Here, then, were the beginnings of sorrows laid up in store for the hapless Charles, and the church of which he was the head, and, in his later and more sobered years, the ornament. Now was the nation fly-blown; and it was only wanted that the days should be fulfilled when the hornets would take wing, and sting it into madness. So true it is that the sin of a government, like that of an individual, does eventually find it out. Long it may tarry before it manifests itself in its effects, but a century in the life of a nation is but a span; and he who destroyed the Amalekites in the time of Saul for the transgression of the Amalekites in the time of Moses, suffering his wrath to sleep four hundred years, and then to burst out, is still the God of the nations, and deals with them still after the same fashion, though the natural consequences of the offence may serve Him for the ministers of his tardy vengeance. For what had the church under its new discipline and organisation to oppose to these restless and inquisitive spirits? Could it not meet the evil, and extinguish it, whilst it was yet done in the green tree? Alas! its clergy were unfit for so delicate and difficult a work. The Reformation, owing to the violence which had attended and disgraced a noble cause, had depressed them as a body; doubtless there were of their number many most able men; none greater than some of them have been since born of woman; but with the generality it was very far otherwise. The impropriation system now began to tell its tale. The universities and schools had been comparatively deserted. It was with extreme difficulty that men could now be found to preach at Paul’s Cross, once the object of so much clerical ambition. About the year 1544, Bonner writes to Parker, then master of Corpus, importuning him to send him help from Cambridge, and expressing his surprise that candidates should be lacking for such an office.[292]—“I think there be at this day,” says Latimer, in the middle of Edward VI.’s reign, “ten thousand students less than were within these twenty years.”[293] The clerical profession no longer held out the same inducements to men of liberal acquirements and liberal minds to enter it. A very considerable proportion of the parishes of England were served by priests utterly ignorant and unlettered. The patrons had given their benefices to their menials as wages; to their gardeners, to the keepers of their hawks and hounds—these were the incumbents;[294] or else, they had let in fee both glebe and parsonage, so that whoever was presented would have neither roof to dwell under nor land to live upon, but too happy if his vicarial tithes afforded him a chamber at an alehouse, and the worshipful society of the dicers and drinkers who frequented it;[295] nay, perhaps himself the landlord.[296] The questions addressed by Bishop Hooper to his clergy on his primary visitation are but too sadly characteristic of the condition of these shepherds of the people:—“How many commandments? Where written? Can you say them by heart? What are the articles of the Christian faith? Can you repeat them? Can you recite the Lord’s Prayer? How do you know it to be the Lord’s Prayer?”[297] Were these the men to uphold church and state, and in critical times too? or rather were they not the men to render both contemptible in any times?
The rising party of the Puritans, an active minority, busy rather than powerful in the Scriptures, given to subtle and unprofitable questions, would scoff at such preachers, and teach their hearers to scoff at them too, and this they not only could do, but did; and with the more mischievous effect, because (as it has been already said) the districts best peopled and most intelligent, the towns, were precisely the very poorest livings in the kingdom, and were, therefore, the very worst supplied with ministers;[298] if, indeed, they were supplied at all, and not rather abandoned to whatever wolf might feel disposed to make the fold his prey, the laity themselves actually left to bury their own dead.[299] The deep lasting wound which such a clergy inflicted upon the character and credit of the church is scarcely to be described. It had not recovered itself in the days of Herbert, who was thought by his worldly-minded friends “to have lost himself in an humble way” when he took orders; and who himself (which is more to the purpose), unambitious of distinction as he was become, casually speaks of his profession in his “Country Parson” as one of general ignominy.[300] It required the Augustan age of our divines—the age of a Hall, an Andrews, a Hammond, a Sanderson, a Taylor, a Barrow a South—to interpose itself, in order that public opinion, viewing the Church of England through such a medium, might be compelled to do it tardy justice, and at length to reverence an establishment which had given birth to so much piety, so much learning, so much genius, so much wisdom, and so much wit.
