But in the last days, the never-failing humour has an exquisitely pathetic setting.
The worthy wife, “somewhat worldlie too,” comes to see her husband in the Tower; she cannot understand why he is so silly as to stop there, when he might so easily recover the king’s goodwill by doing “as all the Busshopps and best learned of this realm have done.” He listens placidly to the outburst, then: “I pray thee, good Mistress Alice, tell me one thing: is not this house as nighe heaven as mine own?” We are reminded of the last words Humphrey Gilbert was heard to utter before the Squirrel foundered: “We are as near God by sea as by land.” But there was no one to reply to Gilbert as “shee, after her accustomed fashion, not likeinge such talke, answeared Tille valle, tille valle.” The good soul has no patience for such incomprehensible folly. Margaret Roper visits him, the darling daughter, of all his children the likest to him in wit and in person; with her he is sure of perfect sympathy. She knows that his doom is absolutely certain, nor is she one to dissuade him from following the dictates of his conscience. After the sentence in Westminster Hall, she is waiting at the Tower wharf for the last fond farewell, the parting blessing. Heedless of spectators, she darts through the press of halberdiers guarding the prisoner, to fling herself on his neck, pour out her tears and her love on his breast. He soothes her with words of tender counsel and affection. At last she tears herself away, but overcome with the passion of devotion, “suddenlye turned back againe, and rann to him as before, tooke him about the necke, and divers times togeather most lovingely kissed him, and at last with a full heavie harte was fayne to separate from him: the behouldinge whereof was to manye of them that were present thereat soe lamentable that it made them for very sorrow to mourne and weepe.”
Shall we wonder at such love for the man who on receiving sentence could say to his judges, as reported by Anthony St. Leger, “I verily trust and right heartily pray that though your lordships have now in earth been Judges to my condemnation, we may yet hereafter in heaven merrily all meet together to our everlasting salvation”; whose spirit was so imperturbable in its serenity, that it looked upon death as a mere casual episode which in no wise ruffled his habitual humour. “I pray you, Mr. Lieutenant,” he said, with his foot on the scaffold, noticing how ill it had been put together, “see me safe up. For my coming down, let me shift for myself”: and as he laid his neck on the block, moving his beard aside, “Pity that should be cut; it hath committed no treason.”
His head, according to custom, was set on Temple Bar, but Margaret Roper, she “who clasped in her last trance her murdered father’s head,” was allowed to obtain possession of it, and preserved it in spices till her own death. The news of the execution was conveyed to Charles V. His comment is endorsed by posterity—“If we had been master of such a servant, we would rather have lost the best city of our dominions than have lost such a worthy Councillor.”
THOMAS CROMWELL
I
THOMAS CROMWELL
For six years, Thomas Cromwell was palpably and unmistakably the ruler of England—subject to the approval of the king. For the four years preceding, it is practically certain that he both suggested and organised Henry’s policy. England has never known a statesman so irresistible, so relentless, while his power lasted; nor one whose downfall was more sudden or so universally applauded. He is the most terrifying because he is the most passionless figure in our history. He wrought like fate, with a perfect disregard of all human sentiment and emotion; a scourge of God. Not, however, a mere scourge like the earthquake and the pestilence; not a mere destroyer; for, while he shattered, he built. But for Cromwell, it may be doubted whether Elizabeth’s England could have come into being.
For a second time Henry VIII. found the man most consummately fitted to minister to his own ambition; to plan, to organise, to smite—and to be smitten. As Wolsey, having accomplished his work, fell because he failed to engineer his master’s matrimonial projects, so Cromwell, having accomplished his work, fell in attempting to engineer a matrimonial project which displeased his master. Both the great ministers were men of humble birth at the best: popular report gave out that the father of the one was a butcher, that of the other a blacksmith. The one mounted to power, the last and perhaps the greatest product of the old relation between Church and State; the other was the first layman who, lacking even gentle blood, achieved the highest position in the State, and shattered her old relation with the Church. The reign of Henry VIII. abounds in huge ironies: it is not perhaps the least of them that the Hammer of the Monks passed into the service of the king from the service of the Cardinal.