Body, Parentage and Character in History: Notes on the Tudor Period

by Furneaux Jordan

HENRY AND HIS COMPEERS.

NOTE VII.

In Henry’s time, and in every time, the art of judging women has been a very imperfect one. It is an imperfect art still and, as long as it takes for granted that women are radically unlike men, so long it will remain imperfect. But Henry was a good judge of one sex at any rate, for he was helped by the most capable men then living, and in reality he tolerated no stupidity—except in his wives. In an era of theological change it was perhaps an unfortunate circumstance that he was better helped in his politics than in his theology. Wolsey, although a Cardinal and even a candidate for the Papal chair, was to all intents and purposes a practical statesman. Had he succeeded in becoming a Pope he would nevertheless have remained a mere politician. Wolsey, then, and Cromwell and More were all distinctly abler men than Cranmer or Latimer or Gardiner.

But Henry himself, looking at him in all that he was and in all that he did, was not unworthy of his helpers. There were then living in Europe some of the most enduring names in history. More, it is true, was made of finer clay than the king; Erasmus was not only the loftiest figure of his time—he is one of the loftiest of any time; but Henry was also a great personality and easily held his own in the front rank of European personalities. As a ruler no potentate of his time—royal, imperial or papal—could for a moment compare with him. Of all known Englishmen he was the fittest to be King of England. Had it been Henry’s fortune to have had one or two or even three wives only, our school histories would have contained a chapter entitled “How ‘Henry the Good’ steered his country safely through its greatest storm.” He played many parts with striking ability. He was probably as great a statesman as Wolsey or More or Cromwell. He would certainly have made a better archbishop than Cranmer; a better bishop than Latimer or Gardiner; he was a better soldier than Norfolk. What then might he have been had he been a statesman only, or a diplomatist or an ecclesiastic or a soldier only?

In all the parts he played, save the part of husband, his unimpassioned temperament stood him in good stead. A man’s attitudes to his fellow-men and to the movements of his time are, on the whole, determined more by his intellect than by his feeling. The emotions indeed are very disturbing elements. They have, it is true, made or helped to make a few careers; but they have destroyed many more. Very curiously, Henry’s compeers were, most of them, like himself—unimpassioned men. Latimer, who was perhaps an exception, preached sermons at Paul’s Cross brimful of a passion which Henry admired but did not understand. Cranmer too was a man of undoubted feeling and strong affection. It is said there is sometimes a magnetic charm between the unlike in temperament; strong friendships certainly exist between them; and it is to Henry’s credit that to the last he kept near to him a man so unlike himself. Cranmer was a kindly, sympathetic, helpful, good soul, but not a saint. He was not one of those to whom Gracian refers as becoming bad out of pure goodness. Cranmer was a capable and a strong man, but he was not supremely capable or supremely strong. He was free from the worst of human evils—‘cocksureness.’ The acute Spaniard just named says that “every blockhead is thoroughly persuaded that he is in the right;” Cranmer was less of a blockhead than most of his compeers. Left to his own instincts, he preferred to live and let others live. Cranmer had not the loftiness (nor the hardness and inflexibility) of a More; not the genius and grace and scholarship of an Erasmus; not the definite purpose and iron will of a Cromwell; not the fire of a Latimer; not the clear sight and grasp of a Gardiner; not the sagacity and varied gifts of a Henry; but for my part I would have chosen him before all his fellows (certainly his English fellows) to advise with and to confide in. Of all the tables and the roofs of that time I should have preferred to sit at his table and sleep under his roof. The great luminaries who guide in revolutions are rare, and the smaller lights of smaller circumstance are not rare; but—the question is not easy to answer—which could we best spare, if we were compelled to choose, the towering lighthouse of exceptional storm or the cheery lamp of daily life?