Nor was it merely the ignorance of churchmen that gave the rising sectaries such advantage;—there was treachery in the camp. Many of the old clergy, conforming to the innovations that had been made, (indeed, during Henry’s reign, those in doctrine were not very considerable,) still occupied the pulpits, but without any love for their present position. On the contrary, it was naturally not unpleasant to them to see the elements of discord let loose, and like the “anarch old,” to watch the strife in silence, by which they might themselves hope in the end again to reign. Homilies were provided, that sound, and at any rate harmless, doctrine might be propounded to the people. They were, however, often but “homely handled,” to speak in Latimer’s vein;[301] for “if the priest were naught, he would so hack and chop them, that it was as good for his hearers to be without them for any word that should be understood.” Neither were these conformists the most intelligent of the Roman Catholic teachers; on the contrary, they were in general of the mendicant orders, their recommendation being that they would work cheap, and spare the pocket of the patron. Neither were they the most reputable; for, as a further proof of the honest motives which had actuated many in their spoliation of the church, the very men who had been denounced as unfit to live whilst they were monks, were now inducted into benefices and stalls by the parties to whom the spiritual welfare of the people, forsooth, had been so dear an object, in order that they might be thus relieved from the payment of the pitiful pension with which their property was charged for their support.[302]
These are miserable and disgusting details; but if they are so to write and read, what must they have been to Cranmer and his colleagues to witness! How must their righteous souls have been vexed! Those persons who give to our reformers credit for the courage which they displayed in the flames, and regard their sufferings as confined to their martyrdom, do them poor justice. To jostle with so many offensive obstacles for so many long years; to persevere unto the end in the midst of so much to thwart, to disappoint, to irritate; to feel themselves earnest, sincere, and single-hearted, and to have to encounter so much hypocrisy, double-dealing, and pretence; to work their weary way through a sordid and mercenary generation, who had a zeal for God’s service on their tongues, but who in their hearts admired nothing of heaven save the riches of its pavement; to see the goodly fruits of all their labours likely to perish through sectarian divisions, which might very probably have been healed by timely precaution, and the adoption (at some cost to be sure) of measures which they were the first to recommend; these were trials by that slow fire of temptation which it requires a stout heart and a high principle to sustain, and though there might be many (as Milton ungenerously and ungratefully puts it) who would give their bodies to be burned, if the occasion demanded it, yet there would be few, who, so tried, would find themselves so unweary in well-doing.
They, however, have their reward; and it was a noble prize for which they struggled. They are themselves gone to heaven in their chariot of fire, and to their country they have bequeathed as a mantle, a free use of the Bible, a reasonable faith, a pure ritual, principles of toleration, liberty of conscience, and that virtue which goeth out of all these things, whereby a nation is made to put forth its otherwise dormant strength in the prosecution of commerce of manufactures, of agriculture, of science, and of whatever else belongs to inextinguishable enterprise.
CHAPTER IX.
CROMWELL.—GARDINER.—BONNER.—THE ACT OF THE SIX ARTICLES.—SERMONS OF THOSE DAYS.—PROPOSED DISPOSAL OF ECCLESIASTICAL PROPERTY.—ARTICLES OF 1536.—THE BIBLE IN CHURCHES.—BISHOPS’ BOOK.—KING’S BOOK.
The two great measures of the supremacy, and the suppression of the abbeys had been carried, but with haste and no small violence; and now came the recoil. It pertained to the king’s prerogative that the pope should be deposed, and to his exchequer that the monasteries should be despoiled; so far, therefore, Henry was a cordial reformer. Churchwork is said in general to go up on crutches, and to come down post; and the present case furnishes no exception to the proverb: for now the king well nigh deserted the cause in which he had been so actively engaged; and having undone so much of the old religion, was disposed to do nothing for the new; but, betaking himself to catholic advisers, surrendered himself for the most part into their hands during the remainder of his reign. For though we shall have occasion to notice some acts of grace towards the reformed faith, they are few and feeble, suggested by a passing wish to preserve something of consistency, by momentary caprice, or by the force of conflicting parties, which, causing him to fall into a place where two seas met, constrained him at least to be still.
