Such, in fact, was the truth. The Emperor, longing, and yet fearing to invade, and prepared to make the attempt if he could be satisfied of a promising insurrection in his support, saw in the swift and easy extinction of the Marquis of Exeter’s conspiracy an evidence of Henry’s strength which Pole’s eloquence could not gainsay. He had waited, uncertain perhaps, till time had proved the consequences of the execution; and when he found that the country was in arms, but only to oppose the invaders whom the English legate had promised it would welcome as deliverers, he was too wise to risk an overthrow which would have broken his power in Germany, and ensured the enduring enmity of England. The time, he told the Pope, did not serve; and to a second more anxious message he replied that he could not afford to quarrel with Henry till Germany was in better order. The King of France might act as he pleased. He would not interfere with him. For himself, when the German difficulty was once settled, he would then take up arms and avenge the Pope’s injuries and his own.[429] Once more Pole had failed. He has been accused of personal ambition; but the foolish expectations of his admirers in Europe have been perhaps mistaken for his own.[430] His worst crime was his vanity; his worst misfortune was his talent—a talent for discovering specious reasons for choosing the wrong side. The deliberate frenzy of his conduct shows the working of a mind not wholly master of itself; or, if we leave him the responsibility of his crimes, he may be allowed the imperfect pity which attaches to failure. The results of his labours to destroy the Reformation had, so far, been to bring his best friends and Lord Montague to the scaffold. His mother, entangled in his guilt, lay open to the same fate. His younger brother was a perjured traitor and a fratricide. In bitter misery he now shrank into the monastery of Carpentras, where, if he might be allowed, he wrote to Contarini, that he would hide his face for ever in mourning and prayer. Often, he said, he had heard the King of England speak of his mother as the most saintly woman in Christendom. First priests, then nobles, and now, as it seemed, women were to follow. Had the faith of Christ, from the beginning, ever known so deadly an enemy?
He went on to bewail the irresolution of Charles:—
He had supposed the Emperor to have been the chosen instrument to punish Henry.
He is now alarmed for the Emperor himself.
“Surely,” he exclaimed, “if the Emperor had pronounced against the tyrant, this worse antagonist of God than the Turk, he would have found God more favourable to him in the defence of his own empire. I the more dread some judgment upon Cæsar, for that I thought him chosen as a special instrument to do God’s work in this matter. God, as we see in the Scriptures, was wont to stir up adversaries against those whom he desired to punish; and when I saw that enemy of all good in his decline into impiety commencing with an attack on Cæsar’s honour and Cæsar’s family, what could I think but that, as Cæsar’s piety was known to all men, so God was in this manner influencing him to avenge the Church’s wrongs with his own? Now we must fear for Cæsar himself. Other princes are ready in God’s cause. He in whom all our hopes were centered is not ready. I have no consolation, save it be my faith in God and in Providence. To Him who alone can save let us offer our prayers, and await his will in patience.”[431]
May 8. The London train bands reviewed by the king.
A gleam of pageantry shoots suddenly across the sky. Pole delighted to picture his countrymen to himself cowering in terror before a cruel tyrant, mourning their ruined faith and murdered nobility. The impression was known to have contributed so largely to the hopes of the Catholics abroad, that the opportunity was taken to display publicly the real disposition of the nation. All England had been under arms in expectation of invasion; before the martial humour died away, the delight of the English in splendid shows was indulged with a military spectacle. On the 8th of May a review was held of the musters of the city of London.
“The King’s Grace,” says a contemporary record, “who never ceased to take pains for the advancement of the commonwealth, was informed by his trusty friends how that the cankered and venomous serpent Paul, Bishop of Rome, and the arch-traitor Reginald Pole, had moved and stirred the potentates of Christendom to invade the realm of England with mortal war, and extermine and destroy the whole nation with fire and sword.”
The king, therefore, in his own person, “had taken painful and laborious journeys towards the sea coast,” to prevent the invasion of his enemies; he had fortified all the coasts both of England and Wales; he had “set his navy in readiness at Portsmouth,” “in all things furnished for the wars.” The people had been called under arms, and the “harness viewed,” in all counties in the realm; and the Lord Mayor of London was instructed by the Lord Thomas Cromwell that the King’s Majesty “of his most gentle nature” would take the pains to see “his loving and benevolent subjects muster in order before his Excellent Highness.”
The mayor and his brethren “determined, after long consultation,” “that no alien, though he were a denizen, should muster,” but only native-born English; and “for especial considerations, they thought it not convenient” that all their able-bodied men should be absent from the City at once. They would have but a picked number; “such as were able persons, and had white harness and white coats, bows, arrows, bills, or poleaxes, and none other except such as bare morris pikes or handguns;” the whole to be “in white hosen and cleanly shod.”