nation after nation against their sovereigns. In
this religious revolution Scotland led the way. Her Prot-
estantism was the first to draw the sword against earthly
rulers. The solemn " Covenant" which bound together her
" Congregation" in the face of the regency, which pledged
its members to withdraw from all submission to the re'
ligion of the State and to maintain in the face of the State
their liberty of conscience, opened that vast series of
struggles which ended in Germany with the Peace of
Westphalia and in England with the Toleration Act of
William the Third.
The " Covenant" of the lords sounded a bold defiance to
the Catholic reaction across the border. While Mary re-
placed the Prayer-book by the Mass, the Scotch lords re-
solved that whenever their power extended the Common
Prayer should be read in all churches. While hundreds
were going to the stake in England the Scotch nobles
boldly met the burning of their preachers by a threat of
war. "They trouble our preachers," ran their bold re-
monstrance against the bishops in the Queen-mother's
presence; "they would murder them and us! shall we
suffer this any longer? No, madam, it shall not be !" and
therewith every man put on his steel bonnet. The Regent
was helpless for the moment and could find refuge only in
fair words, words so fair that for a while the sternest of
the reformers believed her to be drifting to their faith.
278 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
She was in truth fettered by the need of avoiding civil
strife at a time when the war of England against France
made a Scotch war against England inevitable. The
nobles refused indeed to cross the border, but the threat of
a Scotch invasion was one of the dangers against which
Mary Tudor now found herself forced to provide. Nor
was the uprise of Protestantism in Scotland the only result
of her policy in giving fire and strength to the new re-
ligion. Each step in the persecution had been marked
by a fresh flight of preachers, merchants, and gentry across
the seas. "Some fled into France, some into Flanders,
and some into the high countries of the Empire." As
early as 1554 we find groups of such refugees at Frankfort,
Emden, Zurich, and Strassburg. Calvin welcomed some of
them at Geneva; the "lords of Berne" suffered a group to
settle at Aarau; a hundred gathered round the Duchess of
Suffolk at Wesel. Among the exiles we find many who
were to be bishops and statesmen in the coming reign.
Sir Francis Knollys was at Frankfort, Sir Francis Wal-
singham travelled in France ; among the divines were the
later archbishops Grindal and Sandys, and the later bishops
Home, Parkhurst, Aylmer, Jewel, and Cox. Mingled
with these were men who had already played their part
in Edward's reign, such as Poinet, the deprived Bishop of
Winchester, Bale, the deprived Bishop of Ossory, and the
preachers Lever and Knox.
Gardiner had threatened that the fugitives should gnaw
their fingers from hunger, but ample supplies reached them
from London merchants and other partisans in England,
and they seem to have lived in fair comfort while their
brethren at home were "going to the fire." Their chief
troubles sprang from strife among themselves. The hotter
spirits among the English Protestants had seen with dis-
content the retention of much that they looked on as super-
stitious and Popish in even the last liturgy of Edward's
reign. That ministers should still wear white surplices,
that litanies should be sung, that the congregation should
CHAP. 2.] THE REFORMATION. 1540-1603. 279
respond to the priest, that babes should be signed in baptism
with the sign of the cross, that rings should be given in
marriage, filled them with horror. Hooper, the leader of
this party, refused when made bishop to don his rochet ; and
had only been driven by imprisonment to vest himself in
"the rags of Popery." Trivial indeed as such questions
seemed in themselves, an issue lay behind them which was
enough to make men face worse evils than a prison. The
royal supremacy, the headship of the Church, which Henry
the Eighth claimed for himself and his successors, was, as
we have seen, simply an application of the principle which
the states of North Germany had found so effective in
meeting the pretensions of the Emperor or the Pope. The
same sentiment of national life took a new form in the
preservation of whatever the change of religious thought
left it possible to preserve in the national tradition of faith
and worship. In the Lutheran churches, though the Mass
was gone, reredos and crucifix remained untouched. In
England the whole ecclesiastical machinery was jealously
preserved. Its Church was still governed by bishops who
traced their succession to the Apostles. The words of its
new Prayer-book adhered as closely as they might to the
words of Missal and Breviary. What made such an ar-
rangement possible was the weakness of the purely relig-
ious impulse in the earlier stages of the Reformation. In
Germany indeed or in England, the pressure for theological
change was small ; the religious impulse told on but a small
part, and that not an influential part of the population ; it
did in fact little more than quicken and bring into action
the older and widely-felt passion for ecclesiastical inde-
pendence.
But the establishment of this independence at once gave
fresh force to the religious movement. From denouncing
the Pope as a usurper of national rights men passed easily
to denounce the Papal system as in itself anti -Christian.
In setting aside the voice of the Papacy as a ground of
faith the new churches had been forced to find a ground of
380 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
faith in the Bible. But the reading and discussion of the
Bible opened up a thousand questions of belief and ritual,
and the hatred of Rome drew men more and more to find
answers to such questions which were antagonistic to the
creed and usages of a past that was identified in their eyes
with the Papacy. Such questions could hardly fail to find
an echo in the people at large. To the bulk of men ec-
clesiastical institutions are things dim and remote; and
the establishment of ecclesiastical independence, though it
gratified the national pride, could have raised little personal
enthusiasm. But the direct and personal interest of every
man seemed to lie in the right holding of religious truth,
and thus the theological aspect of the Reformation tended
more and more to supersede its political one. All that is
generous and chivalrous in human feeling told in the same
direction. To statesmen like Gardiner or Paget the ac-
ceptance of one form of faith or worship after another as
one sovereign after another occupied the throne seemed, no
doubt, a logical and inevitable result of their acceptance
of the royal supremacy. But to the people at large there
must have been something false and ignoble in the sight
of a statesman or a priest who had cast off the Mass undei
Edward to embrace it again under Mary, and who was
ready again to cast it off at the will of Mary's successor.
If worship and belief were indeed spiritual things, if they
had any semblance of connection with divine realities, men
must have felt that it was impossible to put them on and
off at a king's caprice. It was this, even more than the
natural pity which they raised, that gave their weight to
the Protestant martyrdoms under Mary. They stood out
in emphatic protest against the doctrine of local religion,
of a belief dictated by the will of kings. From the Primate
of the Church to the "blind girl" who perished at Col-
chester, three hundred were found in England who chose
rather to go to the fire than to take up again at the Queen's
will what their individual conscience had renounced as a
lie against God.
CHAP. 2.] THE REFORMATION. 15401603. 281
But from the actual assertion of such a right of the in-
dividual conscience to find and hold what was true, even
those who witnessed for it by their death would have
shrunk. Driven by sheer force of fact from the theory of
a national and royal faith, men still shuddered to stand
alone. The old doctrine of a Catholic Christianity flung
over them its spell. Rome indeed they looked on as anti-
Christ, but the doctrine which Rome had held so long and
so firmly, the doctrine that truth should be coextensive
with the world and not limited by national boundaries,
that the Church was one in all countries and among all
peoples, that there was a Christendom which embraced all
kingdoms and a Christian law that ruled peoples and kings,
became more and more the doctrine of Rome's bitterest
opponents. It was this doctrine which found its embodi-
ment in John Calvin, a young French scholar, driven in
early manhood from his own country by the persecution
of Francis the First. Calvin established himself at Basle,
and produced there in 1535 at the age of twenty-six a book
which was to form the theology of the Huguenot churches,
his "Institutes of the Christian Religion." What was
really original in this work was Calvin's doctrine of the
organization of the Church and of its relation to the State.
The base of the Christian republic was with him the
Christian man, elected and called of God, preserved by
his grace from the power of sin, predestinate to eternal life.
Every such Christian man is in himself a priest, and every
group of such men is a Church, self-governing, independ-
ent of all save God, supreme in its authority over all mat-
ters ecclesiastical and spiritual. The constitution of such
a church, where each member as a Christian was equal
before God, necessarily took a democratic form. In Cal-
vin's theory of Church government it is the Church which
itself elects its lay elders and lay deacons for purposes of
administration; it is with the approval and consent of the
Church that elders and deacons with the existing body of
pastors elect new ministers. It is through these officers
282 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI
that the Church exercises its power of the keys, the power
of diffusing the truth and the power of correcting error.
To the minister belongs the preaching of the word and the
direction of all religious instruction ; to the body of min-
isters belongs the interpretation of scripture and the de-
cision of doctrine. On the other hand the administration
of discipline, the supervision of the moral conduct of each
professing Christian, the admonition of the erring, the ex-
communication and exclusion from the body of the Church
of the unbelieving and the utterly unworthy, belongs to the
Consistory, the joint assembly of ministers and elders. To
this discipline princes as well as common men are alike
subject; princes as well as common men must take their
doctrine from the ministers of the Church.
The claims of the older faith to spiritual and ecclesiastical
supremacy over the powers of earth reappeared in this
theory. Calvin like the Papacy ignored all national inde-
pendence, all pretensions of peoples as such to create their
own system of church doctrine or church government.
Doctrine and government he held to be already laid down
in the words of the Bible, and all questions that rose out of
those words came under the decision of the ecclesiastical
body of ministers. Wherever a reformed religion ap-
peared, there was provided for it a simple but orderly or-
ganization which in its range and effectiveness rivalled
that of the older Catholicism. On the other hand this or-
ganization rested on a wholly new basis; spiritual and
ecclesiastical power came from below, not from above ; the
true sovereign in this Christian state was not Pope or
Bishop but the Christian man. Despotic as the authority
of pastor and elders seemed, pastor and elders were alike
the creation of the whole congregation, and their judg-
ment could in the last resort be adopted or set aside by it.
Such a system stood out in bold defiance against the ten-
dencies of the day. On its religious side it came into con-
flict with that principle of nationality, of ecclesiastical as
well as civil subjection to the prince, on which the re-
CHAP. 2.] THE REFORMATION. 15401603. 283
formed Churches and above all the Church of England had
till now been built up. As a vast and consecrated democ-
racy it stood in contrast with the whole social and political
framework of the European nations. Grave as we may
count the faults of Calvinism, alien as its temper may in
many ways be from the temper of the modern world, it is
in Calvinism that the modern world strikes its roots, for
it was Calvinism that first revealed the worth and dignity
of Man. Called of God, and heir of heaven, the trader at
his counter and the digger in his field suddenly rose into
equality with the noble and the king.
It was this system that Calvin by a singular fortune was
able to put into actual working in the little city of Geneva,
where the party of the Reformation had become master and
called him in 1536 to be their spiritual head. Driven out
but again recalled, his influence made Geneva from 1541
the centre of the Protestant world. The refugees who
crowded to the little town from persecution in France, in
the Netherlands, in England, found there an exact and
formal doctrine, a rigid discipline of manners and faith, a
system of church government, a form of church worship,
stripped, as they held, of the last remnant of the supersti-
tions of the past. Calvin himself with his austere and
frugal life, his enormous industry, his power of govern-
ment, his quick decision, his undoubting self-confidence,
his unswerving will, remained for three and twenty years
till his death in 1564 supreme over Protestant opinion. His
influence told heavily on England. From the hour of
Cromwell's fall the sympathies of the English reformers
had drawn them not to the Lutheran Churches of North
Germany but to the more progressive Churches of the
Rhineland and the Netherlands; and, on the critical ques-
tion of the Lord's Supper which mainly divided the two
great branches of the Reformation, Cranmer and his parti-
sans became more definitely anti-sacramentarian as the
years went by. At Edward's death the exiles showed their
tendencies by seeking refuge not with the Lutheran
284 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
Churches of North Germany but with the Calvinistic
Churches of Switzerland or the Rhine ; and contact with
such leaders as Bullinger at Zurich or Calvin at Geneva
could hardly fail to give fresh vigor to the party which
longed for a closer union with the foreign churches and
a more open breach with the past.
The results of this contact first showed themselves at
Frankfort. At the instigation of Wittingham, who in
Elizabeth's days became Dean of Durham, a body of Eng-
lish exiles that had found shelter there resolved to reform
both worship and discipline. The obnoxious usages were
expunged from the Prayer-book, omissions were made in
the communion service, a minister and deacons chosen,
and rules drawn up for church government after the Gene-
van model. Free at last " from all dregs of superstitious
ceremonies" the Frankfort refugees thanked God "that
had given them such a church in a strange land wherein
they might hear God's holy word preached, the sacraments
rightly ministered, and discipline used, which in their own
country could never be obtained." But their invitation to
the other English exiles to join them in the enjoyment of
these blessings met with a steady repulse. Lever and
the exiles at Zurich refused to come unless they might " al-
together serve and praise God as freely and uprightly as
the order last taken in the Church of England permitteth
and presenteth, for we are fully determined to admit and
use no other." The main body of the exiles who were
then gathered at Strassburg echoed the refusal. Knox,
however, who had been chosen minister by the Frankfort
congregation, moved rapidly forward, rejecting the com-
munion service altogether as superstitious, and drawing up
a new " order" of worship after the Genevan model. But
in the spring of 1555 these efforts were foiled by the arrival
of fresh exiles from England of a more conservative turn :
the reformers were outvoted ; Knox was driven from the
town by the magistrates " in fear of the Emperor" whom he
had outraged in an " Admonition" to the English people,
CHAP. 3.] THE REFORMATION. 15401603. 285
which he had lately issued ; and the English service was
restored. Wittingham and his adherents, still resolute,
as Bale wrote, " to erect a Church of the Purity" (we may
perhaps trace in the sneer the origin of their later name of
Puritans), found a fresh refuge at Basle and Geneva, where
the leaders of the party occupied themselves in a metrical
translation of the Psalms which left its traces on English
psalmody and in the production of what was afterward
known as the Geneva Bible.
Petty as this strife at Frankfort may seem, it marks the
first open appearance of English Puritanism, and the open-
ing of a struggle which widened through the reign of
Elizabeth till under the Stuarts it broke England in pieces.
But busy as they were in strife among themselves, the
exiles were still more busy in fanning the discontent at
home. Books, pamphlets, broadsides, were written and
sent for distribution to England. The violence of their
language was incredible. No sooner had Bonner issued
his injunctions than Bale denounced him in a fierce reply
as "a beastly belly-god and damnable dunghill." With a
spirit worthy of the " bloody bitesheeps" whom he attacked,
the ex-Bishop of Ossory regretted that when Henry plucked
down Becket's shrine he had not burned the idolatrous
priests upon it. It probably mattered little to Bale that at
the moment when he wrote not a single Protestant had as
yet been sent to the stake ; but language such as this was
hardly likely to stir Mary to a spirit of moderation. The
Spanish marriage gave the refugees a fairer opportunity
of attack, and the Government was forced to make inquiries
of the wardens of city guilds " whether they had seen or
heard of any of these books which had come from beyond
seas." The violence of the exiles was doubled by the sup-
pression of Wyatt's revolt. Poinet, the late Bishop of
Winchester, who had taken part in it, fled over sea to write
a " Sharp Tractate of political power" in which he discussed
the question " whether it be lawful to depose an evil gov-
ernor and kill a tyrant."
286 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
But with the actual outbreak of persecution and the death
of Cranmer all restraint was thrown aside. In his " First
Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of
Women" Knox denounced Mary as a Jezebel, a traitress,
and a bastard. He declared the rule of women to be
against the law of Nature and of God. The duty, whether
of the estates or people of the realm, was " first to remove
from honor and authority that monster in nature ; second-
arily, if any presume to defend that impiety, they ought
not to fear first to pronounce, then after to execute against
them the sentence of death." To keep the oath of alle-
giance was "nothing but plain rebellion against God."
"The day of vengeance," burst out the writer, "which
shall apprehend that horrible monster, Jezebel of England,
and such as maintain her monstrous cruelty is already ap-
pointed in the counsel of the Eternal ; and I verily believe
that it is so nigh that she shall not reign so long in tyranny
as hitherto she hath done, when God shall declare himself
her enemy." Another exile, Goodman, inquired "how
superior powers ought to be obeyed of their subjects ; and
wherein they may lawfully by God's word be disobeyed
and resisted. " His book was a direct summons to rebellion.
"By giving authority to an idolatrous woman," Goodman
wrote to his English fellow-subjects, " ye have banished
Christ and his Gospel. Then in taking the same authority
from her you shall restore Christ and his word, and shall do
well. In obeying her you have disobeyed God ; then in
disobeying her you shall please God." " Though it should
appear at the first sight," he urged, "a great disorder that
the people should take unto them the punishment of trans-
gressions, yet when the magistrates and other officers cease
to do their duties they are as it were without officers, yea,
worse than if they had none at all, and then God giveth
the sword into the people's hand." And what the people
were to do with the sword Poinet had already put very
clearly. It was the "ungodly serpent Mary" who was
" the chief instrument of all this present misery in Eng-
CHAP. 2.] THE REFORMATION. 15401603. 287
land." "Now both by God's laws and man's," concluded
the bishop, " she ought to be punished with death, as an
open idolatress in the sight of God, and a cruel murderer of
His saints before men, and merciless traitress to her own
native country."
Behind the wild rhetoric of words like these lay the new
sense of a prophetic power, the sense of a divine commis-
sion given to the preachers of the Word to rebuke nobles
and kings. At the moment when the policy of Cromwell
crushed the Church as a political power and freed the grow-
ing Monarchy from the constitutional check which its in-
dependence furnished, a new check offered itself in the
very enthusiasm which sprang out of the wreck of the
great religious body. Men stirred with a new sense of
righteousness and of a divine government of the world,
men too whose natural boldness was quickened and fired
by daily contact with the older seers who rebuked David
or Jezebel, could not hold their peace in the presence of
wrong. While nobles and statesmen were cowering in
silence before the dreaded power of the Kingship the
preachers spoke bluntly out. Not only Latimer, but
Knox, Grindal, and Lever had uttered fiery remonstrances
against the plunderers of Edward's reign. Bradford had
threatened them with the divine judgment which at last
overtook them. "'The judgment of the Lord! The
judgment of the Lord !' cried he, with a lamentable voice
and weeping tears." Wise or unwise, the pamphlets of
the exiles only carried on this theory to its full develop-
ment. The great conception of the mediaeval Church, that
of the responsibility of Kings to a spiritual power, was
revived at an hour when Kingship was trampling all re-
sponsibility to God or man beneath its feet. Such a re-
vival was to have large and beneficial issues in our later
history. Gathering strength under Elizabeth, it created
at the close of her reign that moral force of public opinion
which under the name of Puritanism brought the acts and
policy of our kings to the tests of reason and the Gospel.
13 VOL. 2
288 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VL
However ill directed that force might be, however errone-
ously such tests were often applied, it is to this new force
that we owe the restoration of liberty and the establish-
ment of religious freedom. As the voice of the first Chris-
tian preachers had broken the despotism of the Roman
ISmpire, so thp voice of the preachers of Puritanism broke
the despotism of the English Monarchy.
But great as their issues were to be, for the moment
these protests only quickened the persecution at home.
We can hardly wonder that the arrival of Goodman's book
in England in the summer of 1558 was followed by stern
measures to prevent the circulation of such incentives to
revolt. " Whereas divers books, " ran a royal proclamation,
" filled with heresy, sedition, and treason, have of late and
be daily brought into the realm out of foreign countries
and places beyond seas, and some also covertly printed
within this realm and cast abroad in sundry parts thereof,
whereby not only God is dishonored but also encourage-
ment is given to disobey lawful princes and governors,"
any person possessing such books " shall be reported and
taken for a rebel, and shall without delay be executed for
that offence according to the order of martial law." But
what really robbed these pamphlets of all force for harm
was the prudence and foresight of the people itself. Never
indeed did the nation show its patient good sense more
clearly than in the later years of Mary's reign. While
fires blazed in Smithfield, and news of defeat came from
over sea, while the hot voices of Protestant zealots hounded
men on to assassination and revolt, the bulk of English-
men looked quietly from the dying Queen . to the girl who
in a little while must wear her crown. What nerved men
to endure the shame and bloodshed about them was the
certainty of the speedy succession of the daughter of Anne
Boleyn. Elizabeth was now in her twenty-fifth yeai.
Personally she had much of her mother's charm with more
than her mother's beauty. Her figure was commanding,
her face long but queenly and intelligent, her eyes quick
CHAP. 3.] THE REFORMATION. 1540-1603. 289
and fine. She had grown up amid the liberal culture of
Henry's court a bold horsewoman, a good shot, a graceful
dancer a skilled musician, and an accomplished scholar.
Even among the highly-trained women who caught the
impulse of the New Learning she stood in the extent of
her acquirements without a peer. Ascham, who succeeded
Grindal and Cheke in the direction of her studies, tells us
how keen and resolute was Elizabeth's love of learning,
even in her girlhood. At sixteen she already showed "a
man's power of application" to her books. She had read
almost the whole of Cicero and a great part of Livy. Sha
began the day with the study of the New Testament in
Greek, and followed this up by reading selected orations
of Isocrates and the tragedies of Sophocles. She could
speak Latin with fluency and Greek moderately well.
Her love of classical culture lasted through her life.
Amid the press and cares of her later reign we find Ascham
recording how " after dinner I went up to read with the
Queen's majesty that noble oration of Demosthenes against
^schines." At a later time her Latin served her to re-
buke the insolence of a Polish ambassador, and she could
" rub up her rusty Greek" at need to bandy pedantry with
a Vice-Chancellor. But Elizabeth was far as yet from
being a mere pedant. She could already speak French
and Italian as fluently as her mother-tongue. In later
days we find her familiar with Ariosto and Tasso. The
purity of her literary taste, the love for a chaste and sim-
ple style, which Ascham noted with praise in her girlhood,
had not yet perished under the influence of euphuism.
But even amidst the affectation and love of anagrams and
puerilities which sullied her later years Elizabeth remained
a lover of letters and of all that was greatest and purest in
letters. She listened with delight to the " Faery Queen"
and found a smile for " Master Spenser" when he appeared
in her presence.
From the bodily and mental energy of her girlhood, the
close of Edward's reign drew Elizabeth at nineteen to face
290 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
the sterner problems of religion and politics. In the daring
attempt of Northumberland to place Jane Grey on the
throne Elizabeth's rights were equally set aside with
those of Mary ; and the first public act of the girl was to
call the gentry to her standard and to join her sister with
five hundred followers in her train. But the momentary
union was soon dissolved. The daughter of Catharine
could look with little but hate on the daughter of Anne
Boleyn. Elizabeth's tendency to the " new religion" jarred
with the Queen's bigotry ; and the warnings of the impe-
rial ambassador were hardly needful to spur Mary to
watch jealously a possible pretender to her throne. The
girl bent to the Queen's will in hearing mass, but her
manner showed that the compromise was merely a matter
of obedience, and fed the hopes of the Protestant zealots,
who saw in the Spanish marriage a chance of driving
Mary from the throne. The resolve which the Queen
showed to cancel her sister's right of succession only
quickened the project for setting Elizabeth in her place ;
and it was to make Elizabeth their sovereign that Suffolk
rose in Leicestershire and Wyatt and his Kentishmen
marched against London Bridge. The failure of the rising
seemed to insure her doom. The Emperor pressed for her
death as a security for Philip on his arrival ; and the de-
tection of a correspondence with the French King served
as a pretext for her committal to the Tower. The fierce
Tudor temper broke through Elizabeth's self-control as she
landed at Traitor's Gate. " Are all these harnessed men
there for me?" she cried as she saw the guard, "it needed
not for me, being but a weak woman !" and passionately
calling on the soldiers to " bear witness that I come as no
traitor !" she flung herself down on a stone in the rain and
refused to enter her prison. "Better sitting here than in
a worse place," she cried; "I know not whither you will
bring me." But Elizabeth's danger was less than it
seemed. Wyatt denied to the last her complicity in the
fevoit, *nd in spite of Gardiner's will to " go roundly to
CHAP. 2.] THE REFORMATION. 15401603. 291
work" with her the Lords of the Council forced Mary to
set her free. The Queen's terrors however revived with
her hopes of a child in the summer of 1555. To Mary her
sister seemed the one danger which threatened the succes-
sion of her coming babe and the vast issues which hung
upon it, and Elizabeth was summoned to her sister's side
and kept a close prisoner at Hampton Court. Philip
joined in this precaution, for "holding her in his power
he could depart safely and without peril" in the event of
the Queen's death in childbirth ; and other plans were per-
haps already stirring his breast. Should Mary die, a fresh
match might renew his hold on England; "he might
hope," writes the Venetian ambassador, "with the help of
many of the nobility, won over by his presents and favors,
to marry her (Elizabeth) again, and thus succeed anew to
the crown."
But whatever may have been Philip's designs, the time
had not as yet come for their realization ; the final disap-
pointment of the Queen's hopes of childbirth set Elizabeth
free, and in July she returned to her house at Ashridge.
From this moment her position was utterly changed.
With the disappearance of all chance of offspring from
the Queen and the certainty of Mary's coming death her
sister's danger passed away. Elizabeth alone stood be-
tween England and the succession of Mary Stuart; and,
whatever might be the wishes of the Queen, the policy of
the House of Austria forced it to support even the daughter
of Anne Boleyn against a claimant who would bind Eng-
land to the French monarchy. From this moment there-
fore Philip watched jealously over Elizabeth's safety. On
his departure for the Continent he gave written instruc-
tions to the Queen to show favor to her sister, and the
charge was repeated to those of his followers whom he left
behind him. What guarded her even more effectually
was the love of the people. When Philip at a later time
claimed Elizabeth's gratitude for his protection she told
him bluntly that her gratitude was really due neither to
292 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
him nor her nobles, though she owned her obligations to
both, but to the English people. It was they who had
saved her from death and hindered all projects for barring
her right to the throne. " It is the people, " she said, " who
have placed me where I am now." It was indeed their
faith in Elizabeth's speedy succession that enabled Eng-
lishmen to bear the bloodshed and shame of Mary's later
'years, and to wait patiently for the end.
Nor were these years of waiting without value for Eliza-
beth herself. The steady purpose, the clear perception of
a just policy which ran through her wonderful reign, were
formed as the girl looked coolly on at the chaos of bigotry
and misrule which spread before her. More and more she
realized what was to be the aim of her after life, the aim
of reuniting the England which Edward and Mary alike
had rent into two warring nations, of restoring again that
English independence which Mary was trailing at the feet
of Spain. With such an aim she could draw to her the
men who, indifferent like herself to purely spiritual con-
siderations, and estranged from Mary's system rather by
its political than its religious consequences, were anxious
for the restoration of English independence and English
order. It was among these "Politicals," as they were
soon to be called, that Elizabeth found at this moment
a counsellor who was to stand by her side through the long
years of her after reign. William Cecil sprang from the
smaller gentry whom the changes of the time were bring-
ing to the front. He was the son of a Yeoman of the
Wardrobe at Henry's court; but his abilities had already
raised him at the age of twenty-seven to the post of secre-
tary to the Duke of Somerset, and through Somerset's
Protectorate he remained high in his confidence. He was
seized by the Lords on the Duke's arrest, and even sent to
the Tower; but he was set at liberty with his master, and
his ability was now so well known that a few months later
saw him Secretary of State under Northumberland. The
post and the knighthood which accompanied it hardly
CHAP. 2.] THE REFORMATION. 15401603. 293
compensated for the yoke which Northumberland's pride
laid upon all who served him, or for the risks in which his
ambition involved them. Cecil saw with a fatal clearness
the silent opposition of the whole realm to the system of
the Protectorate, and the knowledge of this convinced
him that the Duke's schemes for a change in the succes-
sion were destined to failure. On the disclosure of the
plot to set Mary aside he withdrew for some days from the
Court, and even meditated flight from the country, till
fear of the young King's wrath drew him back to share in
the submission of his fellow-counsellors and to pledge him-
self with them to carry the new settlement into effect.
But Northumberland had no sooner quitted London than
Cecil became the soul of the intrigues by which the royal
Council declared themselves in Mary's favor. His deser-
tion of the Duke secured him pardon from the Queen, and
though he was known to be in heart " a heretic" he con-
tinued at court, conformed like Elizabeth to the established
religion, confessed and attended mass. Cecil was em-
ployed in bringing Pole to England and in attending him
in embassies abroad. But his caution held him aloof from
any close connection with public affairs. He busied him-
self in building at Burghley and in the culture of the
Church lands he had won from Edward the Sixth, while
he drew closer to the girl who alone could rescue England
from the misgovernment of Mary's rule. Even before the
Queen's death it was known that Cecil would be the chief
counsellor of the coming reign. "I am told for certain,"
the Spanish ambassador wrote to Philip after a visit to
Elizabeth during the last hours of Mary's life, " that Cecil
who was secretary to King Edward will be her secretary
also. He has the character of a prudent and virtuous
man, although a heretic." But it was only from a belief
that Cecil retained at heart the convictions of his earlier
days that men could call him a heretic. In all outer mat^
ters of faith or worship he conformed to the religion of the
state.
294 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
It is idle to charge Cecil, or the mass of Englishmen
who conformed with him in turn to the religion of Henry,
of Edward, of Mary, and of Elizabeth, with baseness or
hypocrisy. They followed the accepted doctrine of the
time that every realm, through its rulers, had the sole
right of determining what should be the form of religion
within its bounds. What the Marian persecution was
gradually pressing on such men was a conviction, not of
the falsehood of such a doctrine, but of the need of limit-
ing it. Under Henry, under Edward, under Mary, no
distinction had been drawn between inner belief and outer
conformity. Every English subject was called upon to
adjust his conscience as well as his conduct to the varying
policy of the state. But the fires of Smithfield had proved
that obedience such as this could not be exacted save by a
persecution which filled all England with horror. Such a
persecution indeed failed in the very end for which it was
wrought. Instead of strengthening religious unity, it
gave a new force to religious separation ; it enlisted the
conscience of the zealot in the cause of resistance ; it se-
cured the sympathy of the great mass of waverers to those
who withstood the civil power. To Cecil, as to the purely
political statesmen of whom he was the type, such a perse-
cution seemed as needless as it was mischievous. Con-
formity indeed was necessary, for men could as yet con-
ceive of no state without a religion or of civil obedience
apart from compliance with the religious order of the state.
But only outer conformity was needed. That no man
should set up a worship other than that of the nation at
large, that every subject should duly attend at the national
worship, Cecil believed to be essential to public order.
But he saw no need for prying into the actual beliefs of
those who conformed to the religious laws of the realm,
nor did he think that such beliefs could be changed by the
fear of punishment. While refusing freedom of worship
therefore, Cecil, like Elizabeth, was ready to concede free-
dom of conscience. And in this concession we can hardly
CHAP. 2.] THE REFORMATION. 15401603. 295
doubt that the bulk of Englishmen went with him.
Catholics shared with Protestants the horror of Mary's
persecution. To Protestantism indeed the horror of the
persecution had done much to give a force such as it had
never had before. The number of Protestants grew with
every murder done in the cause of Catholicism. But they
still remained a small part of the realm. What the bulk
of Englishmen had been driven to by the martyrdoms was
not a change of creed, but a longing for religious peace
and for such a system of government as, without destroy-
ing the spiritual oneness of the nation, would render a re-
ligious peace possible. And such a system of government
Cecil and Elizabeth were prepared to give.
We may ascribe to Cecil's counsels somewhat of the
wise patience with which Elizabeth waited for the coming
crown. Her succession was assured, and the throng of
visitors to her presence showed a general sense that the
Queen's end was near. Mary stood lonely and desolate in
her realm. " I will not be buried while I am living, as
my sister was," Elizabeth said in later years. " Do I not
know how during her life every one hastened to me at
Hatfield?" The bloodshed indeed went on more busily
than ever. It had spread now from bishops and priests to
the people itself, and the sufferers were sent in batches to
the flames. In a single day thirteen victims, two of them
women, were burned at Stratford- le-Bow. Seventy-three
Protestants of Colchester were dragged through the streets
of London tied to a single rope. A new commission for
the suppression of heresy was exempted by royal authority
from all restrictions of law which fettered its activity.
But the work of terror broke down before the silent revolt
of the whole nation. The persecution failed even to put
an end to heretical worship. Not only do we find ministers
moving about in London and Kent to hold " secret meet-
ings of the Gospellers," but up to the middle of 1555 four
parishes in Essex still persisted in using the English
Prayer-book. Open marks of sympathy at last began to
296 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
be offered to the victims at the stake. " There were seven
men burned in Smithfield the twenty-eighth day of July,"
a Londoner writes in 1558, "a fearful and a cruel procla-
mation being made that under pain of present death no
man should either approach nigh unto them, touch them,
neither speak to them nor comfort them. Yet were they
so comfortably taken by the hand and so goodly comforted,
notwithstanding that fearful proclamation and the present
threatenings of the sheriffs and sergeants, that the ad-
versaries themselves were astonished." The crowd round
the fire shouted "Amen" to the martyrs' prayers, and
prayed with them that God would strengthen them.
What galled Mary yet more was the ill will of the Pope.
Paul the Fourth still adhered to his demand for full
restoration of the Church lands, and held England as only
partly reconciled to the Holy See. He was hostile to
Philip ; he was yet more hostile to Pole. At this moment
he dealt a last blow at the Queen by depriving Pole of his
legatine power, and was believed to be on the point of call-
ing him to answer a charge of heresy. Even when she
was freed from part of her troubles in the autumn of 1558
by the opening of conferences for peace at Cambray a
fresh danger disclosed itself. The demands of the Queen's
envoys for the restoration of Calais met with so stubborn
a refusal from France that it seemed as if England would
be left alone to bear the brunt of a future struggle, for
Mary's fierce pride, had she lived, could hardly have
bowed to the surrender of the town. But the Queen was
dying. Her health had long been weak, and the miseries
and failure of her reign hastened the progress of disease.
Already enfeebled, she was attacked as winter drew near
by a fever which was at this time ravaging the country,
and on the seventeenth of November, 1558, she breathed
her last
CHAPTER III.
THE ENGLAND OF ELIZABETH.
15581561.
TRADITION still points out the tree in Hatfield Park b*-
neath which Elizabeth was sitting when she received the
news of her peaceful accession to the throne. She fell on
her knees and drawing a long breath, exclaimed at last,
" It is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes."
To the last these words remained stamped on the golden
coinage of the Queen. The sense never left her that her
preservation and her reign were the issues of a direct in-
terposition of God. Daring and self-confident indeed as
was her temper, it was awed into seriousness by the
weight of responsibility which fell on her with her sister's
death. Never had the fortunes of England sunk to a lower
ebb. Dragged at the heels of Philip into a useless and
ruinous war, the country was left without an ally save
Spain. The loss of Calais gave France the mastery of the
Channel, and seemed to English eyes "to introduce the
French King within the threshold of our house." "If
God start not forth to the helm," wrote the Council in an
appeal to the country, "we be at the point of greatest
misery that can happen to any people, which is to become
thrall to a foreign nation." The French King, in fact,
" bestrode the realm, having one foot in Calais and the
other in Scotland." Ireland too was torn with civil war,
while Scotland, always a danger in the north, had become
formidable through the French marriage of its Queen. In
presence of enemies such as these, the country lay helpless,
without army or fleet, or the means of manning one, for
the treasury, already drained by the waste of Edward's
298 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
reign, had been utterly exhausted by the restoration of the
church-lands in possession of the Crown and by the cost
of the war with France. But formidable as was the dan-
ger from without, it was little to the danger from within.
The country was humiliated by defeat and brought to the
verge of rebellion by the bloodshed and misgovernment of
Mary's reign. The social discontent which had been
trampled down for a while by the horsemen of Somerset
remained a menace to further order. Above all, the relig-
ious strife had passed beyond hope of reconciliation now
that the reformers were parted from their opponents by the
fires of Smithfield and the party of the New Learning all
but dissolved. The more earnest Catholics were bound
helplessly to Home. The temper of the Protestants,
burned at home or driven into exile abroad, had become a
fiercer thing, and the Calvinistic refugees were pouring
back from Geneva with dreams of revolutionary changes
in Church and State.
It was with the religious difficulty that Elizabeth was
called first to deal ; and the way in which she dealt with
it showed at once the peculiar bent of her mind. The
young Queen was not without a sense of religion ; at mo-
ments of peril or deliverance throughout her reign her
acknowledgments of a divine protection took a strange
depth and earnestness. But she was almost wholly desti-
tute of spiritual emotion, or of any consciousness of the
vast questions with which theology strove to deal. While
the world around her was being swayed more and more
by theological beliefs and controversies, Elizabeth was ab-
solutely untouched by them. She was a child of the Italian
Renascence rather than of the New Learning of Colet or
Erasmus, and her attitude toward the enthusiasm of her
time was that of Lorenzo de' Medici toward Savonarola.
Her mind was untroubled by the spiritual problems which
were vexing the minds around her; to Elizabeth indeed
they were not only unintelligible, they were a little ridicu-
lous. She had been brought up under Henry amid the
CHAP. 3.] THE REFORMATION. 15401603. 299
ritual of the older Church ; under Edward she had sub-
mitted to the English Prayer-book, and drunk in much of
the Protestant theology ; under Mary she was ready after
a slight resistance to conform again to the mass. Her
temper remained unchanged through the whole course of
her reign. She showed the same intellectual contempt for
the superstition of the Romanist as for the bigotry of the
Protestant. While she ordered Catholic images to be
flung into the fire, she quizzed the Puritans as " brethren
in Christ." But she had no sort of religious aversion
from either Puritan or Papist. The Protestants grumbled
at the Catholic nobles whom she admitted to the presence.
The Catholics grumbled at the Protestant statesmen whom
she called to her council board. To Elizabeth on the other
hand the arrangement was the most natural thing in the
world. She looked at theological differences in a purely
political light. She agreed with Henry the Fourth that a
kingdom was well worth a mass. It seemed an obvious
thing to her to hold out hopes of conversion as a means of
deceiving Philip, or to gain a point in negotiation by re-
storing the crucifix to her chapel. The first interest in her
own mind was the interest of public order, and she never
could understand how it could fail to be the first in every
one's mind.
One memorable change marked the nobler side of the
policy she brought with her to the throne. Elizabeth's
accession was at once followed by a close of the religious
persecution. Whatever might be the changes that awaited
the country, conformity was no longer to be enforced by
the penalty of death. At a moment when Philip was pre-
siding at autos-da-fe and Henry of Franca plotting a
massacre of his Huguenot subjects, such a resolve was a
gain for humanity as well as a step toward religious toler-
ation. And from this resolve Elizabeth never wavered.
