A Popular History of England, From the Earliest Times to the Reign of Queen Victoria; Vol. II

by François Guizot

When the entire kingdom thus remained silent and was suffering, Henry VIII. occupied his leisure in interrogating and judging a poor schoolmaster, named John Lambert, who had adopted the views of the German reformers upon the doctrine of the real presence. All the arguments of the royal theologian, reinforced by those of the bishops whom he had called to his aid, could not shake the conviction of Lambert. "Resign thy soul to God," said Henry angrily. "I resign my soul to God," said the accused man, "and my body to the mercy of your Grace." "Thou shalt die then," exclaimed the king, "for I am not the patron of heretics," and Lambert was burned alive, on the 20th of November, 1538. Henry VIII. alone had found a means of combining the twofold persecution of the Roman Catholics and the reformers; he plundered and closed the convents while he burnt the heretics. Cranmer shared in the main, the opinions of the unhappy Lambert, but he dared not protest, and contented himself with favouring the translation of the Bible into English, a task which had just been accomplished by Miles Coverdale; the price of the book was, unhappily, very high, and the circulation consequently somewhat limited.

Henry meanwhile was uneasy; the Emperor and King Francis I. had recently concluded at Nice, under the auspices of the Pope, a truce for ten years; hence the alliance of England lost the value which had often attracted the advances of the two great rivals; Paul III. again threatened to promulgate the bull so long prepared, and he sought to unite against King Henry the forces of the empire and of France. Cardinal Pole had been employed in this negotiation; it remained without result, but the distrust and jealousy of the despot had been aroused, and the fate which the family of the cardinal had so long dreaded at length overtook them. In the month of December, 1538, Lord Montacute and Sir Geoffrey Pole, brother of the cardinal, as well as the Marquis of Exeter, grandson of King Edward IV., through his daughter Catherine, were arrested and conducted to the Tower. Some months later the Countess of Salisbury, mother of the cardinal, the Marchioness of Exeter, and the son of Lord Montacute were impeached in their turn. All were condemned, and all perished, with the exception of Sir Geoffrey Pole, who betrayed his kinsmen. The old countess remained for a long time in Prison, as though to experience all the horrors of her situation. When she was finally led to the scaffold, at the age of seventy-two, she refused to place her head upon the block. "No," she said; "my head has committed no treason; if you want it, come and take it." It was found necessary to seize her by force, and she resisted until the last moment.

While bathing his hands in blood. King Henry was much occupied in instructing his people in sound doctrine; he had entered seriously upon his duties as supreme head of the Church, and was carefully preparing the articles of faith which were to form the basis of the popular belief; woe to him who should not adhere to the six articles which the king sent to the convocation of the clergy. In the main, the doctrines expounded by the king were those of the Roman Catholic Church, with the exception of the supremacy of the Pope; the efforts which Cranmer made to bring about, by discussion with the German theologians, some modifications in the ideas of Henry, remained without result. The emissaries of the reformed Churches in vain maintained the doctrine of communion of the two kinds, the marriage of priests, and other important points in doctrine and in practise; the king thanked them for the trouble which they had taken in coming to his kingdom; he assured them of the esteem in which he held their erudition and virtues, but he sent to the Parliament of 1539 an act recapitulating the obligatory articles of faith, entirely in conformity with the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church, and threatening the most severe penalties against whosoever should reject these doctrines, or should fail to conform his life thereto. The influence of Cranmer was once more defeated, and that of Bishop Gardiner, who had constantly remained faithful to the old Church, was again triumphant. The star of Cromwell was on the wane; the first instigator of the religious rivalry of Henry VIII. with the Pope, was about in his turn to succumb beneath the jealous despotism which he had contributed to raise.

The two great parties which had been formed in the Church of England after the reformation continued to share power under the king. The bishops favourable to Protestantism had for a time prevailed, when Henry alarmed by the alliance of the Catholic powers, sent a mission to Germany to the Protestant princes, and authorized the journey of the German theologians to England. The prelates attached to the Catholic Church triumphed when Gardiner was recalled from his retirement, and the king accepted his revision of the religious edict submitted to Parliament. Several of the reforming bishops had already resigned or had been deprived of their dignities, when Cromwell, still favourable to the new party, desired to furnish it with an important support by uniting the king with a Protestant queen. For several months past, Henry had in vain looked for a consort among the European princesses; the Dowager Duchess of Milan replied that if she had two heads, she might have thought of that alliance, but that, having but one, she declined the honour which his Majesty wished to do her. He solicited the hand of Mary of Guise, Duchess of Longueville, but she was betrothed to his nephew, James V., king of Scotland, who had lost his first wife, Madeleine of France, a few months after their marriage. King Francis I. had refused to send to Calais the two sisters of Mary of Guise, whom Henry wished to see. Cromwell proposed the Princess Anne of Cleves, sister of the reigning duke, whose beauty, gentleness, and virtue were much extolled. Henry VIII. despatched to Germany his favourite painter, Holbein, to bring him back a portrait of the princess; it was contained in a rose of ivory admirably carved; the casket and the contents pleased the king; he asked for the hand of Anne of Cleves, to the great joy of Cromwell. The unfortunate man had never seen the princess.

