While the Anglo-Catholic party were recovering their former influence over Henry's mind, some members of the Roman Catholic party were laboring to re-establish the influence of the pope. They supposed that they had found a clue by means of which the king might be brought back to the obedience of Rome. Henry who, while busy in preparing fires for the martyrs, did not forget the marriage altar, was very desirous of obtaining the hand of Christina, duchess of Milan. Now, it was this princess, a niece of Charles V., of whom it was thought possible to make use for gaining over the king to the pope. She was now at the court of Brussels, with her aunt Queen Mary; and it is related that to the first offer of Henry VIII. she had replied with a smile,—'I have but one head; if I had two, one of them should be at the service of his majesty.' If she did not say this, as some friends of Henry VIII. have maintained, something like it was doubtless said by one of the courtiers. However this may be, the king did not meet with a refusal. Francis I., alarmed at the prospect of an alliance between Henry VIII. and Charles V., sent word to Henry that the emperor was deceiving him. The king did not believe it. The queen regent of the Netherlands endeavored to bring about this union; Spanish commissioners arrived to conduct the negotiation, and Hutton de Wriothesley, the English envoy at Brussels, devoted himself zealously to the business. One of the principal officers of the court, taking supper with the latter, in June, 1538, inquired of him for news about the negotiation. Hutton expressed his surprise 'that the emperor had been so slack therein.' His companion remarked that the only difficulty in the matter was that the king his (Hutton's) master had 'married the lady Katherine, to whom the duchess is near kinswoman,' so that the marriage could not be solemnized without a dispensation from the pope.[277]
MARRIAGE NEGOTIATIONS.
The emperor spoke more clearly still. Wyatt was instructed to tell the king that the hand of the duchess of Milan would be given to him, with a dowry of one hundred thousand crowns, and an annuity of fifteen thousand, secured on the duchy; and that for the gift of this beautiful and accomplished young widow all they required of him was that he should be reconciled with the bishop of Rome.[278] This was fixing a high price on the hand of Christina. The princess, considering perhaps that it was a glorious task to bring back Henry VIII. to the bosom of the papacy, declared her readiness to obey the emperor. The pope, on his part, was willing to grant the necessary dispensation; but the king must first make his submission. For a prince of such fiery passions this was a great temptation. The chancellor Wriothesley, who was negotiating the affair, was himself undecided about it. At one time he eagerly advocated it, and at another time he wrote (January 21, 1539): 'If this marriage may not be had with such honor and friendship as is requisite, that his Grace may also fix his most noble stomach in some other place'.[279] The treaty was finally broken off, the thread snapped, to the great regret of the Roman party. One circumstance might influence the king's decision. Before the negotiations had been closed, in December, 1538, the pope published the bull of 1535, in which he excommunicated Henry VIII. Had the pontiff no hope of good from the matrimonial intrigue, or did he intend to catch the king by fear?
Henry understood that it was not enough to oppose the king of England to the pope. The Word of God was for him the rival of Rome. During these years, 1538 and 1539, in which so many measures were taken against the evangelical doctrine and its teachers, the Bible, strange to say, was printed and circulated. This publication has one singular characteristic; it was made by the intervention of Henry VIII. and Francis I., the two greatest enemies of the faith of the Holy Scriptures among all the sovereigns of the world.
The emperor and the king of France occasionally coquetted with the king of England, whom each of them was anxious to win over to his own side. Francis, knowing how sensitive Henry was on the subject of marriage, offered him his son Henry of Orleans for the princess Mary. Cromwell, who was now giving way to the Anglo-Catholic party on many points essential to reform, was all the more desirous of holding by those which his master would really permit. Amongst these was the translation of the Bible. He saw in the offer made by Francis I. an opening of which he might avail himself. An edition of the Bible, extending to 2,500 copies, published the year before by the eminent printer Richard Grafton in conjunction with Whitchurch, was now exhausted. Cromwell determined to issue a new one; and as printing was better executed at Paris than in London, the French paper also being superior, he begged the king to request permission of Francis I. to have the edition printed at Paris. Francis addressed a royal letter to his beloved Grafton and Whitchurch, saying that having received credible testimonies to the effect that his very dear brother, the king of the English, whose subjects they were, had granted full and lawful liberty to print, both in Latin and in English, the Holy Bible, and of importing it into his kingdom, he gave them himself his authorization so to do.[280] Francis comforted himself with the thought that his own subjects spoke neither English nor Latin; and, besides, this book so much dreaded would be immediately exported from France.