Through all her long reign, save a few Anabaptists whom
the whole nation loathed as blasphemers of God and dreaded
as enemies of social order, no heretic was " sent to the
300 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
fire." It was a far greater gain for humanity when the
Queen declared her will to meddle in no way with the con-
sciences of her subjects. She would hear of no inquisi-
tion into a man's private thoughts on religious matters or
into his personal religion. Cecil could boldly assert in her
name at a later time the right of every Englishman to
perfect liberty of religious opinion. Such a liberty of
opinion by no means implied liberty of public worship.
On the incompatibility of freedom of worship with public
order Catholic and Protestant were as yet at one. The
most advanced reformers did not dream of contending for
a right to stand apart from the national religion. What
they sought was to make the national religion their own.
The tendency of the reformation had been to press for the
religious as well as the political unity of every state.
Even Calvin looked forward to the winning of the nations
to a purer faith without a suspicion that the religious
movement which he headed would end in establishing the
right even of the children of " antichrist" to worship as
they would in a Protestant commonwealth. If the Protes-
tant lords in Scotland had been driven to assert a right of
nonconformity, if the Huguenots of France were follow-
ing their example, it was with no thought of asserting
the right of every man to worship God as he would.
From the claim of such a right Knox or Coligni would
have shrunk with even greater horror than Elizabeth.
What they aimed at was simply the establishment of a
truce till by force or persuasion they could win the realms
that tolerated them for their own. In this matter there-
fore Elizabeth was at one with every statesman of her day.
While granting freedom of conscience to her subjects, she
was resolute to exact an outward conformity to the estab-
lished religion.
But men watched curiously to see what religion the
Queen would establish. Even before her accession the
keen eye of the Spanish ambassador had noted her " great
admiration for the king her father's mode of carrying on
CHAP. 3.] THE REFORMATION. 1540-1603. 301
matters," as a matter of ill omen for the interests of Cath-
olicism. He had marked that the ladies about her and
the counsellors on whom she seemed about to rely were,
like Cecil, "held to be heretics." "I fear much," he
wrote, "that in religion she will not go right." As keen
an instinct warned the Protestants that the tide had turned.
The cessation of the burnings, and the release of all per-
sons imprisoned for religion, seemed to receive their inter-
pretation when Elizabeth on her entry into London kissed
an English Bible which the citizens presented to her and
promised "diligently to read therein." The exiles at
Strassburg or Geneva flocked home with wild dreams of a
religious revolution and of vengeance upon their foes.
But hopes and fears alike met a startling check. For
months there was little change in either government or
religion. If Elizabeth introduced Cecil and his kinsman,
Sir Nicholas Bacon, to her council board, she retained as
yet most of her sister's advisers. The Mass went on as
before, and the Queen was regular in her attendance at it.
As soon as the revival of Protestantism showed itself in
controversial sermons and insults to the priesthood it was
bridled by a proclamation which forbade unlicensed preach-
ing and enforced silence on the religious controversy.
Elizabeth showed indeed a distaste for the elevation of the
Host, and allowed the Lord's Prayer, Creed, and Ten
Commandments to be used in English. But months
passed after her accession before she would go further than
this. A royal proclamation which ordered the existing
form of worship to be observed " till consultation might be
had in Parliament by the Queen and the Three Estates"
startled the prelates ; and only one bishop could be found
to assist at the coronation of Elizabeth. But no change
was made in the ceremonies of the coronation ; the Queen
took the customary oath to observe the liberties of the
Church, and conformed to the Catholic ritual. There was
little in fact to excite any reasonable alarm among the
adherents of the older faith, or any reasonable hope among
302 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
the adherents of the new. "I will do," the Queen said,
"as my father did." Instead of the reforms of Edward
and the Protectorate, the Protestants saw themselves
thrown back on the reforms of Henry the Eighth. Even
.Henry's system indeed seemed too extreme for Elizabeth.
Her father had at any rate broken boldly from the Papacy.
But the first work of the Queen was to open negotiations
for her recognition with the Papal Court.
What shaped Elizabeth's course in fact was hard neces-
sity. She found herself at war with France and Scotland,
and her throne threatened by the claim of the girl who
linked the two countries, the claim of Mary Stuart, at
once Queen of Scotland and wife of the Dauphin Francis.
On Elizabeth's accession Mary and Francis assumed by
the French King's order the arms and style of English
sovereigns : and if war continued it was clear that their
pretensions would be backed by Henry's forces as well as
by the efforts of the Scots. Against such a danger Philip
of Spain was Elizabeth's only ally. Philip's policy was
at this time a purely conservative one. The vast schemes
of ambition which had so often knit both Pope and Protes-
tants, Germany and France, against his father were set
aside by the young King. His position indeed was very
different from that of Charles the Fifth. He was not
Emperor. He had little weight in Germany. Even in
Italy his influence was less than his father's. He had lost
with Mary's death the crown of England. His most valu-
able possessions outside Spain, the provinces of the Nether-
lands, were disaffected to a foreign rule. All the King
therefore aimed at was to keep his own. But the Nether-
lands were hard to keep: and with France mistress of
England as of Scotland, and so mistress of the Channel, to
keep them would be impossible. Sheer necessity forbade
Philip to suffer the union of the three crowns of the west
on the head of a French King ; and the French marriage
of Mary Stuart pledged him to oppose her pretensions and
support Elizabeth's throne. For a moment he even
CHAP. 3.] THE REFORMATION. 1540-1608. 303
dreamed of meeting the union of France and Scotland by
that union of England with Spain which had been seen
under Mary. He offered Elizabeth his hand. The match
was a more natural one than Philip's union with her sis-
ter, for the young King's age was not far from her own.
The offer however was courteously put aside, for Eliza-
beth had no purpose of lending England to the ambftion
of Spain, nor was it possible for her to repeat her sister's
unpopular experiment. But Philip remained firm in his
support of her throne. He secured for her the allegiance of
the Catholics within her realm, who looked to him as their
friend while they distrusted France as an ally of heretics.
His envoys supported her cause in the negotiations at
Gateau Cambresis; he suffered her to borrow money and
provide herself with arms in his provinces of the Nether-
lands. At such a crisis Elizabeth could not afford to
alienate Philip by changes which would roughly dispel his
hopes of retaining her within the bounds of Catholicism.
Nor is there any sign that Elizabeth had resolved on a
defiance of the Papacy. She was firm indeed to assert her
father's claim of supremacy over the clergy and her own
title to the throne. But the difficulties in the way of an
accommodation on these points were such as could be set-
tled by negotiation; and, acting on Cecil's counsel, Eliza-
beth announced her accession to the Pope. The announce-
ment showed her purpose of making no violent break in
the relations of England with the Papal See. But be-
tween Elizabeth and the Papacy lay the fatal question of
the Divorce. To acknowledge the young Queen was not
only to own her mother's marriage, but to cancel the
solemn judgment of the Holy See in Catharine's favor and
its solemn assertion of her own bastardy. The temper of
Paul the Fourth took fire at the news. He reproached
Elizabeth with her presumption in ascending the throne,
recalled the Papal judgment which pronounced her illegiti-
mate, and summoned her to submit her claims to his tri-
bunal. Much of this indignation was no doubt merely
304 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
diplomatic. If the Pope listened to the claims of Mary
Stuart, which were urged on him by the French Court, it
was probably only with the purpose of using them to bring
pressure to bear on Elizabeth and on the stubborn country
which still refused to restore its lands to the Church and
to make the complete submission which Paul demanded.
But Cecil and the Queen knew that, even had they been
willing to pay such a price for the crown, it was beyond
their power to bring England to pay it. The form too in
which Paul had couched his answer admitted of no com-
promise. The summons to submit the Queen's claim of
succession to the judgment of Rome produced its old effect.
Elizabeth was driven, as Henry had been driven, to assert
the right of the nation to decide on questions which af-
fected its very life. A Parliament which met in January,
1559, acknowledged the legitimacy of Elizabeth and her
title to the crown.
Such an acknowledgment in the teeth of the Papal re-
pudiation of Anne Boleyn's marriage carried with it a re-
pudiation of the supremacy of the Papacy. It was in vain
that the clergy in convocation unanimously adopted five
articles which affirmed their faith in transubstantiation,
their acceptance of the supreme authority of the Popes as
"Christ's vicars and supreme rulers of the Church," and
their resolve " that the authority in all matters of faith
and discipline belongs and ought to belong only to the pas-
tors of the Church, and not to laymen." It was in vain
that the bishops unanimously opposed the Bill for restor-
ing the royal supremacy when it was brought before the
Lords. The " ancient jurisdiction of the Crown over the
Estate ecclesiastical and spiritual" was restored ; the Acts
which under Mary re-established the independent jurisdic-
tion and legislation of the Church were .repealed ; and the
clergy were called on to swear to the supremacy of the
Crown and to abjure ah 1 foreign authority and jurisdiction.
Further Elizabeth had no personal wish to go. A third
of the Council and at least two-thirds of the people were as
CHAP. 3.] THE REFORMATION. 15401603. 305
opposed to any radical changes in religion as the Queen.
Among the gentry the older and wealthier were on the
conservative side, and only the younger and meaner on the
other. In the Parliament itself Sir Thomas White pro-
tested that " it was unjust that a religion begun in such a
miraculous way and established by such grave men should
be abolished by a set of beardless boys. " Yet even this
"beardless" parliament had shown a strong conservatism.
The Bill which re-established the royal supremacy met
with violent opposition in the Commons, and only passed
through Cecil's adroit manoeuvring.
But the steps which Elizabeth had taken made it neces-
sary to go further. If the Protestants were the less nu-
merous, they were the abler and the more vigorous party,
and the break with Rome threw Elizabeth, whether she
would or no, on their support. It was a support that could
only be bought by theological concessions, and above all
by the surrender of the Mass ; for to every Protestant the
Mass was identified with the fires of Smithfield, while the
Prayer-book which it had displaced was hallowed by the
memories of the Martyrs. The pressure of the reforming
party indeed would have been fruitless had the Queen still
been hampered by danger from France. Fortunately for
their cause the treaty of Cateau Cambresis at this juncture
freed Elizabeth's hands. By this treaty, which was prac-
tically concluded in March, 1559, Calais was left in French
holding on the illusory pledge of its restoration to England
eight years later ; but peace was secured and the danger of
a war of succession, in which Mary Stuart would be
backed by the arms of France, for a while averted. Se-
cure from without, Elizabeth could venture to buy the sup-
port of the Protestants within her realm by the restoration
of the English Prayer-book. Such a measure was far in-
deed from being meant as an open break with Catholicism.
The use of the vulgar tongue in public worship was still
popular with a large part of the Catholic world ; and the
Queen did her best by the alterations she made in Ed-
306 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VL
ward's Prayer-book to strip it of its more Protestant tone.
To the bulk of the people the book must have seemed
merely a rendering of the old service in their own tongue.
As the English Catholics afterward represented at Rome
when excusing their own use of it, the Prayer-book " con-
tained neither impiety nor false doctrine; its prayers were
those of the Catholic Church, altered only so far as to omit
the merits and intercession of the saints." On such con-
cession as this the Queen felt it safe to venture in spite of
the stubborn opposition of the spiritual estate. She or-
dered a disputation to be held in Westminster Abbey be-
fore the Houses on the question, and when the disputation
ended in the refusal of the bishops to proceed an Act of
Uniformity, which was passed in spite of their strenuous
opposition, restored at the close of April the last Prayer-
book of Edward, and enforced its use on the clergy on pain
of deprivation.
At Rome the news of these changes stirred a fiercer
wrath in Paul the Fourth, and his threats of excommuni-
cation were only held in check by the protests of Philip.
The policy of the Spanish King still bound him to Eliza-
beth's cause, for the claims of Mary Stuart h#d been re-
served in the treaty of Gateau Cambresis, and the refusal
of France to abandon them held Spain to its alliance with
the Queen. Vexed as he was at the news of the Acts
which re-established the supremacy, Philip ordered his
ambassador to assure Elizabeth he was as sure a friend as
ever, and to soothe the resentment of the English Catholics
if it threatened to break out into revolt. He showed the
same temper in his protest against action at Rome. Paul
had however resolved to carry out his threats when his
death and the interregnum which followed gave Elizabeth
a fresh respite. His successor, Pius the Fourth, was of
milder temper and leaned rather to a policy of conciliation.
Decisive indeed as the Queen's action may seem in modern
eyes, it was far from being held as decisive at the time.
The Act of Supremacy might be regarded as having been
CHAP. 3.] THE REFORMATION. 15401603. 307
forced upon Elizabeth by Paul's repudiation of her title
to the crown. The alterations which were made by the
Queen's authority in the Prayer-book showed a wish to
conciliate those who clung to the older faith. It was clear
that Elizabeth had no mind merely to restore the system
of the Protectorate. She set up again the royal suprem-
acy, but she dropped the words " Head of the Church"
from the royal title. The forty-two Articles of Protestant
doctrine which Cranmer had drawn up were left in abey-
ance. If the Queen had had her will, she would have re-
tained the celibacy of the clergy and restored the use of
crucifixes in the churches.
The caution and hesitation with which she enforced on
the clergy the oath required by the Act of Supremacy
showed Elizabeth's wish to avoid the opening of a relig-
ious strife. The higher dignitaries indeed were unspar-
ingly dealt with. The bishops, who with a single excep-
tion refused to take the oath, were imprisoned and deprived.
The same measure was dealt out to most of the archdea-
cons and deans. But with the mass of the parish priests
a very different course was taken. The Commissioners
appointed in May, 1559, were found to be too zealous in
October, and several of the clerical members were replaced
by cooler laymen. The great bulk of the clergy seem
neither to have refused nor to have consented to the oath,
but to have left the Commissioners' summons unheeded
and to have stayed quietly at home. Of the nine thousand
four hundred beneficed clergy only a tenth presented them-
selves before the Commissioners. Of those who attended
and refused the oath a hundred and eighty-nine were de-
prived, but many of the most prominent went unharmed.
At Winchester, though the dean and canons of the cathe-
dral, the warden and fellows of the college, and the master
of St. Cross, refused the oath, only four of these appear in
the list of deprivations. Even the few who suffered proved
too many for the purpose of the Queen. In the more re-
mote parts of the kingdom the proceedings of the visitors
308 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VL
threatened to wake the religious strife which she was en-
deavoring to lull to sleep. On the northern border, where
the great nobles, Lord Dacres and the Earls of Cumber-
land and Westmoreland, were zealous Catholics, and re-
fused tq let the bishop "meddle with them," the clergy-
held stubbornly aloof. At Durham a parson was able to
protest without danger that the Pope alone had power in
spiritual matters. In Hereford the town turned out to re-
ceive in triumph a party of priests from the west who had
refused the oath. The University of Oxford took refuge
in sullen opposition. In spite of pressure from the Protes-
tant prelates, who occupied the sees vacated by the de-
prived bishops, Elizabeth was firm in her policy of pa-
tience, and in December she ordered the Commissioners
In both provinces to suspend their proceedings.
In part indeed of her effort she was foiled by the bitter-
ness of the reformers. The London mob tore down the
crosses in the streets. Her attempt to retain the crucifix,
or to enforce the celibacy of the priesthood fell dead before
the opposition of the Protestant clergy. But to the mass
of the nation the compromise of Elizabeth seems to have
been fairly acceptable. They saw but little change. Their
old vicar or rector in almost every case remained in his
parsonage and ministered in his church. The new Prayer-
book was for the most part an English rendering of the old
service. Even the more zealous adherents of Catholicism
held as yet that in complying with the order for attendance
at public worship " there could be nothing positively un-
lawful." Where party feeling ran high indeed the matter
was sometimes settled by a compromise. A priest would
celebrate mass at his parsonage for the more rigid Catho-
lics, and administer the new communion in church to the
more rigid Protestants. Sometimes both parties knelt
together at the same altar-rails, the one to receive hosts
consecrated by the priest at home after the old usage, the
other wafers consecrated in Church after the new. In
many parishes of the north no change of service was made
CHAP. 3.] THE REFORMATION. 15401603. 309
at all. Even where priest and people conformed it was
often with a secret belief that better times were soon to
bring back the older observances. As late as 1569 some
of the chief parishes in Sussex were still merely bending
to the storm of heresy. " In the church of Arundel certain
altars do stand yet, to the offence of the godly, which
murmur and speak much against the same. In the town
of Battle when a preacher doth come and speak anything
against the Pope's doctrine they will not abide but get
them out of the church. They have yet in the diocese in
many places thereof images hidden and other popish orna-
ments ready to set up the mass again within twenty -four
hours warning. In many places they keep yet their
chalices, looking to have mass again." Nor was there
much new teaching as yet to stir up strife in those who
clung to the older faith. Elizabeth had no mind for con-
troversies which would set her people by the ears. " In
many churches they have no sermons, not one in seven
years, and some not one in twelve." The older priests of
Mary's days held their peace. The Protestant preachers
were few and hampered by the exaction of licenses. In
many cases churches had "neither parson, vicar, nor
curate, but a sorry reader." Even where the new clergy
were of higher intellectual stamp they were often un-
popular. Many of those who were set in the place of the
displaced clergy roused disgust by their violence and greed.
Chapters plundered their own estates by leases and fines
and by felling timber. The marriages of the clergy became
a scandal, which was increased when the gorgeous vest-
ments of the old worship were cut up into gowns and bod-
ices for the priests' wives. The new services sometimes
turned into scenes of utter disorder where the ministers
wore what dress they pleased and the communicant stood
or sat as he liked ; while the old altars were broken down
and the communion-table was often a bare board upon
trestles. Only in a few places where the more zealous of
the reformers had settled was there any religious instruc-
310 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VL
tion. "In many places," it was reported after ten years
of the Queen's rule, " the people cannot yet say their com-
mandments, and in some not the articles of their belief.
Naturally enough, the bulk of Englishmen were found to
be " utterly devoid of religion," and came to church " as to
a May game."
To modern eyes the Church under Elizabeth would seem
little better than a religious chaos. But England was
fairly used to religious confusion, for the whole machinery
of English religion had been thrown out of gear by the
rapid and radical changes of the last two reigns. And to
the Queen's mind a religious chaos was a far less difficulty
than a parting of the nation into two warring Churches
which would have been brought about by a more rigorous
policy. She trusted to time to bring about greater order ;
and she found in Matthew Parker, whom Pole's death at
the moment of her accession enabled her to raise to the see
of Canterbury, an agent in the reorganization of the Church
whose patience and moderation were akin to her own. To
the difficulties which Parker found indeed in the temper of
the reformers and their opponents new difficulties were
sometimes added by the freaks of the Queen herself. If
she had no convictions, she had tastes ; and her taste re-
volted from the bareness of Protestant ritual and above all
from the marriage of priests. "Leave that alone," she
shouted to Dean Nowell from the royal closet as he de-
nounced the use of images " stick to your text, Master
Dean, leave that alone!" When Parker was firm in re-
sisting the introduction of the crucifix or of celibacy, Eliza-
beth showed her resentment by an insult to his wife. Mar-
ried ladies were addressed at this time as "Madam," un-
married ladies as " Mistress ;" but the marriage of the clergy
was still unsanctioned by law, for Elizabeth had refused
to revive the statute of Edward by which it was allowed,
and the position of a priest's wife was legally a very doubt-
ful one. When Mrs. Parker therefore advanced at the
close of a sumptuous entertainment at Lambeth to take
CHAP. 3.] THE REFORMATION. 1540-1603. 311
leave of the Queen, Elizabeth feigned a momentary hesita-
tion. "Madam," she said at last, "I may not call you,
and Mistress I am loath to call you ; however, I thank you
for your good cheer." But freaks of this sort had little
weight beside the steady support which the Queen gave
to the Primate in his work of order. The vacant sees were
filled with men from among the exiles, for the most part
learned and able, though far more Protestant than the
bulk of their flocks; the plunder of the Church by the
nobles was checked; and at the close of 1559 England
seemed to settle quietly down in a religious peace.
But cautious as had been Elizabeth's movements and
skilfully as she had hidden the real drift of her measures
from the bulk of the people, the religion of England was
changed. The old service was gone. The old bishops
were gone. The royal supremacy was again restored.
.All connection with Rome was again broken. The repudi-
ation of the Papacy and the restoration of the Prayer-book
in the teeth of the unanimous opposition of the priest-
hood had established the great principle of the Reforma-
tion, that the form of a nation's faith should be determined
not by the clergy but by the nation itself. Different there-
fore as was the temper of the government, the religious at-
titude of England was once more what it had been under
the Protectorate. At the most critical moment of the strife
between the new religion and the old England had ranged
itself on the side of Protestantism. It was only the later
history of Elizabeth's reign which was to reveal or what
mighty import this Protestantism of Lngland was to prove.
Had England remained Catholic the freedom of the Dutch
Republic would have been impossible. No Henry the
Fourth would have reigned in France to save French
Protestantism by the Edict of Nantes. No struggle over
far-off seas would have broken the power of Spain and
baffled the hopes which the House of Austria cherished of
whining a mastery over the western world. Nor could
Calvinism have found a home across the northern border.
ii VOL. 2
312 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
The first result of the religious change in England was to
give a new impulse to the religious revolution in Scotland.
In the midst of anxieties at home Elizabeth had been
keenly watching the fortunes of the north. We have seen
how the policy of Mary of Guise had given life and force
to the Scottish Reformation. Not only had the Regent
given shelter to the exiled Protestants and looked on at the
diffusion of the new doctrines, but her " fair words" had
raised hopes that the government itself would join the
ranks of the reformers. Mary of Guise had looked on the
religious movement in a purely political light. It was as
enemies of Mary Tudor that she gave shelter to the exiles,
and it was to avoid a national strife which would have left
Scotland open to English attack in the war which closed
Mary's reign that the Regent gave " fair words" to the
preachers. But with the first Covenant, with the appear-
ance of the Lords of the Congregation in an avowed league
in the heart of the land, with their rejection of the state
worship and their resolve to enforce a change of religion,
her attitude suddenly altered. To the Regent the new re-
ligion was henceforth but a garb under which the old
quarrel of the nobles was breaking out anew against the
Crown. Smooth as were her words, men knew that Mary
of Guise was resolute to withstand religious change. But
Elizabeth's elevation to the throne gave a new fire to the
reformers. Conservative as her earlier policy seemed, the
instinct of the Protestants told them that the new queen's
accession was a triumph for Protestantism. The Lords at
once demanded that all bishops should be chosen by the
nobles and gentry, each priest by his parish, and that divine
service should be henceforth in the vulgar tongue. These
demands were rejected by the bishops, while the royal
court in May 1559 summoned the preachers to its bar and
on their refusal to appear condemned them to banishment
as rebels. The sentence was a signal for open strife. The
Protestants, whose strength as yet lay mainly in Fife, had
gathered in great numbers at Perth, and the news stirred
CHAP. 3.] THE REFORMATION. 15401603. 313
them to an outbreak of fury. The images were torn down
from the churches, the monasteries of the town were sacked
and demolished. The riot at Perth was followed by a
general rising. The work of destruction went on along
the east coast and through the Lowlands, while the " Con-
gregation" sprang up everywhere in its train. The Mass
came to an end. The Prayer-book of Edward was heard
in the churches. The Lords occupied the capital and found
its burghers as zealous in the cause of reformation as
themselves. Throughout all these movements the Lords
had been in communication with England, for the old
jealousy of English annexation was now lost in a jealousy
of French conquest. Their jealousy had solid grounds.
The marriage of Mary Stuart with the Dauphin of France
had been celebrated in April 1558 and three days before the
wedding the girl-queen had been brought to convey her
kingdom away by deed to the House of Valois. The deed
was kept secret ; but Mary's demand of the crown matri-
monial for her husband roused suspicions. It was known
that the government of Scotland was discussed at the
French council-board, and whispers came of a suggestion
that the kingdom should be turned into an appanage for
a younger son of the French King. Meanwhile French
money was sent to the Regent, a body of French troops
served as her body-guard, and on the advance of the Lords
in arms the French Court promised her the support of a
larger army.
Against these schemes of the French Court the Scotch
; Lords saw no aid save in Elizabeth. Their aim was to
drive the Frenchmen out of Scotland ; and this could only
be done by help both in money and men from England.
Nor was the English Council slow to promise help. To
Elizabeth indeed the need of supporting rebels against their
sovereign was a bitter one. The need of establishing a
Calvinistic Church on her frontier was yet bitterer. It
was not a national force which upheld the fabric of the
monarchy, as it had been built up by the Houses of York
314 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
and of Tudor, but a moral force. England held that safety
against anarchy within and against attacks on the national
independence from without was to be found in the Crown
alone, and that obedience to the Crown was the first ele-
ment of national order and national greatness. In their
religious reforms the Tudor sovereigns had aimed at giving
a religious sanction to the power which sprang from this
general conviction, and at hallowing their secular suprem-
acy by blending with it their supremacy over the Church.
Against such a theory, either of Church or State, Calvin-
ism was an emphatic protest, and in aiding Calvinism to
establish itself in Scotland the Queen felt that she was deal-
ing a heavy blow to her political and religious system at
home. But struggle as she might against the necessity,
she had no choice but to submit. The assumption by
Francis and Mary of the style of King and Queen of Eng-
land, the express reservation of this claim, even in the
treaty of Cateau Cambresis, made a French occupation of
Scotland a matter of life and death to the kingdom over
the border. The English Council believed " that the French
mean, after their forces are brought into Scotland, first to
conquer it, which will be neither hard nor long and
next that they and the Scots will invade this realm."
They were soon pressed to decide on their course. The
Regent used her money to good purpose, and at the ap-
proach of her forces the Lords withdrew from Edinburgh
to the west. At the end of August two thousand French
soldiers landed at Leith, as the advance guard of the
promised forces, and entrenched themselves strongly. It
was in vain that the Lords again appeared in the field, de-
manded the withdrawal of the foreigners, and threatened
Mary of Guise that as she would no longer hold them for
her counsellors " we also will no longer acknowledge you
as our Regent." They were ordered to disperse as traitors,
beaten off from the fortifications of Leith, and attacked by
the French troops in Fife itself.
The Lords called loudly for aid from the English Queen.
CHAP. 3.] THE REFORMATION. 15401608. 315
To give such assistance would have seemed impossible but
twelve months back. But the appeal of the Scots found a
different England from that which had met Elizabeth on
her accession. The Queen's diplomacy had gained her a
year, and her matchless activity had used the year to good
purpose. Order was restored throughout England, the
Church was reorganized, the debts of the Crown were in
part paid off, the treasury was recruited, a navy created,
and a force made ready for action in the north. Neither
religiously nor politically indeed had Elizabeth any sym-
pathy with the Scotch Lords. Knox was to her simply a
firebrand of rebellion; her political instinct shrank from
the Scotch Calvinism with its protest against the whole
English system of government, whether in Church or
State ; and as a Queen she hated revolt. But the danger
forced her hand. Elizabeth was ready to act, and to act
even in the defiance of France. As yet she stood almost
alone in her self-reliance. Spain believed her ruin to be
certain. Her challenge would bring war with France, and
in a war with France the Spanish statesmen held" that only
their master's intervention could save her. " For our own
sake," said one of Philip's ministers, "we must take as
much care of England as of the Low Countries." But
that such a care would be needed Grenville never doubted ;
and Philip's councillors solemnly debated whether it might
not be well to avoid the risk of a European struggle by
landing the six thousand men whom Philip was now with-
drawing from the Netherlands on the English shore, and
coercing Elizabeth into quietness. France meanwhile
despised her chances. Her very Council was in despair.
The one minister in whom she dared to confide throughout
these Scotch negotiations was Cecil, the youngest and
boldest of her advisers, and even Cecil trembled for her
success. The Duke of Norfolk refused at first to take com-
mand of the force destined as he held for a desperate enter-
prise. Arundel, the leading peer among the Catholics,
denounced the supporters of a Scottish war as traitors. But
316 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
lies and hesitation were no sooner put aside than the
Queen's vigor and tenacity came fairly into play. In
January, 1560, at a moment when D'Oysel, the French
commander, was on the point of crushing the Lords of the
Congregation, an English fleet appeared suddenly in the
Forth and forced the Regent's army to fall back upon
Leith.
Here however it again made an easy stand against the
Protestant attacks, and at the close of February the Queen
was driven to make a formal treaty with the Lords by
which she promised to assist them in the expulsion of the
strangers. The treaty was a bold defiance of the power
from whom Elizabeth had been glad to buy peace only a
year before, even by the sacrifice of Calais. But the
Queen had little fear of a counter-blow from France. The
Reformation was fighting for her on the one side of the
sea as on the other. From the outset of her reign the rapid
growth of the Huguenots in France had been threatening
a strife between the old religion and the new. It was to
gird himself for such a struggle that Henry the Second
concluded the treaty of Gateau Cambresis; and though
Henry's projects were foiled by his death, the Duke of
Guise, who ruled his successor, Francis the Second, pressed
on yet more bitterly the work of persecution. It was be-
lieved that he had sworn to exterminate " those of the re-
ligion." But the Huguenots were in no mood to bear ex-
termination. Their Protestantism, like that of the Scots,
was the Protestantism of Calvin. As they grew in num-
bers, their churches formed themselves on the model of
Geneva, and furnished in their synods and assemblies a
political as well as a religious organization ; while the doc-
trine of resistance even to kings, if kings showed them-
selves enemies to God, found ready hearers, whether among
the turbulent French noblesse, or among the traders of the
towns who were stirred to new dreams of constitutional
freedom. Theories of liberty or of resistance to the crown
were as abhorrent to Elizabeth as to the Guises, but again
CHAP. 3.] THE REFORMATION. 15401603. 317
necessity swept her into the current of Calvinism. She
was forced to seize on the religious disaffection of France
as a check on the dreams of aggression which Francis and
Mary had shown in assuming the style of English Sover-
eigns. The English ambassador, Throckmorton, fed the
alarms of the Huguenots and pressed them to take up arms.
It is probable that the Huguenot plot which broke out in
the March of 1560 in an attempt to surprise the French
Court at Amboise was known beforehand by Cecil ; and,
though the conspiracy was ruthlessly suppressed, the Queen
drew fresh courage from a sense that the Guises had hence-
forth work for their troops at home.
At the end of March therefore Lord Grey pushed ovei
the border with 8,000 men to join the Lords of the Con-
gregation in the siege of Leith. The Scots gave little aid ;
and an assault on the town signally failed. Philip too in
a sudden jealousy of Elizabeth's growing strength de-
manded the abandonment of the enterprise, and offered to
warrant England against any attack from the north if its
forces were withdrawn. But eager as Elizabeth was to
preserve Philip's alliance, she preferred to be her own
security. She knew that the Spanish King could not
abandon her while Mary Stuart was Queen of France, and
that at the moment of his remonstrances Philip was menac-
ing the Guises with war if they carried out their project
of bringing about Catholic rising by a descent on the
English coast. Nor were the threats of the French Court
more formidable. The bloody repression of the conspiracy
of Amboise had only fired the temper of the Huguenots ;
southern and western France were on the verge of revolt;
the House of Bourbon had adopted the reformed faith, and
put itself at the head of the Protestant movement. In the
face of dangers such as these the Guises could send to
Leith neither money nor men. Elizabeth therefore re-
mained immovable while famine did its work on the town.
At the crisis of the siege the death of Mary of Guise threw
the direct rule over Scotland into the hands of Francis and
318 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
Mary Stuart; and the exhaustion of the garrison forced
the two sovereigns to purchase its liberation by two treaties
which their envoys concluded at Edinburgh in June 1560.
That with the Scotch pledged them to withdraw forever
the French from the realm, and left the government of
Scotland to a Council of the Lords. The treaty with Eng-
land was a more difficult matter. Francis and Mary had
forbidden their envoys to sign any engagement with Eliza-
beth as to the Scottish realm, or to consent to any aban-
donment of their claims on the royal style of England. It
was only after long debate that Cecil wrested from them
the acknowledgment that the realms of England and Ire-
land of right appertained to Elizabeth, and a vague clause
by which the French sovereigns promised the English
Queen that they would fulfil their pledges to the Scots.
Stubborn however as was the resistance of the French
envoys the signature of the treaty proclaimed Elizabeth's
success. The issue of the Scotch war revealed suddenly to
Europe the vigor of the Queen and the strength of her
throne. What her ability really was no one, save Cecil,
had as yet suspected. There was little indeed in her out-
ward demeanor to give any indication of her greatness.
To the world about her the temper of Elizabeth recalled in
its strange contrasts the mixed blood within her veins.
She was at once the daughter of Henry and of Anne
Boleyn. From her father she inherited her frank and
hearty address, her love of popularity and of free inter-
course with the people, her dauntless courage and her
amazing self-confidenee. Her harsh, manlike voice, her
impetuous will, her pride, her furious outbursts of anger
came to her with her Tudor blood. She rated great nobles
as if they were schoolboys; she met the insolence of Lord
Essex with a box on the ear ; she broke now and then into
the gravest deliberations to swear at her ministers like a
fishwife. Strangely in contrast with these violent outlines
of her father's temper stood the sensuous, self-indulgent
nature she drew from Anne Boleyn. Splendor and pleasure
CHAP. 8.] THE REFORMATION. 15401608. 319
were with Elizabeth the very air she breathed. Her de-
light was to move in perpetual progresses from caatle to
castle through a series of gorgeous pageants, fanciful and
extravagant as a caliph's dream. She loved gayety and
laughter and wit. A happy retort or a finished compliment
never failed to win her favor. She hoarded jewels. Her
dresses were innumerable. Her vanity remained, even to
old age, the vanity of a coquette in her teens. No adula-
tion was too fulsome for her, no flattery of her beauty too
gross. She would play with her rings that her courtiers
might note the delicacy of her hands ; or dance a coranto
that an ambassador, hidden dexterously behind a curtain,
might report her sprightliness to his master. Her levity,
her frivolous laughter, her unwomanly jests gave color to
a thousand scandals. Her character in fact, like her por-
traits, was utterly without shade. Of womanly reserve or
self-restraint she knew nothing. No instinct of delicacy
veiled the voluptuous temper which broke out in the romps
of her girlhood and showed itself almost ostentatiously
through her later life. Personal beauty in a man was a
sure passport to her liking. She patted handsome young
squires on the neck when they knelt to kiss her hand, and
fondled her "sweet Robin," Lord Leicester, in the face of
the Court.
It was no wonder that the statesmen whom she outwitted
held Elizabeth to be little more than a frivolous woman,
or that Philip of Spain wondered how " a wanton" could
hold in check the policy of the Escurial. But the Eliza-
beth whom they saw was far from being all of Elizabeth.
Wilf ulness and triviality played over the surface of a na-
ture hard as steel, a temper purely intellectual, the very
type of reason untouched by imagination or passion.
Luxurious and pleasure-loving as she seemed, the young
Queen lived simply and frugally, and she worked hard.
Her vanity and caprice had no weight whatever with her
in state affairs. The coquette of the presence-chamber be-
came the coolest and hardest of politicians at the council-
320 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
board. Fresh from the flattery of her courtiers, she would
tolerate no flattery in the closet ; she was herself plain and
downright of speech with her counsellors, and she looked
for a corresponding plainness of speech in return. The
very choice of her advisers indeed showed Elizabeth's
ability. She had a quick eye for merit of any sort, and a
wonderful power of enlisting its whole energy in her ser-
vice. The sagacity which chose Cecil and Walsingham
was just as unerring in its choice of the meanest of her
agents. Her success indeed in securing from the begin-
ning of her reign to its end, with the single exception of
Leicester, precisely the right men for the work she set
them to do sprang in great measure from the noblest char-
acteristic of her intellect. If in loftiness of aim the Queen's
temper fell below many of the tempers of her time, in the
breadth of its range, in the universality of its sympathy it
stood far above them all. Elizabeth could talk poetry with
Spenser and philosophy with Bruno; she could discuss
Euphuism with Lilly, and enjoy the chivalry of Essex ;
she could turn from talk of the last fashions to pore with
Cecil over dispatches and treasury books ; she could pas?
from tracking traitors with Walsingham to settle points of
doctrine with Parker, or to calculate with Frobisher the
chances of a northwest passage to the Indies. The ver-
satility and many-sidedness cf her mind enabled her to
understand every phase of the intellectual movement about
her, and to fix by a sort of instinct era its higher represen'
tatives.
It was only on its intellectual side indeed that Elizabeth
touched the England of her day. All its moral aspects
were simply dead to her. It was a time when men were
being lifted into nobleness by the new moral energy which
seemed suddenly to pulse through the whole people, when
honor and enthusiasm took colors of poetic beauty, and re-
ligion became a chivalry. But the finer sentiments of the
men about her touched Elizabeth simply as the fair tints
of a picture would have touched her. She made hca
CHAP. 3.] THE REFORMATION. 15401603. 321
market with equal indifference out of the heroism of
William of Orange or the bigotry of Philip. The noblest
aims and lives were only counters on her board. She was
the one soul in her realm whom the news of St. Bartholo-
mew stirred to no thirst for vengeance ; and while England
was thrilling with the triumph over the Armada, its Queen
was coolly grumbling over the cost, and making her profit
out of the spoiled provisions she had ordered for the fleet
that saved her. No womanly sympathy bound her even
to those who stood closest to her life. She loved Leicester
indeed ; she was grateful to Cecil. But for the most part
she was deaf to the voices either of love or gratitude. She
accepted such services as were never rendered to any other
English sovereign without a thought of return. Walsing-
ham spent his fortune in saving her life and her throne,
and she left him to die a beggar. But, as if by a strange
irony, it was to this very lack of womanly sympathy that
she owed some of the grandest features of her character.
If she was without love she was without hate. She cher-
ished no petty resentments ; she never stooped to envy or
suspicion of the men who served her. She was indifferent
to abuse. Her good humor was never ruffled by the
charges of wantonness and cruelty with which the Jesuits
filled every Court in Europe. She was insensible to fear.
Her life became at last a mark for assassin after assassin,
but the thought of peril was the thought hardest to bring
home to her. Even when Catholic plots broke out in her
very household she would listen to no proposals for the re-
moval of Catholics from her court.
If any trace of her sex lingered in the Queen's actual
statesmanship, it was seen in the simplicity and tenacity
of purpose that often underlies a woman's fluctuations of
feeling. It was the directness and steadiness of her aims
which gave her her marked superiority over the statesmen
of her time. No nobler group of ministers ever gathered
round a council-board than those who gathered round the
council-board of Elizabeth. But she was the instrument
322 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
of none. She listened, she weighed, she used or put by
the counsels of each in turn, but her policy as a whole was
her own. It was a policy, not of genius, but of good sense.
