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

by François Guizot

A few more executions were wanting to light up the dismal valley of death into which the king felt himself descending; the jealousies of the political chiefs of the great factions which divided the country were about to furnish matter for the last deeds of violence of the dying monarch. The ancient and illustrious house of the Howards and its chief, the Duke of Norfolk, had observed with vexation the growing power and influence of the Earl of Hertford and of the family of the Seymours. The wealth, as well as the past renown of the Howards, had nothing to fear from the new rival who had sprung up beside them; but Lord Hertford was uncle to the heir to the throne, which gave him much power in the future, he wished to secure himself against any fatal mishap by striking his enemies beforehand. The distrust and jealousy of King Henry VIII. were easily excited; the old Duke of Norfolk and his son, the Earl of Surrey, were arrested on the 12th of December, 1546, and taken to the Tower. At the same time, in the presence of several witnesses, the king erased their names from the list of his testamentary executors. The precautions had been well taken. Advantage had been taken of the bad terms which had for a long time existed between the Duke of Norfolk and his wife, between the Earl of Surrey and his sister, the Duchess of Richmond, to search the papers and coffers of the family, in order to discover some tokens of treason. The ladies had even been arrested, and had been severely interrogated; but all that could be alleged in the impeachment was that Lord Surrey had quartered with his own arms the royal arms of Edward the Confessor. The old Duke of Norfolk had, it was said, been guilty of seditious utterances regarding the death of the king while manifesting his dissatisfaction at the reforms of the Church. His trial had not commenced when Lord Surrey was brought to Guildhall to reply to his accusers. He was young, handsome, valiant; he was learned and cultivated; his poems are still famous. He defended himself with as much intelligence as courage, proving that he was authorized by the decisions of the heralds-at-arms to bear the arms of Edward the Confessor, which he had constantly displayed in the presence of the king without his Majesty having discovered anything to find fault with. The court declared, however, that this simple matter of royal arms betrayed pretensions to the throne; Surrey was condemned, and on the 19th of January the flower of English chivalry perished upon the scaffold, while King Henry VIII. was already at the point of death.

Norfolk had in vain demanded to be confronted with his accusers; he had written to the king, and his letters had remained without a reply. Henry VIII. when dying, had not forgotten the convenient arm which he had wielded so long; the old duke, alarmed and wearied, had even gone so far as to make a gift of all his property to the sovereign, begging him to secure them for Prince Edward. The experienced politician knew that it would be easier for his posterity to regain some day the riches concentrated in the hands of the sovereign, than to snatch them from the hands of the greedy courtiers, who were already in expectation sharing them amongst themselves; but this manœuvre was not successful in saving him; the confession which preceded his donation served as a basis for the bill of attainder, which was voted by the House of Commons on the 20th of January, 1547. The king was no longer able to sign. On the 27th the Chancellor Wriothesley informed the two Houses that his Majesty had chosen delegates to ratify the condemnation, and the order was despatched to the Lieutenant of the Tower to execute the Duke of Norfolk on the 28th, early in the morning. On the same night Henry VIII. expired, after a reign of thirty-seven years. On the last day only had the bolder of his courtiers dared to suggest to him the possibility of a near end, and proposed to bring a priest to him. "No other than Archbishop Cranmer," he said, "but not yet; when I shall have rested." When the archbishop was at length asked for, the king could no longer speak; Cranmer reminded him of the mercy of God through Jesus Christ, and Henry grasped the hand of the prelate with his remaining strength; a moment afterwards he was no more.

For some years past, endeavours have been made to place the memory of King Henry VIII. in a more favourable light. No one has laboured in this direction with more zeal and ability than Mr. Froude; but no party passions can annihilate the facts of history; the personal character of the king must still be regarded as corrupt and cruel; relations with him were fatal to all who approached him, wives and ministers. A despotic and arbitrary, violent and unjust monarch, he was at the same time a capricious and perfidious ally, a vain and harsh pedant. The reform which he undertook in England was the work of his private interest and his tyrannical pride, not of a settled and sincere conviction. In his heart he still remained a Catholic and only wished to rid himself of the supremacy of the Pope, who thwarted him and of the monasteries, the spoliation of which enriched him. Illegalities and abuses of all kinds were increasing with the servility of Parliament, the long duration of the reign and the development of the vices of the king. At the period of his death no one in England dared any longer to raise his head.