One figure of Henry’s times which never fails to interest us is that of Sir Thomas More. More was clearly one of the unimpassioned class; but his commanding intellect, his quick response to high influences, his capability of forming noble friendships, and his lofty ideals seemed to dispense with the need of deep emotions. More and Henry, indeed, were much alike in many ways. Both were precocious in early life; both were quick, alert, practical; both were able; both, to the outside world at least, were genial, affable, attractive; both also, alas, were fitful, censorious, difficult to please; both were self-confident—one confident enough to kill, the other confident enough to be killed. Had they changed places in the greatest crisis of their lives Henry would have rejected More’s headship of the Church and More would have sent Henry to the block.

In order to understand More’s character correctly we must recognise the changing waves of circumstance through which he passed. There were in fact two Mores, the earlier and the later. The earlier More was an unembittered and independent thinker; the seeming spirit of independence however was, in a great degree, merely the spirit of contradiction. He was a friend of education and the new learning. He advocated reform in religion; but reform, be it noted, before the Reformation, reform gently and from within; reform when kings and scholars and popes themselves all asked for it. History, unhappily, tells of much reform on the lips which doggedly refused to translate itself into practice. The earlier More was all for reform in principle, but he invariably disapproved of it in detail. The later and in some degree embittered More was thrown by temperament, by the natural bias of increasing years and by the exigencies of combat, into the ecclesiastical and reactionary camp, and in that camp his conduct was stained by cruel inquisitorial methods.

The deteriorating effects of conflict (which happily grow less in each successive century) on individuals as well as on parties and peoples is seen in another notable though very different character of More’s century. Savonarola, before his bitter fight with Florentine and Roman powers, was a large, clear-sighted, sane reformer; after the fight he became blind, fanatical, and insane. Why may we not combine all thankfulness for the early More and the early Savonarola, and all compassion for the later More and later Savonarola? Mary Stuart, Francis Bacon, Robert Burns, Napoleon Buonapart, and Lord Byron were notable personalities; they—some of them at least—did the world service which others did not and could not do. Yet how many of us are there who, if admitting to the full their greatness, do not belittle their follies? or, if freely admitting their follies, do not belittle their greatness?

Wolsey, holding aloof from religious strife, remained simply the scholar and the politician—a politician moreover before politics became in their turn also a matter of hostile camps. Being a politician only, he continued to be merciful while More drifted from politics and mercy into ecclesiasticism and cruelty. More’s change was in itself evidence of a fitful and passionless temperament, of such evidence indeed there is no lack. His first public action was one of petulance and self-importance. He had been treated with continued and exceptional kindness by Cardinal Morton and Henry VII.; but when Morton, on behalf of his king, asked parliament for a subsidy, the newly-elected More, conscious of his powers, and thinking too, may we not say, much more of a people’s applause than of a people’s burdens, successfully urged its reduction to one half.

More was by nature censorious, and never heartily approved of anything. When Wolsey, on submitting a proposal to him with the usual result, told him—told him it would seem in the unvarnished language of the time—that he stood alone in his disapproval, and that he was a fool, More, with ready wit and affected humility, rejoined that he thanked God that he was the only fool on the King’s Council. More, we may be quite sure, was not conscious of a spirit of contradiction; he probably felt that his first duty was to suggest to everybody some improvement in everything. This spirit of antagonism nevertheless played a leading part in his changeful life. In his early years he found orthodoxy rampant and defiant, consequently he inclined to heresy; at a later period heresy became rampant and defiant, and as inevitably he returned to the older faith and views. A modern scholar and piquant censor, and—I gather from his own writings, the only knowledge I have of him—an extreme specimen of the unimpassioned temperament, Mark Pattison, says that he never saw anything without suggesting how it might have been better; and that every time he entered a railway carriage he worked out a better time table than the one in use. If More had lived in his own Utopia he would have found fault with it, and drawn in imagination another and a better land. The later More was, as all unimpassioned and censorious temperaments are, a prophet of evil; and as much evil did happen—was sure to happen—his wisdom has come down to us somewhat greater in appearance than it was in reality.