The abbeys had scarcely been disposed of, when Cromwell, the political agent of the reformation, and the individual who had succeeded to the greatest share of Wolsey’s influence over the king, fell into disgrace. After the untimely death of Jane Seymour, he had ventured (a measure requiring as much personal courage as the suppression of the monasteries) to negotiate a match for his capricious master; a match which, it was thought, would bind Henry still more closely with the Protestant cause, by connecting him with the Lutheran princes of Germany. But Cromwell’s good genius had here forsaken him; Anne of Cleves was not found to answer to the agreeable portrait which Holbein had painted of her; on the contrary, she was illfavoured; moreover she spoke Dutch, a language of which the king was ignorant; and had never learned music, of which he was passionately fond. Henry became disgusted, and Cromwell’s position became precarious. Other ostensible causes were of course put forward to justify the ruin of this minister; treason and heresy were the stalking-horses, but the marriage was the snare—“The weight that pulled him down was there.” That Henry gave him an earldom after this period, is true enough; it might be to throw dust in the eyes of the suspicious; it certainly proved but a garland to deck the victim for the altar. And now Gardiner, bishop of Winchester, “that fox” who had been long upon the watch to supplant him, saw that his opportunity was come, and profited by it. Gardiner and Cromwell had known each other from early years, having been brought up together, and of nearly the same standing in the household of cardinal Wolsey; but there was not room upon the stage for both of them at a time; and Cromwell having soon on his part declared for the Reformation, had the king with him; and whilst this was the case, the churchman lay by. Cromwell seems to have owed him no good-will, and to have taken no pains to disguise his sentiments. Having the king’s ear, he sent Bonner to supersede him as ambassador in France; and from the letters of that monster (as time-serving then as he was afterwards bloody-minded), and which are all meant to play up to the known tastes or prejudices of his patron, it is plain enough that Gardiner was disliked and distrusted by Cromwell, whom he in his turn was as studious to affront by the insults which he heaped upon this his mean-spirited vassal, and the savage ill-humour with which he resigned to him his office. He returned, however, to England; and as a man changes his latitude, but not his temper, who crosses the seas, Gardiner still continued to be a thorn in Cromwell’s side; and on a comparison of dates, it will be seen that he had scarcely set foot in England before a change began to manifest itself in the counsels of the king, and Cromwell’s influence, even long before he was attainted, to decline. What, indeed, could induce the latter to be instrumental to his recall from France (as Fox implies he was), and thereby to put his enemy in a situation where he could do him more mischief, it is vain at this time of day to inquire; but it seems probable that Gardiner was thought to be playing a game of his own in his master’s service; and to be accommodating the foreign relations of his country to a policy that suited himself, or at least the cause which he had at heart.[303] But in truth it must have been a very difficult matter for a minister of those times to have found the right place for the bishop of Winchester, whose talents were such, that it was alike unsafe to use or to refuse them. The character of this double-edged tool the king had learned to appreciate when it was too late; and on making a fresh will shortly before his death, showed no disposition to meddle with it more, by excluding Gardiner from the number of his executors (for in a former will, which was now cancelled, his name was found amongst them), and on being reminded of the omission by Sir Anthony Browne, he replied, that he had acted advisedly, seeing that “if he were in his testament he would cumber them all.”[304]
Gardiner, however, once dominant, maintained the ascendency of the Romish party and principles to the last of Henry’s reign. He had, indeed, powerful coadjutors. The Howards were devoted to the same cause; and the natural influence of that distinguished house was then accidentally increased by the alliance which the king was about to form with one of its members. Then, again, he strengthened himself by the king’s fears. If he found him making any demonstrations of a nearer approach to the Reformers, he could threaten him with the displeasure of the emperor, and picture to him the jealousy with which he was already regarded by the European powers, as the royal ringleader of heresy. The expectation too of a general council shortly to be held for the settlement of religious differences, and which finally fixed itself at Trent, threw its weight into the same scale. Henry might think it his policy not to commit himself farther with the faithful sons of the church till the storm was overpast. Not was it a slight matter in favour of Gardiner, that the king, in a rash hour, had become an author; that his sentiments on the leading doctrines of the Reformers were put upon irrevocable record; and that now to flinch from his positions would be to resign the laurels which his reputed scholarship had won for him; and, what was still less to his taste, would be to pronounce that in matters of opinion even he himself was not infallible. No man was better qualified to take advantage of these or any other incidents which might make for his object than Gardiner, the most astute politician of his time; while Cranmer, on the other hand, had nothing to oppose to him but the spirit of an Israelite indeed, alike unfit for contriving plots