Notwithstanding so many crimes, oppressions and errors, England had grown under the reign of Henry VIII.; the king had overwhelmed his people with taxes, but he had maintained public order, and favoured the development of commerce; he had persecuted Catholics and Protestants, but by separating violently from the court of Rome, he had implanted in English soil the germ of that religious liberty which was destined never to perish: he had laboured to construct a strange structure, mingled with strange contradictions and he had called it the Church of England in order to place himself at its head as the supreme chief, but he had imprinted upon English reform its peculiar character, at once governmental and liberal, aristocratic and popular. He infamously plundered the monasteries, but he thereby involved in the party of reform the great noblemen enriched by the spoils; he shed upon the scaffold the noblest blood of England, but he followed the policy of his father, in elevating to the summit obscure men drawn from that growing middle class which was one day to constitute the greatness and strength of his country. Without brilliant military genius, without great political talents, he had contrived to maintain himself abroad as the respected arbiter of the greatest sovereigns of Europe, causing the scale to incline to the side to which his capricious vanity impelled him. The royal coffers were full at the death of Henry VII.; they were empty at the death of his son, notwithstanding the enormous exactions which had filled them so many times; but sixty years of comparative peace had enriched the nation, so long crushed under the weight of civil and foreign wars; it had regained its breath. In vain had Henry VIII. oppressed it; in vain had he reduced Parliament to servile dependence; the new spirit inspired by the reformation had done its work; in spite of the stake, religious sects were already multiplying; the day of the Puritans was about to dawn; the obstinate resistance of weakness under a powerful oppression was already preparing. Protestant England had sprung into existence.

Chapter XVIII
The Reformation.
Edward VI. (1547-1553).

The oppressive tyranny of Henry VIII. had ceased, and the child who succeeded him was destined to reign without attaining manhood. The ambitions and animosities of the great, as well as the sincere passions and intrigues of the theologians were about to occupy the scene, to divide and agitate all minds; but the work which was to make England Protestant and free had begun, and was continuing silently, and in obscurity; Henry VIII. had thought to regulate the religious movement in England as he had shaken off the supremacy of the Pope, but all his despotism could not arrest the effects of the new convictions, powerful especially among the lower clergy and the inhabitants of the towns. It was there that the Reformation numbered every day more numerous and more zealous adherents; it was there that the changes soon brought about by Cranmer in the organization of the Church met with the most ardent sympathy, and it was there that the persecution set on foot by the fanatic zeal of Queen Mary was to find the firmest resistance and the most heroic martyrs. Henry VIII. had accomplished the royal reform in order to satisfy his passions and his personal animosities; the English people, under the reign of his son, accomplished noiselessly and without proclamation a reform in a far different way, solid and profound. The country districts were still Catholic and long remained so; a portion of the bishops and the high clergy refused to admit the new doctrines, but the religious reform progressed none the less; it was no longer in the power of man to arrest the work begun in the heart and conscience of a mass of people as obscure as they were sincere. The young king, moreover, never had a desire to do so. During the short reign of Edward VI., through the weaknesses and vacillations natural to childhood, the prince was seen to pass from one to the other of the great noblemen who were contending together for power; never did he change in opinion or in religious tendency, and his influence always weighed on the side of the Reformation. Edward VI. was destined for a long while yet, to remain the most Protestant of English sovereigns.

Henry VIII. had scarcely been dead four days, his obsequies had not yet been celebrated, and already all that he had wished and ordained for the government of England during the minority of his son was destroyed. Formerly the House of Lords possessed the privilege of designating the regent and the members of the council of regency; Parliament had granted this power to the king by the Act which had allowed him to dispose at his pleasure of the succession to the throne. Henry had accordingly made use of this right in designating in his will sixteen persons to constitute the privy council, and to be entrusted with the executive power. A second commission of twelve members was to be consulted in grave cases; the two bodies united composed the council of regency. Among the more important members of the privy council were the names of Cranmer, Chancellor Wriothesley, Lord Hertford, Lord Lisle; but the Earl of Hertford did not limit his ambition to his seat in a council. He had taken his steps and secured partisans among the testamentary executors of the king; at the first meeting, he contrived to accomplish his project. It was proposed to select a president. Wriothesley violently opposed this, saying that the will placed all the councillors in the same rank; he counted, no doubt, upon taking possession of the principal part of the power; he found himself alone upon his side, and finally gave way. When the Lords reassembled, on the 1st of February, the young king heard the list of the members of the two councils read, Wriothesley added that the executors had resolved to place at their head the Earl of Hertford as Protector of the kingdom and governor of the royal person; on condition, however, that he would take no steps in any matter without the assent of a majority of the members of the council. All the peers spiritual and temporal applauded this amendment and the last wishes of Henry VIII. were violated with no more ado.