By Henry's death Norfolk's life was saved. The new government declined to begin the new reign by putting to death the foremost peer of England. Norfolk lived for eight years longer. He spent, indeed, the greater part of it in prison; but for more than a year he was at liberty, and died at last at Kenninghall.
Henry died at the age of fifty-six years. It is no easy task to sketch the character of a prince whose principal feature was inconsistency. Moreover, as Lord Herbert of Cherbury said, his history is his best portrait. The epoch in which he lived was that of a resurrection of the human mind. Literature and the arts, political liberty, and evangelical faith were now coming forth from the tomb and returning to life. The human mind, since the outburst of bright light which then illumined it, has sometimes given itself up, it must be confessed, to strange errors; but it has never again fallen into its old sleep. There were some kings, such as Henry VIII. and Francis I., who took an interest in the revival of letters; but the greater number were alarmed at the revival of freedom and of faith, and instead of welcoming tried to stifle them. Some authors, and particularly Fox, have asserted that if death had not prevented him, Henry VIII. would have so securely established the Reformation as not to leave a single mass in the kingdom. This is nothing more than a hypothesis, and it appears to us a very doubtful one. The king had made his will two years before his death, when he was setting out for the war with France. In it, his chief object was to regulate the order of succession and the composition of the council of regency; but at the same time it contains positive signs of scholastic Catholicism. In this document the king says: 'We do instantly desire and require the blessed Virgin Mary His mother, with all the holy company of heaven, continually to pray for us and with us while we live in this world, and in time of passing out of the same.'
HIS WILL.
Moreover, he ordained that the dean and canons of the chapel royal, Windsor, and their successors forever, should have two priests to say masses at the altar.[477] The will was rewritten on December 13, 1546; and the members of the Privy Council signed it as witnesses. But the only change which the king introduced was the omission of Gardiner's name among the members of the council of regency. The passages respecting the Virgin and masses for his soul were retained.
Henry had brought into the world with him remarkable capacities, and these had been improved by education. He has been praised for his application to the business of the State, for his wonderful cleverness, his rare eloquence, his high courage. He has been looked upon as a Mæcenas, and pronounced a great prince. His abilities certainly give him a place above the average of kings. He regularly attended the council, corresponded with his ambassadors, and took much pains. In politics he had some clear views; he caused the Bible to be printed; but the moral sentiment is shocked when he is held up as a model. The two most conspicuous features of his character were pride and sensuality; and by these vices he was driven to most blameworthy actions, and even to crimes. Pride led him to make himself head of the church, to claim the right to regulate the faith of his subjects, and to punish cruelly those who had the audacity to hold any other opinions on matters of religion than his own. The Reformation, of which he is assumed to be the author, was hardly a pseudo-reform; we might rather see in it another species of deformation. Claiming autocracy in matters of faith, he naturally claimed the same in matters of state. All the duties of his subjects were summed up by him in the one word obedience; and those who refused to bow the head to his despotic rule were almost sure to lose it. He was covetous, prodigal, capricious, suspicious; not only was he fickle in his friendships, but on many occasions he did not hesitate to take his victims from amongst his best friends. His treatment of his wives, and especially of Anne Boleyn, condemns him as a man; his bloody persecutions of the evangelicals condemn him as a Christian; the scandalous servility which he endeavored, and not unsuccessfully, to engraft in the nobles, the bishops, the house of commons and the people, condemn him as a king.
BOOK XVI.