Her aims were simple and obvious : to preserve her throne,
to keep England out of war, to restore civil and religious
order. Something of womanly caution and timidity per-
haps backed the passionless indifference with which she
set aside the larger schemes of ambition which were ever
opening before her eyes. In later days she was resolute
in her refusal of the' Low Countries. She rejected with a
laugh the offers of the Protestants to make her " head of
the religion" and " mistress of the seas. " But her amaz-
ing success in the end sprang mainly from this wise limita-
tion of her aims. She had a finer sense than any of her
counsellors of her real resources; she knew instinctively
how far she could go and what she could do. Her cold,
critical intellect was never swayed by enthusiasm or by
panic either to exaggerate or to under-estimate her risks
or her power. Of political wisdom indeed in its larger
and more generous sense Elizabeth had little or none ; but
her political tact was unerring. She seldom saw her course
at a glance, but she played with a hundred courses, fitfully
and discursively, as a musician runs his fingers over the
keyboard, till she hit suddenly upon the right one. Her
nature was essentially practical and of the present. She
distrusted a plan in fact just in proportion to its specula-
tive range or its outlook into the future. Her notion of
statesmanship lay in watching how things turned out
around her, and in seizing the moment for making the
best of them.
Such a policy as this, limited, practical, tentative as it
always was, had little of grandeur and originality about
it; it was apt indeed to degenerate into mere trickery and
finesse. But it was a policy suited to the England of her
day, to its small resources and the transitional character of
its religious and political belief, and it was eminently suited
to Elizabeth's peculiar powers. It was a policy of detail,
CHAP. 3.] THE REFORMATION. 15401603. 323
and in details her wonderful readiness and ingenuity found
scope for their exercise. " No War, my Lords," the Queen
used to cry imperiously at the council-board, " No War 1"
but her hatred of war sprang not so much from aversion
to blood or to expense, real as was her aversion to both, as
from the fact that peace left the field open to the diplomatic
manoeuvres and intrigues in which she excelled. Her
delight in the consciousness of her ingenuity broke out in
a thousand puckish freaks, freaks in which one can hardly
see any purpose beyond the purpose of sheer mystification.
She revelled in "by-ways" and "crooked ways." She
played with grave cabinets as a cat plays with a mouse,
and with much of thA same feline delight in the mere em-
barrassment of her victims. When she was weary of
mystifying foreign statesmen she turned to find fresh sport
in mystifying her own ministers. Had Elizabeth written
the story of her reign she would have prided herself, not
on the triumph of England or the ruin of Spain, but on
the skill with which she had hoodwinked and outwitted
every statesman in Europe during fifty years. Nothing is
more revolting, but nothing is more characteristic of the
Queen than her shameless mendacity. It was an age of
political lying, but in the profusion and recklessness of her
lies Elizabeth stood without a peer in Christendom. ^A
falsehood was to her simply an intellectual means of meet-
ing a difficulty ; and the ease with which she asserted or
denied whatever suited her purpose was only equalled by
the cynical indifference with which she met the exposure
of her lies as soon as their purpose was answered. Her
trickery in fact had its political value. Ignoble and weari-
some as the Queen's diplomacy seems to us now, tracking
it as we do through a thousand dispatches, it succeeded in
its main end, for it gained time, and every year that was
gained doubled Elizabeth's strength. She made as dexter-
ous a use of the foibles of her temper. Her levity carried
her gayly over moments of detection and embarrassment
where better women would have died of shame. She
324: HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
screened her tentative and hesitating statesmanship under
the natural timidity and vacillation of her sex. She turned
her very luxury and sports to good account. There were
moments of grave danger in her reign when the country
remained indifferent to its perils, as it saw the Queen give
her days to hawking and hunting, and her nights to danc-
ing and plays. Her vanity and affectation, her womanly
fickleness and caprice, all had their part in the diplomatic
comedies she played with the successive candidates for her
hand. If political necessities made her life a lonely one,
she had at any rate the satisfaction of averting war and
conspiracies by love sonnets and romantic interviews, or
of gaining a year of tranquillity by the dexterous spinning
out of a flirtation.
As we track Elizabeth through her tortuous mazes of
lying and intrigue, the sense of her greatness is almost
lost in a sense of contempt. But wrapped as they were in
a cloud of mystery, the aims of her policy were throughout
temperate and simple, and they were pursued with a rare
tenacity. The sudden acts of energy which from time to
time broke her habitual hesitation proved that it was no
hesitation of weakness. Elizabeth could wait and finesse;
but when the hour was come she could strike, and strike
hard. Her natural temper indeed tended to a rash self-
confidence rather than to self -distrust. " I have the heart
of a King," she cried at a moment of utter peril, and it
was with a kingly unconsciousness of the dangers about
her that she fronted them for fifty years. She had, as
strong natures always have, an unbounded confidence in
her luck. "Her Majesty counts much on Fortune,"
Walsingham wrote bitterly; " I wish she would trust more
in Almighty God." The diplomatists who censured at
one moment her irresolution, her delay, her changes of
front, censure at the next her "obstinacy," her iron will,
her defiance of what seemed to them inevitable ruin. " This
woman," Philip's envoy wrote after a wasted remon-
strance, " this woman is possessed by a hundred thousand
CHAP. 8.] THE REFORMATION. 15401603. 325
devils." To her own subjects, who knew nothing of her
manoeuvres and flirtations, of her " by-ways" and " crooked
ways," she seemed the embodiment of dauntless resolution.
Brave as they were, the men who swept the Spanish Main
or glided between the icebergs of Baffin's Bay never
doubted that the palm of bravery lay with their Queen.
It was this dauntless courage which backed Elizabeth's
good luck in the Scottish war. The issue of the war
wholly changed her position at home and abroad. Not
only had she liberated herself from the control of Philip
and successfully defied the threats of the Guises, but at a
single blow she had freed England from what had been its
sorest danger for two hundred years. She had broken the
dependence of Scotland upon France. That perpetual
peace between England and the Scots which the policy of
the Tudors had steadily aimed at was at last sworn in the
Treaty of Edinburgh. If the Queen had not bound to her
all Scotland, she had bound to her the strongest and most
vigorous party among the nobles of the north. The Lords
of the Congregation promised to be obedient to Elizabeth
in all such matters as might not lead to the overthrow of
their country's rights or of Scottish liberties. They were
bound to her not only by the war but by the events that fol-
lowed the war. A Parliament at Edinburgh accepted the
Calvinistic confession of Geneva as the religion of Scotland,
abolished the temporal jurisdiction of the bishops, and
prohibited the celebration of the Mass. The Act and the
Treaty were alike presented for confirmation to Francis
and Mary. They were roughly put aside, for the French
King would give no sanction to a successful revolt, and
Mary had no mind to waive her claim to the English
throne. But from action the two sovereigns were held back
by the troubles in France. It was in vain that the Guisea
strove to restore political and religious unity by an assembly
of the French notables : the notables met only to receive a
demand for freedom of worship from the Huguenots of the
west, and to force the Government to promise a national
326 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
council for the settlement of the religious disputes as well
as a gathering of the States- General. The counsellors of
Francis resolved to anticipate this meeting by a sudden
stroke at the heretics; and as a preliminary step the chiefs
of the House of Bourbon were seized at the court and the
Prince of Conde threatened with death. The success of
this measure roused anew the wrath of the young King at
the demands of the Scots, and at the close of 1560 Francis
was again nursing plans of vengeance on the Lords of the
Congregation. But Elizabeth's good fortune still proved
true to her. The projects of the Guises were suddenly
foiled by the young King's death. The power of Mary
Stuart and her kindred came to an end, for the childhood
of Charles the Ninth gave the regency over France to the
Queen-mother, Catharine of Medicis, and the policy of
Catharine secured England and Scotland alike from
danger of attack. Her temper, like that of Elizabeth, was
a purely political temper ; her aim was to balance Catholics
against Protestants to the profit of the throne. She needed
peace abroad to preserve this political and religious balance
at home, and though she made some fruitless efforts to re-
new the old friendship with Scotland, she had no mind to
intrigue like the Guises with the English Catholics nor to
back Mary Stuart's pretensions to the English throne.
With Scotland as an ally and with France at peace
Elizabeth's throne at last seemed secure. The outbreak
of the strife between the Old Faith and the New indeed,
if it gave the Queen safety abroad, somewhat weakened
her at home. The sense of a religious change which her
caution had done so much to disguise broke slowly on
England as it saw the Queen allying herself with Scotch
Calvinists and French Huguenots; and the compromise
she had hoped to establish in matters of worship became
hourly less possible as the more earnest Catholics discerned
the Protestant drift of Elizabeth's policy. But Philip still
held them back from any open resistance. There was
much indeed to move him from his old support of the
CHAP. 3.] THE REFORMATION. 15401603. 327
Queen. The widowhood of Mary Stuart freed him from
his dread of a permanent annexation of Scotland by France
as well as of a French annexation of England, while the
need of holding England as a check on French hostility to
the House of Austria grew weaker as the outbreak of civil
war between the Guises and their opponents rendered
French hostility less possible. Elizabeth's support of the
Huguenots drove the Spanish King to a burst of passion.,
A Protestant France not only outraged his religious bigotry,
. but, as he justly feared, it would give an impulse to heresy
throughout his possessions in the Netherlands which would
make it hard to keep his hold upon them. Philip noted
that the success of the Scotch Calvinists had been followed
by the revolt of the Calvinists in France. He could hardly
doubt that the success of the French Huguenots would be
followed by a rising of the Calvinists in the Low Countries,
"Religion," he told Elizabeth angrily, "was being made a
cloak for anarchy and revolution." But vexed as Philip
was with her course both abroad and at home, he was still
far from withdrawing his support from Elizabeth. Even
now he could not look upon the Queen as lost to Catholi-
cism. He knew how her course both at home and abroad
had been forced on her not by religious enthusiasm but by
political necessity, and he still " trusted that ere long God
would give us either a general council or a good Pope who
would correct abuses and then all would go well. That
God would allow so noble and Christian a realm as Eng-
land to break away from Christendom and run the risk of
perdition he could not believe."
What was needed, Philip thought, was a change of
policy in the Papacy. The bigotry of Paul the Fourth
had driven England from the obedience of the Roman see.
The gentler policy of Pius the Fourth might yet restore
her to it. Pius was as averse from any break with Eliza-
beth as Philip was. He censured bitterly the harshnew
of his predecessor. The loss of Scotland and the threat-
ened loss of France he laid to the charge of the wars which
828 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
Paul had stirred up against Philip and which had opened
a way for the spread of Calvinism in both kingdoms.
England, he held, could have been easily preserved for
Catholicism but for Paul's rejection of the conciliatory
efforts of Pole. When he ascended the Papal throne at
the end of 1559 indeed the accession of England to the Ref-
ormation seemed complete. The royal supremacy was
re-established : the Mass abolished : the English Liturgy
restored. A new episcopate, drawn from the Calvinistic
refugees, was being gathered round Matthew Parker. But
Pius would not despair. He saw no reason why England
should not again be Catholic. He knew that the bulk of
its people clung to the older religion, if they clung also to
independence of the Papal jurisdiction and to the seculari-
zation of the Abbey-lands. The Queen, as he believed,
had been ready for a compromise at her accession, and he
was ready to make terms with her now. In the spring of
1560 therefore he dispatched Parpaglia, a follower of Pole,
to open negotiations with Elizabeth. The moment which
the Pope had chosen was a critical one for the Queen. She
was in the midst of the Scotch war, and her forces had just
been repulsed in an attempt to storm the walls of Leith.
Such a repulse woke fears of conspiracy among the Catho-
lic nobles of the northern border, and a refusal to receive
the legate would have driven them to an open rising. On
the other hand the reception of Parpaglia would have
alienated the Protestants, shaken the trusts of the Lords
of the Congregation in the Queen's support, and driven
them to make terms with Francis and Mary. In either
case Scotland fell again under the rule of France, and the
throne of Elizabeth was placed in greater peril than ever.
So great was the Queen's embarrassment that she availed
herself of Cecil's absence in the north to hold out hopes of
the legate's admission to the realm and her own reconcilia-
tion with the Papacy. But she was freed from these dif-
ficulties by the resolute intervention of Philip. If he dis-
approved of her policy in Scotland he had no mind that
CHAP. 3.] THE REFORMATION. 1540-1603. 329
Scotland should become wholly French or Elizabeth be
really shaken on her throne. He ordered the legate there-
fore to be detained in Flanders till his threats had obtained
from the Pope an order for his recall.
But Pius was far from abandoning his bishops. After
ten years' suspension he had again summoned the Council
of Trent. The cry for Church reform, the threat of na-
tional synods in Spain and in France, forced this message
on the Pope ; and Pius availed himself of the assembly of
the Council to make a fresh attempt to turn the tide of the
Reformation and to win back the Protestant Churches to
Catholicism. He called therefore on the Lutheran princes
of Germany to send doctors to the Council, and in May
1561, eight months after Parpaglia's failure, dispatched a
fresh nuncio, Martinengo, to invite Elizabeth to send
ambassadors to Trent. Philip pressed for the nuncio's
admission to the realm. His hopes of the Queen's return
to the faith were now being fed by a new marriage-nego-
tiation ; for on the withdrawal of the Archduke of Austria
in sheer weariness of Elizabeth's treachery, she had en-
couraged her old playfellow, Lord Robert Dudley, to hope
for her hand and to amuse Philip by pledges of bringing
back "the religion," should the help of the Spanish king
enable him to win it. Philip gave his help, but Dudley
remained a suitor, and the hopes of a Catholic revolution
became fainter than ever. The Queen would suffer no
landing of a legate in her realm. The invitation to the
Council fared no better. The Lutheran states of North
Germany had already refused to attend. The Council,
they held, was no longer a council of reunion. In its
earlier session it had formally condemned the very doc-
trine on which Protestantism was based ; and to join it
now would simply be to undo all that Luther had done.
Elizabeth showed as little hesitation. The hour of her
triumph, when a Calvinistic Scotland and a Calvinistic
France proved the mainstays of her policy, was no hour of
submission to the Papacy. In spite of Philip's entreaties
330 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
she refused to send envoys to what was not " a free Chris-
tian Council." The refusal was decisive in marking Eliza-
beth's position. The long period of hesitation, of drift,
was over. All chance of submission to the Papacy was at
an end. In joining the Lutheran states in their rejection
of this Council, England had definitely ranged itself on
the side of the Reformation.
.. CHAPTER IV.
ENGLAND AND MARY STUART.
15611567.
WHAT had hitherto kept the bulk of Elizabeth's subjects
from opposition to her religious system was a disbelief ID
its permanence. Englishmen had seen English religion
changed too often to believe that it would change no more.
When the Commissioners forced a Protestant ritual on St.
John's College at Oxford, its founder, Sir Thomas White,
simply took away its vestments and crucifixes, and hid
them in his house for the better times that every zealous
Catholic trusted would have their turn. They believed
that a Catholic marriage would at once bring such a turn
about; and if Elizabeth dismissed the offer of Philip's
hand she played long and assiduously with that of a son
of the Emperor, an archduke of the same Austrian house.
But the alliance with the Scotch heretics proved a rough
blow to this trust: and after the repulse at Leith there
were whispers that the two great Catholic nobles of the
border, the Earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland,
were only waiting for the failure of the Scotch enterprise
to rise on behalf of the older faith. Whatever their pro-
jects were, they were crushed by the Queen's success.
With the Lords of the Congregation masters across the
border the northern Earls lay helpless between the two
Protestant realms. In the mass of men loyalty was still
too strong for any dream of revolt ; but there was a grow-
ing uneasiness lest they should find themselves heretics
after all, which the failure of the Austrian match and the
help given to the Huguenots was fanning into active dis-
content. It was this which gave such weight to the
333 HISTORY OF THti ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI
Queen's rejection of the summons to Trent. Whatever
color she might strive to put upon it, the bulk of her sub-
jects accepted the refusal as a final break with Catholicism,
as a final close to all hope of their reunion with the Cath-
olic Church.
The Catholic disaffection which the Queen was hence-
forth to regard as her greatest danger was thus growing
into life when in August 1561, but a few months after the
Queen's refusal to acknowledge the Council, Mary Stuart
landed at Leith. Girl as she was, and she was only nine-
teen, Mary was hardly inferior in intellectual power to
Elizabeth herself, while in fire and grace and brilliancy of
temper she stood high above her. She brought with her
the voluptuous refinement of the French Renascence ; she
would lounge for days in bed, and rise only at night for
dances and music. But her frame was of iron, and in-
capable of fatigue; she galloped ninety miles after her last
defeat without a pause save to change horses. She loved
risk and adventure and the ring of arms ; as she rode in a
foray to the north the swordsmen beside her heard her
wish she was a man " to know what life it was to lie all
night in the fields, or to walk on the cawsey with a jack
and knapschalle, a Glasgow buckler and a broadsword."
But in the closet she was as cool and astute a politician as
Elizabeth herself ; with plans as subtle, and of a far wider
and bolder range than the Queen's. " Whatever policy is
in all the chief and best practised heads of France," wrote
an English envoy, " whatever craft, falsehood, and deceit
is in all the subtle brains of Scotland, is either fresh in
this woman's memory, or she can fetch it out with a wet
finger." Her beauty, her exquisite grace of manner, her
generosity of temper and warmth of affection, her frank-
ness of speech, her sensibility, her gayety, her womanly
tears, her manlike courage, the play and freedom of her
nature, the flashes of poetry that broke from her at every
intense moment of her life, flung a spell over friend or foe
which has only deepened with the lapse of years. Even
CHAP. 4.] THE REFORMATION. 1640 108. 33?
to Knollys, the sternest Puritan of his day, she seemed in
her later captivity to be " a notable woman. " " She seemeth
to regard no ceremonious honor besides the acknowledg-
ment of her estate royal. She showeth a disposition to
speak much, to be bold, to be pleasant, to be very familiar.
She showeth a great desire to be avenged on her enemies,
She showeth a readiness to expose herself to all perils in
hope of victory. She desireth much to hear of hardiness
and valiancy, commending by name all approved hardy
men of her country though they be her enemies, and she
concealeth no cowardice even in her friends."
Of the stern bigotry, the intensity of passion, which lay
beneath the winning surface of Mary's womanhood, met,
as yet knew nothing. But they at once recognized her
political ability. Till now she had proved in her own de-
spite a powerful friend to the Reformation. It was her
claim of the English crown which had seated Elizabeth on
the throne, had thrown her on the support of the Protes-
tants, and had secured to the Queen in the midst of her re-
ligious changes the protection of Philip of Spain. It was
the dread of Mary's ambition which had forced Elizabeth
to back the Lords of the Congregation, and the dread of
her husband's ambition which had driven Scotland to
throw aside its jealousy of England and ally itself with
the Queen. But with the death of Francis Mary's position
had wholly changed. She had no longer the means of
carrying out her husband's threats of crushing the Lords
of the Congregation by force of arms. The forces of
France were in the hands of Catharine of Medicis ; and
Catharine was parted from her both by her dread of the
Guises and by a personal hate. Yet the attitude of the
lords .became every day more threatening. They were
pressing Elizabeth to marry the Earl of Arran, a chief of
the house of Hamilton and near heir to the throne, a mar-
riage which pointed to the complete exclusion of Mary from
her realm. Even when this project failed, they rejected
with stern defiance the young (jueen's proposal of restoring
834 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI, j
_ i
the old religion as a condition of her return. If they in-
vited her to Scotland, it was in the name of the Parliament
which had set up Calvinism as the law of the land. Bitter
as such terms must have been Mary had no choice but to
submit to them. To accept the offer of the Catholic lords
of Northern Scotland with the Earl of Huntly at their
head, who proposed to welcome her in arms as a champion
of Catholicism, was to risk a desperate civil war, a war
which would in any case defeat a project far dearer to her
than her plans for winning Scotland, the project she was
nursing of winning the English realm. In the first months
of her widowhood therefore her whole attitude was re-
versed. She received the leader of the Protestant Lords,
her half brother, Lord James Stuart, at her court. She
showed her favor to him by creating him Earl of Murray.
She adopted his policy of accepting the religious changes
in Scotland and of bringing Elizabeth by friendly pressure
to acknowledge her right, not of reigning in her stead, but
of following her on the throne. But while thus in form
adopting Murray's policy Mary at heart was resolute to
carry out her own policy too. If she must win the Scots
by submitting to a Protestant system in Scotland, she
would rally round her the English Catholics by remaining
a Catholic herself. If she ceased to call herself Queen of
England and only pressed for her acknowledgment as
rightful successor to Elizabeth, she would not formally
abandon her claim to reign as rightful Queen in Elizabeth's
stead. Above all she would give her compliance with
Murray's counsels no legal air. No pressure either from
her brother or from Elizabeth could bring the young Queen
to give her royal confirmation to the Parliamentary Acts
which established the new religion in Scotland, or her
signature to the Treaty of Edinburgh. In spite of her
habitual caution the bold words which broke from Mary
Stuart on Elizabeth's refusal of a safe-conduct betrayed
her hopes. " I came to France in spite of her brother's
opposition," she said, "and I will return in spite of her
CHAP. 4.] THE REFORMATION. 15401608. 335
own. She has combined with rebel subjects of mine : but
there are rebel subjects in England too who would gladly
listen to a call from me. I am a Queen as well as she,
and not altogether friendless. And perhaps I have as
great a soul too !"
She saw indeed the new strength which was given her
by her husband's death. Her cause was no longer ham-
pered, either in Scotland or in England, by a national
jealousy of French interference. It was with a resolve to
break the league between Elizabeth and the Scotch Protes-
tants, to unite her own realm around her, and thus to give
a firm base for her intrigues among the English Catholics,
that Mary Stuart landed at Leith. The effect of her pres-
ence was marvellous. Her personal fascination revived
the national loyalty, and swept all Scotland to her feet.
Knox, the greatest and sternest of the Calvinistic preach-
ers, alone withstood her spell. The rough Scotch nobles
owned that there was in Mary " some enchantment whereby
men are bewitched." It was clear indeed from the first
that, loyal as Scotland might be, its loyalty would be of
little service to the Queen if she attacked the new religion.
At her entry into Edinburgh the children of the pageant
presented her with a Bible and "made some speech con-
cerning the putting away of the Mass, and thereafter sang
a psalm." It was only with difficulty that Murray won
for her the right of celebrating Mass at her court. But
for the religious difficulty Mary was prepared. While
steadily abstaining from any legal confirmation of the new
faith, and claiming for her French followers freedom of
Catholic worship, she denounced any attempt to meddle
with the form of religion she found existing in the realm.
Such a toleration was little likely to satisfy the more
fanatical among the ministers; but even Knox was con-
tent with her promise "to hear the preaching," and
brought his brethren to a conclusion, as " she might be
won," "to suffer her for a time." If the preachers indeed
maintained that the Queen's liberty of worship " should be
336 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
their thraldom," the bulk of the nation was content with
Mary's acceptance of the religious state of the realm. Nor
was it distasteful to the secular leaders of the reforming
party. The Protestant Lords preferred their imperfect
work to the more complete reformation which Knox and
his fellows called for. They had no mind to adopt the
whole Calvinistic system. They had adopted the Genevan
Confession of Faith ; but they rejected a book of discipline
which would have organized the Church on the Huguenot
model. All demands for restitution of the church property
which they were pillaging they set aside as a " fond imagi-
nation. " The new ministers remained poor and dependent,
while noble after noble was hanging an abbot to seize his
estates in forfeiture, or roasting a commendator to wring
from him a grant of abbey -lands in fee.
The attitude of the Lords favored the Queen's designs.
She was in effect bartering her toleration of their religion
in exchange for her reception in Scotland and for their
support of her claim to be named Elizabeth's successor.
With Mary's landing at Leith the position of the English
Queen had suddenly changed. Her work seemed utterly
undone. The national unity for which she was struggling
was broken. The presence of Mary woke the party of the
old faith to fresh hopes and a fresh activity, while it roused
a fresh fear and fanaticism in the party of the new. Scot-
land, where Elizabeth's influence had seemed supreme, was
struck from her hands. Not only was it no longer a sup-
port; it was again a danger. Loyalty, national pride, a
just and statesmanlike longing for union with England,
united her northern subjects round the Scottish Queen in her
claim to be recognized as Elizabeth's successor. Even Mur-
ray counted on Elizabeth's consent to this claim to bring
Mary into full harmony with his policy, and to preserve
the alliance between England and Scotland. But the ques-
tion of the succession, like the question of her marriage,
was with Elizabeth a question of life and death. Her
wedding with a Catholic or a Protestant suitor would have
CHAP. 4.] THE REFORMATION. 15401603. 337
equally the end of her system of balance and national
union, a signal for the revolt of the party which she disap-
pointed and for the triumphant dictation of the party which
she satisfied. "If a Catholic prince come here," wrote a
Spanish ambassador while pressing her marriage with an
Austrian archduke, " the first Mass he attends will be the
signal for a revolt." It was so with the question of the
succession. To name a Protestant successor from the
House of Suffolk would have driven every Catholic to in-
surrection. To name Mary was to stir Protestantism to a
rising of despair, and to leave Elizabeth at the mercy of
every fanatical assassin who wished to clear the way for a
Catholic ruler. Yet to leave both unrecognized was to
secure the hostility of both, as well as the discontent of the
people at large, who looked on the settlement of the succes-
sion as the primary need of their national life. From the
moment of Mary's landing therefore Elizabeth found her-
self thrown again on an attitude of self-defence. Every
course of direct action was closed to her. She could satisfy
neither Protestant nor Catholic, neither Scotland nor Eng-
land. Her work could only be a work of patience ; the one
possible policy was to wait, to meet dangers as they rose,
to watch for possible errors in her rival's course, above all
by diplomacy, by finesse, by equivocation, by delay, to
gain time till the dark sky cleared.
Nothing better proves Elizabeth's political ability than
the patience, the tenacity, with which for the six years
that followed she played this waiting game. She played
it utterly alone. Even Cecil at moments of peril called
for a policy of action. But his counsels never moved the
Queen. Her restless ingenuity vibrated ceaselessly, like
the needle of a compass, from one point to another, now
stirring hopes in Catholic, now in Protestant, now quiver-
ing toward Mary's friendship, then as suddenly trembling
off to incur her hate. But tremble and vibrate as it might,
Elizabeth's purpose returned ever to the same unchanging
point. It was in vain that Mary made a show of friend-
338 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
ship, and negotiated for a meeting at York, where the
question of the succession might be settled. It was in
vain that to prove her lack of Catholic fanaticism she even
backed Murray in crushing the Earl of Huntly, the fore-
most of her Catholic nobles, or that she held out hopes to
the English envoy of her conformity to the faith of the
Church of England. It was to no purpose that, to meet
the Queen's dread of her marriage with a Catholic prince
when her succession was once acknowledged, a marriage
which would in such a case have shaken Elizabeth on her
throne, Mary listened even to a proposal for a match with
Lord Leicester, and that Murray supported such a step, if
Elizabeth would recognize Mary as her heir. Elizabeth
promised that she would do nothing to impair Mary's
rights ; but she would do nothing to own them. " I am
not so foolish," she replied with bitter irony to Mary's en-
treaties, " I am not so foolish as to hang a winding-sheet
before my eyes." That such a refusal was wise time was
to show. But even then it is probable that Mary's in-
trigues were not wholly hidden from the English Queen.
Elizabeth's lying paled indeed before the cool duplicity
of this girl of nineteen. While she was befriending Prot-
estantism in her realm, and holding out hopes of her
mounting the English throne as a Protestant Queen,
Mary Stuart was pledging herself to the Pope to restore
Catholicism on either side the border, and pressing Philip
to aid her in this holy work by giving her the hand of his
son Don Carlos. It was with this design that she was
fooling the Scotch Lords and deceiving Murray : it was
with this end that she strove in vain to fool Elizabeth and
Knox.
But pierce through the web of lying as she might, the
pressure on the English Queen became greater every day.
What had given Elizabeth security was the adhesion of
the Scotch Protestants and the growing strength of the
Huguenots in France. But the firm government of Mur-
ray and her own steady abstinence from any meddling
CHAP. 4.] THE REFORMATION. 15401603. 339
with the national religion was giving Mary a hold upon
Scotland which drew Protestant after Protestant to her
side; while the tide of French Calvinism was suddenly
rolled back by the rise of a Catholic party under the lead-
ership of the Guises. Under Catharine of Medicis France
had seemed to be slowly drifting to the side of Protestant-
ism. While the Queen-mother strove to preserve a relig-
ious truce the attitude of the Huguenots was that of men
sure of success. Their head, the King of Navarre, boasted
that before the year was out he would have the Gospel
preached throughout the realm, and his confidence seemed
justified by the rapid advance of the new opinions. They
were popular among the merchant class. The noblesse
was fast becoming Huguenot. At the court itself the
nobles feasted ostentatiously on the fast days of the Church
and flocked to the Protestant preachings. The clergy
themselves seemed shaken. Bishops openly abjured the
older faith. Coligni's brother, the Cardinal of Chatillon,
celebrated the communion instead of mass in his own epis-
copal church at Beauvais, and married a wife. So irre-
sistible was the movement that Catharine saw no way of
preserving France to Catholicism but by the largest con-
cessions; and in the summer of 1561 she called on the Pope
to allow the removal of images, the administration of the
sacrament in both kinds, and the abolition of private
masses. Her demands were outstripped by those of an
assembly of deputies from the states which met at Pon-
tofee. These called for the confiscation of Church prop-
erty, for freedom of conscience and of worship, and above
all for a national Council in which every question should
be decided by " the Word of God." France seemed on the
verge of becoming Protestant; and at a moment when
Protestantism had won England and Scotland, and ap-
peared to be fast winning southern as well as northern
Germany, the accession of France would have determined
the triumph of the Reformation. The importance of its
attitude was seen in its effect on the Papacy. It was the
340 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
call of France for a national Council that drove Rome once
more to summon the Council of Trent. It was seen too in
the policy of Mary Stuart. With France tending to Cal-
vinism it was no time for meddling with the Calvinism of
Scotland; and Mary rivalled Catharine herself in her
pledges of toleration. It was seen above all in the anxiety
of Philip of Spain. To preserve the Netherlands was still
the main aim of Philip's policy, and with France as well
as England Protestant, a revolt of the Netherlands against
the cruelties of the Inquisition became inevitable. By
appeals therefore to religious passion, by direct pledges of
aid, the Spanish King strove to rally the party of the
Guises against the system of Catharine.
But Philip's intrigues were hardly needed to rouse the
French Catholics to arms. If the Guises had withdrawn
from court it was only to organize resistance to the Hugue-
nots. They were aided by the violence of their opponents.
The Huguenot lords believed themselves irresistible ; they
boasted that the churches numbered more than three hun-
dred thousand men fit to bear arms. But the mass of the
nation was hardly touched by the new Gospel; and the
Guises stirred busily the fanaticism of the poor. The
failure of a conference between the advocates of either
faith was the signal for a civil war in the south. Catha-
rine strove in vain to allay the strife at the opening of 1562
by an edict of pacification ; Guise struck his counter-blow
by massacring a Protestant congregation at Vassy, by en-
tering Paris with two thousand men, and by seizing the
Regent and the King. Conde and Coligni at once took up
arms ; and the fanaticism of the Huguenots broke out in a
terrible work of destruction which rivalled that of the
Scots. All Western France, half Southern France, the
provinces along the Loire and the Rhone, rose for the
Gospel. Only Paris and the north of France held firmly
to Catholicism. But the plans of the Guises had been
ably laid. The Huguenots found themselves girt in by a
ring of foes. Philip sent a body of Spaniards into Gas-
CHAP. 4.] THE REFORMATION. 15401603. 341
cony, Italians and Piedmontese in the pay of the Pope and
the Duke of Savoy marched upon the Rhone. Seven
thousand German mercenaries appeared in the camp of
the Guises. Panic ran through the Huguenot forces;
they broke up as rapidly as they had gathered ; and resist-
ance was soon only to be found in Normandy and in tha
mountains of the Cevennes.
Conde appealed for aid to the German princes and to
England : and grudge as she might the danger and cost of
such a struggle, Elizabeth saw that her aid must be given,
She knew that the battle with her opponent had to be
fought abroad rather than at home. The Guises were
Mary's uncles; and their triumph meant trouble in Scot-
land and worse trouble in England. In September there-
fore she concluded a treaty with the Huguenots at Hamp-
ton Court, and promised to supply them with six thousand
men and a hundred thousand crowns. The bargain she
drove was a hard one. She knew that the French had no
purpose of fulfilling their pledge to restore Calais, and she
exacted the surrender of Havre into her hands as a security
for its restoration. Her aid came almost too late. The
Guises saw the need of securing Normandy if English in-
tervention was to be hindered, and a vigorous attack
brought about the submission of the province. But the
Huguenots were now reinforced by troops from the German
princes; and at the close of 1562 the two armies met on
the field of Dreux. The strife had already widened into
a general war of religion. It was the fight, not of French
factions, but of Protestantism and Catholicism, that was
to be fought out on the fields of France. The two warring
elements of Protestantism were represented in the Hugue-
not camp where German Lutherans stood side by side with
the French Calvinists. On the other hand the French
Catholics were backed by soldiers from the Catholic can-
tons of Switzerland, from the Catholic states of Germany,
from Catholic Italy, and from Catholic Spain. The en-
counter was a desperate one, but it ended in a virtual
342 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Boos VI.
triumph for the Guises. While the German troops of
Coligni clung to the Norman coast in the hope of sub-
sidies from Elizabeth, the Duke of Guise was able to
march at the opening of 1563 on the Loire, and form the
siege of Orleans.
In Scotland Mary Stuart was watching her uncle's pro-
gress with ever-growing hope. The policy of Murray had
failed in the end to which she mainly looked. Her accept-
ance of the new religion, her submission to the Lords of
the Congregation, had secured her a welcome in Scotland
and gathered the Scotch people round her standard. But
it had done nothing for her on the other side of the border.
Two years had gone by, and any recognition of her right
of succession to the English crown seemed as far off as
ever. But Murray's policy was far from being Mary's
only resource. She had never surrendered herself in more
than outer show to her brother's schemes. In heart she
had never ceased to be a bigoted Catholic, resolute for the
suppression of Protestantism as soon as her toleration of it
had given her strength enough for the work. It was this
that made the strife between the two Queens of such ter-
rible moment for English freedom. Elizabeth was fight-
ing for more than personal ends. She was fighting for
more than her own occupation of the English throne.
Consciously or unconsciously she was struggling to avert
from England the rule of a Queen who would have undone
the whole religious work of the past half-century, who
would have swept England back into the tide of Catholi-
cism, and who in doing this would have blighted and crip-
pled its national energies at the very moment of their
mightiest development. It was the presence of such a
danger that sharpened the eyes of Protestants on both sides
the border. However she might tolerate the reformed re-
ligion or hold out hopes of her compliance with a reformed
worship, no earnest Protestant either in England or in
Scotland could bring himself to see other than an enemy
in the Scottish Queen. Within a few months of her ar-
CHAP. 4.] THE REFORMATION. 15401608. 343
rival the cool eye of Knox had pierced through the veil of
Mary's dissimulation. " The Queen," he wrote to Cecil,
" neither is nor shall be of our opinion. " Her steady re-
fusal to ratify the Treaty of Edinburgh or to confirm the
statutes on which the Protestantism of Scotland rested was
of far.greater significance than her support of Murray or
her honeyed messages to Elizabeth. While the young
Queen looked coolly on at the ruin of the Catholic house
of Huntly, at the persecution of Catholic recusants, at so
strict an enforcement of the new worship that " none within
the realm durst more avow the hearing or saying of Mass
than the thieves of Liddesdale durst avow their stealth in
presence of an upright judge," she was in secret corre-
spondence with the Guises and the Pope. Her eye was
fixed upon France. While Catharine of Medicis was all
powerful, while her edict secured toleration for the Hugue-
nots on one side of the sea, Mary knew that it was impos-
sible to refuse toleration on the other. But with the first
movement of the Duke of Guise fiercer hopes revived.
Knox was " assured that the Queen danced till after mid-
night because that she had received letters that persecu-
tion was begun in France, and that her uncles were be-
ginning to stir their tail, and to trouble the whole realm
of France." Whether she gave such open proof of her joy
or no, Mary woke to a new energy at the news of Guise's
success. She wrote to Pope Pius to express her regret that
the heresy of her realm prevented her sending envoys to
the Council of Trent. She assured the Cardinal of Lor-
raine that she would restore Catholicism in her dominions,
even at the peril of her life. She pressed on Philip of
Spain a proposal for her marriage with his son, Don Car-
los, as a match which would make her strong enough to
restore Scotland to the Church.
The echo of the French conflict was felt in England as
in the north. The English Protestants saw in it the ap
proach of a struggle for life and death at home. The
English Queen saw in it a danger to her throne. So great
344 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
was Elizabeth's terror at the victory of Dreux that she re-
solved to open her purse-strings and to hire fresh troops
for the Huguenots in Germany. But her dangers grew at
home as abroad. The victory of Guise dealt the first heavy
blow at her system of religious conformity. Rome had
abandoned its dreams of conciliation on her refusal* to own
the Council of Trent, and though Philip's entreaties
brought Pius to suspend the issue of a Bull of Deposition,
the Papacy opened the struggle by issuing in August 1562
a brief which pronounced joining in the Common Prayer
schismatic and forbade the attendance of Catholics at
church. On no point was Elizabeth so sensitive, for on
no point had her policy seemed so successful. Till now,
whatever might be their fidelity to the older faith, few
Englishmen had carried their opposition to the Queen's
changes so far as to withdraw from religious communion
with those who submitted to them. But with the issue of
the brief this unbroken conformity came to an end. A
few of the hotter Catholics withdrew from church. Heavy
fines were laid on them as recusants ; fines which, as their
numbers increased, became a valuable source of supply for
the royal exchequer. But no fines could compensate for
the moral blow which their withdrawal dealt. It was the
beginning of a struggle which Elizabeth had averted
through three memorable years. Protestant fanaticism
met Catholic fanaticism, and as news of the massacre at
Vassy spread through England the Protestant preachers
called for the death of "Papists." The tidings of Dreux
spread panic through the realm. The Parliament which
met again in January 1563 showed its terror by measures
of a new severity. There had been enough of words, cried
one of the Queen's ministers, Sir Francis Knollys, " it was
time to draw the sword."
