Cassell's History of England, Vol. 2 (of 8) / From the Wars of the Roses to the Great Rebellion

by Anonymous

Now was the time to push the object for which this expedition had been undertaken—the securing the young queen for the king. Somerset had attained a commanding position. He held the capital, as it were, under his hand, and fresh forces brought up, and judiciously employed, must have put the country so far into his power as to enable him to treat on the most advantageous terms for the accomplishment of this great national object; or if he could not obtain it by treaty, he might make himself master of her person by arms. But all this demonstration, this signal victory, this sanguinary butchery, which must add finally to the antipathy of the Scottish people if no real gain followed it, was cast aside with a strange recklessness which shewed that though Somerset could conquer in the field, he was totally destitute of the qualities of a statesman. Instead of making his success the platform of wise negotiation, and of a great national union, he converted it into a fresh aggravation of the ill-will of the Scots, by depriving it of all rational result. Being, it is supposed, apprised of some machinations of his brother, the admiral, in his absence, he commenced an instant march homeward, like a man that was beaten rather than a victor. On the 17th of September, only a week from the battle of Pinkie, he took his departure southwards. On entering England, he made the best of his way to London, the whole term of his absence having been only some six weeks. A Parliament was then summoned, and the Protector proceeded to carry out the contemplated reform in the Church. Already an ecclesiastical commission had been busily engaged in visitation of dioceses. For this purpose, the kingdom was divided into six circuits, to each of which was appointed a certain number of visitors, partly laymen partly clergymen, who, the moment they arrived in a diocese, became the only ecclesiastical authority there. They were empowered to call before them the bishop, the clergy, and five, six, or eight of the principal inhabitants of each parish, and put into their hands a body of royal injunctions, seven-and-thirty in number. These injunctions regarded religious doctrines and practice, and the visitors required an answer upon oath to every question which they chose to put concerning them. The injunctions were similar to those which had been framed and used by Cromwell, but the present practice of joining the laity with the clergy was an innovation of a more sweeping character. The commission promptly imprisoned Bonner and Gardiner, the leaders of the Roman Catholic party.

Parliament assembled on the 4th of November, and proceeded to mitigate some of the severities of the last reign. It repealed those monstrous acts of Henry VIII., which gave to Royal proclamations all the force of Acts of Parliament; likewise all the penal statutes against the Lollards, and all the new felonies created in the last reign, including the statute of the Six Articles. It admitted the laity as well as the clergy to receive the sacrament of the Lord's Supper in both kinds. It determined that the old fiction of electing bishops by "congé d'élire" should cease, and that all such appointments should proceed directly by nomination of the Crown; that all processes in the episcopal courts should be carried on in the king's name, and all documents issuing thence should be sealed, not with the bishop's seal, but with that of the Crown. The claim of spiritual supremacy was placed on the same level as the other rights of the Crown, and it was made a capital offence to deny that the king was supreme head of the Church; but with this distinction, that what was printed of that nature was direct high treason—what was merely spoken only became so by repetition. A bill for legalising the marriages of the clergy was brought into the Commons, and carried by a large majority; but, from some cause, was not carried to the Lords during the present session.

Parliament terminated its sitting on the 24th of December, and the council, carrying forward its measures for the advancement of the Reformation, issued an order prohibiting the burning of candles on Candlemas-Day, and the use of ashes on Ash Wednesday, and of palms on Palm Sunday. The order against images was repeated, and the clothes covering them were directed to be given to the poor. The people, however, who delighted in religious ceremonies, processions, and spectacles, and thought the sermons very dull, were by no means pleased with these innovations. There was to be no elevation of the Host, and the whole service was to be in English.

Cranmer employed himself in composing a catechism, which was published "for the singular profit and instruction of children and young people;" and a committee of bishops and divines sat to compile a new liturgy for the use of the English Church. They took the Latin missals and breviaries for the groundwork, omitting whatever they deemed superfluous or superstitious, and adding fresh matter. Before Christmas they had compiled a book of common prayer, differing in various particulars from the one now in use, and all ministers were ordered to make use of that book, under penalty, on refusal, of forfeiture of a year's income, and six months' imprisonment for the first offence; for the second, loss of all preferments, with twelve months' imprisonment; and for the third, imprisonment for life. Any one taking upon him to preach, except in his own house, without licence from the king's visitors, the Archbishop of Canterbury, or the bishop of the diocese, was liable to imprisonment. Latimer, who had resigned his bishopric in 1539, was now called forward again, and appointed to preach at St. Paul's Cross, and also in the king's privy garden, where Edward, attended by his court, used to listen to his bold and quaint eloquence for an hour together.

