“One sort of dignity,” thought he, "consists with the purposes of him who regards his people as his servants, and another with the wishes of him who regards himself as the servant of his people. As for the monarchs who live in times when the struggle is which party shall be a slave, God’s mercy be on them and their people! Their throne moves, like an idol’s car, over the bones of those who have worshipped or defied their state; and they have fiends to act as mummers in their pageants, and defiled armour for their masques, and much dolorous howling in the place of a band of minstrels. In such days the people pay no tax, because the monarch has only to stretch forth his hand and take. It is a better age when the mummers are really merry, and minstrels make music that gladdens the heart like wine; and gaudy shows make man’s face to shine like the oil of the Hebrews: but it would be better if this gladdening of some made no heart heavy; and this partial heaviness must needs be where childish sports take place; and the gawds of a court like ours are but baby sports after all. When my little ones made a pageant in the meadow, there were ever some sulking, sooner or later, under the hedge or within the arbour, while there was unreasonable mirth among their fellows in the open sunshine,—however all might be of one accord in the study and at the board. And so is it ever with those who follow childish plays, be they august kings, or be they silly infants. But it is no April grief that clouds the faces of the people while their King is playing the master in order afterwards to enact the buffoon. They have spent more upon him than the handful of meadow-flowers that children fling into the lap to help the show; and they would do worse in their moods than pull these gay flowers to pieces, after the manner of a freakish babe. Remembering that it is the wont of honest masters to pay their servants, they are ill content to pay the very roofs from off their houses, and the seed from out of their furrows, to be lorded over, and for the greatest favour, laid at the gate to see Dives pass in and out in his purple and fine linen. It is ill sport for Dives to whistle up his dogs to lick the poor man’s sores when so black a gulf is opening yonder to swallow up his pomp. May be, his brethren that shall come after him shall be wiser; as all are apt to become as time rolls on. The matin hour decks itself gorgeously with long bright trains, and flaunts before men’s winking eyes, as if all this grandeur were not made of tears caught up for a little space into a bright region, but in their very nature made to dissolve and fall in gloom. But then there is an end of the folly, and out of the gloom step forth other hours, growing clearer, and more apt to man’s steady uses; so that when noon is come, there is no more pranking and shifting of purple and crimson clouds, but the sun is content to light men perfectly to their business, without being worshipped as he was when gayer but less glorious. Perhaps a true sun-like king may come some day, when men have grown eagle-eyed to hail such an one; and he will not be for calling people from their business to be dazzled with him; nor for sucking up all that the earth will yield, so that there may be drought around and gloom overhead. Rather will he call out bubbling springs from the warm hill-side, and cast a glister over every useful stream, to draw men’s eyes to it; and would rather thirst himself than that they should. Such an one will be content to leave it to God’s hand to fill him with glory, and would rather kiss the sweat from off the poor man’s brow, than that the labourer should waste the precious time in falling on his knees to him to mock him with idolatry. Though he be high enough above the husbandman’s head, he is not the lord of the husbandman, but in some sort his servant; though it be a service of more glory than any domination.—If he should chance vainly to forget that there sitteth One above the firmament, he may find that the same Maker who once stayed the sun for the sake of one oppressed people may, at the prayer of another, wheel the golden throne hurriedly from its place, and call out constellations of lesser lights, under whose rule men may go to and fro, and refresh themselves in peace. The state of a king that domineers is one thing; and the dignity of a king that serves and blesses is another; and this last is so noble, that if any shall arise who shall not be content with the office’s simplicity, but must needs deck it with trappings and beguile it with toys, let him be assured that he is as much less than man as he is more than ape; and it were wiser in him to rummage out a big nut to crack, and set himself to switch his own tail, than seek to handle the orb and stretch out the sceptre of kings."