The sword was drawn in the first of a series of penal
statutes which weighed upon English Catholics for two
hundred years. By this statute an oath of allegiance to
the Queen and of abjuration of the temporal authority of
CHAP. 4.] THE REFORMATION. 15401603. 345
the Pope was exacted from all holders of office, lay or
spiritual, within the realm, with the exception of peers.
Its effect was to place the whole power of the realm in the
hands either of Protestants or of Catholics who accepted
Elizabeth's legitimacy and her ecclesiastical jurisdiction
in the teeth of the Papacy. The oath of supremacy was
already exacted from every clergyman and every member
of the universities. But the obligation of taking it was
now widely extended. Every member of the House of
Commons, every officer in the army or the fleet, every
schoolmaster and private tutor, every justice of the peace,
every municipal magistrate, to whom the oath was tendered,
was pledged from this moment to resist the blows which
Rome was threatening to deal. Extreme caution indeed
was used in applying this test to the laity, but pressure
was more roughly put on the clergy. A great part of the
parish priests, though they had submitted to the use of the
Prayer-book, had absented themselves when called on to
take the oath prescribed by the Act of Uniformity, and were
known to be Catholics in heart. As yet Elizabeth had
cautiously refused to allow any strict inquiry into their
opinions. But a commission was now opened by her
order at Lambeth, to enforce the Act of Uniformity in
public worship ; while thirty-nine of the Articles of Faith
drawn up under Edward the Sixth, which had till now
been left in suspense by her Government, were adopted in
Convocation as a standard of faith, and acceptance of them
demanded from all the clergy.
With the Test Act and the establishment of the High
Commission the system which the Queen had till now
pursued in great measure ceased. Elizabeth had " drawn
the sword." It is possible she might still have clung to
her older policy had she foreseen how suddenly the danger
which appalled her was to pass away. At this crisis, as
ever, she was able to "count on Fortune." The Test Act
was hardly passed when in February 1563 the Duke of
Guise was assassinated by a Protestant zealot, and with
346 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
his murder the whole face of affairs was changed. The
Catholic army was paralyzed by its leader's loss, while
Coligni, who was now strengthened with money and
forces from England, became master of Normandy. The
war however came quietly to an end; for Catharine of
Medicis regained her power on the Duke's death, and her
aim was still an aim of peace. A treaty with the Hugue-
nots was concluded in March, and a new edict of Amboise
restored the truce of religion. Elizabeth's luck indeed was
checkered by a merited humiliation. Now that peace
was restored Huguenot and Catholic united to demand
the surrender of Tours ; and an outbreak of plague among
its garrison compelled the town to capitulate. The new
strife in which England thus found itself involved with
the whole realm of France moved fresh hopes in Mary
Stuart. Mary had anxiously watched her uncle's progress,
for his success would have given her the aid of a Catholic
France in her projects on either side of the border. But
even his defeat failed utterly to dishearten her. The war
between the two Queens which followed it might well
force Catharine of Medicis to seek Scottish aid against
England, and the Scottish Queen would thus have secured
that alliance with a great power which the English Cath-
olics demanded before they would rise at her call. At
home troubles were gathering fast around her. Veil her
hopes as she might, the anxiety with which she had fol-
lowed the struggle of her kindred had not been lost on the
Protestant leaders, and it is probable that Knox at any
rate had learned something of her secret correspondence
with the Pope and the Guises. The Scotch Calvinists
were stirred by the peril of their brethren in France, and
the zeal of the preachers was roused by a revival of the old
worship in Clydesdale and by the neglect of the Govern-
ment to suppress it. In the opening of 1563 they resolved
" to put to their own hands," and without further plaint to
Queen or Council to carry out " the punishment that God
had appointed to idolaters in his law." In Mary's eyes
CHAP. 4.] THE REFORMATION. 15401602. 347
such a resolve was rebellion. But her remonstrances only
drew a more formal doctrine of resistance from Knox.
"The sword of justice, madam, is God's," said the stern
preacher, " and is given to princes and rulers for an end ;
which, if they transgress, they that in the fear of God ex-
ecute judgments when God has commanded offend not
God. Neither yet sin they that bridle kings who strike
innocent men in their rage." The Queen was forced to
look on while nearly fifty Catholics, some of them high
ecclesiastics, were indicted and sent to prison for cele-
brating mass in Paisley and Ayrshire.
The zeal of the preachers was only heightened by the
coolness of the Lords. A Scotch Parliament which as-
sembled in the summer of 1563 contented itself with secur-
ing the spoilers in their possession of the Church lands,
but left the Acts passed in 1560 for the establishment of
Protestantism unconfirmed as before. Such a silence
Knox regarded as treason to the faith. He ceased to
have any further intercourse with Murray, and addressed
a burning appeal to the Lords, "Will ye betray God's
cause when ye have it in your hands to establish it as ye
please? The Queen, ye say, will not agree with you. Ask
ye of her that which by God's word ye may justly require,
and if she will not agree with ye in God, ye are not bound
to agree with her in the devil !" The inaction of the nobles
proved the strength which Mary drew from the attitude of
France. So long as France and England were at war, so
long as a French force might at any moment be dispatched
to Mary's aid, it was impossible for them to put pressure
on the Queen; and bold as was the action of the preachers
the Queen only waited her opportunity for dealing them a
fatal blow . But whatever hopes Mary may have founded on
the strife, they were soon brought to an end. Catharine
used her triumph only to carry out her system of balance,
and to resist the joint remonstrance of the Pope, the Em-
peror, and the King of Spain against her edict of tolera-
tion. The policy of Elizabeth, on the other hand, was too
348 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VL
much identified with Catharine's success to leave room
for further hostilities ; and a treaty of peace between the
two countries was concluded in the spring of 1564.
The peace with France marked a crisis in the struggle
between the rival Queens. It left Elizabeth secure against
a Catholic rising and free to meet the pressure from the
north. But it dashed the last hopes of Mary Stuart to the
ground. The policy which she had pursued from her
landing in Scotland had proved a failure in the end at
which it aimed. Her religious toleration, her patience,
her fair speeches, had failed to win from Elizabeth a
promise of the succession. And meanwhile the Calvinism
she hated was growing bolder and bolder about her. The
strife of religion in France had woke a fiercer bigotry in
the Scotch preachers. Knox had discovered her plans of
reaction, had publicly denounced her designs of a Catholic
marriage, and had met her angry tears, her threats of
vengeance, with a cool defiance. All that Murray's policy
seemed to have really done was to estrange from her the
English Catholics. Already alienated from Mary by her
connection with France, which they still regarded as a
half -heretic power, and by the hostility of Philip, in whom
they trusted as a pure Catholic, the adherents of the older
faith could hardly believe in the Queen's fidelity to their
religion when they saw her abandoning Scotland to heresy
and holding out hopes of her acceptance of the Anglican
creed. Her presence had roused them to a new energy,
and they were drifting more and more as the strife waxed
warmer abroad to dreams of forcing on Elizabeth a Cath-
olic successor. But as yet their hopes turned not so much
to Mary Stuart as to the youth who stood next to the Scot-
tish Queen in the line of blood. Henry Stuart, Lord Darn-
ley, was a son of the Countess of Lennox, Margaret
Douglas, a daughter of Margaret Tudor by her second
marriage with.the Earl of Angus. Lady Lennox was the
successor whom Mary Tudor would willingly have chosen
in her sister's stead, had Philip and the Parliament suf-
CHAP. 4.] THE REFORMATION. 15401603. 349
fered her; and from the moment of Elizabeth's accession
the Countess had schemed to drive her from the throne.
She offered Philip to fly with her boy to the Low Countries
and to serve as a pretender in his hands. She intrigued
with the partisans of the old religion. Though the house of
Lennox conformed to the new system of English worship,
its sympathies were known to be Catholic, and the hopes
of the Catholics wrapped themselves round its heir.
"Should any disaster befall the Queen," wrote a Spanish
ambassador in 1560, "the Catholics would choose Lord
Darnley for King." " Not only," he adds in a later letter,
" would all sides agree to choose him were the Queen to
die, but the Catholic Lords, if opportunity offer, may de-
clare for him at once."
His strongest rival was Mary Stuart, and before Mary
landed in Scotland Lady Lennox planned the union of both
their claims by the marriage of her son with the Scottish
Queen. A few days after her landing Mary received a
formal offer of his hand. Hopes of yet greater matches,
of a marriage with Philip's son, Don Carlos, or with the
young French King, Charles the Ninth, had long held the
scheme at bay ; but as these and her policy of conciliation
proved alike fruitless Mary turned to the Lennoxes. The
marriage was probably planned by David Rizzio, a young
Piedmontese who had won the Scotch Queen's favor, and
through whom she conducted the intrigues, both in Eng-
land and abroad, by which she purposed to free herself
from Murray's power and to threaten Elizabeth. Her
diplomacy was winning Philip to her cause. The Spanish
King had as yet looked upon Mary's system of toleration
and on her hopes from France with equal suspicion. But
he now drew slowly to her side. Pressed hard in the
Mediterranean by the Turks, he was harassed more than
ever by the growing discontent of the Netherlands, where
the triumph of Protestantism in England and Scotland
and the power of the Huguenots in France gave fresh
vigor to the growth of Calvinism, and where the nobles
350 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
were stirred to new outbreaks against the foreign rule of
Spain by the success of the Scottish Lords in their rising
and by the terms of semi-independence which the French
nobles wrested from the Queen. It was to hold the
Netherlands in check that Philip longed for Mary's suc-
cess. Her triumph over Murray and his confederates
would vindicate the cause of monarchy ; her triumph over '
Calvinism would vindicate that of Catholicism both in her
own realm and in the realm which she hoped to win. He
sent her therefore assurances of his support, and assur-
ances as strong reached her from the Vatican. The dis-
pensation which was secretly obtained for her marriage
with Darnley was granted on the pledge of both to do
their utmost for ihe restoration of the old religion.
Secret as was the pledge, the mere whisper of the match
revealed their danger to the Scotch Protestants. The
Lords of the Congregation woke with a start from their
confidence in the Queen. Murray saw that the policy to
which he had held his sister since her arrival in the realm
was now to be abandoned. Mary was no longer to be the
Catholic ruler of a Protestant country, seeking peaceful ac-
knowledgment of her right of succession to Elizabeth's
throne ; she had placed herself at the head of the English
Catholics, and such a position at once threatened the safety
of Protestantism in Scotland itself. If once Elizabeth
were overthrown by a Catholic rising, and a Catholic
policy established in England, Scotch Protestantism was
at an end. At the first rumor of the match therefore
Murray drew Argyle and the Hamiltons round him in a
band of self-defence, and refused his signature to a paper
recommending Darnley as husband to the Queen. But
Mary's diplomacy detached from him lord after lord, till
his only hope lay in the opposition of Elizabeth. The
marriage with Darnley was undoubtedly a danger even
more formidable to England than to Scotland. It put an
end to the dissensions which had till now broken the
strength of the English Catholics. It rallied them round
CHAP. 4.] THE REFORMATION. 15401603. 351
Mary and Darnley as successors to the throne. It gathered
to their cause the far greater mass of cautious conserva-
tives who had been detached from Mary by her foreign
blood and by dread of her kinship with the Guises. Darn-
ley was reckoned an Englishman, and with an English
husband to sway her policy Mary herself seemed to be-
come an Englishwoman. But it was in vain that the
Council pronounced the marriage a danger to the realm,
that Elizabeth threatened Mary with war, or that she
plotted with Murray for the seizure of Mary and the driv-
ing Darnley back over the border. Threat and plot were
too late to avert the union, and at the close of July, 1565,
Darnley was married to Mary Stuart and proclaimed King
of Scotland. Murray at once called the Lords of the Con-
gregation to arms. But the most powerful and active
stood aloof. As heir of the line of Angus, Darnley was
by blood the head of the house of Douglas, and Protestants
as they were, the Douglases rallied to their kinsman.
Their actual chieftain, the Earl of Morton, stood next to
Murray himself in his power over the Congregation ; he
was chancellor of the realm ; and his strength as a great
noble was backed by a dark and unscrupulous ability. By
waiving their claim to the earldom of Angus and the lands
which he held, the Lennoxes won Morton to his kinsman's
cause, and the Earl was followed in his course by two of
the sternest and most active among the Protestant Lords,
Darnley's uncle, Lord Kuthven, and Lord Lindesay, who
had married a Douglas. Their desertion broke Murray's
strength ; and his rising was hardly declared when Mary
marched on his little force with pistols in her belt, and
drove its leaders over the border.
The work which Elizabeth had done in Scotland had
been undone in . an hour. Murray was a fugitive. The
Lords of the Congregation were broken or dispersed. The
English party was ruined. And while Scotland was lost
it seemed as if the triumph of Mary was a signal for the
general revival of Catholicism. The influence of the
352 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PfiOPLE. [BOOK VL
Guises had again become strong in Franee, and though
Catherine of Medici held firmly to her policy of tolera-
tion, an interview which she held with Alva at Bayonne
led every Protestant to believe in the conclusion of a league
between France and Spain for a common war on Protestant-
ism. To this league the English statesmen held that Mary
Stuart had become a party, and her pressure upon Eliza-
beth was backed by the suspicion that the two great mon-
archies had pledged her their support. No such league
existed, nor had such a pledge been given, but the dread
served Mary's purpose as well as the reality could have
done. Girt in, as she believed, with foes, Elizabeth took
refuge in the meanest dissimulation, while Mary Stuart
imperiously demanded a recognition of her succession as
the price of peace. But her aims went far beyond this
demand. She found herself greeted at Rome as the
champion of the Faith. Pius the Fifth, who mounted the
Papal throne at the moment of her success, seized on the
young Queen to strike the first blow in the crusade against
Protestantism on which he was set. He promised her
troops and money. He would support her, he said, so
long as he had a single chalice to sell. " With the help of
God and your Holiness," Mary wrote back, "I will leap
over the wall." In England itself the marriage and her
new attitude rallied every Catholic to Mary's standard;
and the announcement of her pregnancy which followed
gave her a strength that swept aside Philip's counsels of
caution and delay. The daring advice of Rizzio fell in
with her natural temper. She resolved to restore Cathol-
icism in Scotland. Yield as she might to Murray's
pressure, she had dextrously refrained from giving legal
confirmation to the resolutions of the Parliament by which
Calvinism had been set up in Scotland ; and in the Parlia-
ment which she summoned for the coming spring she
trusted to do " some good anent restoring the old religion."
The appearance of the Catholic lords, the Earls of Huntly,
Athol, and Both well, at Mary's court showed her purpose
CHAP. 4.] THE REFORMATION. 15401608. 353
to attempt this religious revolution. Nor were her polit-
ical schemes less resolute. She was determined to wring
from the coming Parliament a confirmation of the banish-
ment of the lords who had fled with Murray which would
free her forever from the pressure of the Protestant nobles.
Mistress of her kingdom, politically as well as religiously,
Mary could put a pressure on Elizabeth which might win
for her more than an acknowledgment of her right to the
succession. She still clung to her hopes of the crown ; and
she knew that the Catholics of Northumberland and York-
shire were ready to revolt as soon as she was ready to aid
them.
No such danger had ever threatened Elizabeth as this.
But again she could " trust to fortune. " Mary had staked
all on her union with Darnley, and yet only a few months
had passed since her wedding-day when men saw that she
" hated the King. " The boy turned out a dissolute, insolent
husband; and Mary's scornful refusal of his claim of the
"crown matrimonial," which would have given him an
equal share of the royal power with herself, widened the
breach between them. Darnley attributed this refusal to
Rizzio's counsels; and his father, Lord Lennox, joined
with him in plotting vengeance against the minister.
They sought aid from the very party whom Darnley's
marriage had been planned to crush. Though the strength
of the Protestant nobles had been broken by the flight of
Murray, the Douglases remained at the court. Morton had
no purpose of lending himself to the ruin of the religion he
professed, and Ruthven and Lindesay were roused to action
when they saw themselves threatened with a restoration of
Catholicism, and with a legal banishment of Murray and
his companions in the coming Parliament, which could
only serve as a prelude to their own ruin. Rizzio was the
author of this policy; and when Darnley called on his
kinsmen to aid him in attacking Rizzio, the Douglases
grasped at his proposal. Their aid and their promise of
the crown matrimonial was bought by Darnley's consent
354 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Boos VI.
to the recall of the fugitive lords and of Murray. The plot
of the Douglases was so jealously hidden that no whisper
of it reached the Queen. Her plans were on the brink of
success. The Catholic nobles were ready for action at her
court. Huntly and Bothwell were called into the Privy
Council. At the opening of March, 1566, the Parliament
which was to carry out her projects was to assemble ; and
the Queen prepared for her decisive stroke by naming men
whom she could trust as Lords of the Articles a body
with whom lay the proposal of measures to the Houses
and by restoring the bishops to their old places among the
peers. But at the moment when Mary revealed the extent
of her schemes by her dismissal of the English ambassador,
the young King, followed by Lord Ruthven, burst into her
chamber, dragged Rizzio from her presence, and stabbed
him in an outer chamber, while Morton and Lord Lindesay
with their followers seized the palace gate. Mary found
herself a prisoner in the hands of her husband and his con-
federates. Her plans were wrecked in an hour. A procla-
mation of the King dissolved the Parliament which she
had called for the ruin of her foes; and Murray, who was
on his way back from England when the deed was done,
was received at Court and restored to his old post at the
Council-board .
Terrible as the blow had been, it roused the more ter-
rible energies which lay hid beneath the graceful bearing
of the Queen. The darker features of her character were
now to develop themselves. With an inflexible will she
turned to build up again the policy which seemed shattered
in Rizzio's murder. Her passionate resentment bent to the
demands of her ambition. "No more tears," she said
when they brought her news of Rizzio's murder; "I will
think upon revenge." But even revenge was not suffered
to interfere with her political schemes. Keen as was
Mary's thirst for vengeance on him, Darnley was needful
to the triumph of her aims, and her first effort was to win
him back. He was already grudging at the supremacy of
CHAP. 4.] THE REFORMATION. 15401603. 355
the nobles and his virtual exclusion from power, when
Mary masking her hatred beneath a show of affection suc-
ceeded in severing the wretched boy from his fellow-con-
spirators, and in gaining his help in an escape to Dunbar.
Once free, a force of eight thousand men under the Earl
of Bothwell quickly gathered round her, and with these
troops she marched in triumph on Edinburgh. An offer
of pardon to all save those concerned in Rizzio's murder
broke up the force of the Lords ; Glencairn and Argyle
joined the Queen, while Morton, Ruthven, and Lindesay
fled in terror over the border. But Mary had learned by a
terrible lesson the need of dissimulation. She made no
show of renewing her Catholic policy. On the contrary,
she affected to resume the system which she had pursued
from the opening of her reign, and suffered Murray to re-
main at the court. Rizzio's death had in fact strengthened
her position. With him passed away the dread of a Cath-
olic reaction. Mary's toleration, her pledges of extending
an equal indulgence to Protestantism in England, should
she mount its throne, her marriage to one who was looked
upon as an English noble, above all the hope of realizing
through her succession the dream of a union of the realms,
again told on the wavering body of more Conservative
statesmen, like Norfolk, and even drew to her side some of
the steadier Protestants who despaired of a Protestant suc-
cession. Even Elizabeth at last seemed wavering toward
a recognition of her as her successor. But Mary aimed at
more than the succession. Her intrigues with the English
Catholics were never interrupted. Her seeming reconcilia-
tion with the young King preserved that union of the whole
Catholic body which her marriage had brought about and
which the strife over Rizzio threatened with ruin. Her
court was full of refugees from the northern counties.
"Your actions," Elizabeth wrote in a sudden break of
fierce candor, " are as full of venom as your words are of
honey." Fierce words however did nothing to break the
clouds that gathered thicker and thicker round England :
356 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
and in June the birth of a boy, the future James the Sixth
of Scotland and First of England, doubled Mary's strength.
Elizabeth felt bitterly the blow. "The Queen of Scots,"
she cried, "has a fair son, and I am but a barren stock."
The birth of James in fact seemed to settle the long strug-
gle in Mary's favor. The moderate Conservatives joined
the ranks of her adherents. The Catholics were wild with
hope. "Your friends are so increased," her ambassador,
Melville, wrote to her from England, " that many whole
shires are ready to rebel, and their captains named by
election of the nobility." On the other hand, the Protes-
tants were filled with despair. It seemed as if no effort
could avert the rule of England by a Catholic Queen.
It was at this moment of peril that the English Parlia-
ment was again called together. Its action showed more
than the natural anxiety of the time ; it showed the growth
of those national forces which far more than the schemes
of Mary or the counter-schemes of Elizabeth were to de-
termine the future of England. While the two queens
were heaping intrigue on intrigue, while abroad and at
home every statesman held firmly that national welfare or
national misery hung on the fortune of the one or the suc-
cess of the other, the English people itself was steadily
moving forward to a new spiritual enlightenment and a
new political liberty. ' The intellectual and religious im-
pulses of the age were already combining with the influ-
ence of its growing wealth to revive a spirit of indepen-
dence in the nation at large. It was impossible for Eliza-
beth to understand this spirit, but her wonderful tact
enabled her from the first to feel the strength of it. Long
before any open conflict arose between the people and the
Crown we see her instinctive perception of the changes
which were going on around her in the modifications,
conscious or unconscious, which she introduced into the
system of the monarchy. Of its usurpations upon English
liberty she abandoned none. But she curtailed and softened
down almost all. She tampered, as her predecessors had
CHAP. 4.] THE REFORMATION. 15401603. 357
tampered, with personal freedom; there was the same
straining of statutes and coercion of juries in political
trials as before, and an arbitrary power of imprisonment
was still exercised by the Council. The duties she imposed
on cloth and sweet wines were an assertion of her right of
arbitrary taxation. Proclamations in Council constantly
assumed the force of law. But, boldly as it was asserted,
the royal power was practically wielded with a caution and
moderation that showed the sense of a growing difficulty
in the full exercise of it. The ordinary course of justice
was left undisturbed. The jurisdiction of the Council was
asserted almost exclusively over the Catholics; and de-
fended in their case as a precaution against pressing dan-
gers. The proclamations issued were temporary in char-
acter and of small importance. The two duties imposed
were so slight as to pass almost unnoticed in the general
satisfaction at Elizabeth's abstinence from internal taxa-
tion. She abandoned the benevolences and forced loans
which had brought home the sense of tyranny to the sub-
jects of her predecessors. She treated the Privy Seals,
which on emergencies she issued for advances to her Ex-
chequer, simply as anticipations of her revenue (like our
own Exchequer Bills), and punctually repaid them. The
monopolies with which she fettered trade proved a more
serious grievance ; but during her earlier reign they were
looked on as a part of the system of Merchant Associations,
which were at that time regarded as necessary for the
regulation and protection of the growing commerce.
The political development of the nation is seen still more
in the advance of the Parliament during Elizabeth's reign.
The Queen's thrift enabled her in ordinary times of poace
to defray the current expenses of the Crown from its ordi-
nary revenues. But her thrift was dictated not so much
by economy as by a desire to avoid summoning fresh
Parliaments. We have seen how boldly the genius of
Thomas Cromwell set aside on this point the tradition of
the New Monarchy. His confidence in the power of the
358 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
Crown revived the Parliament as an easy and manageable
instrument of tyranny. The old forms of constitutional
freedom were turned to the profit of the royal despotism,
and a revolution which for the moment left England ab-
solutely at Henry's feet was wrought out by a series of
parliamentary statutes. Throughout Henry's reign Crom-
well's confidence was justified by the spirit of slavish sub-
mission which pervaded the Houses. But the effect of the
religious change for which his measures made room began
to be felt during the minority of Edward the Sixth ; and
the debates and divisions on the religious reaction which
Mary pressed on the Parliament were many and violent.
A great step forward was marked by the effort of the
Crown to neutralize by "management" an opposition
which it could no longer overawe. Not only was the Par-
liament packed with nominees of the Crown but new con-
stituencies were created whose members would follow
implicitly its will. For this purpose twenty-two new
boroughs were created under Edward, fourteen under
Mary; some, indeed, places entitled to representation by
their wealth and population, but the bulk of them small
towns or hamlets which lay wholly at the disposal of the
Koyal Council.
Elizabeth adopted the system of her two predecessors
both in the creation of boroughs and the recommendation
of candidates ; but her keen political instinct soon perceived
the inutility of both expedients. She saw that the " man-
agement" of the Houses, so easy under Cromwell, was be-
coming harder every day. The very number of the mem-
bers she called up into the Commons from nomination
boroughs, sixty-two in all, showed the increasing difficulty
which the government found in securing a working major-
ity. The rise of a new nobility enriched by the spoils of
the Church and trained to political life by the stress of
events around them was giving fresh vigor to the House
of Lords. The increased wealth of the country gentry as
well aa the growing desire to obtain a seat among the
CHAP. 4.] THE REFORMATION. 15401608. 359
Commons brought about the cessation at this time of the
old payment of members by their constituencies. A
change too in the borough representation, which had long
been in progress but was now for the first time legally
recognized, tended greatly to increase the vigor and inde-
pendence of the Lower House. By the terms of the older
writs borough members were required to be chosen from
the body of the burgesses ; and an act of Henry the Fifth
gave this custom the force of law. But the passing of such
an act shows that the custom was already widely infringed,
and by Elizabeth's day act and custom alike had ceased to
have force. Most seats were now filled by representatives
who were strange to the borough itself, and who were often
nominees of the great landowners round. But they were
commonly men of wealth and blood whose aim in entering
parliament was a purely political one, and whose attitude
toward the Crown was far bolder and more independent
than that of the quiet tradesmen who preceded them.
Elizabeth saw that " management" was of little avail with
a house of members such as these; and she fell back as far
as she could on Wolsey's policy of practical abolition. She
summoned Parliaments at longer and longer intervals.
By rigid economy, by a policy of balance and peace, she
strove, and for a long time successfully strove, to avoid
the necessity of assembling them at all. But Mary of
Scotland and Philip of Spain proved friends to English
liberty in its sorest need. The struggle with Catholicism
forced Elizabeth to have more frequent recourse to her
Parliaments, and as she was driven to appeal for increas-
ing supplies the tone of the Houses rose higher and higher.
What made this revival of Parliamentary independence
more important was the range which Cromwell's policy
had given to Parliamentary action. In theory the Tudor
statesman regarded three cardinal subjects, matters of
trade, matters of religion, and matters of State, as lying
exclusively within the competence of the Crown. But in
actual fact such subjects had been treated by Parliament
16 YOL. 2
360 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VL
after Parliament. The whole religious fabric of the realm
rested on Parliamentary enactments. The very title of
Elizabeth rested in a Parliamentary statute. When the
Houses petitioned at the outset of her reign for the declara-
tion of a successor and for the Queen's marriage it was
impossible for her to deny their right to intermeddle with
these "matters of State," though she rebuked the demand
and evaded an answer. But the question of the succession
was a question too vital for English freedom and English
religion to remain prisoned within Elizabeth's council-
chamber. It came again to the front in the Parliament
which the pressure from Mary Stuart forced Elizabeth to
assemble after six prorogations and an interval of four
years in September, 1566. The Lower House at once re-
solved that the business of supply should go hand in hand
with that of the succession. Such a step put a stress on
the monarchy which it had never known since the War of
the Roses. The Commons no longer confined themselves
to limiting or resisting the policy of the Crown; they
dared to dictate it. Elizabeth's wrath showed her sense
of the importance of their action. " They had acted like
rebels !" she said ; " they had dealt with her as they dared
not have dealt with her father." "I cannot tell," she
broke out angrily to the Spanish ambassador, " what these
devils want!" "They want liberty, madam," replied the
Spaniard, " and if princes do not look to themselves and
work together to put such people down they will find be-
fore long what all this is coming to !" But Elizabeth had
to front more than her Puritan Commons. The Lords
joined with the Lower House in demanding the Queen's
marriage and a settlement of the succession, and after a
furious burst of anger Elizabeth gave a promise of marriage,
which she was no doubt resolved to evade as she had
evaded it before. But the subject of the succession was
one which could not be evaded. Yet any decision on it
meant civil war. It was notorious that if the Commons
were resolute to name the Lady Catharine Grey, the heiress
CHAP. 4.] THE REFORMATION. 15401808. 361
of the House of Suffolk, successor to the throne, the Lords
were as resolute to assert the right of Mary Stuart. To
settle such a matter was at once to draw the sword. The
Queen therefore peremptorily forbade the subject to be ap-
proached. But the royal message was no sooner delivered
than Wentworth, a member of the House of Commons,
rose to ask whether such a prohibition was not " against
the liberties of Parliament." The question was followed
by a hot debate, and a fresh message from the Queen
commanding " that there should be no further argument"
was met by a request for freedom of deliberation while the
subsidy bill lay significantly unnoticed on the table. A
new strife broke out when another member of the Com-
mons, Mr. Dalton, denounced the claims put forward by
the Scottish Queen. Elizabeth at once ordered him into
arrest. But the Commons prayed for leave "to confer
upon their liberties," and the Queen's prudence taught her
that it was necessary to give way. She released Dalton ;
she protested to the Commons that " she did not mean~ to
prejudice any part of the liberties heretofore granted them ;"
she softened the order of silence into a request. Won by
the graceful concession, the Lower House granted the sub-
sidy and assented loyally to her wish. But the victory was
none the less a real one. No such struggle had taken place
between the Crown and the Commons since the beginning
of the New Monarchy ; and the struggle had ended in the
virtual defeat of the Crown.
The strife with the Parliament hit Elizabeth hard. It
was " secret foes at home," she told the House as the quar-
rel passed away in a warm reconciliation, " who thought
to work me that mischief which never foreign enemies
could bring to pass, which is the hatred of my Commons.
Do you think that either I am so unmindful of your surety
by succession, wherein is all my care, or that I went about
to break your liberties? No! it never was my meaning;
but to stay you before you fell into the ditch." But it was
impossible for her to explain the real reasons for her course,
362 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VL
and the dissolution of the Parliament in January, 1567,
left her face to face with a national discontent added to the
ever-deepening peril from without. To the danger from
the north and from the east was added a danger from the
west. The north of Ireland was in full revolt. From the
moment of her accession Elizabeth had realized the risks
of the policy of confiscation and colonization which had
been pursued in the island by her predecessor: and the
prudence of Cecil fell back on the safer though more tedi-
ous policy of Henry the Eighth. But the alarm at English
aggression had already spread among the natives ; and its
result was seen in a revolt of the north, and in the rise of
a leader more vigorous and able than any with whom the
Government had had as yet to contend. An acceptance
of the Earldom of Tyrone by the chief of the O'Neills
brought about the inevitable conflict between the system of
succession recognized by English and that recognized by
Irish law. On the death of the Earl of Tyrone England
acknowledged his eldest son as the heir of his Earldom ;
while the sept of which he was the head maintained their
older right of choosing a chief from among the members
of the family, and preferred Shane O'Neill, a younger
son of less doubtful legitimacy. The Lord Deputy, the
Earl of Sussex, marched northward to settle the question
by force of arms ; but ere he could reach Ulster the activ-
ity of Shane had quelled the disaffection of his rivals, the
O'Donnells of Donegal, and won over the Scots of Antrim.
"Never before," wrote Sussex, "durst Scot or Irishman
look Englishman in the face in plain or wood since I came
here ;" but Shane fired his men with a new courage, and
charging the Deputy's army with a force hardly half its
number drove it back in rout on Armagh. A promise of
pardon induced the Irish chieftain to visit London, and
make an illusory submission, but he was no sooner safe
home again than its terms were set aside; and after a
wearisome struggle, in which Shane foiled the efforts of
the Lord Deputy to entrap or to poison him, he remained
CHAP. 4.] THE REFORMATION. 15401603. 363
virtually master of the north. His success stirred larger
dreams of ambition. He invaded Connaught, and pressed
Clanrickard hard ; while he replied to the remonstrances
of the Council at Dublin with a bold defiance. " By the
sword I have won these lands," he answered, "and by the
sword will I keep them." But defiance broke idly against
the skill and vigor of Sir Henry Sidney, who succeeded
Sussex as Lord Deputy. The rival septs of the north were
drawn into a rising against O'Neill, while the English
army advanced from the Pale; and in 1567 Shane, defeated
by the O'Donnells, took refuge in Antrim, and was hewn
to pieces in a drunken squabble by his Scottish enter-
tainers.
The victory of Sidney marked the turn of the tide which
had run so long against Elizabeth. The danger which
England dreaded from Mary Stuart, the terror of a Catholic
sovereign and a Catholic reaction, reached its height
only to pass irretrievably away. At the moment when
the Irish revolt was being trampled under foot a terrible
event suddenly struck light through the gathering clouds
in the north. Mary had used Darnley as a tool to bring
about the ruin of his confederates and to further her policy ;
but from the moment that she discovered his actual com-
plicity in the plot for Rizzio's murder she had loathed and
avoided him. Ominous words dropped from her lips.
" Unless she were free of him some way," Mary was
heard to mutter, " she had no pleasure to live." The lords
whom he had drawn into his plot only to desert and betray
them hated him with as terrible a hatred, and in their
longing for vengeance a new adventurer saw the road to
power. Of all the border nobles James Hepburn, the Earl
of Bothwell, was the boldest and the most unscrupulous.
But, Protestant as he was, he had never swerved from the
side of the Crown; he had supported the Regent, and
crossed the seas to pledge as firm a support to Mary ; and
his loyalty and daring alike appealed to the young Queen's
heart. Little as he was touched by Mary's passion, it
364 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
stirred in the Earl dreams of a union with the Queen; and
great as were the obstacles to such a union which presented
themselves in Mary's marriage and his own, Bothwell was
of too desperate a temper to recoil before obstacles such as
these. Divorce would free him from his own wife. To
free himself from Darnley he seized on the hatred which
the lords whom Darnley had deserted and betrayed bore
to the King. Bothwell joined Murray and the English
ambassador in praying for the recall of Morton and the
exiles. The pardon was granted; the nobles returned to
court, and the bulk of them joined readily in a conspiracy
to strike down one whom they still looked on as their bit-
terest foe.
Morton alone stood aloof. He demanded an assurance
of the Queen's sanction to the deed ; and no such assurance
was given him. On the contrary Mary's mood seemed
suddenly to change. Her hatred to Darnley passed all at
once into demonstration of the old affection. He had
fallen sick with vice and misery, and she visited him on
his sick-bed, and persuaded him to follow her to Edin-
burgh. She visited him again in a ruinous and lonely
house near the palace in which he was lodged by her order,
on the ground that its pare air would further his recovery,
kissed him as she bade him farewell, and rode gayly back
to a wedding-dance at Holyrood. If Mary's passion had
drawn her to share Bothwell 's guilt, these acts were but
awful preludes to her husband's doom. If on the other
hand her reconciliation was a real one, it only drove Both-
well to hurry on his deed of blood without waiting for the
aid of the nobles who had sworn the King's death. The
terrible secret is still hid in a cloud of doubt and mystery
which will probably never be wholly dispelled. But Mary
had hardly returned to her palace when, two hours after
midnight on the ninth of February, 1567, an awful ex-
plosion shook the city. The burghers rushed out from the
gates to find the house of Kirk o' Field destroyed and
Darnley's body dead beside the ruins.
CHAP. 4.] THE REFORMATION. 15401603. 365
The murder was undoubtedly the deed of Both well. It
was soon known that his servant had stored the powder
beneath the King's bed-chamber and that the Earl had
watched without the walls till the deed was done. But,
in spite of gathering suspicion and of a charge of murder
made formally against Bothwell by Lord Lennox no seri-
ous steps were taken to investigate the crime ; and a rumor
that Mary purposed to marry the murderer drove her
friends to despair. Her agent in England wrote to her
that " if she married that man she would lose the favor of
God, her own reputation, and the hearts of all England,
Ireland, and Scotland." But whatever may have been the
ties of passion or guilt which united them, Mary was now
powerless in Bothwell's hands. While Murray withdrew
to France on pretext of travel, the young Earl used the
plot against Darnley into which he had drawn the lords to
force from them a declaration that he was guiltless of the
murder and their consent to his marriage with the Queen.
He boasted that he would marry Mary, whether she would
or no. Every stronghold in the kingdom was placed in
his hands, and this step was the prelude to a trial and
acquittal which the overwhelming force of his followers
in Edinburgh turned into a bitter mockery. The Protes-
tants were bribed by the assembling of a Parliament in
which Mary for the first time gave her sanction to the laws
which established the reformation in Scotland. A shame-
less suit for his divorce removed the last obstacle to Both-
well's ambition ; and a seizure of the Queen as she rode to
Linlithgow, whether real or fictitious, was followed three
weeks later by their union on the fifteenth of May. Mary
may have yielded to force; she may have yielded to pas-
sion ; it is possible that in Bothwell's vigor she saw the
means of at last mastering the kingdom and wreaking her
vengeance on the lords. But whatever were her hopes or
fears, in a month more all was over. The horror at the
Queen's marriage with a man fresh from her husband's
blood drove the whole nation to revolt. The Catholic
366 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
party held aloof from a Queen who seemed to have for-
saken them by a Protestant marriage and by her acknowl-
edgment of the Protestant Church. The Protestant lords
seized on the general horror to free themselves from a
master whose subtlety and bloodshed had placed them at
his feet. Morton and Argyle rallied the forces of the Con-
gregation at Stirling, and were soon joined by the bulk of
the Scottish nobles of either religion. Their entrance into
Edinburgh roused the capital into insurrection. On the
fifteenth of June Mary and her husband advanced with a
fair force to Seton to encounter the Lords ; but their men
refused to fight, and Bothwell galloped off into lifelong
exile, while the Queen was brought back to Edinburgh in
a frenzy of despair, tossing back wild words of defiance to
the curses of the crowd.
CHAPTER V.
ENGLAND AND THE PAPACY.
15671576.
THE fall of Mary freed Elizabeth from the most terrible
of her outer dangers. But it left her still struggling with
ever-growing dangers at home. The religious peace for
which she had fought so hard was drawing to an end.
