Had the Protector been actuated mainly by a desire to achieve popularity, the Pinkie campaign would have been a brilliant success. But his aims were far higher. His conception of a union with Scotland was so far in advance of his times that it was not even realised by the union of the crowns in 1603, or until the Treaty of Union in 1707, more than 150 years later. That in itself is sufficient to demonstrate that his statesmanship had its quite admirable side. On the other hand, the means by which he endeavoured to secure those aims were absolutely the worst that could have been devised. The Pinkie campaign placed them more completely and hopelessly out of reach than any inaction or any other measures he could possibly have contrived. That is sufficient to explain why his government was on the whole so disastrous. He had thrown Scotland into the arms of France, and made France herself more instead of less hostile to England.
IV
SOMERSET’S RELIGIOUS POLICY
The Protector’s praiseworthy desire for a union with Scotland was in part at least subsidiary to his enthusiasm for the Reformation. The desire to see Scotland Protestant as well as England was one of his motives, and a strong one. And for his efforts in the cause of the New Learning in England he deserves more praise and less censure than is usually accorded to him. The historians with what may be called the anti-Protestant bias rarely distinguish between what was done under his rule and what was done under that of his successor in power. Those with a Protestant bias are apt to condemn him as lukewarm. Very rarely is it realised that under his government a degree of toleration prevailed such as was never contemplated by other Protestant rulers of his times, still less by Catholic princes. Yet here as in all else his work was marred by his lack of judgment, and still more—unhappily—by personal defects in his character.
The religious problem was obviously the most prominent of those which demanded solution on the death of Henry VIII. That monarch had broken with the Papacy, revolutionised the relations of the State and the ecclesiastical organisation in England, dissolved the monasteries, appropriated their revenues, condemned a few superstitious practices, and authorised a version of the Scriptures in the vernacular. There he had stopped. No dogmatic innovations had been admitted, and a large number of practices which moderate as well as extreme reformers desired to see altered had been retained. Obedience had been enforced by stringent legislation, and the Six Articles Act was a standing menace to innovators. Still, if in his later years Henry refused to go forward, he also declined to go backward. The party of reaction, when they attempted to subvert Cranmer’s position in the royal favour, only got a sharp reprimand for their pains. Yet the Reformation had reached a stage at which standing still had become impossible.
In framing the list of his executors, it seems as though the king’s intention had been to preserve a balance, with a slight leaning towards the forward school; a leaning which would almost have been reversed if Gardiner had been included. Cranmer was balanced by Tunstal, Hertford by Wriothesley. Dudley, Herbert, and Russell, were avowedly on the Protestant side. Others were pronounced supporters of the old order, and others again like Paget would be guided by circumstances. The moment, however, that Hertford’s ascendency was assured, it was quite certain that the forward movement would be set on foot. Cranmer took in the pulpit the earliest opportunity of likening the boy-king to Josiah, thereby very definitely fore-shadowing a war against “images.”
Nevertheless, there was nothing in the way of a violent revolution instituted. Broadly speaking, measures of which Cranmer had openly avowed himself in favour during the late king’s reign were resorted to perhaps more hastily than was wise. The Archbishop’s Book of Homilies received the sanction which Henry had refused to it. Injunctions based on those of Thomas Cromwell were issued, chiefly directed against “abused images,” and a visitation by Royal Commission was presently set on foot. While Somerset was still in Scotland, Gardiner and Bonner, the bishops of Winchester and London, offered some opposition on the ground that these measures were inconsistent with the later ecclesiastical legislation of Henry; and both were placed under easy confinement in the Fleet. So far, however, there was nothing which could be called innovation; there was merely a renewal of Cromwell’s activity on the same lines—accompanied in practice by very much the same irreverence and violence.
When Convocation and Parliament met for the winter, there was no appearance of any violence being done to ecclesiastical consciences. All the bishops were Henry’s bishops, not Somerset’s; and though they did not prove unanimous in Parliament, a majority of them were favourable to the reforming measures introduced—with the exception of the Chantries Act, which was in itself quite obviously nothing but the completion of an approved policy. Acts for the suppression of irreverent language about the Sacrament, and enjoining the administration of the Communion in both kinds, were passed actually at the instance of the clergy themselves, while the clerical demand for permission to marry was ignored. The Six Articles Act was repealed, but that was nothing more than an abolition of penalties, like the accompanying repeal of the statutes de heretico comburendo. During 1548, there were proclamations enjoining the Lenten fast, for the sake of the fisheries; an Order of service for Communion was issued, which, however, only gave effect to the recent Act; there was a fresh Injunction against Images; preaching was restricted to the Homilies, except for licensed preachers—a custom frequently enforced in the last reign. In form, there was still no innovation.
In the winter of 1548–9 came the First Prayer Book of Edward VI., and the Act of Uniformity. The Prayer Book was a compromise, which admitted of such divergent interpretation that the most and the least advanced of the bishops could use it without straining their consciences: and the Act of Uniformity, while it penalised disobedience on the part of the clergy, laid no burden whatever upon laymen.
Now we have here reviewed summarily the whole of the ecclesiastical legislation for which Somerset was responsible. On the face of it, the changes he introduced were by no means revolutionary. Even the new Prayer Book in effect required no one to accept any new doctrine. The repeal of penal acts practically permitted but assuredly did not enforce the teaching of the doctrines against which they had been directed. Not a single victim was sent to the stake; not a single bishop was deprived of his See. During Somerset’s absence in Scotland, Gardiner and Bonner were placed in confinement for disobeying the Injunctions. Both were released after some three months. Again, the next year, Gardiner adopted a critical attitude which led to his being imprisoned again in what was no doubt a high-handed fashion; and almost at the moment of the Protector’s fall, Bonner was again sent to prison for disobeying the Act of Uniformity. There is only one other act of persecution charged to Somerset which even calls for comment, the condemnation of Joan Bocher; and that is only to remark that as a matter of fact it was after his fall that her execution was sanctioned. It was not till he had been ousted from power by Dudley that the zealots dominated the reforming party.
Nevertheless, in this field also the Protector failed, and brought discredit both on his measures and his motives. On his measures, because those which were in themselves the most questionable and the most unpopular were, so to express it, not statutory but proclamatory: exercises of a power which was of extremely doubtful legality, arbitrary in their nature. On his motives, because he made large personal profits out of the spoils of the Church (though a far larger proportion of these was appropriated to education than in the preceding reign), and set an evil example of sacrilege by laying hands upon sacred edifices and pulling them down for the building of a palace for himself. In his policy, which was moderate and most unusually tolerant, he worked hand-in-hand with the Archbishop, so that it is difficult to say which of the two was the guiding spirit; yet its effect was in great part—though not, as in the case of Scotland, totally—destroyed by the mistaken methods he chose to adopt for enforcing it.