Footnote 1171: Sir John Mason, quoted in Froude, iv., 306 n.[(back)]
Footnote 1172: The Leviathan is the best philosophical commentary on the Tudor system; Hobbes was Tudor and not Stuart in all his ideas, and his assertion of the Tudor de facto theory of monarchy as against the Stuart de jure theory brought him into disfavour with Cavaliers.[(back)]
Footnote 1173: John Hales in Lansdowne MS., 238; England under Protector Somerset, p. 216.[(back)]
Footnote 1174: L. and P., x., 920; "all which died charitably," writes Husee of Anne Boleyn and her fellow-victims; Rochford "made a very catholic address to the people saying he had not come there to preach but to serve as a mirror and example, acknowledging his sins against God and the King" (ibid., x., 911; cf. xvii., 124). Cromwell and Somerset had more cause to complain of their fate than other statesmen of the time, yet Cromwell on the scaffold says: "I am by the law condemned to die, and thank my Lord God that hath appointed me this death for mine offence.... I have offended my prince, for the which I ask him heartily forgiveness" (Foxe, v., 402). And Somerset says: "I am condemned by a law whereunto I am subject, as we all; and therefore to show obedience I am content to die" (Ellis, Orig. Letters, II., ii., 215; England under Somerset, p. 308). Compare Buckingham in Shakespeare, "Henry VIII.," Act II., Sc. i.:—
"I bear the law no malice for my death
... my vows and prayers
Yet are the King's; and till my soul forsake
Shall cry for blessings on him." [(back)]
Footnote 1175: "I never knew," writes Bishop Gardiner a few months after Henry's death, "man committed to prison for disagreeing to any doctrine unless the same doctrine were established by a law of the realm before" (Foxe, ed. Townsend, vi., 141).[(back)]
Footnote 1176: The Countess of Salisbury and Cromwell are the two great exceptions.[(back)]
Footnote 1177: L. and P., vi., 954. It may be reading too much into Francis I.'s words, but it is tempting to connect them with Machiavelli's opinion that the French parlement was devised to relieve the Crown of the hostility aroused by curbing the power of the nobles (Il Principe c. 19). A closer parallel to the policy of Henry VIII. may be found in that which Tacitus attributes to Tiberius with regard to the Senate; "he must devolve on the Senate the odious duty of trial and condemnation and reserve only the credit of clemency for himself" (Furneaux, Tacitus, Introd.).[(back)]
Footnote 1178: In three months of "peace" in 1568 over ten thousand persons are said to have been slain in France (Cambr. Mod. Hist., ii., 347). At least a hundred thousand were butchered in the Peasants' War in Germany in 1525-6, and thirty thousand Anabaptists are said to have suffered in Holland and Friesland alone between 1523 and 1546. Henry VIII.'s policy was parcere subjectis et debellare superbos, to protect the many humble and destroy the mighty few.[(back)]
Footnote 1179: L. and P., iv., Introd., p. dcxvi.[(back)]