Towards the close of 1547, as we have seen, a bill passed the Commons authorising the marriage of the clergy, but on the 9th of February, 1548, a different bill for the same object was carried in the House of Lords, and accepted by the Commons.

While these events had been taking place in England, the war had been steadily prosecuted against Scotland, and led to the result which might naturally be expected, but which was least expected by the Protector—that of the passing of the young queen of Scotland into the hands of the French. Very soon after the battle of Pinkie, a council was summoned at Stirling, where the queen-dowager proposed that, to put an end to those barbarous inroads of the English on pretence of seeking the hand of the queen, they should apply to France for its assistance; that as a means of engaging it in effectual aid, they should offer the young queen in marriage to the Dauphin; and that for her better security she should be educated in the French court. There, in August, 1548, she was solemnly contracted to the Dauphin, afterwards Francis II.

But during the session of Parliament commencing on the 24th of November, a question of most serious import was brought forward concerning the Protector's brother. The lord high admiral, Thomas Seymour, had all the ambition of his elder brother, the Protector, but from some cause he had failed to acquire the same position at court. Henry VIII. had not only employed Somerset in great commissions, but had given him such marks of his confidence that, on his death, he easily engrossed all the power of the State under his son. The admiral did not witness this with indifference. The Protector, to satisfy him, got him created Baron Seymour of Sudeley, and with this title he received in August, 1548, the lordship of Sudeley in Gloucestershire, together with other lands and tenements in no less than eighteen counties. He made him, moreover, high admiral, a post which had been held by the Earl of Warwick, who received instead of it that of lord great chamberlain. These honours and estates might have well contented a man of even high ambition, but the aspiring of the Seymours brooked no limits. As he did not seem to succeed in his desire of rising to a station as lofty as that of his brother the Protector, through the Council and political alliance, he sought to achieve this by means of marriage. There were several ladies on whom he cast his eyes for this purpose. The Princesses Mary and Elizabeth were the next in succession, and he did not hesitate to aim at securing the hand of one of them, which would have realised his soaring wishes, or plunged him down at once to destruction. He seems then to have weighed the chances which a union with Lady Jane Grey might give him; but, as if not satisfied with the prospect, he suddenly determined on the queen-dowager. He had, indeed, paid his addresses to Catherine Parr before her marriage with Henry VIII., and Catherine was so much attached to him that she at first listened with obvious reluctance to Henry's proposal. No sooner was Henry dead than Seymour seems to have renewed his addresses to Catherine, and, with all her piety and prudence, the queen-dowager seems to have listened to him as promptly and readily. Though Henry only died at the end of January, 1547, in a single month, according to Leti, she had consented to a private contract of marriage, and she and Seymour had exchanged rings of betrothal. According to King Edward's journal, their marriage took place in May, but the courtship had been going on long before, and was only revealed to him when it was become dangerous to conceal it any longer, and they were privately married long before that. The marriage was publicly announced in June—a rapidity for such a transaction as strange as it was indecorous. Catherine Parr gave birth to a daughter on the 30th of August, 1548, and on the 7th of September, only eight days after, she died of puerperal fever. Rumours that her husband had poisoned her to enable him to aspire to the hand of the Princess Elizabeth, were spread by his enemies, but there does not appear the slightest foundation for the horrible charge.

GREAT SEAL OF EDWARD VI.

The lord admiral, who had found it difficult to keep out of danger during the life of his wife, partly through his own rash ambition, and partly through the malice of his near relatives, soon fell into it after her death. In July of 1548, he had been called before the Council on the charge of having endeavoured to prevail on the king to write a letter, complaining of the arbitrary conduct of the Protector and of the restraint in which he was kept by him. Seymour was seeking, in fact, to supersede the Protector, and was threatened with imprisonment in the Tower; but the matter for that time was made up, and the Protector added £800 per annum to his income, by way of conciliating him.