Sturdily as she might aver to her subjects that no change
had really been made in English religion, that the old faith
had only been purified, that the realm had only been freed
from Papal usurpation, jealously as she might preserve the
old episcopate, the old service, the old vestments and usages
of public worship, her action abroad told too plainly its
tale. The world was slowly drifting to a gigantic conflict
between the tradition of the past and a faith that rejected
the tradition of the past ; and in this conflict men saw that
England was ranging itself not on the side of the old belief
but of the new. The real meaning of Elizabeth's attitude
was revealed in her refusal to own the Council of Trent.
From that moment the hold which she had retained on all
who still clung strongly to Catholic doctrine was roughly
shaken. Her system of conformity received a heavy blow
from the decision of the Papacy that attendance at the
common prayer was unlawful. Her religious compromise
was almost destroyed by the victory of the Guises. In the
moment of peril she was driven on Protestant support, and
Protestant support had to be bought by a Test Act which
excluded every zealous Catholic from all share in the gov-
ernment or administration of the realm, while the re-en-
actment of Edward's Articles by the Convocation of the
clergy was in avowal of Protestantism which none could
868 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
mistake. Whatever in fact might be Elizabeth's own
predilections, even the most cautious of Englishmen could
hardly doubt of the drift of her policy. The hopes which
the party of moderation had founded on a marriage with
Philip, or a marriage with the Austrian Archduke, or a
marriage with Dudley, had all passed away. The con-
ciliatory efforts of Pope Pius had been equally fruitless.
The last hope of a quiet undoing of the religious changes
lay in the succession of Mary Stuart. But with the fall of
Mary a peaceful return to the older faith became impos-
sible; and the consciousness of this could hardly fail to
wake new dangers for Elizabeth, whether at home or
abroad.
It was in fact at this moment of seeming triumph that
the great struggle of her reign began. In 1565 a pontiff
was chosen to fill the Papal chair whose policy was that
of open war between England and Rome. At no moment
in its history had the fortunes of the Roman See sunk so
low as at the accession of Pius the Fifth. The Catholic
revival had as yet done nothing to arrest the march of the
Reformation. In less than half a century the new doc-
trines had spread from Iceland to the Pyrenees and from
Finland to the Alps. When Pius mounted the throne
Lutheranism was firmly established in Scandinavia and in
Northern Germany. Along the eastern border of the Em-
pire it had conquered Livonia and Old Prussia ; its adhe-
rents formed a majority of the nobles of Poland ; Hungary
seemed drifting toward heresy ; and in Transylvania the
Diet had already confiscated aU Church lands. In Central
Germany the great prelates whose princedoms covered so
large a part of Franconia opposed in vain the spread of
Lutheran doctrine. It seemed as triumphant in Southern
Germany, for the Duchy of Austria was for the most part
Lutheran, and many of the Bavarian towns with a large
part of the Bavarian nobles had espoused the cause of the
Reformation. In Western Europe the fiercer doctrines of
Calvinism took the place of the faith of Luther. At the
CHAP. 3.j THE REFORMATION. 15401608. 369
death of Henry the Second Calvin's missionaries poured
from Geneva over France, and in a few years every
province of the realm was dotted with Calvinistic churches.
The Huguenots rose into a great political and religious
party which struggled openly for the mastery of the realm
and wrested from the Crown a legal recognition of its ex-
istence and of freedom of worship. The influence of
France told quickly on the regions about it. The Rhine-
land was fast losing its hold on Catholicism. In the
Netherlands, where the persecutions of Charles the Fifth
had failed to check the upgrowth of heresy, his successor
saw Calvinism win state after state, and gird itself to a
desperate struggle at once for religious and for civil in-
dependence. Still further west a sudden revolution had
won Scotland for the faith of Geneva; and a revolution
hardly less sudden, though marked with consummate sub-
tlety, had in effect added England to the Churches of the
Reformation. Christendom in fact was almost lost to the
Papacy ; for only two European countries owned its sway
without dispute. " There remain firm to the Pope," wrote
a Venetian ambassador to his State, " only Spain and Italy
with some few islands, and those countries possessed by
your Serenity in Dalmatia and Greece."
It was at this moment of defeat that Pius the Fifth
mounted the Papal throne. His earlier life had been that
of an Inquisitor; and he combined the ruthlessness of a
persecutor with the ascetic devotion of a saint. Pius had
but one end, that of re-conquering Christendom, of restor-
ing the rebel nations to the fold of the Church, and of
stamping out heresy by fire and sword. To his fiery faith
every means of warfare seemed hallowed by the sanctity of
his cause. The despotism of the prince, the passion of the
populace, the sword of the mercenary, the very dagger of
the assassin, were all seized without scruple as weapons in
the warfare of God. The ruthlessness of the Inquisitor
was turned into the world-wide policy of the Papacy.
Wljen Philip doubted how to deal w_ith the troubles in the
370 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Boon VI.
Netherlands, Pius bade him deal with them by force of
arms. When the Pope sent soldiers of his own to join the
Catholics in France he bade their leader " slay instantly
whatever heretic fell into his hands." The massacres of
Alva were rewarded by a gift of the consecrated hat and
sword, as the massacre of St. Bartholomew was hailed by
the successor of Pius with a solemn thanksgiving. The
force of the Pope's effort lay in its concentration of every
energy on a single aim. Rome drew in fact a new power
from the ruin of her schemes of secular aggrandizement.
The narrower hopes and dreads which had sprung from
their position as Italian princes told no longer on the
Popes. All hope of the building up of a wider princedom
passed away. The hope of driving the stranger from Italy
came equally to an end. But on the other hand Rome was
screened from the general conflicts of the secular powers.
It was enabled to be the friend of every Catholic State,
and that at a moment when every Catholic State saw in
the rise of Calvinism a new cause for seeking its friend-
ship. Calvinism drew with it a thirst for political liberty,
and religious revolution became the prelude to political
revolution. From this moment therefore the cause of the
Papacy became the cause of kings, and a craving for self-
preservation rallied the Catholic princes round the Papal
throne. The same dread of utter ruin rallied round it the
Catholic Church. All strife, all controversy was hushed
in the presence of the foe. With the close of the Council
of Trent came a unity of feeling and of action such as had
never been seen before. Faith was defined. The Papal
authority stood higher than ever. The bishops owned
themselves to be delegates of the Roman See. The clergy
were drawn together into a disciplined body by the institu-
tion of seminaries. The new religious orders carried
everywhere the watchword of implicit obedience. As the
heresy of Calvin pressed on to one victory after another,
the Catholic world drew closer and closer round the stand-
ard of Rome.
CHAP. 5.] THE REFORMATION. 15401603. 371
What raised the warfare of Pius into grandeur was the
scale upon which he warred. His hand was everywhere
throughout Christendom. Under him Rome became the
political as well as the religious centre of Western Europe.
The history of the Papacy widened again, as in the Middle
Ages, into the history of the world. Every scheme of the
Catholic resistance was devised or emboldened at Rome.
While her Jesuit emissaries won a new hold in Bavaria
and Southern Germany, rolled back the tide of Protestant-
ism in the Rhine-land, and by school and pulpit labored to
re-Catholicize the Empire, Rome spurred Mary Stuart to
the Darnley marriage, urged Philip to march Alva on the
Netherlands, broke up the religious truce which Catharine
had won for France, and celebrated with solemn pomp the
massacre of the Huguenots. England above all was the
object of Papal attack. The realm of Elizabeth was too
important for the general Papal scheme of re-conquering
Christendom to be lightly let go. England alone could
furnish a centre to the reformed communions of Western
Europe. The Lutheran states of North Germany were
too small. The Scandinavian kingdoms were too remote.
Scotland hardly ranked as yet as a European power. Even
if France joined the new movement her influence would
long be neutralized by the strife of the religious parties
within her pale. But England was to outer seeming a
united realm. Her government held the country firmly in
hand. Whether as an island or from her neighborhood to
the chief centres of the religious strife, she was so placed
as to give an effective support to the new opinions. Prot-
estant refugees found a safe shelter within her bounds.
Her trading ships diffused heresy in every port they
touched at. She could at little risk feed the Calvinistic
revolution in France or the Netherlands. In the great
battle of the old faith and the new England was thus the
key of the reformed position. With England Protestant
the fight against Protestantism could only be a slow and
doubtful one. On the other hand a Catholic England
372 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VL
would render religious revolution in the west all but hope-
less. Hand in hand with Philip religiously, as she al-
ready was politically, the great island might turn the tide
of the mighty conflict which had so long gone against the
Papacy.
It was from this sense of the importance of England in
the world- wide struggle which it was preparing that Rome
had watched with such a feverish interest the effort of Mary
Stuart. Her victory would have given to Catholicism the
two westernmost realms of the Reformation, England and
Scotland; it would have aided it in the re-conquest of the
Netherlands and of France. No formal bond indeed, such
as the Calvinists believed to exist, bound Mary and Pius
and Philip and Catharine of Medicis together in a vast
league for the restoration of the Faith ; the difference of
political aim held France and Spain obstinately apart both
from each other and from Mary Stuart, and it was only at
the Vatican that the great movement was conceived as a
whole. But practically the policy of Mary and Philip
worked forward to the same end. While the Scottish
Queen prepared her counter-reformation in England and
Scotland, Philip was gathering a formidable host which
was to suppress Calvinism as well as liberty in the Nether-
lands. Of the seventeen provinces which Philip had in-
nerited from his father, Charles, in this part of his domin-
ions, each had its own constitution, its own charter and
privileges, its own right of taxation. All clung to their
local independence ; and resistance to any projects of cen-
tralization was common to the great nobles and the
burghers of the towns. Philip on the other hand was
resolute to bring them by gradual steps to the same level
of absolute subjection and incorporation in the body of the
monarchy as the provinces of Castile. The Netherlands
were the wealthiest part of his dominions. Flanders alone
contributed more to his exchequer than all his kingdoms in
Spain. With a treasury drained by a thousand schemes
Philip longed to have this wealth at his unfettered dis-
CHAP. 5.] THE REFORMATION. 1540 108. 373
posal, while his absolutism recoiled from the independence
of the States, and his bigotry drove him to tread their
heresy under foot. Policy backed the impulses of greed
and fanaticism. In the strangely mingled mass of the
Spanish monarchy, the one bond which held together its
various parts, divided as they were by blood, by tradition,
by tongue, was their common faith. Philip was in more
than name the " Catholic King. " Catholicism alone united
the burgher of the Netherlands to the nobles of Castile,
or Milanese and Neapolitan to the Aztec of Mexico and
Peru. With such an empire heresy meant to Philip polit-
ical chaos, and the heresy of Calvin, with its ready or-
ganization and its doctrine of resistance, promised not only
chaos but active revolt. In spite therefore of the growing
discontent in the Netherlands, in spite of the alienation of
the nobles and the resistance of the Estates, he clung to a
system of government which ignored the liberties of every
province, and to a persecution which drove thousands of
skilled workmen to the shores of England.
At last the general discontent took shape in open resist-
ance. The success of the French Huguenots in wresting
the free exercise rf their faith from the monarchy told on
the Calvinists 01 the Low Countries. The nobles gathered
in leagues. Riots broke out in the towns. The churches
were sacked, and heretic preachers preached in the open
fields to multitudes who carried weapons to protect them.
If Philip's system was to continue it must be by force of
arms, and the King seized the disturbances as a pretext
for dealing a blow he had long meditated at the growing
heresy of this portion of his dominions. Pius the Fifth
pressed him to deal with heresy by the sword, and in 1567
an army of ten thousand men gathered in Italy under the
Duke of Alva for a march on the Low Countries. Had
Alva reached the Netherlands while Mary was still in the
flush of her success, it is hard to see how England could
have been saved. But again Fortune proved Elizabeth's
friend. The passion of Mary shattered the hopes of Ca-
374 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
tholicism, and at the moment when Alva led his troops
over the Alps Mary passed a prisoner within the walls of
Lochleven. Alone however the Duke was a mighty-
danger : nor could any event have been more embarrass-
ing to Elizabeth than his arrival in the Netherlands in
the autumn of 1567. The terror he inspired hushed all
thought of resistance. The towns were occupied. The
heretics were burned. The greatest nobles were sent to the
block or driven, like William of Orange, from the country.
The Netherlands lay at Philip's feet; and Alva's army
lowered like a thundercloud over the Protestant West.
The triumph of Catholicism and the presence of a Cath-
olic army in a country so closely connected with England
at once revived the dreams of a Catholic rising against
Elizabeth's throne, while the news of Alva's massacres
stirred in every one of her Protestant subjects a thirst for
revenge which it was hard to hold in check. Yet to strike
a blow at Alva was impossible. Antwerp was the great
mart of English trade, and a stoppage of the trade with
Flanders, such as war must bring about, would have
broken hah 5 the merchants in London. Elizabeth could
only look on while the Duke trod resistance and heresy
under foot, and prepared in the Low Countries a securer
starting-point for his attack on Protestantism in the West.
With Elizabeth indeed or her cautious and moderate
Lutheranism Philip had as yet little will to meddle, how-
ever hotly Rome might urge him to attack her. He knew
that the Calvinism of the Netherlands looked for support
to the Calvinism of France; and as soon as Alva's work
was done in the Low Countries the Duke had orders to aid
the Guises in assailing the Huguenots. But the terror of
the Huguenots precipitated the strife, and while Alva was
still busy with attacks from the patriots under the princes
of the house of Orange a fresh rising in France woke the
civil war at the close of 1567. Catharine lulled this strife
for the moment by a new edict of toleration ; but the pres-
ence of Alva was stirring hopes and fears in other lands
CHAP. 5.] THE REFORMATION. 15401608. 375
than France. Between Mary Stuart and the lords who
had imprisoned her in Lochleven reconciliation was im-
possible. Elizabeth, once lightened of her dread from
Mary, would have been content with a restoration of Mur-
ray's actual supremacy. Already alarmed by Calvinistic
revolt against monarchy in France, she was still more
alarmed by the success of Calvinistic revolt against mon-
archy in Scotland ; and the presence of Alva in the Nether-
lands made her anxious above all to settle the troubles in
the north and to devise some terms of reconciliation be-
tween Mary and her subjects. But it was in vain that she
demanded the release of the Queen. The Scotch Protest-
ants, with Knox at their head, called loudly for Mary's
death as a murderess. If the lords shrank from such ex-
tremities, they had no mind to set her free and to risk
their heads for Elizabeth's pleasure. As the price of her
life they forced Mary to resign her crown in favor of her
child, and to name Murray, who was now returning from
France, as regent during his minority. In July, 1567, the
babe was solemnly crowned as James the Sixth.
But Mary had only consented to abdicate because she
felt sure of escape. With an infant king the regency of
Murray promised to be a virtual sovereignty ; and the old
factions of Scotland. woke again into life. The house of
Hamilton, which stood next in succession to the throne,
became the centre of a secret league which gathered to it
the nobles and prelates who longed for the re-establishment
of Catholicism, and who saw in Alva's triumph a pledge
of their own. The regent's difficulties were doubled by
the policy of Elizabeth. Her wrath at the revolt of sub-
jects against their Queen, her anxiety that " by this ex-
ample none of her own be encouraged," only grew with
the disregard of her protests and threats. In spite of
Cecil she refused to recognize Murray's government, re-
newed her demands for the Queen's release, and encour-
aged the Hamiltons in their designs of freeing her. She
was in fact stirred by more fears than her dread of Calvin-
376 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
ism and of Calvinistic liberty. Philip's triumph in the
Netherlands and the presence of his army across the sea
was filling the Catholics of the northern counties with new
hopes, and scaring Elizabeth from any joint action with
the Scotch Calvinists which might call the Spanish forces
over sea. She even stooped to guard against any possible
projects of Philip by fresh negotiations for a marriage
with one of the Austrian archdukes. But the negotiations
proved as fruitless as before, while Scotland moved boldly
forward in its new career. A Parliament which assembled
at the opening of 1568 confirmed the deposition of the
Queen, and made Catholic worship punishable with the
pain of death. The triumph of Calvinistic bigotry only
hastened the outbreak which had long been preparing, and
at the beginning of May an escape of Mary from her prison
was a signal for civil war. Five days later six thousand
men gathered round her at Hamilton, and Argyle joined the
Catholic lords who rallied to her banner. The news found
different welcomes at the English court. Elizabeth at
once offered to arbitrate between Mary and her subjects.
Cecil, on the other hand, pressed Murray to strike quick
and hard. But the regent needed little pressing. Sur-
prised as he was, Murray was quickly in arms ; and cut-
ting off Mary's force as it moved on Dumbarton, he
brought it to battle at Langside on the Clyde on the thir-
teenth of May, and broke it in a panicstricken rout. Mary
herself, after a fruitless effort to reach Dumbarton, fled
southward to find a refuge in Galloway. A ride of ninety
miles brought her to the Solway, but she found her friends
wavering in her support and ready to purchase pardon
from Murray by surrendering her into the regent's hands.
From that moment she abandoned all hope from Scotland.
She believed that Elizabeth would in the interests of mon-
archy restore her to the throne ; and changing her designs
with the rapidity of genius, she pushed in a light boat
across the Solway, and was safe before the evening fell in
the castle of Carlisle.
CHAP. 5.] THE REFORMATION. 15401603. 877
The presence of Alva in Flanders was a far less peril
than the presence of Mary in Carlisle. To restore her, as
she demanded, by force of arms was impossible. If Eliza-
beth was zealous for the cause of monarchy, she had no
mind to crush the nobles who had given her security
against her rival simply to seat that rival triumphantly
on the throne. On the other hand to retain her in Eng-
land was to furnish a centre for revolt. Mary herself in-
deed threatened that " if they kept her prisoner they should
have enough to do with her." If the Queen would not aid
in her restoration to the throne, she demanded a free pas-
sage to France. But compliance with such a request would
have given the Guises a terrible weapon against Elizabeth
and have insured French intervention in Scotland. Foi
a while Elizabeth hoped to bring Murray to receive Mary
back peaceably as Queen. But the regent refused to sacri-
fice himself and the realm to Elizabeth's policy. When
the Duke of Norfolk with other commissioners appeared
at York to hold a formal inquiry into Mary's conduct with
a view to her restoration, Murray openly charged the
Queen with a share in the murder of her husband, and he
produced letters from her to Bothwell, which if genuine
substantiate!: the charge. , Till Mary was cleared of guilt,
Murray would hear nothing of her return, and Mary re-
fused to submit to such a trial as would clear her. So
eager however was Elizabeth to get rid of the pressing
peril of her presence in England that Mary's refusal to
submit to any trial only drove her to fresh devices for her
restoration. She urged upon Murray the suppression of
the graver charges, and upon Mary the leaving Murray in
actual possession of the royal power as the price of her re-
turn. Neither however would listen to terms which sacri-
ficed both to Elizabeth's self-interest. The Regent per-
sisted in charging the Queen with murder and adultery.
Mary refused either to answer or to abdicate in favor of
her infant son.
The triumph indeed of her bold policy was best advanced,
878 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK Vt
as the Queen of Scots had no doubt foreseen, by simple in-
action. Her misfortunes, her resolute denials were gradu-
ally wiping away the stain of her guilt and winning back
the Catholics of England to her cause. Already there
were plans for her marriage with Norfolk, the head of the
English nobles, as for her marriage with the heir of the
Hamiltons. The first match might give her the English
crown, the second could hardly fail to restore her to the
crown of Scotland. In any case her presence, rousing as
it did fresh hopes of a Catholic reaction, put pressure on
her sister Queen. Elizabeth "had the wolf by the ears,"
while the fierce contest which Alva's presence roused in
France and in the Netherlands was firing the temper of
the two great parties in England. In the Court, as in the
country, the forces of progress and of resistance stood at
last in sharp and declared opposition to each other. Cecil
at the head of the Protestants demanded a general alliance
with the Protestant churches throughout Europe, a war
in the Low Countries against Alva, and the unconditional
surrender of Mary to her Scotch subjects for the punish-
ment she deserved. The Catholics on the other hand,
backed by the mass of the Conservative party with the
Duke of Norfolk at its head, and supported by the wealth-
ier merchants who dreaded the ruin of the Flemish trade,
were as earnest in demanding the dismissal of Cecil and
the Protestants from the council-board, a steady peace
with Spain, and, though less openly, a recognition of
Mary's succession. Elizabeth was driven to temporize as
before. She refused Cecil's counsels; but she sent money
and arms to Conde, and hampered A.va by seizing treasure
on its way to him, and by pushing ,he quarrel even to a
temporary embargo on shipping either side the sea. She
refused the counsels of Norfolk; but she would hear
nothing of a declaration of war, or give any judgment
on the chai-ges against the Scottish Queen, or recognize
the accession of James in her stead.
But to the pressure of Alva and Mary was now added
CHAP. 5.] THE REFORMATION. 15401603. 379
the pressure of Rome. With the triumph of Philip in the
Netherlands and of the Guises in France Pius the Fifth
held that the time had come for a decisive attack on Eliz-
abeth. If Philip held back from playing the champion
of Catholicism, if even the insults to Alva failed to stir
him to active hostility, Rome could still turn to its adhe-
rents within the realm. Pius had already sent two envoys
in 1567 with powers to absolve the English Catholics who
had attended church from their schism, but to withdraw
all hope of future absolution for those who continued to
conform. The result of their mission however had been
so small that it was necessary to go further. The triumph
of Alva in the Netherlands, the failure of the Prince of
Orange in an attempt to rescue them from the Spanish
army, the terror-struck rising of the French Huguenots,
the growing embarrassments of Elizabeth both at home
and abroad, seemed to offer Rome its opportunity of deliv-
ering a final blow. In February, 1569, the Queen was de-
clared a heretic by a Bull which asserted in their strong-
est form the Papal claims to a temporal supremacy over
princes. As a heretic and excommunicate, she was " de-
prived of her pretended right to the said kingdom," her
subjects were absolved from allegiance to her, commanded
"not to dare to obey her," and anathematized if they did
obey. The Bull was not as yet promulgated, but Dr. Mor-
ton was sent into England to denounce the Queen as fallen
from her usurped authority, and to promise the speedy
issue of the sentence of deposition. The religious pressure
was backed by political intrigue. Ridolfi, an Italian mer-
chant settled in London, who had received full powers and
money from Rome, knit the threads of a Catholic revolt
in the north, and drew the Duke of Norfolk into corre-
spondence with Mary Stuart. The Duke was the son of
Lord Surrey and grandson of the Norfolk who had headed
the Conservative party through the reign of Henry the
Eighth. Like the rest of the English peers, he had acqui-
esced in the religious compromise of the Queen. It was
380 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK YL
as a Protestant that the more Conservative among his fel-
low nobles now supported a project for his union with the
Scottish Queen. With an English and Protestant hus-
band it was thought that Murray and the lords might
safely take back Mary to the Scottish throne, and Eng-
land again accept her as the successor to her crown. But
Norfolk was not contented with a single game. From
the Pope and Philip he sought aid in his marriage-plot as
a Catholic at heart, whose success would bring about a
restoration of Catholicism throughout the realm. With
the Catholic lords he plotted the overthrow of Cecil and
the renewal of friendship with Spain. To carry out
schemes such as these however required a temper of sub-
tler and bolder stamp than the Duke's : Cecil found it easy
by playing on his greed to part him from his fellow no-
bles; his marriage with Mary as a Protestant was set
aside by Murray's refusal to accept her as Queen; and
Norfolk promised to enter into no correspondence with
Mary Stuart but with Elizabeth's sanction.
The hope of a crown, whether in Scotland or at home,
proved too great however for his good faith, and Norfolk
was soon wrapped anew in the net of papal intrigue. But
it was not so much on Norfolk that Rome counted as on
the nobles of the North. The three great houses of the
northern border the Cliffords of Cumberland, the Ne-
villes of Westmoreland, the Percies of Northumberland
had remained Catholics at heart; and from the moment
of Mary's entrance into England they had been only wait-
ing for a signal of revolt. They looked for foreign aid,
and foreign aid now seemed assured. In spite of Eliza-
beth's help the civil war in France went steadily against
the Huguenots. In March, 1569, their army was routed at
Jarnac, and their leader, Conde, left dead on the field.
The joy with which the victory was greeted by the Eng-
lish Catholics sprang from a consciousness that the victors
looked on it as a prelude to their attack on Protestantism
across the sea. No sooner indeed was this triumph won
CHAP. 5.] THE REFORMATION. 15401608. 381
than Mary's uncle, the Cardinal of Lorraine, as the head
of the house of Guise, proposed to Philip to complete the
victory of Catholicism by uniting the forces of France and
Spain against Elizabeth. The moment was one of peril
such as England had never known. Norfolk was still
pressing forward to a marriage with Mary ; he was backed
by the second great Conservative peer, Lord Arundel, and
supported by a large part of the nobles. The Northern
Earls with Lords Montague and Lumley and the head of
the great house of Dacres were ready to take up arms, and
sure as they believed of the aid of the Earls of Derby
and Shrewsbury. Both parties of plotters sought Philip's
sanction and placed themselves at his disposal. A descent
of French and Spanish troops would have called both to
the field. But much as Philip longed for a triumph of re-
ligion he had no mind for a triumph of France. France
now meant the Guises, and to set their niece Mary Stuart
on the English throne was to insure the close union of
England and the France they ruled. Though he suffered
Alva therefore to plan the dispatch of a force from the
Netherlands should a Catholic revolt prove successful, he
refused to join in a French attack.
But the Papal exhortations and the victories of the
Guises did their work without Philip's aid. The conspir-
ators of the north only waited for Norfolk's word to rise
in arms. But the Duke dissembled and delayed, while
Elizabeth, roused at last to her danger, struck quick and
hard. Mary Stuart was given in charge to the Puritan
Lord Huntingdon. The Earls of Arundel and Pembroke,
with Lord Lumley, were secured. Norfolk himself, sum-
moned peremptorily to court, dared not disobey ; and found
himself at the opening of October a prisoner in the Tower.
The more dangerous plot was foiled, for whatever were
Norfolk's own designs, the bulk of his Conservative parti-
sans were good Protestants, and their aim of securing the
succession by a Protestant marriage for Mary was one
with which the bulk of the nation would have sympathized,
382 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
But the Catholic plot remained ; and in October the hopes
of its leaders were stirred afresh by a new defeat of the
Huguenots at Montcontour; while a Papal envoy, Dr.
Morton, goaded them to action by news that a Bull of
Deposition was ready at Rome. At last a summons to
court tested the loyalty of the Earls, and on the tenth of
November, 1569, Northumberland gave the signal for a
rising. He was at once joined by the Earl of Westmore-
land, and in a few days the Earls entered Durham and
called the North to arms. They shrank from an open re-
volt against the Queen, and demanded only the dismissal
of her ministers and the recognition of Mary's right of
succession. But with these demands went a pledge to re-
establish the Catholic religion. The Bible and Prayer-
book were torn to pieces, and Mass said once more at the
altar of Durham Cathedral, before the Earls pushed on to
Doncaster with an army which soon swelled to thousands
of men. Their cry was " to reduce all causes of religion
to the old custom and usage ;" and the Earl of Sussex, her
general in the North, wrote frankly to Elizabeth that
" there were not ten gentlemen in Yorkshire that did allow
[approve] her proceedings in the cause of religion." But
he was as loyal as he was frank, and held York stoutly
while the Queen ordered Mary's hasty removal to a new
prison at Coventry. The storm however broke as rapidly
as it had gathered. Leonard Dacres held aloof. Lord
Derby proved loyal. The Catholic lords of the south re-
fused to stir without help from Spain. The mass of the
Catholics throughout the country made no sign ; and the
Earls no sooner halted irresolute in presence of this unex-
pected inaction than their army caught the panic and dis-
persed. Northumberland and Weslpioreland fled in the
middle of December, and were followed in their flight by
Leonard Dacres of Naworth, while their miserable adhe-
rents paid for their disloyalty in bloodshed and ruin.
The ruthless measures of repression which followed this
revolt were the first breach in the clemency of Elizabeth's
CHAP. 5.] THE REFORMATION. 15401608. 383
rule. But they were signs of terror which were not lost
on her opponents. It was the general inaction of the
Catholics which had foiled the hopes of the northern Earls;
and Pope Pius resolved to stir them to activity by publish-
ing in March, 1570, the Bull of Excommunication and
Deposition which had been secretly issued in the preced-
ing year. In his Bull Pius declared that Elizabeth had
forfeited all right to the throne, released her subjects from
their oath of allegiance to her, and forbade her nobles and
people to obey her on pain of excommunication. In spite
of the efforts of the Government to prevent the entry of
any copies of this sentence into the realm the Bull was
found nailed in a spirit of ironical defiance on the Bishop
of London's door. Its effect was far from being what
Rome desired. With the exception of one or two zealots
the English Catholics treated the Bull as a dead letter.
The duty of obeying the Queen seemed a certain thing to
them, while that of obeying the Pope in temporal matters
was denied by most and doubted by all. Its spiritual
effect indeed was greater. The Bull dealt a severe blow
to the religious truce which Elizabeth had secured. In
the North the Catholics withdrew stubbornly from the na-
tional worship, and everywhere throughout the realm an
increase in the number of recusants showed the obedience
of a large body of Englishmen to the Papal command.
To the minds of English statesmen such an obedience to
the Papal bidding in matters of religion only heralded an
obedience to the Papal bidding in matters of state. In
issuing the Bull of Deposition Pius had declared war upon
the Queen. He had threatened her throne. He had called
on her subjects to revolt. If his secret pressure had stirred
the rising of the Northern Earls, his open declaration of
war might well rouse a general insurrection of Catholics
throughout the realm, while the plots of his agents threat-
ened the Queen's life.
How real-was the last danger was shown at this moment
by the murder of Murray. ^In January 1570 a Catholic
384 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
partisan, James Hamilton, shot the Regent in the streets
of Linlithgow; and Scotland plunged at once into war
between the adherents of Mary and those of her son. The
blow broke Elizabeth's hold on Scotland at a moment when
conspiracy threatened her hold on England itself. The de-
feat of the Earls had done little to check the hopes of the
Roman court. Its intrigues were busier than ever. At
the close of the rising Norfolk was released from the Tower,
but he was no sooner free than he renewed his correspond-
ence with the Scottish Queen. Mary consented to wed
him, and the Duke, who still professed himself a Protes-
tant, trusted to carry the bulk of the English nobles with
him in pressing a marriage which seemed to take Mary
out of the hands of French and Catholic intriguers, to
make her an Englishwoman, and to settle the vexed ques-
tion of the succession to the throne. But it was only to
secure this general adhesion that Norfolk delayed to de-
clare himself a Catholic. He sought the Pope's approval
of his plans, and appealed to Philip for the intervention of
a Spanish army. At the head of this appeal stood the
name of Mary; while Norfolk's name was followed by
those of many lords of "the old blood," as the prouder
peers styled themselves. The significance of the request
was heightened by gatherings of Catholic refugees at Ant-
werp in the heart of Philip's dominions in the Low Coun-
tries round the fugitive leaders of the Northern Revolt.
The intervention of the Pope was brought to quicken
Philip's slow designs. Ridolfi, as the agent of the conspir-
ators, appeared at Rome and laid before Pius their plans
for the marriage of Norfolk and Mary, the union of both
realms under the Duke and the Scottish Queen, and the
seizure of Elizabeth and her counsellors at one of the royal
country houses. Pius backed the project with his warm
approval, and Ridolfi hurried to secure the needful aid from
Philip of Spain.
Enough of these conspiracies was discovered to rouse a
fresh ardor in the menaced Protestants. While Ridolfi
CHAP. 5.] THE REFORMATION. 15401608, 385
was negotiating at Rome and Madrid, the Parliament met
to pass an act of attainder against the Northern Earls,
and to declare the introduction of Papal Bulls into the
country an act of high treason. It was made treason to
call the Queen heretic or schismatic, or to deny her right
to the throne. The rising indignation against Mary, as
"the daughter of Debate, who discord fell doth sow," was
shown in a statute, which declared any person who laid
claim to the Crown during the Queen's lifetime incapable
of ever succeeding to it. The disaffection of the Catholics
was met by imposing on all magistrates and public officers
the obligation of subscribing to the Articles of Faith, a
measure which in fact transferred the administration of
justice and public order to their Protestant opponents, by
forbidding conversions to Catholicism or bringing into
England of Papal absolutions or objects consecrated by the
Pope. Meanwhile Ridolfi was struggling in vain against
Philip's caution. The King made no objection to the
seizure or assassination of Elizabeth. The scheme secured
his fullest sympathy ; no such opportunity, he held, would
ever offer again ; and he longed to finish the affair quickly
before France should take part in it. But he could not be
brought to send troops to England before Elizabeth was
secured. If troops were once sent, the failure of the plot
would mean war with England ; and with fresh troubles
threatening Alva's hold on the Netherlands Philip had no
mind to risk an English war. Norfolk on the other hand
had no mind to risk a rising before Spanish troops were
landed, and Ridolfi's efforts failed to bring either Duke or
King to action. But the clew to these negotiations had
long been in Cecil's hands ; and at the opening of 1571
Norfolk's schemes oi' ambition were foiled by his arrest.
He was convicted of treason, and after a few months' delay
executed at the Tower.
With the death of Norfolk and that of Northumberland,
who followed him to the scaffold, the dread of revolt within
the realm which had so long hung over England passed
386 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI
quietly away. The failure of the two attempts not only
showed the weakness and disunion of the party of discon-
tent and reaction, but it revealed the weakness of all party
feeling before the rise of a national temper which was
springing naturally out of the peace of Elizabeth's [reign,
and which a growing sense of danger to the order and
prosperity around it was fast turning into a passionate
loyalty to the Queen. It was not merely against Cecil's
watchfulness or Elizabeth's cunning that Mary and Philip
and the Percies dashed themselves in vain ; it was against
a new England. And this England owed its existence to
the Queen. "I have desired," Elizabeth said proudly to
her Parliament, " to have the obedience of my subjects by
love, and not by compulsion. " Through the fourteen years
which had passed since she mounted the throne, her sub-
jects' love had been fairly won by justice and good gov-
ernment. The current of political events had drawn
men's eyes chiefly to the outer dangers of the country, to
the policy of Philip and of Rome, to the revolutions of
France, to the pressure from Mary Stuart. No one had
watched these outer dangers so closely as the Queen. But
buried as she seemed in foreign negotiations and intrigues,
Elizabeth was above all an English sovereign. She devoted
herself ably and energetically to the task of civil adminis-
tration. At the first moment of relief from the pressure of
outer troubles, after the treaty of Edinburgh, she faced the
two main causes of internal disorder. The debasement of
the coinage was brought to an end in 1560. In 1561 a
commission was issued to inquire into the best means of
facing the problem of social pauperism.
Time, and the natural development of new branches of
industry, were working quietly for the relief of the glutted
labor market ; but a vast mass of disorder still existed in
England, which found a constant ground of resentment in
the enclosures and evictions which accompanied the pro-
gress of agricultural change. It was on this host of
" broken men" that every rebellion could count for support;
v,iiAP. 5.] THE REFORMATION. 15401603. 387
their mere existence was an encouragement to civil war ;
while in peace their presence was felt in the insecurity of
life and property, in bands of marauders which held whole
counties in terror, and in " sturdy beggars" who stripped
travellers on the road. Under Elizabeth as under her
predecessors the terrible measures of repression, whose
uselessness More had in vain pointed out, went pitilessly
on. We find the magistrates of Somersetshire capturing
a gang of a hundred at a stroke, hanging fifty at once on
the gallows, and complaining bitterly to the Council of
the necessity for waiting till the Assizes before they could
enjoy the spectacle of the fifty others hanging beside them.
But the Government were dealing with the difficulty in a
wiser and more effectual way. The old powers to enforce
labor on the idle and settlement on the vagrant class which
had been given by statutes of Henry the Eighth were con-
tinued ; and each town and parish was held responsible for
the relief of its indigent and disabled poor, as well as for
the employment of able-bodied mendicants. But a more
efficient machinery was gradually devised for carrying out
the relief and employment of the poor. Funds for this
purpose had been provided by the collection of alms in
church; but by an Act of 1562 the mayor of each town
and the churchwardens of each country parish were
directed to draw up lis*.ong struggle of government after
434 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
government to check the liberty of printing. The irregular
censorship which had long existed was now finally organ-
ized. Printing was restricted to London and the two
Universities, the number of printers was reduced, and all
applicants for license to print were placed under the super-
vision of the Company of Stationers. Every publication,
too, great or small, had to receive the approbation of the
Primate or the Bishop of London. The fi>st result of this
system of repression was the appearance, in the very year
of the Armada, of a series of anonymous pamphlets bear-
ing the significant name of "Martin Marprelate," and
issued from a secret press which found refuge from the
Royal pursuivants in the country-houses of the gentry.
The press was at last seized ; and the suspected authors of
these scurrilous libels, Penry, a young Welshman, and a
minister named Udall, died, the one in prison, the other
on the scaffold. But the virulence and boldness of their
language produced a powerful effect, for it was impossible
under the system of Elizabeth to "mar" the bishops with-
out attacking the Crown ; and a new age of political liberty
was felt to be at hand when Martin Marprelate forced the
political and ecclesiastical measures of the Government
into the arena of public discussion.
The strife between Puritanism and the Crown was to
grow into a fatal conflict, but at the moment the Queen's
policy was in the main a wise one. It was no time for
scaring and disuniting the mass of the people when the
united energies of England might soon hardly suffice to
withstand the onset of Spain. On the other hand, strike
as she might at the Puritan party, it was bound to support
Elizabeth in the coming struggle with Philip. For the
sense of personal wrong and the outcry of the Catholic
world against his selfish reluctance to avenge the blood
of its martyrs had at last told on the Spanish King, and
in 1584 the first vessels of an armada which was destined
for the conquest of England began to gather in the Tagus.