She arrived in England on the 31st of December, 1539; notwithstanding his gout, and his inconvenient stoutness, the king repaired to Rochester, in order to see secretly the princess who came courageously to share with him the fatal throne. He started back in dread and anger. Anne was tall and muscular, as he had been informed, and as he wished; her features were regular, but coarse; her complexion, which was fresh, bore traces of small-pox; her figure was massive, her walk awkward, and, above all, the worthy German lady was clad in the fashion of her country, without elegance or grace. The voluptuous and debilitated monarch experienced an indignation that did not permit him to show himself at first. When at length he consented to see the princess, he said but a few words to her: Anne of Cleves spoke German, the king did not know that language. He sent her a present of some furs, and returned to London to convoke his council. On perceiving Cromwell, he reproached him, in violent terms, for having married him to a great Flemish nag, uncouth and awkward, ill-fitted to inspire her love; he then commanded him to find some pretext for breaking off this odious union. Cromwell was politic, he trembled for his favour and, perhaps his life; he was compelled to remind the king that, in the situation of his affairs in Germany, it would be dangerous to displease the German princes. "There is no remedy then? I must place my head in the halter?" exclaimed Henry piteously. He yielded, and the marriage was celebrated at Greenwich on the 5th of January. But the burden of this union became every day more insupportable to the king; he was not accustomed to find himself thwarted; the objections of Cromwell to the divorce rankled in his breast. A theological quarrel of a dependent of the minister with Bishop Gardiner completed the exasperation of the king against his vicar-general; the heterodoxy of Barnes called in question the orthodoxy of Cromwell, who had employed him in the fatal negotiations for the marriage of Anne of Cleves. The king still continued his resentment. Cromwell opened Parliament as usual, entrusted with the royal message, which related solely to the religious questions yet in litigation; he obtained from the Houses enormous subsidies, dispensed court favours, threatened with the royal displeasure the chiefs of the Catholic party, the Duke of Norfolk, and the Bishops of Durham, Winchester, and Bath; then, on the 10th of June, 1540, he was arrested in the very council-chamber, for high treason. Four days afterwards, he was condemned by a bill of attainder, a process which he himself contributed to establish, and on the 28th of June, he suffered his sentence as a traitor to the Head of the Church and a pestilent heretic. The king was compelled, in order to replace Cromwell, whose activity was indefatigable, to summon to his side two secretaries of State, of whom one, Wriothesley, afterwards became his chancellor.

The ill-starred marriage with Anne of Cleves and the theological errors of Barnes were not the sole causes of the ruin of Cromwell; the beautiful face of Lady Catherine Howard, niece of the Duke of Norfolk, had played a part in the overthrow of the condemned minister. Before Cromwell perished upon the scaffold, Henry VIII. had married Catherine Howard. Anne of Sleeves had at first swooned on learning the intentions of the king towards her, but recovering her senses, she had no doubt, returned thanks to God for having preserved her from the melancholy fate of the wives of Henry VIII., and had accepted without a murmur the title of "adopted sister" of the king, which was bestowed upon her by that gracious sovereign. A suitable establishment was granted to her in England, and the Duke of Suffolk, entrusted with the letters of the princess for her brother, started for Cleves, in order to explain to the duke the scruples concerning a former contract of the princess with the Duke of Lorraine, which had led the king to break off the marriage, while assuring him of the happy condition and full consent of the dethroned queen.

Anger of Henry VIII on his First View of Anne of Cleves.

By way of celebrating his fifth nuptials Henry sent to the stake Dr. Barnes, the maladroit dependent of Cromwell, in company with two or three other heretics, while certain Catholics were quartered for having refused to take the oath of supremacy. The punishment alone was different: Catholics and Protestants were dragged to Smithfield upon the same hurdle, bound together, to the common indignation of both parties. "How do folks manage to live here?" exclaimed a Frenchman, "the Papists are hanged and the Anti-Papists are burned." In the following month, the Prior of Doncaster and six of his monks were hanged for having defended monastic institutions; all crimes became equally grave in the eyes of the despot, from the moment they thwarted his supreme will.