In whatever light, however, we may now think of these things, the effect in Europe was instantaneous and electrical. The irritation which had accompanied the excommunication by Clement had died away in the difficulty of executing the censures. The papal party had endeavoured to persuade themselves that the king was acting under a passing caprice. They had believed that the body of the people remained essentially Catholic; and they had trusted to time, to discontent, to mutiny, to the consequences of what they chose to regard as the mere indulgence of criminal passion, to bring Henry to his senses. To threats and anathemas, therefore, had again succeeded fair words and promises, and intrigues and flatteries; and the pope and his advisers, so long accustomed themselves to promise and to mean nothing, to fulminate censures in form, and to treat human life as a foolish farce upon the stage, had dreamed that others were like themselves. In the rough awakening out of their delusion, as with a stroke of lightning, popes, cardinals, kings, emperors, ambassadors, were startled into seriousness; and, the diplomatic meshwork all rent and broken, they fell at once each into their places, with a sense suddenly forced upon them that it was no child's play any longer. The King of England was in earnest, it seemed. The assumption of the supremacy was a fixed purpose, which he was prepared to make a question of life and death; and with this resolution they must thenceforward make their account.
The news arrives at Rome of the deaths of the Carthusians.
On the 1st of June, Cassalis wrote[464] from Rome that the French ambassador had received a letter concerning certain friars who had been put to death in England for denying the king to be Head of the Church. The letter had been read in the consistory, and was reported to be written in a tone of the deepest commiseration. There had been much conversation about it, the French bishops having been louder than any in their denunciations; and the form of the execution was described as having been most barbarous. Some of the cardinals had said that they envied the monks their deaths in such a cause, and wished that they had been with them. "I desired my informant," Cassalis said, "to suggest to these cardinals, that, if they were so anxious on the subject, they had better pay a visit to England." And he concluded, in cipher, "I cannot tell very well what to think of the French. An Italian told me he had heard the Most Christian king himself say, that although he was obliged to press upon the pope the requests of the king of England, yet that these requests were preposterous, and could not be granted."
And of Fisher, which the pope will make of more account than the martyrdom of Becket.
The deaths of a few poor monks would soon have been forgiven; the execution of Fisher first really revealed the truth. No sooner was the terrible reply of Henry to his promotion to the cardinalate made known than the conclave was instantly summoned. Cardinal Tournon described the scene upon the scaffold in language which moved all his audience to tears.[465] The pope, in a paroxysm of anger, declared that if he had seen his own nephews murdered in his presence, it would not have so much affected him; and Cassalis said he heard, from good authority, that they would do their worst, and intended to make the Bishop of Rochester's death of more account than that of the martyr St. Thomas.[466]
All Europe unites in amazed displeasure.
Francis remonstrates, and recommends that in future political offenders should be banished.
Nor was the anger or the surprise confined to Rome. Through England, through France, through Flanders, even among the Protestants of Germany, there rose a simultaneous outcry of astonishment. Rumour flew to and fro with a thousand falsehoods; and the unfortunate leaven of the Anne Boleyn marriage told fatally to destroy that appearance of probity of motive so indispensable to the defence of the government. Even Francis I. forgot his caution, and dared to remonstrate. He wrote to entreat his good brother in future to content himself for the future with banishing such offenders, and sparing the extremity of his penalties.
Unfortunately, the question which was at issue was European as well as English; and every exile who was driven from England would have become, like Reginald Pole, a missionary of a holy war against the infidel king. Whatever else might have been possible, banishment was more perilous than pardon.
Henry condescends to explanation.
But the indignation was so general and so serious, that Henry thought it well to offer an explanation of his conduct, both at home and abroad. With his own people he communicated through the lay authorities, not choosing to trust himself on this occasion to the clergy. The magistrates at the quarter sessions were directed "to declare to the people the treasons committed by the late Bishop of Rochester and Sir Thomas More; who thereby, and by divers secret practices, of their malicious minds intended to seminate, engender, and breed a most mischievous and seditious opinion, not only to their own confusion, but also of divers others, who have lately suffered execution according to their demerits."[467] To Francis, Cromwell instructed Gardiner, who was ambassador in Paris, to reply very haughtily. His message to Francis.
He had made his laws on good and substantial grounds, The English government, he said had acted on clear proof of treason; treason so manifest, and tending so clearly to the total destruction of the commonwealth of the realm, that the condemned persons "were well worthy, if they had a thousand lives, to have suffered ten times a more terrible death and execution than any of them did suffer." The laws which the king had made were "not without substantial grounds;" but had been passed "by great and mature advice, counsel, and deliberation of the whole policy of the realm, and" were "indeed no new laws, but of great antiquity, now renovate and renewed in respect to the common weal of the same realm."