Resentment and fanaticism indeed were backed by a cool
CHAP. 6.] THE KEFORMATION. 1540-1608. 435
policy. The gain of the Portuguese dominions made it
only the more needful for Philip to assert his mastery of
the seas. He had now to shut Englishman and heretic
not only out of the New World of the West but out of the
lucrative traffic with the East. And every day showed a
firmer resolve in Englishmen to claim the New World for
their own. The plunder of Drake's memorable voyage
had lured fresh freebooters to the "Spanish Main." The
failure of Frobisher's quest for gold only drew the nobler
spirits engaged in it to plans of colonization. North
America, vexed by long winters and thinly peopled by
warlike tribes of Indians, gave a rough welcome to the
earlier colonists; and after a fruitless attempt to forma
settlement on its shores Sir Humphrey Gilbert, one of the
noblest spirits of his time, turned homeward again to find
his fate in the stormy seas. " We are as near to heaven
by sea as by land," were the famous words he was heard
to utter ere the light of his little bark was lost forever in
the darkness of the night. But an expedition sent by his
brother-in-law, Sir Walter Raleigh, explored Pamlico
Sound ; and the country they discovered, a country where
in their poetic fancy " men lived after the manner of the
Golden Age," received from Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen,
the name of Virginia.
It was in England only that Philip could maintain his
exclusive right to the New World of the West; it was
through England only that he could strike a last and fatal
blow at the revolt of the Netherlands. And foiled as his
plans had been as yet by the overthrow of the Papal
schemes, even their ruin had left ground for hope in Eng-
land itself. The tortures and hangings of the Catholic
priests, the fining and imprisonment of the Catholic gentry,
had roused a resentment which it was easy to mistake for
disloyalty. The Jesuits with Parsons at their head pictured
the English Catholics as only waiting to rise in rebellion
at the call of Spain, and reported long lists of nobles and
squires who would muster their tenants to join Parma's
436 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Boon VI.
legions on their landing. A Spanish victory would be
backed by insurrection in Ireland and attack from Scot-
land. For in Scotland the last act of the Papal conspiracy
against Elizabeth was still being played. Though as yet
under age, the young King, James the Sixth, had taken
on himself the government of the realm, and had sub-
mitted to the guidance of a cousin, Esme Stuart, who had
been brought up in France and returned to Scotland a
Catholic and a fellow-plotter with the Guises. He suc-
ceeded in bringing Morton to the block ; and the death of
the great Protestant leader left him free to enlist Scotland
in the league which Home was forming for the ruin of
Elizabeth. The revolt in Ireland had failed. The work
of the Jesuits in England had just ended in the death of
Campian and the arrest of his followers. But with the
help of the Guises Scotland might yet be brought to rise
in arms for the liberation of Mary Stuart, and James
might reign as co-regent with his mother, if he were con-
verted to the Catholic Church. The young King, anxious
to free his crown from the dictation of the nobles, lent
himself to his cousin's schemes. For the moment they
were foiled. James was seized by the Protestant lords,
and the Duke of Lennox, as Esme Stuart, was now called,
driven from the realm. But James was soon free again,
and again in correspondence with the Guises and with
Philip. The young King was lured by promises of the
hand of an archduchess and the hope of the crowns of
both England and Scotland. The real aim of the intriguers
who guided him was to set him aside as soon as the victory
was won and to restore his mother to the throne. But
whether Mary were restored or no it seemed certain that
in any attack on Elizabeth Spain would find helpers from
among the Scots.
Nor was the opportunity favorable in Scotland alone.
In the Netherlands and in France all seemed to go well
for Philip's schemes. From the moment of his arrival in
the Low Countries the Prince of Parma had been steadily
CHAP. 6.] THE REFORMATION. 1540-1603. 437
winning back what Alva had lost. The Union of Ghent
had been broken. The ten Catholic provinces were being
slowly brought anew under Spanish rule. Town after
town was regained. From Brabant Parma had penetrated
into Flanders; Ypres, Bruges, and Ghent had fallen into
his hands. Philip dealt a more fatal blow at his rebellious
subjects in the murder of the man who was the centre of
their resistance. For years past William of Orange had
been a mark for assassin after assassin in Philip's pay,
and in 1584 the deadly persistence of the Spanish King
was rewarded by his fall. Reft indeed as they were of
their leader, the Netherlands still held their ground. The
union of Utrecht stood intact ; and Philip's work of re-
conquest might be checked at any moment by the inter-
vention of England or of France. But at this moment all
chance of French intervention passed away. Henry the
Third was childless, and the death of his one remaining
brother, Francis of Anjou, in 1584 left the young chief of
the house of Bourbon, King Henry of Navarre, heir to the
crown of France. Henry was the leader of the Huguenot
party, and in January, 1585, the French Catholics bound
themselves in a holy league to prevent such a triumph of
heresy in the realm as the reign of a Protestant would
bring about by securing the succession of Henry's uncle,
the cardinal of Bourbon. The Leaguers looked to Philip
for support; they owned his cause for their own; and
pledged themselves not only to root out Protestantism in
France, but to help the Spanish King in rooting it out
throughout the Netherlands. The League at once over-
shadowed the Crown; and Henry the Third could only
meet the blow by affecting to put himself at its head, and
by revoking the edicts of toleration in favor of the Hugue-
nots. But the Catholics disbelieved in his sincerity; they
looked only to Philip; and as long as Philip could supply
the Leaguers with men and money, he felt secure on the
side of France.
The vanishing of all hope of French aid was the more
438 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
momentous to the Netherlands that at this moment Parma
won his crowning triumph in the capture of Antwerp.
Besieged in the winter of 1584, the city surrendered after
a brave resistance in the August of 1585. But heavy as
was the blow, it brought gain as well as loss to the Nether-
landers. It forced Elizabeth into action. She refused in-
deed the title of Protector of the Netherlands which the
States offered her, and compelled them to place Brill and
Flushing in her hands as pledges for the repayment of her
expenses. But she sent aid. Lord Leicester was hurried
to the Flemish coast with eight thousand men. In a yet
bolder spirit of defiance Francis Drake was suffered to set
sail with a fleet of twenty-five vessels for the Spanish Main.
The two expeditions had very different fortunes. Drake's
voyage was a series of triumphs. The wrongs inflicted on
English seamen by the Inquisition were requited by the
burning of the cities of St. Domingo and Carthagena.
The coasts of Cuba and Florida were plundered, and though
the gold fleet escaped him, Drake returned in the summer
of 1586 with a heavy booty. Leicester on the other hand
was paralyzed by his own intriguing temper, by strife with
the Queen, and by his military incapacity. Only one dis-
astrous skirmish at Zutphen broke the inaction of his
forces, while Elizabeth strove vainly to use the presence
of his army to force Parma and the States alike to a peace
which would restore Philip's sovereignty over the Nether-
lands, but leave them free enough to serve as a check on
Philip's designs against herself.
Foiled as she was in securing a check on Philip in the
Low Countries, the Queen was more successful in robbing
him of the aid of the Scots. The action of King James
had been guided by his greed of the English Crown, and
a secret promise of the succession sufficed to lure him from
the cause of Spain. In July, 1586, he formed an alliance,
defensive and offensive, with Elizabeth, and pledged him-
self not only to give no aid to revolt in Ireland, but to
suppress any Catholic rising in the northern counties. The
CHAP. 6.] THE REFORMATION. 15401603. 439
pledge was the more important that the Catholic resent-
ment Deemed passing into fanaticism. Maddened by con-
fiscation and persecution, by the hopelessness of rebellion
within or of deliverance from without, the fiercer Catholics
listened to schemes of assassination to which the murder
of William of Orange lent a terrible significance. The
detection of Somerville, a fanatic who had received the
host before setting out for London "to shoot the Queen
with his dag," was followed by measures of natural se-
verity, by the flight and arrest of Catholic gentry and
peers, by a vigorous purification of the Inns of Court
where a few Catholics lingered, and by the dispatch of
fresh batches of priests to the block. The trial and death
of Parry, a member of the House of Commons who had
served in the royal household, on a similar charge, fed the
general panic. The leading Protestants formed an asso-
ciation whose members pledged themselves to pursue to the
death all who sought the Queen's life, and all on whose
behalf it was sought. The association soon became na-
tional, and the Parliament met together in a transport of
horror and loyalty to give it legal sanction. All Jesuits
and seminary priests were banished from the realm on
pain of death, and a bill for the security of the Queen dis-
qualified any claimant of the succession who instigated
subjects to rebellion or hurt to the Queen's person from
ever succeeding to the Crown.
The threat was aimed at Mary Stuart. Weary of her
long restraint, of her failure to rouse Philip or Scotland to
her aid, of the baffled revolt of the English Catholics and
the baffled intrigues of the Jesuits, Mary had bent for a
moment to submission. "Let me go," she wrote to Eliza-
beth; "let me retire from this island to some solitude
where I may prepare my soul to die. Grant this and 1
will sign away every right which either I or mine can
claim." But the cry was useless, and in 1586 her despair
found a new and more terrible hope in the plots against
Elizabeth's life. She knew and approved the vow of An-
440 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VL
thony Babington and a band of young Catholics, for the
most part connected with the royal household, to kill the
Queen and seat Mary on the throne ; but plot and approval
alike passed through Walsingham's hands, and the seizure
of Mary's correspondence revealed her connivance in the
scheme. Babington with his fellow-conspirators were at
once sent to the block, and the provisions of the act passed
in the last Parliament were put in force against Mary. In
spite of her protest a Commision of Peers sat as her judges
at Fotheringay Castle, and their verdict of " guilty" an-
nihilated under the provisions of the statute her claim to
the Crown. The streets of London blazed with bonfires,
and peals rang out from steeple to steeple at the news of
Mary's condemnation ; but in spite of the prayer of Par-
liament for her execution and the pressure of the Council
Elizabeth shrank from her death. The force of public
opinion however was now carrying all before it, and after
three months of hesitation the unanimous demand of her
people wrested a sullen consent from the Queen. She flung
the warrant signed upon the floor, and the Council took on
themselves the responsibility of executing it. On the 8th
of February, 1587, Mary died on a scaffold which was
erected in the castle-hall at Fotheringay as dauntlessly as
she had lived. "Do not weep," she said to her ladies, " I
have given my word for you." "Tell my friends," she
charged Melville, "that I die a good Catholic."
The blow was hardly struck before Elizabeth turned
with fury on the ministers who had forced her hand.
Cecil, who had now become Lord Burghley, was for a
while disgraced, and Davison, who carried the warrant to
the Council, was sent to the Tower to atone for an act
which shattered the policy of the Queen. The death of
Mary Stuart in fact seemed to have removed the last ob-
etacle out of Philip's way. It had put an end to the divi-
sions of the English Catholics. To the Spanish King, as
to the nearest heir in blood who was of the Catholic Faith,
Mary bequeathed her rights to the Crown, and the hopes
CHAP. 6.J THE REFORMATION. 1540-1608. 441
of her more passionate adherents were from that moment
bound up in the success of Spain. The blow too kindled
afresh the fervor of the Papacy, and Sixtus the Fifth
offered to aid Philip with money in his invasion of the
heretic realm. But Philip no longer needed pressure to
induce him to act. Drake's triumph had taught him that
the conquest of England was needful for the security of
his dominion in the New World, and for the mastery of
the seas. The presence of an English army in Flanders
convinced him that the road to the conquest of the States
lay through England itself. Nor did the attempt seem a
very perilous one. Allen and his Jesuit emissaries assured
Philip that the bulk of the nation was ready to rise as soon
as a strong Spanish force was landed on English shores
They numbered off the great lords who would head the re
volt, the Earls of Arundel and Northumberland, who wer*
both Catholics, the Earls of Worcester, Cumberland, Ox
ford, and Southampton, Viscount Montacute, the Lords
Dacres, Morley, Vaux, Wharton, Windsor, Lumley, and
Stourton. " All these," wrote Allen, " will follow our party
when they see themselves supported by a sufficient foreign
force." Against these were only "the new nobles, who
are hated in the country, "and the towns. " But the strength
of England is not in its towns." All the more warlike
counties were Catholic in their sympathies ; and the per-
secution of the recusants had destroyed the last traces of
their loyalty to the Queen. Three hundred priests had
been sent across the sea to organize the insurrection, and
they were circulating a book which Allen had lately pub-
lished " to prove that it is not only lawful but our bounden
duty to take up arms at the Pope's bidding and to fight
for the Catholic faith against the Queen and other here-
tics." A landing in the Pope's name would be best, but
a landing in Philip's name would be almost as secure of
success. Trained as they were now by Allen and his
three hundred priests, English Catholics " would let in
Catholic auxiliaries of any nation, for they have learned
442 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
to hate their domestic heretic more than any foreign
power."
What truth there was in the Jesuit view of England
time was to prove. But there can be no doubt that Philip
believed it, and that the promise of a Catholic rising was
his chief inducement to attempt an invasion. The opera-
tions of Parma therefore were suspended with a view to
the greater enterprise, and vessels and supplies for the fleet
which had for three years been gathering in the Tagus
were collected from every port of the Spanish coast. Only
France held Philip back. He dared not attack England
till all dread of a counter-attack from France was removed ;
and though the rise of the League had seemed to secure this,
its success had now become more doubtful. The King,
who had striven to embarrass it by placing himself at its
head, gathered round him the politicians and the moderate
Catholics who saw in the triumph of the new Duke of
Guise the ruin of the monarchy ; while Henry of Navarre
took the field at the head of the Huguenots, and won in
1587 the victory of Coutras. Guise restored the balance
by driving the German allies of Henry from the realm ;
but the Huguenots were still unconquered, and the King,
standing apart, fed a struggle which lightened for him the
pressure of the League. Philip was forced to watch the
wavering fortunes of the struggle, but while he watched,
another blow fell on him from the sea. The news of the
coming Armada called Drake again to action. In ApriL
1587, he set sail with thirty small barks, burned the store-
ships and galleys in the harbor of Cadiz, stormed the ports
of the Faro, and was only foiled in his aim of attacking
the Armada itself by orders from home. A descent upon
Corunna however completed what Drake called his " singe-
ing of the Spanish king's beard." Elizabeth used the dar-
ing blow to back some negotiations for peace which she
was still conducting in the Netherlands. But on Philip's
side at least these negotiations were simply delusive. The
Spanish pride had been touched to the quick. Amid
CHAP. 6.] THE REFORMATION. 1540-1608. 443
the exchange of protocols Parma gathered seventeen thou-
sand men for the coming invasion, collected a fleet of flat
bottomed transports at Dunkirk, and waited impatiently
for the Armada to protect his crossing. The attack of
Drake however, the death of its first admiral, and the
winter storms delayed the fleet from sailing. What held
it back even more effectually was the balance of parties in
France. But in the spring of 1588 Philip's patience was
rewarded. The League had been baffled till now not so
much by the resistance of the Huguenots as by the attitude
of the King. So long as Henry the Third held aloof from
both parties and gave a rallying point to the party of
moderation the victory of the Leaguers was impossible.
The difficulty was solved by the daring of Henry of Guise.
The fanatical populace of Paris rose at his call; the royal
troops were beaten off from the barricades; and on the
12th of May the King found himself a prisoner in the
hands of the Duke. Guise was made lieutenant-general
of the kingdom, and Philip was assured on the side of
France.
The revolution was hardly over when at the end of May
the Armada started from Lisbon. But it had scarcely put
to sea when a gale in the Bay of Biscay drove its scattered
vessels into Ferrol, and it was only on the nineteenth of
July, 1588, that the sails of the Armada were seen from the
Lizard, and the English beacons flared out their alarm
along the coast. The news found England ready. An
army was mustering under Leicester at Tilbury, the militia
of the midland counties were gathering to London, while
those of the south and east were held in readiness to meet
a descent on either shore. The force which Parma hoped
to lead consisted of forty thousand men, for the Armada
brought nearly twenty-two thousand soldiers to be added
to the seventeen thousand who were waiting to cross from
the Netherlands. Formidable as this force was, it was far
too weak by itself to do the work which Philip meant it to
do. Had Parma landed on the earliest day he purposed,
444 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
he would have found his way to London barred by a force
stronger than his own, a force, too, of men in whose ranks
were many who had already crossed pikes on equal terras
with his best infantry in Flanders. "When I shall have
landed," he warned his master, "I must fight battle after
battle, I shall lose men by wounds and disease, I must
leave detachments behind me to keep open my communica-
tions; and in a short time the body of my army will be-
come so weak that not only I may be unable to advance in
the face of the enemy, and time may be given to the
heretics and your Majesty's other enemies to interfere, but
there may fall out some notable inconveniences, with the
loss of everything, and I be unable to remedy it." What
Philip really counted on was the aid which his army
would find within England itself. Parma's chance of
victory, if he succeeded in landing, lay in a Catholic
rising. But at this crisis patriotism proved stronger than
religious fanaticism in the hearts of the English Catholics.
The news of invasion ran like fire along the English coasts.
The whole nation answered the Queen's appeal. Instinct
told England that its work was to be done at sea, and the
royal fleet was soon lost among the vessels of the volun-
teers. London, when Elizabeth asked for fifteen ships
and five thousand men, offered thirty ships and ten thou-
sand seamen, while ten thousand of its train-bands drilled
in the Artillery ground. Every seaport showed the same
temper. Coasters put out from every little harbor. Squires
and merchants pushed off in their own little barks for a
brush with the Spaniards. In the presence of the stranger
all religious strife was forgotten. The work of the Jesuits
was undone in an hour. Of the nobles and squires whose
tenants were to muster under the flag of the invader not
one proved a traitor. The greatest lords on Allen's list of
Philip's helpers, Cumberland, Oxford, and Northumber-
land, brought their vessels up alongside of Drake and Lord
Howard as soon as Philip's fleet appeared in the Channel.
The Catholic gentry who had been painted as longing for
CHAP. 6.] THE REFORMATION. 15401603. 44fl
the coming of the stranger, led their tenantry, when the
stranger came, to the muster at Tilbury.
The loyalty of the Catholics decided the fate of Philip's
scheme. Even if Parma's army succeeded in landing, its
task was now an impossible one. Forty thousand Spaniards
were no match for four millions of Englishmen, banded
together by a common resolve to hold England against the
foreigner. But to secure a landing at all, the Spaniards
had to be masters of the Channel. Parma might gather
his army on the Flemish coast, but every estuary and inlet
was blocked by the Dutch cruisers. The Netherlands
knew well that the conquest of England was planned only
as a prelude to their own reduction ; and the enthusiasm
with which England rushed to the conflict was hardly
greater than that which stirred the Hollanders. A fleet
of ninety vessels, with the best Dutch seamen at their
head, held the Scheldt and the shallows of Dunkirk, and
it was only by driving this fleet from the water that
Parma's army could be set free to join in the great enter-
prise. The great need of the Armada therefore was to
reach the coast of Flanders. It was ordered to make for
Calais, and wait there for the junction of Parma. But
even if Parma joined it, the passage of his force was im-
possible without a command of the Channel ; and in the
Channel lay an English fleet resolved to struggle hard for
the mastery. As the Armada sailed on in a broad crescent
past Plymouth, the vessels which had gathered under Lord
Howard of Effingham slipped out of the bay and hung
with the wind upon their rear. In numbers the two forces
were strangely unequal, for the English fleet counted only
eighty vessels against the hundred and thirty-two which
composed the Armada. In size of ships the disproportion
was even greater. Fifty of the English vessels, including
the squadron of the Lord Admiral and the craft of the
volunteers, were little bigger than yachts of the present
day. Even of the thirty Queen's ships which formed i
main body, there were but four which equalled in tonnage
446 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VL
the smallest of the Spanish galleons. Sixty-five of these
galleons formed the most formidable half of the Spanish
fleet ; and four galleasses, or gigantic galleys, armed with
fifty guns apiece, fifty-six armed merchantmen, and twenty
pinnaces made up the rest. The Armada was provided
with 2,500 cannons, and a vast store of provisions ; it had
on board 8,000 seamen and more than 20,000 soldiers ; and
if a court-favorite, the Duke of Medina Sidonia, had been
placed at its head, he was supported by the ablest staff of
naval officers which Spain possessed.
Small however as the English ships were, they were in
perfect trim; they sailed two feet for the Spaniards' one,
they were manned with 9,000 hardy seamen, and their
Admiral was backed by a crowd of captains who had won
fame in the Spanish seas. With him was Hawkins, who
had been the first to break into the charmed circle of the
Indies; Frobisher, the hero of the Northwest passage;
and, above all, Drake, who held command of the privateers.
They had won, too, the advantage of the wind ; and, closing
in or drawing off as they would, the lightly-handled Eng-
lish vessels, which fired four shots to the Spaniards' one,
hung boldly on the rear of the great fleet as it moved along
the Channel. "The feathers of the Spaniard," in the
phrase of the English seamen, were "plucked one by one."
Galleon after galleon was sunk, boarded, driven on shore ;
and yet Medina Sidonia failed in bringing his pursuers to
a close engagement. Now halting, now moving slowly on,
the running fight between the two fleets lasted throughout
the week, till on Sunday, the twenty-eighth of July, the
Armada dropped anchor in Calais roads. The time had
come for sharper work if the junction of the Armada with
Parma was to be prevented ; for, demoralized as the Span-
iards had been by the merciless chase, their loss in ships
had not been great, and their appearance off Dunkirk
might drive off the ships of the Hollanders who hindered
the sailing of the Duke. On the other hand, though the
numbers of English ships had grown, their supplies of food
CHAP. 6.] THE REFORMATION. 1640-1008. 447
and ammunition were fast running out. Howard there-
fore resolved to force an engagement; and, lighting eight
fire-ships at midnight, sent them down with the tide upon
the Spanish line. The galleons at once cut their cables
and stood out in panic to sea, drifting with the wind in a
long line off Gravelines. Drake resolved at all costs to
prevent their return. At dawn on the twenty-ninth the
English ships closed fairly in, and almost their last car-
tridge was spent ere the sun went down.
Hard as the fight had been, it seemed far from a decisive
one. Three great galleons indeed had sunk in the engage-
ment, three had drifted helplessly on to the Flemish coast,
but the bulk of the Spanish vessels remained, and even to
Drake the fleet seemed "wonderful great and strong."
Within the Armada itself however all hope was gone.
Huddled together by the wind and the deadly English fire,
their sails torn, their masts shot away, the crowded gal-
leons had become mere slaughter-houses. Four thousand
men had fallen, and bravely as the seamen fought, they
were cowed by the terrible butchery. Medina himself was
in despair. "We are lost, Senor Oquenda," he cried to
his bravest captain; "what are we to do?" "Let others
talk of being lost," replied Oquenda, "your Excellency has
only to order up fresh cartridge. " But Oquenda stood alone,
and a council of war resolved on retreat to Spain by the one
course open, that of a circuit round the Orkneys. " Never
anything pleased me better," wrote Drake, "than seeing
the enemy fly with a southerly wind to the northward.
Have a good eye to the Prince of Parma, for, with the
grace of God, I doubt not ere it be long so to handle the
matter with the Duke of Sidonia, as he shall wish himself
at St. Mary Port among his orange trees." But the work
of destruction was reserved for a mightier foe than Drake.
The English vessels were soon forced to give up the chase
by the running out of their supplies. But the Spanish
ships had no sooner reached the Orkneys than the storms
of the northern seas broke on them with a fury before
448 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
which all concert and union disappeared. In October fifty
reached Corunna, bearing ten thousand men stricken with
pestilence and death. Of the rest some were sunk, some
dashed to pieces against the Irish cliffs. The wreckers of
the Orkneys and the Faroes, the clansmen of the Scottish
Isles, the kernes of Donegal and Galway, all had their part
in the work of murder and robbery. Eight thousand
Spaniards perished between the Giant's Causeway and the
Blaskets. On a strand near Sligo an English captain
numbered eleven hundred corpses which had been cast up
by the sea. The flower of the Spanish nobility, who had
been sent on the new crusade under Alonzo da Leyva,
after twice suffering shipwreck, put a third time to sea to
founder on a reef near Dunluce.
" I sent my ships against men," said Philip when the
news reached him, "not against the seas." It was in
nobler tone that England owned her debt to the storm that
drove the Armada to its doom. On the medal that com-
memorated its triumph were graven the words, " The Lord
sent his wind, and scattered them." The pride of the
conquerors was hushed before their sense of a mighty de-
liverance. It was not till England saw the broken host
" fly with a southerly wind to the north" that she knew
what a weight of fear she had borne for thirty years. The
victory over the Armada, the deliverance from Spain, the
rolling away of the Catholic terror which had hung like a
cloud over the hopes of the new people, was like a passing
from death unto life. Within as without, the dark sky
suddenly cleared. The national unity proved stronger
than the religious strife. When the Catholic lords flocked
to the camp at Tilbury, or put off to join the fleet in the
Channel, Elizabeth could pride herself on a victory as
great as the victory over the Armada. She had won it by
her patience and moderation, by her refusal to lend herself
to the fanaticism of the Puritan or the reaction of the
Papist, by her sympathy with the mass of the people, by
her steady and unflinching preference of national unity to
CHAP. 6.] THE REFORMATION. 15401603. 449
any passing considerations of safety or advantage. For
thirty years, amid the shock of religious passions at home
and abroad, she had reigned not as a Catholic or as a
Protestant Queen, but as a Queen of England, and it was
to England, Catholic and Protestant alike, that she could
appeal in her hour of need. "Let tyrants fear," she ex-
claimed in words that still ring like the sound of a trumpet,
as she appeared among her soldiers. "Let tyrants fear!
I have always so behaved myself that under God I have
placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal
hearts and good-will of my subjects And therefore I am
come among you, as you see, resolved in the midst and
heat of the battle to live and die among you all." The
work of Edward and of Mary was undone, and the strife
of religions fell powerless before the sense of a common
country.
IsTor were the results of the victory less momentous to
Europe at large. What Wolsey and Henry had struggled
for, Elizabeth had done. At her accession England was
scarcely reckoned among European powers. The wisest
statesmen looked on her as doomed to fall into the hands
of France, or to escape that fate by remaining a depend-
ency of Spain. But the national independence had grown
with the national life. France was no longer a danger,
Scotland was no longer a foe. Instead of hanging on the
will of Spain, England had fronted Spain and conquered
her. She now stood on a footing of equality with the
greatest powers of the world. Her military weight indeed
was drawn from the discord which rent the peoples about
her, and would pass away with its close. But a new and
lasting greatness opened on the sea. She had sprung at a
bound into a great sea-power. Her fleets were spreading
terror through the New World as through the Old. When
Philip by his conquest of Portugal had gathered the two
greatest navies of the world into his single hand, England
had faced him and driven his fleet from the seas. But
the rise of England was even less memorable than the fall
460 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VL
of Spain. That Spain had fallen few of the world's states-
men saw then. Philip thanked God that he could easily,
if he chose, "place another fleet upon the seas," and the
dispatch of a second armada soon afterward showed that
his boast was a true one. But what had vanished was his
mastery of the seas. The defeat of the Armada was the
first of a series of defeats at the hands of the English and
the Dutch. The naval supremacy of Spain was lost, and
with it all was lost. An empire so widely scattered over
the world, and whose dominions were parted by interven-
ing nations, could only be held together by its command
of the seas. One century saw Spain stripped of the bulk of
the Netherlands, another of her possessions in Italy, a
third of her dominions in the New World. But slowly as
her empire broke, the cause of ruin was throughout the
same. It was the loss of her maritime supremacy that
robbed her of all, and her maritime supremacy was lost in
the wreck of the Armada.
If Philip met the shock with a calm patience, it at once
ruined his plans in the West. France broke again from
his grasp. Since the day of the Barricades Henry the
Third had been virtually a prisoner in the hands of the
Duke of Guise ; but the defeat of the Armada woke him
to a new effort for the recovery of power, and at the close
of 1588 Guise was summoned to his presence and stabbed
as he entered by the royal body-guard. The blow broke
the strength of the League. The Duke of Mayenne, a
brother of the victim, called indeed the Leaguers to arms;
and made war upon the King. But Henry found help in
his cousin, Henry of Navarre, who brought a Huguenot
force to his aid ; and the moderate Catholics rallied as of
old round the Crown. The Leaguers called on Philip for
aid, but Philip was forced to guard against attack at home.
Elizabeth had resolved to give blow for blow. The Portu-
guese were writhing under Spanish conquest; and a
claimant of the crown, Don Antonio, who had found
refuge in England, promised that on his landing the coun-
CHAP. 6.] THE REFORMATION. 1540-1603. 451
try would rise in arms. In the spring of 1589 therefor
an expedition of fifty vessels and 15,000 men was sent
under Drake and Sir John Norris against Lisbon. Its
chances of success hung on a quick arrival in Portugal,
but the fleet touched at Corunna, and after burning the
ships in its harbor the army was tempted to besiege the
town. A Spanish army which advanced to its relief was
repulsed by an English force of half its numbers. Corunna
however held stubbornly out, and in the middle of May
Norris was forced to break the siege and to sail to Lisbon.
But the delay had been fatal to his enterprise. The coun-
try did not rise; the English troops were thinned with
sickness; want of cannon hindered a siege; and after a
fruitless march up the Tagus Norris fell back on the fleet.
The coast was pillaged, and the expedition returned baffled
to England. Luckless as the campaign had proved, the
bold defiance of Spain and the defeat of a Spanish army
on Spanish ground kindled a new daring in Englishmen
while they gave new heart to Philip's enemies. In the
summer of 1589 Henry the Third laid siege to Paris. The
fears of the League were removed by the knife of a priest,
Jacques Clement, who assassinated the King in August ;
but Henry of Navarre, or, as he now became, Henry the
Fourth, stood next to him in line of blood, and Philip saw
with dismay a Protestant mount the throne of France.
From this moment the thought of attack on England,
even his own warfare in the Netherlands, was subordinated
in the mind of the Spanish King to the need of crushing
Henry the Fourth. It was not merely that Henry's Prot-
estantism threatened to spread heresy over the West.
Catholic or Protestant, the union of France under an active
and enterprising ruler would be equally fatal to Philip's
designs. Once gathered round its King, France was a
nearer obstacle to the re-conquest of the Netherlands than
ever England could be. On the other hand, the religious
strife, to which Henry's accession gave a fresh life and
vigor, opened wide prospects to Philip's ambition. Far
45 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
from proving a check upon Spain, it seemed as if France
might be turned into a Spanish dependence. While the
Leaguers proclaimed the Cardinal of Bourbon King, under
the name of Charles the Tenth, they recognized Philip as
Protector of France. Their hope indeed lay in his aid,
and their army was virtually his own. On the other band
Henry the Fourth was environed with difficulties. It was
only by declaring his willingness to be " further instructed"
in matters of faith, in other words by holding out hopes of
his conversion, that he succeeded in retaining the moder-
ate Catholics under his standard. His desperate bravery
alone won a victory at Yvry over the forces of the League,
which enabled him to again form the siege of Paris in 1590.
All recognized Paris as the turning-point in the struggle,
and the League called loudly for Philip's aid. To give it
was to break the work which Parma was doing in the
Netherlands, and to allow the United Provinces a breath-
ing space in their sorest need. But even the Netherlands
were of less moment than the loss of France ; and Philip's
orders forced Parma to march to the relief of Paris. The
work was done with a skill which proved the Duke to be
a master in the art of war. The siege of Paris was raised ;
the efforts of Henry to bring the Spaniards to an engage-
ment were foiled; and it was only when the King's army
broke up from sheer weariness that Parma withdrew un-
harmed to the north.
England was watching the struggle of Henry the Fourth
with a keen interest. The failure of the expedition against
Lisbon had put an end for the time to any direct attacks
upon Spain, and the exhaustion of the treasury forced
Elizabeth to content herself with issuing commissions to
volunteers. But the war was a national one, and the na-
tion waged it for itself. Merchants, gentlemen, nobles
fitted out privateers. The sea-dogs in ever-growing
numbers scoured the Spanish Main. Their quest had its
ill chances as it had its good, and sometimes the prizes
made were far from paying for the cost of the venture.
CHAP. 6.] THE REFORMATION. 15401603. 453
"Paul might plant, and Apollos might water," John
Hawkins explained after an unsuccessful voyage, " but it
is God only that giveth the increase!" But more often
the profit was enormous. Spanish galleons, Spanish mer-
chant-ships, were brought month after month to English
harbors. The daring of the English seamen faced any
odds. Ten English trading vessels beat off twelve Spanish
war-galleys in the Straits of Gibraltar. Sir Richard
Grenville in a single bark, the Revenge, found himself
girt in by fifty men-of-war, each twice as large as his
own. He held out from afternoon to the following day-
break, beating off attempt after attempt to board him ; and
it was not till his powder was spent, more than half his
crew killed, and the rest wounded, that the ship struck its
flag. Grenville had refused to surrender, and was carried
mortally wounded to die in a Spanish ship. " Here die I,
Richard Grenville," were his last words, "with a joyful
and a quiet mind, for that I have ended my life as a good
soldier ought to do, who has fought for his country and
his queen, for honor and religion." But the drift of the
French war soon forced Elizabeth back again into the
strife. In each of the French provinces the civil war
went on : and in Brittany, where the contest raged fiercest,
Philip sent the Leaguers a supply of Spanish troops. Nor-
mandy was already in Catholic hands, and the aim of the
Spanish King was to secure the western coast for future
operations against England. Elizabeth pressed Henry the
Fourth to foil these projects, and in the winter of 1591 she
sent money and men to aid him in the siege of Rouen.
To save Rouen Philip was again forced to interrupt his
work of conquest in the Netherlands. Parma marched
anew into the heart of France, and with the same consum-
mate generalship as of old relieved the town without giv-
ing Henry a chance of battle. But the day was fast going
against the Leaguers. The death of the puppet-king,
Charles the Tenth, left them without a sovereign to oppose
to Henry of Navarre; and their scheme of conferring the
454 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VL
crown on Isabella, Philip's daughter by Elizabeth of
France, with a husband whom Philip should choose,
awoke jealousies in the house of Guise itself, while it
gave strength to the national party who shrank from lay-
ing France at the feet of Spain. Even the Parliament of
Paris, till now the centre of Catholic fanaticism, protested
against setting the crown of France on the brow of a
stranger. The politicians drew closer to Henry of Navarre,
and the moderate Catholics pressed for his reconciliation
to the Church as a means of restoring unity to the realm.
The step had become so inevitable that even the Protes-
tants were satisfied with Henry's promise of toleration ; and
in the summer of 1593 he declared himself a Catholic.
With his conversion the civil war came practically to an
end. It was in vain that Philip strove to maintain the
zeal of the Leaguers, or that the Guises stubbornly kept
the field. All France drew steadily to the King. Paris
opened her gates in the spring of 1594, and the chief of
the Leaguers, the Duke of Mayenne, submitted at the close
of the year. Even Rome abandoned the contest, and at
the end of 1595 Henry received solemn absolution from
Clement the Eighth. From that moment France rose
again into her old power, and the old national policy of
opposition to the House of Austria threw her weight into
the wavering balance of Philip's fortunes. The death of
Parma had already lightened the peril of the United Prov-
inces, but though their struggle in the Low Countries was
to last for years, from the moment of Henry the Fourth's
conversion their independence was secure. Nor was the
restoration of the French monarchy to its old greatness of
less moment to England. Philip was yet to send an armada
against her coasts ; he was again to stir up a fierce revolt
in northern Ireland. But all danger from Spain was over
with the revival of France. Even were England to shrink
from a strife in which she had held Philip so gloriously at
bay, French policy would never suffer the island to fall
unaided under the power of Spain. The fear of foreign
CHAP. 6.] THE REFORMATION. 1540-1608. 455
conquest passed away. The long struggle for sheer exist-
ence was over. What remained was the Protestantism,
the national union, the lofty patriotism, the pride in Eng-
land and the might of Englishmen, which had drawn life
more vivid and intense than they had ever known before
from the long battle with the Papacy and with Spain.
20 VOL. 2
CHAPTER VII.
ENGLAND OP SHAKSPEBE.
15831603.
THE defeat of the Armada, the deliverance from Cathol-
icism and Spain, marked the critical moment in our polit-
ical development. From that hour England's destiny was
fixed. She was to be a Protestant power. Her sphere of
action was to be upon the seas. She was to claim her part
in the New World of the West. But the moment was as
critical in her intellectual development. As yet English
literature had lagged behind the literature of the rest of
Western Christendom. It was now to take its place among
the greatest literatures of the world. The general awaken-
ing of national life, the increase of wealth, of refinement,
and leisure that characterized the reign of Elizabeth, was
accompanied by a quickening of intelligence. The Renas-
cence had done little for English letters. The overpower-
ing influence of the new models both of thought and style
which it gave to the world in the writers of Greece and
Rome was at first felt only as a fresh check to the revival
of English poetry or prose. Though England shared more
than any European country in the political and ecclesias-
tical results of the New Learning, its literary results were
far less than in the rest of Europe, in Italy, or Germany,
or France. More alone ranks among the great classical
scholars of the sixteenth century. Classical learning in-
deed all but perished at the Universities in the storm of
the Reformation, nor did it revive there till the close of
Elizabeth's reign. Insensibly however the influences of
the Renascence fertilized the intellectual soil of England
for the rich harvest that was to come. The court poetry
CHAP. 7.] THE REFORMATION. 15401608. 457
which clustered round Wyatt and Surrey, exotic and imi-
tative as it was, promised a new life for English verse.
The growth of grammar-schools realized the dream of Sir
Thomas More, and brought the middle-classes, from the
squire to the petty tradesman, into contact with the
masters of Greece and Rome. The love of travel, which
became so remarkable a characteristic of Elizabeth's age,
quickened the temper of the wealthier nobles. "Home-
keeping youths," says Shakspere in words that mark the
time, " have ever homely wits ;" and a tour over the Con-
tinent became part of the education of a gentleman. Fair-
fax's version of Tasso, Harrington's version of Ariosto,
were signs of the influence which the literature of Italy,
the land to which travel led most frequently, exerted on
English minds. The classical writers told upon England
at large when they were popularized by a crowd of trans-
lations. Chapman's noble version of Homer stands high
above its fellows, but all the greater poets and historians
of the ancient world were turned into English before the
close of the sixteenth century.
It is characteristic of England that the first kind of
literature to rise from its long death was the literature of
history. But the form in which it rose marked the differ-
ence between the world in which it had perished and that
in which it reappeared. During the Middle Ages the
world had been without a past, save the shadowy and un-
known past of early Rome ; and annalist and chronicler
told the story of the years which went before as a preface
to their tale of the present without a sense of any differ-
ence between them. But the religious, social, and political
change which passed over England under the New Mon-
archy broke tho continuity of its life ; and the depth of the
rift between the two ages is seen by the way in which
History passes on its revival under Elizabeth from the
medisBval form of pure narrative to its modern form of an
investigation and reconstruction of the past. The new
interest which attached to the bygone world led to the col-
458 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VL
lection of its annals, their reprinting and embodiment in
an English shape. It was his desire to give the Elizabethan
Church a basis in the past, as much as any pure zeal for
letters, which induced Archbishop Parker to lead the way
in the first of these labors. The collection of historical
manuscripts which, following in the track of Leland, he
rescued from the wreck of the monastic libraries created a
school of antiquarian imitators, whose research and in-
dustry have preserved for us almost every work of per-
manent historical value which existed before the Dissolu-
tion of the Monasteries. To his publication of some of our
earlier chronicles we owe the series of similar publications
which bear the name of Camden, Twysden, and Gale.
