Had Henry been hampered, like Darcy, with scruples about honour, truth, or conscience, he too might have been undone. His power lay in his capacity for doing what was needful for success. He enticed Aske to London, and, when he held him, slew him. He pardoned Darcy, and then sent him to Tower Hill.
Lacking force to crush the rebels, Norfolk, in the royal name, pacified the people with pardon and promises of redress. They dispersed, thinking themselves safe. Henry ignored his pledges, risings followed; but, when the country had been tranquillized and his army was again in peaceful possession, he thus instructed the Duke:—
“Our pleasure is, that ... you shal, in any wise, cause suche dredfull execution to be doon upon a good nombre of thinhabitauntes of every towne, village, and hamlet, that have offended in this rebellion, aswell by the hanging of them uppe in trees, as by the quartering of them, and the setting of their heddes and quarters in every towne, greate and small, and in al suche other places, as they may be a ferefull spectacle to all other herafter, that wold practise any like mater: whiche We requyre you to doo, without pitie or respecte, according to our former letters; remembring that it shalbe moche better, that these traitours shulde perishe in their wilfull, unkynde, and traitorous folyes, thenne that so slendre punishment shuld be doon upon them, as the dredde thereof shuld not be a warning to others.”[229]
Norfolk was after Henry’s pattern. The rebels were his friends—men with whom he had pledged himself to act shortly before. But he had chosen his side, he had made his bargain, and he earned his pay. He was never weary of boasting of his cruelty toward the defenceless yeomanry:—
“They shall be put to death in every town where they dwelt.... As many as chains of iron can be made for in this town and in the country shall be hanged in them; the rest in ropes. Iron is marvellous scarce.”
He tried his prisoners by court martial, for he dared not trust the juries. Many of the farmers declared they had been forced to join in the insurrection through threats of violence, and these might have been acquitted. “They say I came out for fear of my life, or for fear of burning my houses and destroying of my wife and children.”[230] But where Henry and Norfolk were concerned there were no acquittals.
In the same way Henry destroyed his ministers when he had done with them. Though Cromwell was sagacious, he was less crafty than Henry. Just before his fall the king made him Earl of Essex, and he lived in such complete ignorance of his fate that his disgrace fell like a thunder-bolt. Marillac has described how one day, in the council chamber, Cromwell was arrested without warning, and “moved with indignation, he plucked his hat from his head and threw it wrathfully upon the ground, saying to Norfolk and to the rest of the council assembled, that this was his reward for his services to the king, ... adding that since he was so treated, he renounced all hope, and all he asked of the king his master ... was not to let him languish....”
The Duke of Norfolk, having reproached him with all the villanies done by him, tore from him the Order of Saint George, which he wore about his neck; and the admiral, to show himself as much his enemy in adversity as he had been believed to be his friend in prosperity, undid his garter.[231]
From one point of view Henry’s vanity was a weakness, for it laid him open to attack, and the diplomatic correspondence is filled with sneers like this of Castillon’s: “Il n’oublye jamais sa grandeur et se taist de celle des autres.”[232] Probably nothing in English civilization has ever equalled the adulation he exacted from his courtiers, and especially from his bishops; yet even this vanity was a source of strength, for it made him insensible to ridicule which would have unnerved Saint Louis.