It was a day of disappointments to Henry. Not only were his Commons anything but benevolently disposed towards furnishing the benevolence required, but the young nun would not come to be married to the friar. The gallants who had been sent for her now appeared before the King with fear and trembling, bearing sad tidings of the sturdiness of female self-will. They had traced the maiden to the house of her father, one Richard Read, and had endeavoured to force her away with them, notwithstanding her own resistance, and her mother’s and sister’s prayers and tears. In the midst of the dispute, her father had returned from Blackfriars, surrounded by the friends who had joined him in declining the tribute which they were really unable to pay. Heated by the insolent words which had been thrown at them by the Cardinal, and now exasperated by the treatment his daughter had met with, Read had dropped a few words,—wonderfully fierce to be uttered in the presence of courtiers in those days,—which were now repeated in the form of a message to the King:—Read had given his daughter to be the spouse of Christ, and had dowered her accordingly; and it did not now suit his paternal ambition that she should be made the spouse of a houseless friar for the bribe of a dowry from the King; this dowry being actually taken from her father under the name of a benevolence to aid the King’s necessities. He would neither sell his daughter nor buy the King’s favour.
Henry was of course enraged, and ordered the arrest of the entire household of Richard Read; a proceeding which the Cardinal and the Speaker agreed in disliking as impolitic in the present crisis. Wolsey represented to the King that there could be no failure of the subsidy if every recusant were reasoned with apart, instead of being placed in a position where his malicious frowardness would pervert all the rest of the waverers. If good words and amiable behaviour did not avail to induce men to contribute, the obstinate might be brought before the privy council; or, better still, be favoured with a taste of military service. Henry seized upon the suggestion, knowing that such service as that of the Border war was not the pleasantest occupation in the world for a London alderman, at the very time when his impoverished and helpless family especially needed his protection. He lost sight, for the time, as Wolsey intended that he should, of the daughter, while planning fresh tyranny towards her father. The church would be spared the scandal of such a jesting marriage as had been proposed, if, as the Cardinal hoped, the damsel should so withdraw herself as not to be found in the morning. The religious More had aspirations to the same effect.
“It is a turning of nature from its course,” said he, “to make night-birds of these tender young swallows; but they are answerable who scared them from beneath their broad eaves when they were nestled and looked for no storm. Pray the Lord of Hosts that he may open a corner in some one of his altars for this ruffled fledgeling!”
Little did the gentle daughters of More suspect for what message they were summoned to produce writing materials, and desired to command the attendance of a king’s messenger. Their father was not required to be aiding and abetting in this exercise of royal tyranny. Perceiving that his presence was not wished for, he stepped into his orchard, to refresh himself with speculations on his harvest of pippins, and to hear what his family had to say on his position with respect to the mighty personages within.
“I marvel,” said his wife to him, “that you should be so wedded to your own small fancies as to do more things that may mislike his Grace than prove your own honest breeding. What with your undue haste to stretch your limbs in your bedesman’s apparel, and your simple desire to mere fruit and well-water, his Highness may right easily content himself that his bounty can add nothing to your state.”
“And so shall he best content me, dame. Worldly honour is the thing of which I have resigned the desire; and as for worldly profit, I trust experience proveth, and shall daily prove, that I never was very greedy therein.”
Mr. Roper saw no reason for the lady’s rebuke or apprehensions. When did the King’s Highness ever more lovingly pass his arm round any subject’s neck than this day, when he caressed the honourable Speaker of his faithful Commons?
“There is full narrow space, Mr. Roper, between my shoulders and my head to serve as a long resting-place for a king’s caress. Trust me, if he had been a Samson, and if it had suited the pleasure of his Grace, he would at that moment have plucked my head from my shoulders before you all. It may be well for plain men that a king’s finger and thumb are not stronger than those of any other man.”
Henry and his poor councillor now appeared from beneath the porch, the one not the less gay, the other not the less complacent, for their having together made provision for the utter ruin of a family whose only fault was their poverty. A letter had been written to the general commanding on the Scotch border, to desire that Richard Read, now sent down to serve as a soldier at his own charge, should be made as miserable as possible, should be sent out on the most perilous duty in the field, and subjected to the most severe privations in garrison, and used in all things according to the sharp military discipline of the northern wars, in retribution for his refusing to pay money which he did not possess. The snare being thus fixed, the train of events laid by which the unhappy wife and daughters were to be compelled first to surrender their only guardian, then to give their all for his ransom from the enemy, and, lastly, to mourn him slain in the field,—this hellish work being carefully set on foot, the devisers thereof came forth boldly into God’s daylight, to amuse themselves with innocence and flatter the ear of beauty till the sun went down, and then to mock the oppressed citizens of London with the tumult of their pomp and revelry. Perhaps some who turned from the false glare to look up into the pure sky might ask why the heavens were clear,—where slept the thunderbolt?