But as a branch of literature, English History in the new
shape which we have noted began in the work of the poet
Daniel. The chronicles of Stowe and Speed, who preceded
him, are simple records of the past, often copied almost
literally from the annals they used, and utterly without
style or arrangement ; while Daniel, inaccurate and super-
ficial as he is, gave his story a literary form and embodied
it in a pure and graceful prose. Two larger works at the
close of Elizabeth's reign, the " History of the Turks" by
Knolles and Raleigh's vast but unfinished plan of the
"History of the World," showed a widening of historic in-
terest beyond national bounds to which it had hitherto
been confined.
A far higher development of our literature sprang from
the growing influence which Italy was exerting, partly
through travel and partly through its poetry and romances,
on the manners and taste of the time. Men made more
account of a story of Boccaccio's, it was said, than of a
story from the Bible. The dress, the speech, the manners
of Italy became objects of almost passionate imitation, and
of an imitation not always of the wisest or noblest kind.
To Ascham it seemed like "the enchantment of Circ
brought out of Italy to mar men's manners in England."
" An Italianate Englishman," ran the harder proverb of
CHAP. 7.] THE REFORMATION. 1540-1606. 459
Italy itself, "is an incarnate devil." The literary form
which this imitation took seemed at any rate ridiculous.
John Lyle, distinguished both as a dramatist and a poet,
laid aside the tradition of English style for a style modelled
on the decadence of Italian prose. Euphuism, as the new
fashion has been named from the prose romance of Euphues
which Lyle published in 1579, is best known to modern
readers by the pitiless caricature in which Shakspere
quizzed its pedantry, its affection, the meaningless monot-
ony of its far-fetched phrases, the absurdity of its extrava-
gant conceits. Its representative, Armado in "Love's
Labor's Lost," is "a man of fire-new words, fashion's own
knight," "that hath a mint of phrases in his brain; one
whom the music of his own vain tongue doth ravish like
enchanting harmony." But its very extravagance sprang
from the general burst of delight in the new resources of
thought and language which literature felt to be at its dis-
posal ; and the new sense of literary beauty which it dis-
closed in its affectation, in its love of a "mint of phrases,"
and the "music of its ever vain tongue," the new sense of
pleasure which it revealed in delicacy or grandeur of ex-
pression, in the structure and arrangement of sentences, in
what has been termed the atmosphere of words, was a
sense out of which style was itself to spring.
For a time Euphuism had it all its own way. Elizabeth
was the most affected and detestable of Euphuists; and
"that beauty in Court which could not parley Euphuism,"
a courtier of Charles the First's time tells us, "was as
little regarded as she that now there speaks not French."
The fashion however passed away, but the " Arcadia" of
Sir Philip Sidney shows the wonderful advance which
prose had made under its influence. Sidney, the nephew
of Lord Leicester, was the idol of his time, and perhaps
no figure reflects the age more fully and more beautifully.
Fair as he was brave, quick of wit as of affection, noble
and generous in temper, dear to Elizabeth as to Spenser,
the darling of the Court and of the camp, his learning and
460 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
his genius made him the centre of the literary world which
was springing into birth on English soil. He had trav-
elled in France and Italy, he was master alike of the older
learning and of the new discoveries of astronomy. Bruno
dedicated to him as to a friend his metaphysical specula-
tions ; he was familiar with the drama of Spain, the poems
of Ronsard, the sonnets of Italy. Sidney combined the
wisdom of a grave councillor with the romantic chivalry
of a knight-errant. " I never heard the old story of Percy
and Douglas," he says, "that I found not my heart moved
more than with a trumpet." He flung away his life to
save the English army in Flanders, and as he lay dying
they brought a cup of water to his fevered lips. He bade
them give it to a soldier who was stretched on the ground
beside him. "Thy necessity," he said, "is greater than
mine." The whole of Sidney's nature, his chivalry and
his learning, his thirst for adventures, his freshness of
tone, his tenderness and childlike simplicity of heart, his
affectation and false sentiment, his keen sense of pleasure
and delight, pours itself out in the pastoral medley, forced,
tedious, and yet strangely beautiful, of his " Arcadia. " In
his " Defence of Poetry" the youthful exuberance of the
romancer has passed into the earnest vigor and grandiose
stateliness of the rhetorician. But whether in the one
work or the other, the flexibility, the music, the luminous
clearness of Sidney's style remains the same.
But the quickness and vivacity of English prose was
first developed in a school of Italian imitators which ap-
peared in Elizabeth's later years. The origin of English
fiction is to be found in the tales and romances with which
Greene and Nash crowded the market, models for which
they found in the Italian novels. The brief form of these
novelettes soon led to the appearance of the " pamphlet ;"
and a new world of readers was seen in the rapidity with
which the stories or scurrilous libels that passed under this
name were issued, and the greediness with which they
were devoured. It was the boast of Greene that in the
CHAP. 7.] THE REFORMATION. 15401603. 461
eight years before his death he had produced forty pam-
phlets. " In a night or a day would he have yarked up a
pamphlet, as well as in seven years, and glad was that
printer that might be blest to pay him dear for the very
dregs of his wit." Modern eyes see less of the wit than of
the dregs in the books of Greene and his compeers ; but
the attacks which Nash directed against the Puritans and
his rivals were the first English works which shook utterly
off the pedantry and extravagance of Euphuism. In his
lightness, his facility, his vivacity, his directness of speech,
we have the beginning of popular literature. It had de-
scended from the closet to the street, and the very change
implied that the street was ready to receive it. The abun-
dance indeed of printers and of printed books at the close of
the Queen's reign shows that the world of readers and
writers had widened far beyond the small circle of scholars
and courtiers with which it began.
But to the national and local influences which were tell-
ing on English literature was added that of the restlessness
and curiosity which characterized the age. At the moment
which we have reached the sphere of human interest was
widened as it has never been widened before or since by
the revelation of a new heaven and a new earth. It was
only in the later years of the sixteenth century that the
discoveries of Copernicus were brought home to the gen-
eral intelligence of mankind by Kepler and Galileo, or that
the daring of the Buccaneers broke through the veil which
greed of Spain had drawn across the New World of
Columbus. Hardly inferior to these revelations as a
source of intellectual impulse was the sudden and pictur-
esque way in which the various races of the world were
brought face to face with one another through the uni-
versal passion for foreign travel. While the red tribes of
the West were described by Amerigo Vespucci, and the
strange civilization of Mexico and Peru disclosed by Cortes
and Pizarro, the voyages of the Portuguese threw open the
older splendors of the East, and the story of India and
463 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Boos VI.
China was told for the first time to Christendom by Maffei
and Mendoza. England took her full part in this work of
discovery. Jenkinson, an English traveller, made his way
to Bokhara. Willoughby brought back Muscovy to the
knowledge of Western Europe. English mariners pene-
trated among the Esquimaux, or settled in Virginia.
Drake circumnavigated the globe. The "Collection of
Voyages" which was published by Hakluyt in 1582 dis-
closed the vastness of the world itself, the infinite number
of the races of mankind, the variety of their laws, their
customs, their religions, their very instincts. We see the
influence of this new and wider knowledge of the world,
not only in the life and richness which it gave to the im-
agination of the time, but in the immense interest which
from this moment attached itself to Man. Shakspere's
conception of Caliban, like the questioning of Montaigne,
marks the beginning of a new and a truer, because a more
inductive, philosophy of human nature and human history.
The fascination exercised by the study of human character
showed itself in the essays of Bacon, and yet more in the
wonderful popularity of the drama.
And to these larger and world-wide sources of poetic
power was added in England, at the moment which we
have reached in its story, the impulse which sprang from
national triumph, from the victory over the Armada, the
deliverance from Spain, the rolling away of the Catholic
terror which had hung like a cloud over the hopes of the
new people. With its new sense of security, its new sense
of national energy and national power, the whole aspect of
England suddenly changed. As yet the interest of Eliza-
beth's reign had been political and material; the stage had
been crowded with statesmen and warriors, with Cecils and
Walsinghams and Drakes. Literature had hardly found
a place in the glories of the time. But from the moment
when the Armada drifted back broken to Ferrol the figures
of warriors and statesmen were dwarfed by the grander
figures of poets and philosophers. Amid the throng in
CHAP. 7.] THE REFORMATION. 15401603. 463
Elizabeth's antechamber the noblest form is that of the
singer who lays the " Faerie Queen" at her feet, or of the
young lawyer who muses amid the splendors of the pres-
ence over the problems of the "Novum Organum." The
triumph at Cadiz, the conquest of Ireland, pass unheeded
as we watch Hooker building up his " Ecclesiastical Polity"
among the sheepfolds, or the genius of Shakspere rising
year by year into supremer grandeur in a rude theatre be-
side the Thames.
The glory of the new literature broke on England with
Edmund Spenser. We know little of his life ; he was born
in 1552 in East London, the son of poor parents, but linked
in blood with the Spencers of Althorpe, even then as he
proudly says " a house of ancient fame. " He studied as
a sizar at Cambridge, and quitted the University while
still a boy to live as a tutor in the north ; but after some
years of obscure poverty the scorn of a fair " Rosalind"
drove him again southward. A college friendship with
Gabriel Harvey served to introduce him to Lord Leicester,
who sent him as his envoy into France, and in whose ser-
vice he first became acquainted with Leicester's nephew,
Sir Philip Sidney. From Sidney's house at Penshurst
came in 1579 his earliest work, the " Shepherd's Calendar ;"
in form, like Sidney's own "Arcadia," a pastoral where
love and loyalty and Puritanism jostled oddly with the
fancied shepherd life. The peculiar melody and profuse
imagination which the pastoral disclosed at once placed its
.author in the forefront of living poets, but a far greater
'work was already in hand; and from some words of
Gabriel Harvey's we see Spenser bent on rivalling Ariosto,
and even hoping " to overgo" the " Orlando Furioso" in
his "Elvish Queen." The ill-will or the indifference of
Burleigh however blasted the expectations he had drawn
from the patronage of Sidney of Leicester, and from the
favor^with which he had been welcomed by the Queen.
Sidney, in disgrace with Elizabeth through his opposition
to the marriage with Anjou, withdrew to Wilton to write
464 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
the "Arcadia" by his sister's side; and "discontent of my
long fruitless stay in princes' courts," the poet tells us,
" and expectation vain of idle hopes" drove Spenser into
exile. In 1580 he followed Lord Grey as his secretary
into Ireland and remained there on the Deputy's recall in
the enjoyment of an office and a grant of land from the
forfeited estates of the Earl of Desmond. Spenser had
thus enrolled himself among the colonists to whom Eng-
land was looking at the time for the regeneration of Mun-
ster, and the practical interest he took in the " barren soil
where cold and want and poverty do grow" was shown by
the later publication of a prose tractate on the condition
and government of the island. It was at Dublin or in his
castle of Kilcolman, two miles from Doneraile, " under the
foot of Mole, that mountain hoar," that he spent the ten
years in which Sidney died and Mary fell on the scaffold
and the Armada came and went ; and it was in the latter
home that Walter Raleigh found him sitting " alwaies idle, "
a8 it seemed to his restless friend, " among the cooly shades
of the green alders by the Mulla's shore" in a visit made
memorable by the poem of "Colin Clout's come home
again."
But in the " idlesse" and solitude of the poet's exile the
great work begun in the two pleasant years of his stay at
Penshurst had at last taken form, and it was to publish the
first three books of the " Faerie Queen" that Spenser re-
turned in Raleigh's company to London. The appearance
of the u Faerie Queen" in 1590 is the one critical event in
the annals of English poetry ; it settled in fact the question
whether there was to be such a thing as English poetry or
no. The older national verse which had blossomed and
died in Caedmon sprang suddenly into a grander life in
Chaucer, but it closed again in a yet more complete death.
Across the Border indeed the Scotch poets of the fifteenth
century preserved something of their master's vivacity
and color, and in England itself the Italian poetry of the
Renascence had of late found echoes in Surrey and Sidney.
CHAP. 7.] THE REFORMATION. 15401603. 46*
The new English drama too was beginning to display ite
wonderful powers, and the work of Marlowe had already
prepared the way for the work of Shakspere. But bright
as was the promise of coming song, no great imaginative
jpoem had broken the silence of English literature for nearly
two hundred years when Spenser landed at Bristol with
the "Faerie Queen." From that moment the stream of
English poetry has flowed on without a break. There
have been times, as in the years which immediately fol-
lowed, when England has " become a nest of singing birds ;"
there have been times when song was scant and poor ; but
there never has been a time when England was wholly
without a singer.
The new English verse has been true to the source from
which it sprang, and Spenser has always been " the poet's
poet." But in his own day he was the poet of England
at large. The " Faerie Queen" was received with a burst
of general welcome. It became " the delight of every ac-
complished gentleman, the model of every poet, the solace
of every soldier." The poem expressed indeed the very
life of the time. It was with a true poetic instinct that
Spenser fell back for the framework of his story on the
fairy world of Celtic romance, whose wonder and mystery
had in fact become the truest picture of the wonder and
mystery of the world around him. In the age of Cortes
and of Raleigh dreamland had ceased to be dreamland, and
no marvel or adventure that befell lady or knight was
stranger than the tales which weatherbeaten mariners
from the Southern Seas were telling every day to grave
merchants upon 'Change. The very incongruities of the
story of Arthur and his knighthood, strangely as it had been
built up out of the rival efforts of bard and jongleur and
priest, made it the fittest vehicle for the expression of the
world of incongruous feeling which we call the Renascence.
To modern eyes perhaps there is something grotesque
in the strange medley of figures that crowd the canvas
of the "Faerie Queen," in its fauns dancing on the sward
466 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
where knights have hurtled together, in its alternation of
the savage men from the New World with the satyrs of
classic mythology, in the giants, dwarfs, and monsters of
popular fancy who jostle with the nymphs of Greek legend
and the damosels of mediaeval romance. But, strange as
the medley is, it reflects truly enough the stranger medley
of warring ideals and irreconcilable impulses which made
up the life of Spenser's contemporaries. It was not in the
u Faerie Queen" only, but in the world which it portrayed,
that the religious mysticism of the Middle Ages stood face
to face with the intellectual freedom of the Revival of Let-
ters, that asceticism and self-denial cast their spell on im-
aginations glowing with the sense of varied and inexhaus-
tible existence, that the dreamy and poetic refinement of
feeling which expressed itself in the fanciful unrealities of
chivalry co-existed with the rough practical energy that
sprang from an awakening sense of human power, or the
lawless extravagance of an idealized friendship and love
lived side by side with the moral sternness and elevation
which England was drawing from the Reformation and
the Bible.
But strangely contrasted as are the elements of the poem,
they are harmonized by the calmness and serenity which
is the note of the " Faerie Queen." The world of the Re-
nascence is around us, but it is ordered, refined, and calmed
by the poet's touch. The warmest scenes which he bor-
rows from the Italian verse of his day are idealized into
purity ; the very struggle of the men around him is lifted
out of its pettier accidents and raised into a spiritual one-
ness with the struggle in the soul itself. There are allu-
sions in plenty to contemporary events, but the contest be-
tween Elizabeth and Mary takes ideal form in that of Una
and. the false Duessa, and the clash of arms between Spain
and the Huguenots comes to us faint and hushed through
the serene air. The verse, like the story, rolli on as by its
own natural power, without haste or effort or delay, Th
gorgeous coloring, the profuse and often complex imagery
CHAP. 7.] THE REFORMATION. 1540-1608. 467
which Spenser's imagination lavishes, leave no sense of
confusion in the reader's mind. Every figure, strange as
it may be, is seen clearly and distinctly as it passes by.
It is in this calmness, this serenity, this spiritual elevation
of the "Faerie Queen," that we feel the new life of the
coming age moulding into ordered and harmonious form
the life of the Renascence. Both in its conception, and in
the way in which this conception is realized in the portion
of his work which Spenser completed, his poem strikes the
note of the coming Puritanism. In his earlier pastoral,
the "Shepherd's Calendar," the poet had boldly taken his
part with the more advanced reformers against the Church
policy of the Court. He had chosen Archbishop Grindal,
who was then in disgrace for his Puritan sympathies, as
his model of a Christian pastor ; and attacked with sharp
invective the pomp of the higher clergy. His "Faerie
Queen" in its religious theory is Puritan to the core. The
worst foe of its " Red-cross Knight" is the false and scarlet-
clad Duessa of Rome, who parts him for a while from
Truth and leads him to the house of Ignorance. Speuser
presses strongly and pitilessly for the execution of Mary
Stuart. No bitter word ever breaks the calm of his verse
save when it touches on the perils with which Catholicism
was environing England, perils before which his knight
must fall " were not that Heavenly Grace doth him uphold
and steadfast Truth acquite him out of all." But it is yet
more in the temper and aim of his work that we catch the
nobler and deeper tones of English Puritanism. In his
earlier musings at Penshurst the poet had purposed to sur-
pass Ariosto, but the gayety of Ariesto's song is utterly
absent from his own. Not a ripple of laughter breaks the
calm surface of Spenser's verse. He is habitually serious,
and the seriousness of his poetic tone reflects the serious-
ness of his poetic purpose. His aim, he tells us, was to
represent the moral virtues, to assign to each its knightly
patron, so that its excellence might be expressed and it
contrary vice trodden under foot by deeds of arms and
468 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
chivalry. In knight after knight of the twelve he pur-
posed to paint, he wished to embody some single virtue of
the virtuous man in its struggle with the faults and errors
which specially beset it; till in Arthur, the sum of the
whole company, man might have been seen perfected, in
his longing and progress toward the "Faerie Queen," the
jDivine Glory which is the true end of human effort.
The largeness of his culture indeed, his exquisite sense
of beauty, and above all the very intensity of his moral
enthusiasm, saved Spenser from the narrowness and exag-
geration which often distorted goodness into unloveliness
in the Puritan. Christian as he is to the core, his Chris-
tianity is enriched and fertilized by the larger temper of
the Renascence, as well as by a poet's love of the natural
world in which the older mythologies struck their roots.
Diana and the gods of heathendom take a sacred tinge
from the purer sanctities of the new faith ; and in one of
the greatest songs of the " Faerie Queen" the conception of
love widens, as it widened in the mind of a Greek, into the
mighty thought of the productive energy of Nature.
Spenser borrows in fact the delicate and refined forms of
the Platonist philosophy to express his own moral enthu-
siasm. Not only does he love, as others have loved, all
that is noble and pure and of good report, but he is fired as
none before or after him have been fired with a passionate
sense of moral beauty. Justice, Temperance, Truth, are
no mere names to him, but real existences to which his
whole nature clings with a rapturous affection. Outer
beauty he believed to spring, and loved because it sprang
from the beauty of the soul within. There was much in
such a moral protest as this to rouse dislike in any age,
but it is the glory of the age of Elizabeth that, " mad world"
as in many ways it was, all that was noble welcomed the
"Faerie Queen." Elizabeth herself, says Spenser, "to
mine oaten pipe inclined her ear," and bestowed a pension
on the poet. In 1595 he brought three more books of hia
poem to England. He returned to Ireland to commemo-
CHAP. 7.] THE REFORMATION. 15401608. 4S9
rate his marriage in Sonnets and the most beautiful of
bridal songs, and to complete the " Faerie Queen" among
love and poverty and troubles from his Irish neighbors.
But these troubles soon took a graver form. In 1599 Ire-
land broke into revolt, and the poet escaped from his burn-
ing house to fly to England and to die broken-hearted in
an inn at Westminster.
If the " Faerie Queen" expressed the higher elements of
the Elizabethan age, the whole of that age, its lower ele-
ments and its higher alike, was expressed in the English
drama. We have already pointed out the circumstances
which throughout Europe were giving a poetic impulse to
the newly-aroused intelligence of men, and this impulse
everywhere took a dramatic shape. The artificial French
tragedy which began about his time with Garnier was not
indeed destined to exert any influence over English poetry
till a later age ; but the influence of the Italian comedy,
which had begun half a century earlier with Machiavelli
and Ariosto, was felt directly through the Novelle, or
stories, which served as plots for our dramatists. It left
its stamp indeed on some of the worst characteristics of
the English stage. The features of our drama that startled
the moral temper of the time and won the deadly hatred of
the Puritans, its grossness and profanity, its tendency to
scenes of horror and crime, its profuse employment of
cruelty and lust as grounds of dramatic action, its daring
use of the horrible and the unnatural whenever they en-
abled it to display the more terrible and revolting sides of
human passion, were derived from the Italian stage. It
is doubtful how much the English playwrights may have
owed to the Spanish drama, which under Lope and Cer-
vantes sprang suddenly into a grandeur that almost
rivalled their own. In the intermixture of tragedy and
comedy, in the abandonment of the solemn uniformity of
poetic diction for the colloquial language of real life, the
use of unexpected incidents, the complication of their plots
and intrigues, the dramas of England and Spain are re-
470 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
markably alike; but the likeness seems rather to have
sprung from a similarity in the circumstances to which
both owed their rise, than to any direct connection of the
one with the other. The real origin of the English drama,
in fact, lay not in any influence from without but in the
influence of England itself. The temper of the nation was
dramatic. Ever since the Reformation, the Palace, the
Inns of Court, and the University had been vying with
one another in the production of plays; and so early was
their popularity that even under Henry the Eighth it was
found necessary to create a " Master of the Revels" to super-
vise them. Every progress of Elizabeth from shire to shire
was a succession of shows and interludes. Diana with her
nymphs met the Queen as she returned from hunting;
Love presented her with his golden arrow as she passed
through the gates of Norwich. From the earlier years of
her reign the new spirit of the Renascence had been pour-
ing itself into the rough mould of the Mystery Plays,
whose allegorical virtues and vices, or scriptural heroes
and heroines, had handed on the spirit of the drama
through the Middle Ages. Adaptations from classical
pieces began to alternate with the purely religious " Moral-
ities;" and an attempt at a livelier style of expression and
invention appeared in the popular comedy of " Gammar
Gurton's Needle;" while Sackville, Lord Dorset, in his
tragedy of " Gorboduc" made a bold effort at sublimity of
diction, and introduced the use of blank verse as the vehicle
of dramatic dialogue.
But it was not to these tentative efforts of scholars and
nobles that the English stage was really indebted for the
amazing outburst of genius which dates from the year
1576, when "the Earl of Leicester's servants" erected the
first public theatre in Blackfriars. It was the people it-
self that created its Stage. The theatre indeed was com-
monly only the courtyard of an inn, or a mere booth such
as is still seen at a country fair. The bulk of the audience
sat beneath the open sky in the "pit" or yard; a few
CHAP. 7.] THE REFORMATION. 1540-1608. 471
covered seats in the galleries which ran round it formed
the boxes of the wealthier spectators, while patrons and
nobles found seats upon the actual boards. All the appli-
ances were of the roughest sort : a few flowers served to
indicate a garden, crowds and armies were represented by
a dozen scene-shifters with swords and bucklers, heroes
rode in and out on hobby-horses, and a scroll on a post told
whether the scene was at Athens or London. There were
no female actors, and the grossness which startles us in
words which fell from women's lips took a different color
when every woman's part was acted by a boy. But dif-
ficulties such as these were more than compensated by the
popular character of the drama itself. Rude as the theatre
might be, all the world was there. The stage was crowded
with nobles and courtiers. Apprentices and citizens
thronged the benches in the yard below. The rough mob
of the pit inspired, as it felt, the vigorous life, the rapid
transitions, the passionate energy, the reality, the lifelike
medley and confusion, the racy dialogue, the chat, the
wit, the pathos, the sublimity, the rant and buffoonery,
the coarse horrors and vulgar bloodshedding, the immense
range over all classes of society, the intimacy with the
foulest as well as the fairest developments of human temper,
which characterized the English stage. The new drama
represented " the very age and body of the time, his form
and pressure." The people itself brought its nobleness and
its vileness to the boards. No stage was ever so human,
no poetic life so intense. Wild, reckless, defiant of all
past tradition, of all conventional laws, the English dram-
atists owned no teacher, no source of poetic inspiration,
but the people itself.
Few events in our literary history are so startling as this
sudden rise of the Elizabethan drama. The first public
theatre was erected only in the middle of the Queen's
reign. Before the close of it eighteen theatres existed in
London alone. Fifty dramatic poets, many of the first
order, appeared in the fifty years which preceded the clos-
472 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
ing of the theatres by the Puritans ; and great as is the
number of their works which have perished, we still possess
a hundred dramas, all written within this period, and of
which at least a half are excellent. A glance at their
authors shows us that the intellectual quickening of the
age had now reached the mass of the people. Almost all
of the new playwrights were fairly educated, and many
were university men. But instead of courtly singers of
the Sidney and Spenser sort we see the advent of the " poor
scholar." The earlier dramatists, such as Nash, Peele,
Kyd, Greene, or Marlowe, were for the most part poor,
and reckless in their poverty ; wild livers, defiant of law
or common fame, in revolt against the usages and religion
of their day, " atheists" in general repute, " holding Moses
for a juggler," haunting the brothel and the alehouse, and
dying starved or in tavern brawls. But with their appear-
ance began the Elizabethan drama. The few plays which
have reached us of an earlier date are either cold imita-
tions of the classical and Italian comedy, or rude farces
like "Ralph Roister Doister," or tragedies such as "Gor-
buduc" where, poetic as occasional passages may be, there
is little promise of dramatic development. But in the year
which preceded the coming of the Armada the whole aspect
of the stage suddenly changes, and the new dramatists
range themselves around two men of very different genius,
Robert Greene and Christopher Marlowe.
Of Greene, as the creator of our lighter English prose,
we have already spoken. But his work as a poet was of
yet greater importance, for his perception of character and
the relations of social life, the playfulness of his fancy, and.
the liveliness of his style, exerted an influence on his con-
temporaries which was equalled by that of none but Mar^
lowe and Peele. In spite of the rudeness of his plots and
the unequal character of his work Greene must be regarded
as the creator of our modern comedy. No figure better
paints the group of young playwrights. He left Cam-
bridge to travel through Italy and Spain, and to bring
CHAP. 7.] THE REFORMATION. 15401603. 473
back the debauchery of the one and the scepticism of the
other. In the words of remorse he wrote before his death
he paints himself as a drunkard and a roysterer, winning
money only by ceaseless pamphlets and plays to waste it
on wine and women, and drinking the cup of life to the
dregs. Hell and the after-world were the butts of his
ceaseless mockery. If he had not feared the judges of the
Queen's Courts more than he feared God, he said in bitter
jest, he should often have turned cutpurse. He married,
and loved his wife, but she was soon deserted; and the
wretched profligate found himself again plunged into ex-
cesses which he loathed, though he could not live without
them. But wild as was the life of Greene, his pen was
pure. He is steadily on virtue's side in the love pam-
phlets and novelettes he poured out in endless succession,
and whose plots were dramatized by the school which
gathered round him.
The life of Marlowe was as riotous, his scepticism even
more daring, than the life and scepticism of Greene. His
early death alone saved him in all probability from a pros-
ecution for atheism. He was charged with calling Moses
a juggler, and with boasting that, if he undertook to write
a new religion, it should be a better religion than the
Christianity he saw around him. But he stood far ahead
of his fellows as a creator of English tragedy. Born in
1564 at the opening of Elizabeth's reign, the son of a
Canterbury shoemaker, but educated at Cambridge, Mar-
lowe burst on the world in the year which preceded the
triumph over the Armada with a play which at once
wrought a revolution in the English stage. Bombastic
and extravagant as it was, and extravagance reached its
height in a scene where captive kings, the "pampered
jades of Asia," drew their conqueror's car across the stage,
" Tamburlaine" not only indicated the revolt of the new
drama against the timid inanities of Euphuism, but gave
an earnest of that imaginative daring, the secret of which
Marlowe was to bequeath to the playwrights who followed
474 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
him. He perished at thirty in a shameful brawl, but in
his brief career he had struck the grander notes of the
coming drama. His Jew of Malta was the herald of Shy-
lock. He opened in " Edward the Second" the series of
historical plays which gave us " Csesar" and " Richard the
Third." His "Faustus" is riotous, grotesque, and full of
a mad thirst for pleasure, but it was the first dramatic at-
tempt to touch the problem of the relations of man to the
unseen world. Extravagant, unequal, stooping even to
the ridiculous in his cumbrous and vulgar buffonery, there
is a force in Marlowe, a conscious grandeur of tone, a range
of passion, which sets him above all his contemporaries
save one. In the higher qualities of imagination, as in
the majesty and sweetness of his "mighty line," he is in-
ferior to Shakspere alone.
A few daring jests, a brawl, and a fatal stab, make up
the life of Marlowe; but even details such as these are
wanting to the life of William Shakspere. Of hardly any
great poet indeed do we know so little. For the story of
his youth we have only one or two trifling legends, and
these almost certainly false. Not a single letter or char-
acteristic saying, not one of the jests " spoken at the Mer-
maid," hardly a single anecdote, remain to illustrate his
busy life in London. His look and figure in later age
have been preserved by the bust over his tomb at Strat-
ford, and a hundred years after his death he was still re-
membered in his native town ; but the minute diligence of
the inquirers of the Georgian time was able to glean
hardly a single detail, even of the most trivial order, which
could throw light upon the years of retirement before his
death. It is owing perhaps to the harmony and unity of
his temper that no salient peculiarity seems to have left its
trace on the memory of his contemporaries ; it is the very
grandeur of his genius which precludes us from discover-
ing any personal trait in his work. His supposed self-
revelation in the Sonnets is so obscure that only a few out-
lines can be traced even by the boldest conjecture. In hia
CHAP. 7.] THE REFORMATION. 1540^1803. 475
dramas he is all his characters, and his characters range
over all mankind. There is not one, or the act or word of
one that we can identify personally with the poet himself.
He was born in 1564, the sixth year of Elizabeth's reign,
twelve years after the birth of Spenser, three years later
than the birth of Bacon. Marlowe was of the same age
with Shakspere : Greene probably a few years older. His
father, a glover and small farmer of Stratford-on-Avon,
was forced by poverty to lay down his office of alderman
as his son reached boyhood ; and stress of poverty may
have been the cause which drove William Shakspere, who
was already married at eighteen to a wife older than him-
self, to London and the stage. His life in the capital can
hardly have begun later than in his twenty-third year, the
memorable year which followed Sidney's death, which
preceded the coming of the Armada, and which witnessed
the production of Marlowe's "Tamburlaine." If we take
the language of the Sonnets as a record of his personal
feeling, his new profession as an actor stirred in him only
the bitterness of self-contempt. He chides with Fortune
" that did not better for my life provide than public means
that public manners breed;" he writhes at the thought
that he has " made himself a motley to the view" of the
gaping apprentices in a pit of Blackfriars. " Thence comes
it," he adds, "that my name receives a brand, and almost
thence my nature is subdued to that it works in." But the
application of the words is a more than doubtful one. In
spite of petty squabbles with some of his dramatic rivals
at the outset of his career, the genial nature of the new-
comer seems to have won him a general love among his
fellows. In 1592, while still a mere actor and fitter of old
plays for the stage, a fellow-playwright, Chettle, answered
Greene's attack on him in words of honest affection : " My-
self have seen his demeanor no less civil than he excellent
in the quality he professes: besides, divers of worship
have reported his uprightness of dealing, which argues his
honesty, and his facetious grace in writing, that approves
476 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK YL
his art." His partner Burbage spoke of him after death
as a " worthy friend and fellow ;" and Jonson handed down
the general tradition of his time when he described him as
"indeed honest, and of an open and free nature."
His profession as an actor was at any rate of essential
service to him in the poetic career which he soon under-
took. Not only did it give him the sense of theatrical
necessities which makes his plays so effective on the boards,
but it enabled him to bring his pieces as he wrote them to
the test of the stage. If there is any truth in Jonson's
statement that Shakspere never blotted a line, there is no
justice in the censure which it implies on his carelessness
or incorrectness. The conditions of poetic publication
were in fact wholly different from those of our own day.
A drama remained for years in manuscript as an acting
piece, subject to continual revision and amendment ; and
every rehearsal and representation afforded hints for change
which we know the young poet was far from neglecting.
The chance which has preserved an earlier edition of his
" Hamlet" shows in what an unsparing way Shakspere
could recast even the finest products of his genius. Five
years after the supposed date of his arrival in London he
was already famous as a dramatist. Greene speaks bit-
terly of him under the name of " Shakescene" as an " up-
start crow beautified with our feathers," a sneer which
points either to his celebrity as an actor or to his prepara-
tion for loftier flights by fitting pieces of his predecessors
for the stage. He was soon partner in the theatre, actor,
and playwright ; and another nickname, that of " Johannes
Factotum" or Jack-of -all- Trades, shows his readiness k>
take all honest work which came to hand.
With his publication in 1593 of the poem of "Venus and
Adonis," "the first heir of my invention" as Shakspere
calls it, the period of independent creation fairly began.
The date of its publication was a very memorable one.
The " Faerie Queen" had appeared only three years before,
and had placed Spenser without a rival at the head of
CHAP. 7.] THE REFORMATION. 15401603. 477
English poetry. On the other hand the two leading dram-
atists of the time passed at this moment suddenly away.
Greene died in poverty and self-reproach in the house of a
poor shoemaker. "Doll," he wrote to the wife he had
abandoned, " I charge thee, by the love of our youth and
by my soul's rest, that thou wilt see this man paid ; for if
he and his wife had not succored me I had died in the
streets." " Oh, that a year were granted me to live," cried
the young poet from his bed of death, " but I must die, of
every man abhorred ! Time, loosely spent, will not again
be won ! My time is loosely spent and I undone !" A
year later the death of Marlowe in a street brawl removed
the only rival whose powers might have equalled Shak-
spere's own. He was now about thirty ; and the twenty-
three years which elapsed between the appearance of the
" Adonis" and his death were filled with a series of master-
pieces. Nothing is more characteristic of his genius than
its incessant activity. Through the five years which fol-
lowed the publication of his early poem he seems to have
produced on an average two dramas a year. When we
attempt however to trace the growth and progress of the
poet's mind in the order of his plays we are met in the
case of many of them by an absence of certain information
as to the dates of their appearance. The facts on which
inquiry has to build are extremely few. "Venus and
Adonis," with the "Lucrece," must have been written
before their publication in 1593-94 ; the Sonnets, though
not published till 1609, were known in some form among
his private friends as early as 1598. His earlier plays are
defined by a list given in the " Wit's Treasury" of Francis
Meres in 1598, though the omission of a play from a casual
catalogue of this kind would hardly warrant us in assum-
ing its necessary non-existence at the time. The works
ascribed to him at his death are fixed in the same approxi-
mate fashion through the edition published by his fellow-
actors. Beyond these meagre facts and our knowledge of
the publication of a few of his dramas in his lifetime all is
478 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VL
uncertain; and the conclusions which have been drawn
from these, and from the dramas themselves, as well as
from the assumed resemblances with, or references to,
other plays of the period can only be accepted as approxi-
mations to the truth.
The bulk of his lighter comedies and historical dramas
can be assigned with fair probability to a period from
about 1593, when Shakspere was known as nothing more
than an adapter, to 1598, when they are mentioned in the
list of Meres. They bear on them indeed the stamp of
youth. In " Love's Labor's Lost" the young playwright,
fresh from his own Stratford, its " daisies pied and violets
blue," with the gay bright music of its country ditties still
in his ears, flings himself into the midst of the brilliant
England which gathered round Elizabeth, busying himself
as yet for the most part with the surface of it, with the
humors and quixotisms, the wit and the whim, the un-
reality, the fantastic extravagance, which veiled its inner
nobleness. Country-lad as he is, Shakspere shows himself
master of it all; he can patter euphuism and exchange
quip and repartee with the best; he is at home in their ped-
antries and affectations, their brag and their rhetoric, their
passion for the fantastic and the marvellous. He can
laugh as heartily at the romantic vagaries of the courtly
world in which he finds himself as at the narrow dulness,
the pompous triflings, of the country world which he has
left behind him. But he laughs frankly and without
malice ; he sees the real grandeur of soul which underlies
all this quixotry and word-play ; and owns with a smile
that when brought face to face with the facts of human
life, with the suffering of man or the danger of England,
these fops have in them the stuff of heroes. He shares the
delight in existence, the pleasure in sheer living, which
was so marked a feature of the age ; he enjoys the mis-
takes, the contrasts, the adventures, of the men about him ;
his fun breaks almost riotously out in the practical jokes
of the " Taming of the Shrew" and the endless blunderings
CHAP. 7.] THE REFORMATION. 1540-1608. 479
of the "Comedy of Errors." In these earlier efforts his
work had been marked by little poetic elevation or by pas-
sion. But the easy grace of the dialogue, the dextrous
management of a complicated story, the genial gayety of
his tone, and the music of his verse promised a master of
social comedy as soon as Shakspere turned from the su-
perficial aspects of the world about him to find a new de-
light in the character and actions of men. The interest of
human character was still fresh and vivid ; the sense of
individuality drew a charm from its novelty ; and poet and
essayist were busy alike in sketching the "humors" of
mankind. Shakspere sketched with his fellows. In the
" Two Gentlemen of Verona" his painting of manners was
suffused by a tenderness and ideal beauty which formed an
effective protest against the hard though vigorous char-
acter-painting which the first success of Ben Jonson in
" Every Man in his Humor" brought at the time into fash-
ion. But quick on these lighter comedies followed two in
which his genius started fully into life. His poetic power,
held in reserve till now, showed itself with a splendid pro-
fusion in the brilliant fancies of the " Midsummer Night's
Dream ;" and passion swept like a tide of resistless delight
through " Romeo and Juliet."