THE BIBLE PRINTED AT PARIS.
Grafton and the pious and learned Coverdale arrived at Paris, at the end of spring, 1538, to undertake this new edition of Tyndale's translation. They lodged in the house of the printer Francis Regnault, who had for some time printed missals for England. As the sale of these had very much fallen off, Regnault changed his course, and determined to print the Bible. The two Englishmen selected a fine type and the best paper to be had in France. But these were expensive, and as early as June 23 they were obliged to apply to Cromwell to furnish them with the means for carrying on his edition of the Bible.[281] They were moreover beset with other difficulties. They could not make their appearance out of doors in Paris without being exposed to threats; and they were in daily expectation that their work would be interrupted. Frances I., their reputed protector, was gone to Nice. By December 13, after six months' labor, their fears had become so serious that when Bonner, who had succeeded Gardiner as English ambassador in France, was setting out from Paris on his way to London, they begged him to take with him the portion already printed and deliver it to Cromwell. The hypocritical Bonner, not satisfied with all the benefices he now held, was grasping at the bishopric of Hereford, which he called a great good fortune, and which he succeeded in getting. He was at this time bent on currying favor with Cromwell, on whose influence the election depended, and therefore, hiding his face under a gracious mask, which he was ere long impudently to throw off, he had most eagerly complied with the request.[282]
Four days later, December 17, the officers of the Inquisition entered the printing-office and presented a document signed by Le Tellier, summoning Regnault and all whom it concerned to appear and make answer touching the printing of the Bible. He was at the same time enjoined to suspend the work, and forbidden to take away what was already printed. Are we to suppose that the Inquisition did not trouble itself about the royal letters of Francis I., or that the prince had changed his mind? Either of these suppositions might be entertained. In consequence of the dispatch of the packet to London, there were but a few sheets to be seized, and these were condemned to be burnt in the Place Maubert. But the officer was even more greedy of gain than fanatical; and gold being offered him by the Englishmen for recovery of their property, almost all the sheets were restored to them. His compliance is perhaps partly to be explained by the consideration that this was not a common case. The proprietors of the sheets seized were the Lord Cromwell, first secretary of state, and the king of England. The matter did not rest here; the bold Cromwell was not to be baffled. Agents sent by him to Paris got possession of the presses, the types, and even the printers, and took the whole away with them to London. In two months from the time of their arrival the printing was completed. On the last page appeared the statement: The whole Bible finished in 1539; and the grateful editors added, A domino factum est istud.[283] The violent proceeding of the Inquisition turned to a great gain for England. Many French printers and a large stock of type had been imported; and henceforward many and more beautiful editions of the Bible were printed in England. 'The wicked diggeth a pit and falleth into it.'
ATTEMPTED COMPROMISE.
Two parties therefore existed in England, and these frequently concerned themselves more with the points on which they differed than with the great facts of their religion. In one pulpit a preacher would call for reformation of the abuses of Rome; in a neighboring church, another preacher would advocate their maintenance at any cost. One monk of York preached against purgatory, while some of his colleagues defended the doctrine. All this gave rise to most exciting discussion amongst the hearers. In addition to the two chief parties, there were the profane, animated by a spirit of unbelief and without reverence for sacred things. While pious men were peacefully assembled for the reading of the Holy Scriptures, these mockers sat in public-houses over their pots of beer, uttering their sarcasms against every body, and especially against the priests. If they spoke of those who gave only the wafer, and not the wine, they would say:—'That is because he has drunk the whole of it; the bottle is empty.' At times they undertook even to discuss, as in old times was done at Byzantium, the most difficult points in theology, and this was still worse. The king, anxious to play his part as head of the church, was desirous of bringing about a union of the two chief parties, and had no doubt that the party of the profane would then disappear. His favorite notion, like that of princes in general, was to have but one single religious opinion in his kingdom. Freedom was a restraint to him. He therefore began, as the emperor Constantine had done, by attempting to gain his end by means of a system of indifference and of subjection to his will. In a royal proclamation he required that the party of reformation and the party of tradition should 'draw in one yoke,'[284] like a pair of good oxen at the plough. He did not omit, however, to read the priests a lesson. He rebuked them for busying themselves far more with the distribution of the consecrated wafer and with the sprinkling of their flocks with holy water than with teaching them what these acts meant. Indifference, however, was of course unattainable, for it implies that each party should consider unimportant the very doctrines on which it sets the highest value. Henry, nevertheless, boldly made the attempt.