Tyrannical as was Henry VIII., still he ever ruled by the laws. He did not abolish parliament, or retrench its privileges. The parliament authorized all his taxes, and gave sanction to all his violent measures. The parliament was his supple instrument; still, had the parliament resisted his will, doubtless he would have dissolved it, as did the Stuart princes. But it was not, in his reign, prepared for resistance, and the king had every thing after his own way.
By nature, he was amiable, generous, and munificent. But his temper was spoiled by self-indulgence and incessant flattery. The moroseness he exhibited in his latter days was partly the effect of physical disease, brought about, indeed, by intemperance and gluttony. He was faithful to his wives, so long as he lived with them; and, while he doted on them, listened to their advice. But few of his advisers dared tell him the truth; and Cranmer himself can never be exculpated from flattering his perverted conscience. No one had the courage to tell him he was dying but one of the nobles of the court. Death of Henry VIII. He died, in great agony, June, 1547, in the thirty-eighth year of his reign, and the fifty-sixth of his age, and was buried, with great pomp, in St. George Chapel, Windsor Castle.
References.—The best English histories of the reign of Henry VIII. are the standard ones of Hume and Lingard. The Pictorial History, in spite of its pictures, is also excellent. Burnet should be consulted in reference to ecclesiastical matters, and Hallam, in reference to the constitution. See also the lives of Wolsey, Sir Thomas More, and Cranmer. The lives of Henry's queens have been best narrated by Agnes Strickland.[(Back to Contents)]
CHAPTER V.
EDWARD VI. AND MARY.
Henry VIII. was succeeded by his son, Edward VI., a boy of nine years of age, learned, pious, and precocious. Still he was a boy; and, as such, was a king but in name. The history of his reign is the history of the acts of his ministers.
The late king left a will, appointing sixteen persons, mostly members of his council, to be guardians of his son, and rulers of the nation during his minority. The Earl of Hertford, being uncle of the king, was unanimously named protector.
The first thing the council did was to look after themselves, that is, to give themselves titles and revenues. Hertford became Duke of Somerset; Essex, Marquis of Northampton; Lisle, Earl of Warwick; the Chancellor Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton. At the head of these nobles was Somerset. He was a Protestant, and therefore prosecuted those reforms which Cranmer had before projected. Cranmer, as member of the council, archbishop of Canterbury, and friend of Somerset, had ample scope to prosecute his measures.
The history of this reign is not important in a political point of view, and relates chiefly to the completion of the reformation, and to the squabbles and jealousies of the great lords who formed the council of regency.