Side by side however with these .passionate dreams,
these delicate imaginings and piquant sketches of man-
ners, had been appearing during this short interval of in-
tense activity a series of dramas which mark Shakspere's
relation to the new sense of patriotism, the more vivid
sense of national existence, national freedom, national
greatness, which gives its grandeur to the age of Eliza-
beth. England itself was now becoming a source of liter-
ary interest to poet and prose-writer. Warner in his
"Albion's England," Daniel in his "Civil Wars," em-
balmed in verse the record of her past; Drayton in his
" Polyolbion" sang the fairness of the land itself, the
"tracts, mountains, forests, and other parts of this re-
nowned isle of Britain." The national pride took its
21 VOL. 2
480 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VX
highest poetic form in the historical drama. No plays
seem to have been more popular from the earliest hours of
the new stage than dramatic representations of our history.
Marlowe had shown in his "Edward the Second" what
tragic grandeur could be reached in this favorite field;
and, as we have seen, Shakspere had been led naturally
toward it by his earlier occupation as an adapter of stock
pieces like " Henry the Sixth" for the new requirements of
the stage. He still to some extent followed in plan the
older plays on the subjects he selected, but in his treatment
of their themes he shook boldly off the yoke of the past.
A larger and deeper conception of human character than
any of the old dramatists had reached displayed itself in
Richard the Third, in Falstaff, or in Hotspur; while in
Constance and Richard the Second the pathos of human
suffering was painted as even Marlowe had never dared to
paint it.
No dramas have done so much for Shakspere's enduring
popularity with his countrymen as these historical plays.
They have done more than all the works of English histo-
rians to nourish in the minds of Englishmen a love of and
reverence for their country's past. When Chatham was
asked where he had read his English history he answered,
" In the plays of Shakspere." Nowhere could he have read
it so well, for nowhere is the spirit of our history so nobly
rendered. If the poet's work echoes sometimes our na-
tional prejudice and unfairness of temper, it is instinct
throughout with English humor, with our English love
of hard fighting, our English faith in goodness, and in the
doom that waits upon triumphant evil, our English pity
for the fallen. Shakspere is Elizabethan to the core. He
stood at the meeting-point of two great epochs of our his-
tory. The age of the Renascence was passing into the age
of Puritanism. Rifts which were still little were widen-
ing every hour, and threatening ruin to the fabric of
Church and State which the Tudors had built up. A new
political world was rising into being; a world healthier,
CHAP. 7.] THE REFORMATION. 15401603. 481
more really national, but less picturesque, less wrapped in
the mystery and splendor that poets love. Great as were
the faults of Puritanism, it may fairly claim to be the first
political system which recognized the grandeur of the peo-
ple as a whole. As great a change was passing over the
spiritual sympathies of men. A sterner Protestantism
was invigorating and ennobling life by its morality, its
seriousness, its intense conviction of God. But it was at
the same time hardening and narrowing it. The Bible
was superseding Plutarch. The " obstinate questionings'*
which haunted the finer souls of the Renascence were be-
ing stereotyped into the theological formulas of the Puritan.
The sense of a divine omnipotence was annihilating man.
The daring which turned England into a people of " ad-
venturers," the sense of inexhaustible resources, the buoy-
ant freshness of youth, the intoxicating sense of beauty
and joy, which created Sidney and Marlowe and Drake,
were passing away before the consciousness of evil and the
craving to order man's life aright before God.
From this new world of thought and feeling Shakspere
stood aloof. Turn as others might to the speculations of
theology, man and man's nature remained with him an
inexhaustible subject of interest. Caliban was among his
latest creations. It is impossible to discover whether his
religious belief was Catholic or Protestant. It is hard in-
deed to say whether he had any religious belief or no.
The religious phrases which are thinly scattered over his
works are little more than expressions of a distant and im-
aginative reverence. But on the deeper grounds of relig-
ious faith his silence is significant. He is silent, and the
doubt of Hamlet deepens his silence, about the after world.
" To die," it may be, was to him as it was to Claudio, " to
go we know not whither." Often as his questionings turn
to the riddle of life and death he leaves it a riddle to the last
without heeding the common theological solutions around
him. " We are such stuff as dreams are made of, and our
little life is rounded with a sleep."
482 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
Nor were the political sympathies of the poet those of
the coming time. His roll of dramas is the epic of civil
war. The Wars of the Roses fill his mind, as they filled
the mind of his contemporaries. It is not till we follow
him through the series of plays from " Richard the Second"
to " Henry the Eighth" that we realize how profoundly the
memory of the struggle between York and Lancaster had
moulded the temper of the people, how deep a dread of civil
war, of baronial turbulence, of disputes over the succession
to the throne, it had left behind it. Men had learned the
horrors of the time from their fathers; they had drunk in
with their childhood the lesson that such a chaos of weak-
ness and misrule must never be risked again. From such
a risk the Crown seemed the one security. With Shak-
spere as with his fellow-countrymen the Crown is still the
centre and safeguard of the national life. His ideal Eng-
land is an England grouped around a noble king, a king
such as his own Henry the Fifth, devout, modest, simple
as he is brave, but a lord in battle, a born ruler of men,
with a loyal people about him and his enemies at his feet.
Socially the poet reflects the aristocratic view of social life
which was shared by all the nobler spirits of the Eliza-
bethan time. Coriolanus is the embodiment of a great
noble ; and the taunts which Shakspere hurls in play after
play at the rabble only echo the general temper of the Re-
nascence. But he shows no sympathy with the struggle of
feudalism against the Crown. If he paints Hotspur with
a fire which proves how thoroughly he could sympathize
with the rough, bold temper of the baronage, he suffers
him to fall unpitied before Henry the Fourth. Apart
however from the strength and justice of its rule, royalty
has no charm for him. He knows nothing of the " right
divine of kings to govern wrong" which became the doc-
trine of prelates and courtiers in the age of the Stuarts.
He shows in his "Richard the Second" the doom that
waits on a lawless despotism, as he denounces in his
" Richard the Third" the selfish and merciless ambition
CHAP. 7.] THE REFORMATION. 15401603. 483
that severs a ruler from his people. But the dread of mis-
rule was a dim and distant one. Shakspere had grown up
under the reign of Elizabeth ; he hao known no ruler save
one who had cast a spell over the hearts of Englishmen.
His thoughts were absorbed, as those of the country were
absorbed, in the struggle for national existence which
centred round the Queen. " King John" is a trumpet-call
to rally round Elizabeth in her fight for England. Again
a Pope was asserting his right to depose an English sov-
ereign and to loose Englishmen from their bond of alle-
giance. Again political ambitions ana civil discord woke
at the call of religious war. Again a foreign power was
threatening England at the summons of Rome, and hoping
to master her with the aid of revolted Englishmen. The
heat of such a struggle as this left no time for the thought
of civil liberties. Shakspere casts aside the thought of the
Charter to fix himself on the strife of the stranger for
England itself. What he sang was the duty of patriotism,
the grandeur of loyalty, the freedom of England from Pope
or Spaniard, its safety within its " water- walled bulwark,"
if only its national union was secure. And now that the
nation was at one, now that he had seen in his first years
of London life Catholics as well as Protestants trooping to
the muster at Tilbury and hasting down Thames to the
fight in the Channel, he could thrill his hearers with the
proud words that sum up the work of Elizabeth :
"This England never did, nor never shall,
Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror,
But when it first did help to wound itself.
Now that her princes are come home again,
Come the three corners of the world in arms,
And we shall shock them ! Naught ehall make us rue
If England to itself do rest but true. "
With this great series of historical and social dramas
Shakspere had passed far beyond his fellows whether as a
tragedian or as a writer of comedy. "The Muses," said
Meres in 1598, "would speak with Shakspere's fine-filed
484 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VL
phrase, if they would speak English." His personal pop-
ularity was now at its height. His pleasant temper and
the vivacity of his wit had drawn him early into contact
with the young Earl of Southampton, to whom his
" Adonis" and " Lucrece" are dedicated ; and the different
tone of the two dedications shows how rapidly acquaint-
ance ripened into an ardent friendship. Shakspere's
wealth and influence too were growing fast. He had
property both in Stratford and London, and his fellow-
townsmen made him their suitor to Lord Burleigh for
favors to be bestowed on Stratford. He was rich enough
to aid his father, and to buy the house at Stratford which
afterward became his home. The tradition that Elizabeth
was so pleased with Falstaff in " Henry the Fourth" that
she ordered the poet to show her Falstaff in love an order
which produced the " Merry Wives of Windsor" whether
true or false, proves his repute as a playwright. As the
group of earlier poets passed away, they found successors
in Marston, Dekker, Middleton, Heywood, and Chapman,
and above all in Ben Jonson. But none of these could
dispute the supremacy of Shakspere. The verdict of Meres
that " Shakspere among the English is the most excellent
in both kinds for the stage," represented the general feel-
ing of his contemporaries. He was at last fully master of
the resources of his art. The "Merchant of Venice"
marks the perfection of his development as a dramatist in
the completeness of its stage effect, the ingenuity of its in-
cidents, the ease of its movement, the beauty of its higher
passages, the reserve and self-control with which its poetry
is used, the conception and unfolding of character, and
above all the mastery with which character and event is
grouped round the figure of Shylock. Master as he is of
his art, the port's temper is still young ; the " Merry Wivei
of Windsor" is a burst of gay laughter ; and laughter more
tempered, yet full of a sweeter fascination, rings round us
in "As You Like It."
But in the melancholy and meditative Jaques of the last
CHAP. 7.] THE REFORMATION. 15401608. 485
drama we feel the touch of a new and graver mood.
Youth, so full and buoyant in the poet till now, seems to
have passed almost suddenly away. Though Shakspere
had hardly reached forty, in one of his Sonnets which can-
not have been written at a much later time than this there
are indications that he already felt the advance of prema-
ture age. And at this moment the outer world suddenly
darkened around him. The brilliant circle of young nobles
whose friendship he had shared was broken up in 1601 by
the political storm which burst in a mad struggle of the
Earl of Essex for power. Essex himself fell on the scaf-
fold ; his friend and Shakspere's idol, Southampton, passed
a prisoner into the Tower; Herbert Lord Pembroke,
a younger patron of the poet, was banished from the Court.
While friends were thus falling and hopes fading without,
Shakspere's own mind seems to have been going through a
phase of bitter suffering and unrest. In spite of the in-
genuity of commentators, it is difficult and even impossible
to derive any knowledge of Shakspere's inner history from
the Sonnets; "the strange imagery of passion which
passes over the magic mirror," it has been finely said,
"has no tangible evidence before or behind it." But its
mere passing is itself an evidence of the restlessness and
agony within. The change in the character of his dramas
gives a surer indication of his change of mood. The fresh
joyousness, the keen delight in life and in man, which
breathes through Shakspere's early work disappears in
comedies such as "Troilus" and "Measure for Measure."
Disappointment, disillusion, a new sense of the evil and
foulness that underlies so much of human life, a loss of the
old frank trust in its beauty and goodness, threw their
gloom over these comedies. Failure seems everywhere.
In " Julius Caesar" the virtue of Brutus is foiled by its
ignorance of and isolation from mankind ; in Hamlet even
penetrating intellect proves helpless for want of the capacity
of action ; the poison of lago taints the love of Desdemona
and the grandeur of Othello; Lear's mighty passion battles
486 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
helplessly against the wind and the rain ; a woman's weak-
ness of frame dashes the cup of her triumph from the hand
of Lady Macbeth ; lust and self-indulgence blast the hero-
ism of Antony; pride ruins the nobleness of Coriolanus.
But the very struggle and self -introspection that these
dramas betray were to give a depth and grandeur to Shak-
spere's work such as it had never known before. The age
was one in which man's temper and powers took a new
range and energy. Sidney or Raleigh lived not one but a
dozen lives at once; the daring of the adventurer, the
philosophy of the scholar, the passion of the lover, the fan-
aticism of the saint, towered into almost superhuman
grandeur. Man became conscious of the immense re-
sources that lay within him, conscious of boundless powers
that seemed to mock the narrow world in which they
moved. All through the age of the Renascence one feels
this impress of the gigantic, this giant-like activity, this
immense ambition and desire. The very bombast and ex-
travagance of the times reveal cravings and impulses be-
fore which common speech broke down. It is this gran-
deur of humanity that finds its poetic expression in the later
work of Shakspere. As the poet penetrated deeper and
deeper into the recesses of the soul, he saw how great and
wondrous a thing was man. " What a piece of work is a
man," cries Hamlet; "how noble in reason; how infinite
in faculty ; in form and moving how express and admirable ;
in action how like an angel ; in apprehension how like a
god ; the beauty of the world ; the paragon of animals !"
It is the wonder of man that spreads before us as the poet
pictures the wide speculation of Hamlet, the awful convul-
sion of a great nature in Othello, the terrible storm in the
soul of Lear which blends with the very storm of the
heavens themselves, the awful ambition that nerved a
woman's hand to dabble itself with the blood of a murdered
king, the reckless lust that "flung away a world for love."
Amid the terror and awe of these great dramas we learn
something of the vast forces of the age from which they
CHAP. 7.] THE REFORMATION. 15401603. 487
sprang. The passion of Mary Stuart, the ruthlessness of
Alva, the daring of Drake, the chivalry of Sidney, the
range of thought and action in Kaleigh or Elizabeth, come
better home to us as we follow the mighty series of trag-
edies which began in " Hamlet" and ended in " Coriolanus."
Shakspere's last dramas, the three exquisite works in
which he shows a soul at rest with itself and with the
world, "Cymbeline," "The Tempest," "Winter's Tale,"
were written in the midst of ease and competence, in a
house at Stratford to which he withdrew a few years after
the death of Elizabeth. In them we lose all relations with
the world or the time and pass into a region of pure poetry.
It is in this peaceful and gracious close that the life of
Shakspere contrasts most vividly with that of his greatest
contemporary. If the imaginative resources of the new
England were seen in the creators of Hamlet and the
Faerie Queen, its purely intellectual capacity, its vast
command over the stores of human knowledge, the amaz-
ing sense of its own powers with which it dealt with them,
were seen in the work of Francis Bacon. Bacon was born
in 1561, three years before the birth of Shakspere. He
was the younger son of a Lord Keeper, as well as the
nephew of Lord Burleigh, and even in childhood his
quickness and sagacity won the favor of the Queen.
Elizabeth "delighted much to confer with him, and to
prove him with questions : unto which he delivered himself
with that gravity and maturity above his years that her
Majesty would of ten term him 'the young Lord Keeper.' "
Even as a boy at college he expressed his dislike of the
Aristotelian philosophy, as a " philosophy only strong for
disputations and contentions but barren of the production of
works for the benefit of the life of man. " As a law student
of twenty-one he sketched in a tract on the " Greatest Birth
of Time" the system of inductive inquiry which he was
already prepared to substitute for it. The speculations of
he young thinker however were interrupted by his hopes
it Court success. But these were soon dashed to the
488 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Boos VI.
ground. He was left poor by his father's death; the ill-
will of the Cecils barred his advancement with the Queen:
and a few years before Shakspere's arrival in London
Bacon entered as a barrister at Gray's Inn. He soon be-
came one of the most successful lawyers of the time. At
twenty-three Bacon was a member of the House of Com-
mons and his judgment and eloquence at once brought
him to the front. " The fear of every man that heard him
was lest he should make an end," Ben Jonson tells us.
The steady growth of his reputation was quickened in 1597
by the appearance of his " Essays," a work remarkable, not
merely for the condensation of its thought and its felicity
and exactness of expression, but for the power with which
it applied to human life that experimental analysis which
Bacon was at a later time to make the key of Science.
His fame at once became great at home and abroad, but
with this nobler fame Bacon could not content himself.
He was conscious of great powers as well as great aims
for the public good : and it was a time when such aims
could hardly be realized save through the means of the
Crown. But political employment seemed farther off
than ever. At the outset of his career in Parliament he
irritated Elizabeth by a firm opposition to her demand of
a subsidy ; and though the offence was atoned for by pro-
fuse apologies and by the cessation of all further resistance
to the policy of the Court, the law offices of the Crown
were more than once refused to him, and it was only after
the publication of his " Essays" that he could obtain some
slight promotion as a Queen's Counsel. The moral weak-
ness which more and more disclosed itself is the best justi-
fication of the Queen in her reluctance a reluctance so
greatly in contrast with her ordinary course to bring the
wisest head in her realm to her Council-board. The men
whom Elizabeth employed were for the most part men
whose intellect was directed by a strong sense of public
duty. Their reverence for the Queen, strangely exagger-
ated as it may seem to us, was guided and controlled by
CHAP. 7.] THE REFORMATION. 15401608. 489
an ardent patriotism and an earnest sense of religion ; and
with all their regard for the royal prerogative, they never
lost their regard for the law. The grandeur and origin-
ality of Bacon's intellect parted him from men like these
quite as much as the bluntness of his moral perceptions. In
politics, as in science, he had little reverence for the past.
Law, constitutional privileges, or religion, were to him
simply means of bringing about certain ends of good gov*
ernment; and if these ends could be brought about in
shorter fashion he saw only pedantry in insisting on more
cumbrous means. He had great social and political ideas
to realize, the reform and codification of the law, the civil-
ization of Ireland, the purification of the Church, the union
at a later time of Scotland and England, educational
projects, projects of material improvement, and the like ;
and the direct and shortest way of realizing these ends
was, in Bacon's eyes, the use of the power of the Crown.
But whatever charm such a conception of the royal power
might have for her successor, it had little charm for Eliza-
beth ; and to the end of her reign Bacon was foiled in his
efforts to rise in her service.
Political activity however and court intrigue left room
in his mind for the philosophical speculation which had
begun with his earliest years. Amid debates in parlia-
ment and flatteries in the closet Bacon had been silently
framing a new philosophy. It made its first decisive ap-
pearance after the final disappointment of his hopes from
Elizabeth in the publication of the "Advancement of
Learning." The close of this work was, in his own
words, " a general and faithful perambulation of learning,
with an inquiry what parts thereof lie fresh and waste
and not improved and converted by the industry of man ;
to the end that such a plot, made and recorded to memory,
may both minister light to any public designation and also
serve to excite voluntary endeavors." It was only by such
a survey, he held, that men could be turned from useless
studies, or ineffectual means of pursuing more useful ones,
490 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Boos VI.
and directed to the true end of knowledge as " a rich store-
house for the glory of the Creator and the relief of man's
estate." The work was in fact the preface to a series of
treatises which were intended to be built up into an " In-
stauratio Magna," which its author was never destined to
complete, and of which the parts that we possess were
published in the following reign. The " Cogitata et Visa"
was a first sketch of the "Novum Organum," which in its
complete form was presented to James in 1621. A year
later Bacon produced his- " Natural and Experimental His-
tory." This, with the "Novum Organum" and the "Ad-
vancement of Learning," was all of his projected "In-
stauratio Magna" which he actually finished; and even
of this portion we have only part of the last two divisions.
The "Ladder of the Understanding," which was to have
followed these and led up from experience to science, the
"Anticipations," or provisional hypotheses for the inqui-
ries of the new philosophy, and the closing account of
" Science in Practice" were left for posterity to bring to
completion. "We may, as we trust," said Bacon, "make
no despicable beginnings. The destinies of the human race
must complete it, in such a manner perhaps as men look-
ing only at the present world would not readily conceive.
For upon this will depend, not only a speculative good,
but all the fortunes of mankind, and all their power. "
When we turn from words like these to the actual work
which Bacon did, it is hard not to feel a certain disap-
pointment. He did not thoroughly understand the older
philosophy which he attacked. His revolt from the waste
of human intelligence which he conceived to be owing to
the adoption of a false method of investigation blinded
him to the real value of deduction as an instrument of dis-
covery ; and he was encouraged in his contempt for it as
much by his own ignorance of mathematics as by the non-
existence in his day of the great deductive sciences of
physics and astronomy. Nor had he a more accurate pre-
vision of the method of modern science. The inductive
CHAP. 7.] THE REFORMATION. 1540-1608. 491
process to which he exclusively directed men's attention
bore no fruit in Bacon's hands. The " art of investigating
nature" on which he prided himself has proved useless for
scientific purposes, and would be rejected by modern in-
vestigators. Where he was on a more correct track he
can hardly be regarded as original. " It may be doubted,"
says Dugald Stewart, "whether any one important rule
with regard to the true method of investigation be con-
tained in his works of which no hint can be traced in those
of his predecessors." Not only indeed did Bacon fail to
anticipate the methods of modern science, but he even re-
jected the great scientific discoveries of his own day. He
set aside with the same scorn the astronomical theory of
Copernicus and the magnetic investigations of Gilbert.
The contempt seems to have been fully returned by the
scientific workers of his day. "The Lord Chancellor
wrote on science," said Harvey, the discoverer of the cir-
culation of the blood, "like a Lord Chancellor."
In spite however of his inadequate appreciation either
of the old philosophy or the new, the almost unanimous
voice of later ages has attributed, and justly attributed, to
the "Nbvum Organum" a decisive influence on the de-
velopment of modern science. If he failed in revealing the
method of experimental research, Bacon was the first to
proclaim the existence of a Philosophy of Science, to insist
on the unity of knowledge and inquiry throughout the
physical world, to give dignity by the large and noble
temper in which he treated them to the petty details of
experiment in which science had to begin, to clear a way
for it by setting scornfully aside the traditions of the past,
to claim for it its true rank and value, and to point to the
enormous results which its culture would bring in increas-
ing the power and happiness of mankind. In one respect
his attitude was in the highest degree significant. The age
in which he lived was one in which theology was absorb-
ing the intellectual energy of the world. He was the ser-
vant too of a king with whom theological studies super-
492 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPI. [BOOK VI.
seded all others. But if he bowed in all else to James,
Bacon would not, like Casaubon, bow in this. He would
not even, like Descartes, attempt to transform theology by
turning reason into a mode of theological demonstration.
He stood absolutely aloof from it. Though as a politician
he did not shrink from dealing with such subjects as
Church Reform, he dealt with them simply as matters of
civil polity. But from his exhaustive enumeration of the
branches of human knowledge he excluded theology, and
theology alone. His method was of itself inapplicable to
a subject where the premises were assumed to be certain,
and the results known. His aim was to seek for unknown
results by simple experiment. It was against received
authority and accepted tradition in matters of inquiry that
his whole system protested ; what he urged was the need
of making belief rest strictly on proof, and proof rest on
the conclusions drawn from evidence by reason. But in
theology all theologians asserted reason played but a
subordinate part. "If I proceed to treat of it," said
Bacon, " I shall step out of the bark of human reason, and
enter into the ship of the Church. Neither will the stars
of philosophy, which have hitherto so nobly shone on us,
any longer give us their light."
The certainty indeed of conclusions on such subjects was
out of harmony with the grandest feature of Bacon's work,
his noble confession of the liability of every inquirer to
error. It was his especial task to warn men against the
"vain shows" of knowledge which had so long hindered
any real advance in it, the " idols" of the Tribe, the Den,
the Forum, and the Theatre, the errors which spring from
the systematizing spirit which pervades all masses of men,
or from individual idiosyncrasies, or from the strange
power of words and phrases over the mind, or from the
traditions of the past. Nor were the claims of theology
easily to be reconciled with the position which he was
resolute to assign to natural science. " Through all those
ages," Bacon says, "wherein men of genius or learning
CHAP. 7.] THE REFORMATION. 16401608. 493
principally or even moderately flourished, the smallest
part of human industry has been spent on natural phil-
osophy, though this ought to be esteemed as the great
mother of the sciences ; for all the rest, if torn from this
root, may perhaps be polished and formed for use, but can
receive little increase." It was by the adoption of the
method of inductive inquiry which physical science was
to make its own, and by basing inquiry on grounds which
physical science could supply, that the moral sciences,
ethics and politics, could alone make any real advance.
"Let none expect any great promotion of the sciences,
especially in their effective part, unless natural philosophy
be drawn out to particular sciences; and, again, unless
these particular sciences be brought back again to natural
philosophy. From this defect it is that astronomy, optics,
music, many mechanical arts, and (what seems stranger)
even moral and civil philosophy and logic rise but little
above the foundations, and only skim over the varieties
and surfaces of things." It was this lofty conception of
the position and destiny of natural science which Bacon
was the first to impress upon mankind at large. The age
was one in which knowledge was passing to fields of in-
quiry which had till then been unknown, in which Kepler
and Galileo were creating modern astronomy, in which
Descartes was revealing the laws of motion, and Harvey
the circulation of the blood. But to the mass of men this
great change was all but imperceptible; and it was the
energy, the profound conviction, the eloquence of Bacon
which first called the attention of mankind as a whole to
the power and importance of physical research. It was he
who by his lofty faith in the results and victories of the
new philosophy nerved its followers to a zeal and confi-
dence equal to his own. It was he above all who gave dig-
nity to the slow and patient processes of investigation, of
experiment, of comparison, to the sacrifice of hypothesis
to fact, to the single aim after truth, which was to be tht
law of modern science.
494 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Boos VL
While England thus became "a nest of singing birds,"
while Bacon was raising the lofty fabric of his philosoph-
ical speculation, the people itself was waking to a new
sense of national freedom. Elizabeth saw the forces, polit-
ical and religious, which she had stubbornly held in check
for half a century pressing on her irresistibly. In spite of
the rarity of its assemblings, in spite of high words and
imprisonment and dextrous management, the Parliament
had quietly gained a power which, at her accession, the
Queen could never have dreamed of its possessing. Step
by step the Lower House had won the freedom of its
members from arrest save by its own permission, the right
of punishing and expelling members for crimes committed
within its walls, and of determining all matters relating
to elections. The more important claim of freedom of
speech had brought on fro n time to time a series of petty
conflicts in which Elizabeth generally gave way. But on
this point the Commons still shrank from any consistent
repudiation of the Queen's assumption of control. A bold
protest of Peter Wentworth against her claim to exercise
such a control in 1575 was met indeed by the House itself.
with his committal to the Tower; and the bolder questions
which he addressed to the Parliament of 1588, "Whether
this Council is not a place for every member of the same
freely and without control, by bill or speech, to utter any
of the griefs of the Commonwealth," brought on him a
fresh imprisonment at the hands of the Council, which
lasted till the dissolution of the Parliament and with which
the Commons declined to interfere. But while vacillating
in its assertion of the rights of individual members, the
House steadily claimed for itself a right to discuss even
the highest matters of State. Three great subjects, the
succession, the Church, and the regulation of trade, had
been regarded by every Tudor sovereign as lying ex-
clusively within the competence of the Crown. But Par-
liament had again and again asserted its right to consider
the succession. It persisted in spite of censure and rebuff
CHAP. 7.] THE REFORMATION. 15401608. 495
in presenting schemes of ecclesiastical reform. And three
years before Elizabeth's death it dealt boldly with matters
of trade. Complaints made in 1571 of the licenses and
monopolies by which internal and external commerce were
fettered were repressed by a royal reprimand as matters
neither pertaining to the Commons nor within the com-
pass of their understanding. When the subject was again
stirred nearly twenty years afterward, Sir Edward Hoby
was sharply rebuked by " a great personage" for his com-
plaint of the illegal exactions made by the Exchequer.
But the bill which he promoted was sent up to the Lords
in spite of this, and at the close of Elizabeth's reign the
storm of popular indignation which had been roused by
the growing grievance nerved the Commons, in 1601, to a
decisive struggle. It was in vain that the ministers op-
posed a bill for the Abolition of Monopolies, and after four
days of vehement debate the tact of Elizabeth taught her
to give way. She acted with her usual ability, declared
her previous ignorance of the existence of the evil, thanked
the House for its interference, and quashed at a single blow
every monopoly that she had granted.
Dextrous as was Elizabeth's retreat, the defeat was
none the less a real one. Political freedom was proving it-
self again the master in the long struggle with the Crown.
Nor in her yet fiercer struggle against religious freedom
could Elizabeth look forward to any greater success. The
sharp suppression of the Martin Marprelate pamphlets
was far from damping the courage of the Presbyterians.
Cartwright, who had been appointed by Lord Leicester to
the mastership of an hospital at Warwick, was bold enough
to organize his system of Church discipline among the
clergy of that country and of Northamptonshire. His ex-
ample was widely followed ; and the general gatherings of
the whole ministerial body of the clergy and the smaller
assemblies for each diocese or shire, which in the Presby-
terian scheme bore the name of Synods and Classes, began
to be held in many parts of England for the purposes of de-
496 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
bate and consultation. The new organization was quickly
suppressed, but Cartwright was saved from the banish-
ment which Whitgift demanded by a promise of submis-
sion, and his influence steadily widened. With Presby<
terianism itself indeed Elizabeth was strong enough to deal.
Its dogmatism and bigotry was opposed to the better
temper of the age, and it never took any popular hold on
England. But if Presbyterianism was limited to a few,
Puritanism, the religious temper which sprang from a
deep conviction of the truth of Protestant doctrines and of
the falsehood of Catholicism, had become through the
struggle with Spain and the Papacy the temper of three-
fourths of the English people. Unluckily the policy of
Elizabeth did its best to give to the Presbyterians the sup-
port of Puritanism. Her establishment of the Ecclesias-
tical Commission had given fresh life and popularity to
the doctrines which it aimed at crushing by drawing to-
gether two currents of opinion which were in themselves
perfectly distinct. The Presbyterian platform of Church
discipline had as yet been embraced by the clergy only,
and by few among the clergy. On the other hand, the
wish for a reform in the Liturgy, the dislike of " supersti-
tious usages," of the use of the surplice, the sign of the
cross in baptism, the gift of the ring in marriage, the pos-
ture of kneeling at the Lord's Supper, was shared by a large
number of the clergy and the laity alike. At the opening
of Elizabeth's reign almost all the higher Churchmen savo
Parker were opposed to them, and a motion for their abo-
lition in Convocation was lost but by a single vote. The
temper of the country gentlemen on this subject was in-
dicated by that of Parliament ; and it was well known
that the wisest of the Queen's Councillors, Burleigh,
Walsingham, and Knollys, were at one time in this mat-
ter with the gentry. If their common persecution did
not wholly succeed in fusing these two sections of relig-
ious opinion into one, it at any rate gained for the Pres-
byterians a general sympathy on the part of the Puritans,
CHAP. 7.] THE REFORMATION. 1540-1608. 497
which raised them from a clerical clique into a popular
party.
But if Elizabeth's task became more difficult at home,
the last years of her reign were years of splendor and
triumph abroad. The overthrow of Philip's hopes in
France had been made more bitter by the final overthrow
of his hopes at sea. In 1596 his threat of a fresh Armada
was met by the daring descent of an English force upon
Cadiz. The town was plundered and burned to the
ground ; thirteen vessels of war were fired in its harbor,
and the stores accumulated for the expedition utterly de-
stroyed. In spite of this crushing blow a Spanish fleet
gathered in the following year and set sail for the English
coast ; but as in the case of its predecessor storms proved
more fatal than the English guns, and the ships were
wrecked and almost destroyed in the Bay of Biscay.
Meanwhile whatever hopes remained of subjecting the
Low Countries were destroyed by the triumph of Henry
of Navarre. A triple league of France, England, and the
Netherlands left Elizabeth secure to the eastward ; and the
only quarter in which Philip could now strike a blow at
her was the great dependency of England in the west.
Since the failure of the Spanish force at Smerwick the
power of the English government had been recognized
everywhere throughout Ireland. But it was a power
founded solely on terror, and the outrages and exactions
of the soldiery who had been flushed with rapine and
bloodshed in the south sowed during the years which fol-
lowed the reduction of Munster the seeds of a revolt more
formidable than any which Elizabeth had yet encountered
The tribes of Ulster, divided by the policy of Sidney, were
again united by a common hatred of their oppressors ; and
in Hugh O'Neill they found a leader of even greater ability
than Shane himself. Hugh had been brought up at the
English court and was in manners and bearing an Eng-
lishman. He had been rewarded for his steady loyalty in
previous contests by a grant of the earldom of Tyrone, and
498 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI.
in his contest with a rival chieftain of his clan he had se-
cured aid from the government by an offer to introduce the
English laws and shire-system into his new country. But
he was no sooner undisputed master of the north than his
tone gradually changed. Whether from a long-formed
plan, or from suspicion of English designs upon himself,
he at last took a position of open defiance.
It was at the moment when the Treaty of Vervins and
the wreck of the second Armada freed Elizabeth's hands
from the struggle with Spain that the revolt under Hugh
O'Neill broke the quiet which had prevailed since the vic-
tories of Lord Grey. The Irish question again became
the chief trouble of the Queen. The tide of her recent
triumphs seemed at first to have turned. A defeat of the
English forces in Tyrone caused a general rising of the
northern tribes, and a great effort made in 1599 for the
suppression of the growing revolt failed through the vanity
and disobedience, if not the treacherous complicity, of the
Queen's lieutenant, the young Earl of Essex. His suc-
cessor, Lord Mount-joy, found himself master on his ar-
rival of only a few miles round Dublin. But in three
years the revolt was at an end. A Spanish force which
landed to support it at Kinsale was driven to surrender; a
line of forts secured the country as the English mastered
it; all open opposition was crushed out by the energy and
the ruthlessness of the new Lieutenant; and a famine
which followed on his ravages completed the devastating
work of the sword. Hugh O'Neill was brought in triumph
to Dublin ; the Earl of Desmond, who had again roused
Munster into revolt, fled for refuge to Spain ; and the work
of conquest was at last brought to a close.
The triumph of Mountjoy flung its lustre over the last
days of Elizabeth, but no outer triumph could break the
gloom which gathered round the dying Queen. Lonely as
she had always been, her loneliness deepened as she drew
toward the grave. The statesmen and warriors of her
earlier days had dropped one by one from her Council-
CHAP. 7.] THE REFORMATION. 15401603. 499
board. Leicester had died in the year of the Armada;
two years later Walsingham followed him to the grave;
in 1598 Burleigh himself passed away. Their successors
were watching her last moments, and intriguing for favor
in the coming reign. Her favorite, Lord Essex, not only
courted favor with James of Scotland, but brought him to
suspect Robert Cecil, who had succeeded his father at the
Queen's Council-board, of designs against his succession.
The rivalry between the two ministers hurried Essex into
fatal projects which led to his failure in Ireland and to an
insane outbreak of revolt which brought him in 1601 to
the block. But Cecil had no sooner proved the victor in
this struggle at court than he himself entered into a secret
correspondence with the King of Scots. His action was
wise : it brought James again into friendly relations with
the Queen; and paved the way for a peaceful transfer of
the crown. But hidden as this correspondence was from
Elizabeth, the suspicion of it only added to her distrust.
The troubles of the war in Ireland brought fresh cares to
the aged Queen. It drained her treasury. The old
splendor of her Court waned and disappeared. Only offi-
cials remained about her, " the other of the Council and
nobility estrange themselves by all occasions." The love
and reverence of the people itself lessened as they felt the
pressure and taxation of the war. Of old men had pressed
to see the Queen as if it were a glimpse of heaven. " In
the year 1588," a bishop tells us, who was then a country
boy fresh come to town, " I did live at the upper end of the
Strand near St. Clement's church, when suddenly there
came a report to us (it was in December, much about five
of the clock at night, very dark) that the Queen was gone
to Council, 'and if you will see the Queen you must come
quickly.' Then we all ran, when the Court gates were set
open, and no naan did hinder us from coming in. There
we came, where there was a far greater company than was
usually at Lenten sermons ; and when we had stayed there
an hour and that the yard was full, there being a number
500 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK VI
of torches, the Queen came out in great state. Then we
cried 'God save your Majesty! God save your Majesty!'
Then the Queen turned to us and said 'God bless you all,
my good people!' Then we cried again 'God bless your
Majesty ! God bless your Majesty !' Then the Queen said
again to us, 'You may well have a greater prince, but you
shall never have a more loving prince.' And so looking
one upon another a while the Queen departed. This
wrought such an impression on us, for shows and pag-
eantry are ever best seen by torchlight, that all the way
long we did nothing but talk what an admirable Queen
she was, and how we would adventure our lives to do her
service." But now, as Elizabeth passed along in her prog-
resses, the people whose applause she courted remained
cold and silent. The temper of the age in fact was chang-
ing, and isolating her as it changed. Her own England,
the England which had grown up around her, serious,
moral, prosaic, shrank coldly from this brilliant, fanciful,
unscrupulous child of earth and the Renascence.
But if ministers and courtiers were counting on her
death, Elizabeth had no mind to die. She had enjoyed
life as the men of her day enjoyed it, and now that they
were gone she clung to it with a fierce tenacity. She
hunted, she danced, she jested with her young favorites,
she coquetted and scolded and frolicked at sixty-seven as
she had done at thirty. "The Queen," wrote a courtier a
few months before her death, " was never so gallant these
many years nor so set upon jollity." She persisted, in
spite of opposition, in her gorgeous progresses from coun-
try-house to country-house. She clung to business as of
old, and rated in her usual fashion " one who minded not
to giving up some matter of account." But death crept
on. Her face became haggard, and her frame shrank al-
most to a skeleton. At last her taste for finery disap-
peared, and she refused to change her dresses for a week
together. A strange melancholy settled down on her.
"She held in her hand," says one who saw her in her last
CHAP. 7.] THE REFORMATION. 15401603. 501
days, " a golden cup, which she often put to her lips : but
in truth her heart seemed too full to need more filling."
Gradually her mind gave way. She lost her memory, the
violence of her temper became unbearable, her very courage
seemed to forsake her. She called for a sword to lie con-
stantly beside her and thrust it from time to time through
the arras, as if she heard murderers stirring there. Food
and rest became alike distasteful. She sat day and night
propped up with pillows on a stool, her finger on her lip,
her eyes fixed on the floor, without a word. If she once
broke the silence, it was with a flash of her old queenliness.
When Robert Cecil declared that she " must" go to bed the
word roused her like a trumpet. " Must !" she exclaimed ;
" is must a word to be addressed to princes? Little man,
little man : thy father, if he had been alive, durst not have
used that word." Then, as her anger spent itself, she sank
into her old dejection. " Thou art so presumptuous, " she
said, "because thou knowest I shall die." She rallied once
more when the ministers beside her bed named Lord Beau-
champ, the heir to the Suffolk claim, as a possible successor.
"I will have no rogue's son," she cried hoarsely, "in my
seat." But she gave no sign, save a motion of the head,
at the mention of the King of Scots. She was in fact fast
becoming insensible ; and early the next morning, on the
twenty-fourth of March, 1603, the life of Elizabeth, a life
so great, so strange and lonely in its greatness, ebbed
quietly away.
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