The Act of the Six Articles, the Royal Proclamations Act, and that for the final suppression of the monasteries, were all passed in the early summer—May or June—of 1539, when Cromwell was already fully involved in his scheme for creating a matrimonial bond between Henry and the German Protestants. In 1538, when peace between Charles and Francis seemed imminent, he had succeeded in persuading Henry to invite a visit from the Lutherans with a view to arriving at a mutual understanding on the theological questions: but even the reconciliation of the French king and the emperor failed to make the English king at all cordial, and the envoys went back to Germany in the autumn with nothing accomplished. As the year drew to a close, however, there were ominous signs of a league being formed to threaten England—which perhaps was one of Cromwell’s incentives to the destruction of Exeter and the Poles, by way of a hint to the Continental Powers that the government was far too strong to be endangered by any domestic discontents. The warnings from abroad had their effect on Henry, who began to think that a counter-alliance might be really necessary. Thus, immediately after the New Year, Cromwell opened negotiations with the intention of obtaining Anne of Cleves, sister of the young duke, as a bride for King Henry. Yet even this concession to his policy was only, so to speak, a half-loaf: since Cleves was not actually in the League of Schmalkald, or irrevocably bound to Lutheranism, though the duke happened to have his own quarrel with the emperor.
In April, another embassy from the League was in England; but so also was an ambassador from France, bent on placating Henry—and about the same time, intelligence arrived that the emperor and the League had come to terms. So very cold water was poured on the Lutheran envoys, to whom the Six Articles Act was virtually a direct snub: as it was to Cromwell, whose policy it signified that Henry meant to desert.
Yet once more the prospect seemed to right itself for the minister. It appeared that the king had been deluded by the diplomatists, and that after all the chance of a coalition against England was by no means dissolved. Before the summer was fairly over, the politest of overtures were passing between Francis and Charles; while the Duke of Cleves, who had been to some degree holding off, again became urgent for the marriage, being, like Henry, threatened with danger from the restoration of amity between the two great rivals. Henry was beguiled into believing that the lady of his minister’s choice would make him a charming and attractive spouse; negotiations were pushed forward apace, and in the last days of December, Anne of Cleves landed in England. On January 6 the marriage was celebrated.
But fate was against Cromwell. In the first place, the king took a violent antipathy to his bride: and though, for an adequate political end, he would have accepted the situation, his soul was wroth with the man who had brought him into it. Moreover, so far as concerned domestic affairs, the minister had done all that Henry needed of him. He had so handled the Church that she lay defenceless under the king’s hand. He had brought to the block every one who could be made a figure-head for insurrection, and had made organised rebellion an impossibility. He had done all that there was to be done in the way of despoiling the king’s subjects for the king’s benefit. Finally, he had just placed in the king’s hand the last administrative instrument of despotism in the Royal Proclamations Act, as he had before provided an irresistible weapon in the Treasons Act. He was not required for any further religious reforms, since his master had already gone as far as he meant to travel in that direction. There was left only one reason why the royal anger should be restrained—a demonstration that his foreign policy was right; that he was needed as foreign minister. And ere many weeks were passed, conclusive reasons appeared for judging that the theory to which Henry had endeavoured to cling was right after all, that a lasting coalition between Francis and Charles was a mere bugbear, that there had never been any need for the Cleves marriage. Moreover, the demonstration was effected by one of Cromwell’s two most determined rivals, the Duke of Norfolk, who at any rate got the credit for bringing about the open rupture which promptly succeeded the fraternal embraces of the emperor and the French king. At last the game was in the hands of Gardiner and Norfolk. On June 10 the bolt fell. Absolutely without warning, Cromwell was arrested for treason at the Council, and sent forthwith to the Tower. His own weapons were turned against him, his own interpretation of treason, his own favourite process of attainder. Like Wolsey, he had served his master only too well; and his master rewarded him as pitilessly as he had rewarded the Cardinal. The only man in England who dared to plead on his behalf was—Cranmer. On July 28, Cromwell’s head was hacked from his shoulders. With what measure he meted, it had been measured to him again.
HENRY VIII
I
APPRECIATIONS
Of both More and Cromwell it has been observed that historians do not greatly vary in their estimates, when a reasonable allowance is made for Protestant and anti-Protestant bias. That remark does not hold good of King Henry. The popular idea of him is more intimately associated with that of Bluebeard than of any other hero of fiction or history. Mr. Froude has created a legend of his own, wherein the only doubt seems to be whether Henry quite passed the dividing line between the mere hero and the demi-god. Most commonly, he appears as a brutal tyrant. Among the best informed living authorities in England on the sixteenth century, one distinguishes him as the most remarkable man who ever sat on the English throne, and another has characterised him as a weak-willed bully, always depending for support on some stronger will than his own; yet neither the one nor the other shows signs of having been led to his conclusion by any marked bias. The data for his reign, in the form of documents calendared with exceptional skill, are peculiarly ample; but the opportunities for drawing divergent inferences therefrom are extensive. It would be too much to call them unique, in a century which gave birth also to Elizabeth and to Mary Queen of Scots.