himself, or for discovering them in another; for of him it might have been said; as it was said of one of his most conspicuous successors in the see of Canterbury (though a character upon the whole very different from his), that “too secure in a good conscience, and most sincere worthy intention, with which no man was ever more plentifully replenished, he thought he could manage and discharge the place and office of the greatest minister in the court without any other friendship or support than what the splendour of a pious life and his accomplished integrity would reconcile to him; which was an unskilful measure,” adds the great historian, whose experience it is presumptuous to question, yet whose conclusion it is painful to admit, “in a licentious age, and may deceive a good man in the best of times that shall succeed; which exposed him to such a torrent of adversity and misery, as we shall have too natural an occasion to lament in the following discourse, in which it will be more reasonable to enlarge of his singular abilities and immense virtue.”[305] Soon had Cranmer reason to exclaim of those now admitted into the king’s counsels, “Ye are too hard for me!” for now is past the act of the Six Articles (the whip with six strings as it was called), the death-warrant of so many innocent men, whereby, 1. the doctrine of transubstantiation was established by law; 2. the communion in both kinds excluded; 3. the marriage of priests forbidden; 4. vows of celibacy declared obligatory; 5. private masses for souls in purgatory upheld; and 6. auricular confession pronounced expedient, and necessary to be retained. The penalties annexed to the breach of these decrees being for the first, to be burnt as a heretic, for the others to be hanged as a felon, and in all cases to forfeit lands and goods to the king as a traitor. Against these sanguinary articles Cranmer lifted up his voice in parliament for three days together in vain. He, on that occasion, was acknowledged by his opponents to have played a noble part; and the king, whose redeeming virtue it was to deal kindly with this single-hearted man, expressed his sense of the zeal, the honesty, and the learning with which he had withstood court and parliament to the face; by commanding the chief lords to dine with the archbishop at Lambeth after the bill was passed, and to “signify unto him that it was the king’s pleasure that all should in his Highness’ behalf cherish, comfort, and animate him.”[306] The king, who understood the beauty of his character, was faithful to his pledge, however faithless were some of his messengers; and within two years after, when two several attempts were made—the one by the clergy, the other by the council, and both probably by Gardiner—to bring the archbishop under the operation of this cruel act, and so to run him down, Henry generously interposed, and casting his sceptre before the pack that was open-mouthed to tear this noble quarry in pieces, called them off, and rescued the victim.[307] It is singular, and characteristic of the man, and of his unsuspicious temperament, that in both instances his sovereign was the first person to apprise him of his danger; in the one case calling him into his barge, as he passed by Lambeth Bridge, and addressing him—“O my chaplain, now I know who is the greatest heretic in Kent,” and thereupon putting him in possession of the charges of his accusers, and giving him directions for vindicating his own innocence, and bringing his enemies to shame; in the other case sending for him out of bed at midnight, and acquainting him that the council had demanded his commitment to the Tower, as being one who sowed heresy and sedition throughout the realm, and that the next day the deed was to be done. What follows is a scene of very touching beauty, whether as given by Fox or Strype; and as the incident is full of dramatic effect, it is happy that Shakspeare has set upon it his own mark, and thereby rescued it from the clownish hand of any ordinary playwright. At the same time it may be remarked, that his characters have their parts allotted to them without any very strict attention to historical fidelity, and sometimes in violation of it. Whether our poet like those of Italy, both ancient and modern, had his own favourites amongst the great of the country, and so doled out his measures of immortality or infamy accordingly—whether the popularity of the reigning queen did not influence the estimation in which the memory of her father’s courtiers was held; or whether, which is the most probable, Shakspeare, with his usual indifference to the minuter matters of his drama, did not put words into the mouths of his speakers somewhat at random, and without much concern as to their being strictly the property of the individual bishop, earl, or duke, who was made to utter them—suffice it to say, in the language of our martyrologists, that when the king had spoke his mind, the archbishop kneeled down and said, “I am content, if it please your Grace, with all my heart to go thither at your Highness’s commandment; and I most humbly thank your Majesty that I may come to my trial; for there be that have in many ways slandered me, and now this way I hope to try myself not worthy of such report.” The king, perceiving the man’s uprightness, joined with such simplicity, said, “Oh Lord! what a man be you! what simplicity is in you! I had thought that you would rather have sued to us to have taken the pains to have heard you and your accusers together for your trial, without any such endurance. Do you know what state you be in with the whole world and how many great enemies you have? Do you not consider what an easy thing it is to procure three or four false knaves to witness against you? Think you to have better luck that way than your master Christ had!”[308]