V
SOMERSET AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM
We have studied the Protector in his character as prophet of the union with Scotland, and as apostle of religious tolerance. We have now to observe him in his third rôle as friend of the people; wherein again he was equally honest in his pursuit of an ideal, equally satisfied of his own competence to deal with the problem, and equally misguided in his methods.
No man, whatever his office, can be reproached for having failed to solve the eternal problems of poverty and unemployment. The enormous discrepancies in the distribution of wealth may appeal to the wealthy as evidence of divine justice; by the poor they are more apt to be attributed to human injustice. Yet it is not always apparent on the face of things that the rich man has become rich or the poor man poor through any misdoings. Natural forces operate without any regard to abstract equity. There are always, however, those who, passionately alive to the unfairness of the inequalities around them, are convinced that there is nothing to prevent the realisation of a Utopian rectification except the selfish greed of the propertied classes, and imagine that an adequate remedy can be found in the imposition of paper rules and regulations. Selfish greed is always one of the factors in the problem, of varying magnitude, and regulations which effectively protect the weak instead of strengthening the strong may have most beneficial results; but they must have a power behind them which is capable of enforcing them, and they must be in themselves capable of being enforced.
The social disorganisation at this period was exceptionally acute. For the agricultural depression, we have already noted as the most vital cause the conversion of arable land into pasture—the growing substitution of a highly remunerative industry demanding little labour for a less remunerative industry requiring more labour. Next to this was the disappearance of small holdings, owing to their accumulation into single large estates—the substitution in effect of large farms worked by farm servants for petty cultivation by peasant households. Third stands the enclosing and appropriation of common lands by large landholders. The demand for labour sinking from these causes out of all proportion to the supply, cheapened labour excessively. There was an army of men who could find no employment, and those who obtained employment were miserably paid. Of the three causes named, only the third can be attributed to the moral obliquities of the wealthy. The other two were natural economic developments which would in the course of time find their natural remedy in the growth of new industries which would absorb the displaced labour. That, however, did not make the existing distress less painful, since the new industries had not yet come into being. Moreover, whereas in the old days the monasteries had at least played some part in the immediate relief of distress, though they had not mitigated its causes, their destruction had abolished this source of relief. We have in our own day an analogous movement in the industrial world, public companies and trusts absorbing the business of the small traders, while the channels into which capital flows are decided by considerations not of philanthropy but of dividends.
The true remedy was to be found—and was found in the course of Elizabeth’s reign—in the development of new industries; and the condition of developing new industries was the restoration of public credit: to be achieved primarily by steady government, establishing general confidence, and by ending one grave cause of the existing lack of credit for which the recent government had been directly responsible, namely, the debasement of the coinage. It was also not impracticable, though exceedingly difficult, to deal with the thievery of common lands. Incidentally, it was necessary to find a substitute which should discharge the charitable functions of the monasteries, as well as to hold in check the vagabondage which, owing to the great number of the unemployed, was a daily increasing danger.
There were, then, certain practical steps to be taken which would not indeed cure the existing evils, but would serve directly to mitigate them and to restore the body politic to a condition in which the only effective remedy could be applied. But in the sixteenth century, even the most scientific thinkers believed that human nature could be “expelled with a fork” by statute: and it is small blame to Somerset that he sought to stay the economic tide and to forbid the inevitable. The attempt was very much more than anything else the cause of his ruin; and as usual it was dictated by the most excellent motives. But it is very much to be lamented that while he attempted the impracticable, he left what was practicable alone, or mismanaged it so far as he did try it. He could not provide the country with a steady government: he did not restore the currency: public credit sank. He pinned his faith on legislation which was either flatly rejected or became a dead letter the moment it was passed. He made an attempt to deal with vagabondage by converting vagabonds into slaves, which was merely grotesque. Dissatisfied—quite properly—with the courts which dealt with the land questions, he established a “Court of Requests” in his own house, and proposed on his own responsibility to overrule their decisions. As for the enclosure business, the Council was not merely unsympathetic; half its members were more or less flagrant enclosers themselves. For Somerset to make a direct frontal attack on the system on which they were battening was creditable to his courage, but it was not politics. When they found that the Protector was not merely playing at being a popular ruler, but was taking himself very seriously indeed, and that he evinced anything but the proper desire to pulverise the Commons when they rose in arms either in the western or the eastern counties, they were not long in deciding that the Protector himself must go. They were only following immemorial custom when they put forward the theory that he was seeking his own advancement by practising the arts of the demagogue, and that the rural unrest was the creation of his machinations.
VI
THE LORD ADMIRAL
The same characteristics of the Protector present themselves in other fields. His motives were quite other than those which actuated the government which succeeded his, and on an altogether higher plane. We have already noted in passing that his scheme for religion included the repeal of the Act of the Six Articles and the old penal statutes de heretico comburendo; that is, his policy abolished the methods of persecution, at least in any stringent form. In precisely the same spirit, he dealt with the Treason Laws invented under Henry VIII. and used by that monarch with such terrible effect. Those laws were a very potent weapon in the hands of an arbitrary ruler; an instrument by which virtually the king—or, if the king so chose, his minister—could absolutely secure the condemnation for high treason of any person who in any way proved obnoxious to his government. To that end it was practically sufficient to procure an information that the proposed victim had used expressions which might be construed as implying a possibility of treasonous intent, or of complicity in treasonous intent—treasonous intent being interpreted in the widest conceivable sense—and the victim’s doom was sealed, whether he were a Buckingham, a More, or a Surrey. This weapon lay ready to the Protector’s hand for the destruction of rivals and the establishment of his own authority. He not only declined to use it; he broke it to pieces himself. It is particularly noteworthy that it was in Somerset’s Act of 1547 that a provision was first introduced requiring that any charge of treason should be supported by two witnesses—a provision repeated in the later Treasons Act of Northumberland. The Protector deliberately and of set purpose deprived himself of those means to tyranny which Thomas Cromwell had so carefully fabricated.
Again, we find during his rule that there was no coercing of Parliament, no interference with freedom of debate, no danger attending on the most outspoken opposition to the personal wishes of the Protector.
Yet here, again, he gave occasion to the enemy. If he had maintained the Cromwellian system of ruthlessness in the pursuit of each object he set before himself, his condemnation as a tyrant would have been tempered by praise of his masterfulness. The policy of blood and iron always has its advocates, and sometimes merits advocacy. But it was not Somerset’s policy, and therefore the one occasion on which he deserted his practice attracts criticism. On that one occasion there is very little doubt that he had an irresistible case. It is scarcely necessary to add that he did the thing the wrong way.