History of the English People, Volume IV

by John Richard Green

Fall of the Howards.

All moral bounds had been loosened by the spirit of the Renascence, and, if we accept the charge of his rivals, Surrey now aimed at gaining a hold on Henry by offering him his sister as a mistress. It is as possible that the young Earl was aiming simply at the displacement of Catharine Parr, and at the renewal by his sister's elevation to the throne of that matrimonial hold upon Henry which the Howards had already succeeded in gaining through the unions with Anne Boleyn and Catharine Howard. But a temper such as Surrey's was ill matched against the subtle and unscrupulous schemers who saw their enemy in a pride that scorned the "new men" about him and vowed that when once the king was dead "they should smart for it." The turn of foreign affairs gave a fresh strength to the party which sympathized with the Protestants and denounced that alliance with the Emperor which had been throughout the policy of the Howards. Henry's offer of aid to the Lutheran princes marked the triumph of this party in the royal councils; and the new steps which Cranmer was suffered to make towards an English Liturgy showed that the religious truce of Henry's later years was at last abandoned. Hertford, the head of the "new men," came more to the front as the waning health of the king brought Jane Seymour's boy, Edward, nearer to the throne. In the new reign Hertford, as the boy's uncle, was sure to play a great part; and he used his new influence to remove the only effective obstacle to his future greatness. Surrey's talk of his royal blood, the Duke's quartering of the royal arms to mark his Plantagenet descent, and some secret interviews with the French ambassador, were adroitly used to wake Henry's jealousy of the dangers which might beset the throne of his child. Norfolk and his son were alike committed to the Tower at the close of 1546. A month later Surrey was condemned and sent to the block, and his father was only saved by the sudden death of Henry the Eighth in January, 1547.

Hertford made Protector.

By an Act passed in the Parliament of 1544 it had been provided that the crown should pass to Henry's son Edward, and on Edward's death without issue to his sister Mary. Should Mary prove childless it was to go to Elizabeth, the child of Anne Boleyn. Beyond this point the Houses would make no provision, but power was given to the king to make further dispositions by will. At his death it was found that Henry had passed over the line of his sister Margaret of Scotland, and named as next in the succession to Elizabeth the daughters of his younger sister Mary by her marriage with Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. As Edward was but nine years old Henry had appointed a carefully-balanced Council of Regency; but the will fell into Hertford's keeping, and when the list of regents was at last disclosed Gardiner, who had till now been the leading minister, was declared to have been excluded from the number of executors. Whether the exclusion was Henry's act or the act of the men who used his name, the absence of the bishop with the imprisonment of Norfolk threw the balance of power on the side of the "new men" who were represented by Hertford and Lisle. Their chief opponent, the Chancellor Wriothesley, struggled in vain against their next step towards supremacy, the modification of Henry's will by the nomination of Hertford as Protector of the realm and governor of Edward's person. Alleged directions from the dying king served as pretexts for the elevation of the whole party to higher rank in the state. It was to repair "the decay of the old English nobility" that Hertford raised himself to the dukedom of Somerset and his brother to the barony of Seymour, the queen's brother Lord Parr to the marquisate of Northampton, Lisle to the earldom of Warwick, Russell to that of Bedford, Wriothesley to that of Southampton. Ten of their partizans became barons, and as the number of peers in spite of recent creations still stood at about fifty such a group constituted a power in the Upper House. Alleged directions of the king were conveniently remembered to endow the new peers with public money, though the treasury was beggared and the debt pressing. The expulsion of Wriothesley from the Chancellorship and Council soon left the "new men" without a check; but they were hardly masters of the royal power when a bold stroke of Somerset laid all at his feet. A new patent of Protectorate, drawn out in the boy-king's name, empowered his uncle to act with or without the consent of his fellow-executors, and left him supreme in the realm.

Somerset and the Protestants.

Boldly and adroitly as the whole revolution had been managed, it was none the less a revolution. To crush their opponents the Council had first used, and then set aside, Henry's will. Hertford in turn by the use of his nephew's name set aside both the will and the Council. A country gentleman, who had risen by the accident of his sister's queenship to high rank at the Court, had thus by sheer intrigue and self-assertion made himself ruler of the realm. But daring and self-confident as he was, Somerset was forced by his very elevation to seek support for the power he had won by this surprise in measures which marked the retreat of the Monarchy from that position of pure absolutism which it had reached at the close of Henry's reign. The Statute that had given to royal proclamations the force of law was repealed, and several of the new felonies and treasons which Cromwell had created and used with so terrible an effect were erased from the Statute Book. The popularity however which such measures won was too vague a force to serve in the strife of the moment. Against the pressure of the conservative party who had so suddenly found themselves jockeyed out of power Somerset and the "new men" could look for no help but from the Protestants. The hope of their support united with the new Protector's personal predilections in his patronage of the innovations against which Henry had battled to the last. Cranmer had now drifted into a purely Protestant position; and his open break with the older system followed quickly on Seymour's rise to power. "This year," says a contemporary, "the Archbishop of Canterbury did eat meat openly in Lent in the Hall of Lambeth, the like of which was never seen since England was a Christian country." This notable act was followed by a rapid succession of sweeping changes. The legal prohibitions of Lollardry were rescinded; the Six Articles were repealed; a royal injunction removed all pictures and images from the churches. A formal Statute gave priests the right to marry. A resolution of Convocation which was confirmed by Parliament brought about the significant change which first definitely marked the severance of the English Church in doctrine from the Roman, by ordering that the sacrament of the altar should be administered in both kinds.

The Common Prayer.

A yet more significant change followed. The old tongue of the Church was now to be disused in public worship. The universal use of Latin had marked the Catholic and European character of the older religion: the use of English marked the strictly national and local character of the new system. In the spring of 1548 a common Communion Service in English was added to the solitary Mass of the priest; an English book of Common Prayer, the Liturgy which with slight alterations is still used in the Church of England, soon replaced the Missal and Breviary from which its contents are mainly drawn. The name "Common Prayer," which was given to the new Liturgy, marked its real import. The theory of worship which prevailed through Mediæval Christendom, the belief that the worshipper assisted only at rites wrought for him by priestly hands, at a sacrifice wrought through priestly intervention, at the offering of prayer and praise by priestly lips, was now set at naught. "The laity," it has been picturesquely said, "were called up into the Chancel." The act of devotion became a "common prayer" of the whole body of worshippers. The Mass became a "communion" of the whole Christian fellowship. The priest was no longer the offerer of a mysterious sacrifice, the mediator between God and the worshipper; he was set on a level with the rest of the Church, and brought down to be the simple mouthpiece of the congregation.

The Triumph of the Emperor.

What gave a wider importance to these measures was their bearing on the general politics of Christendom. The adhesion of England to the Protestant cause came at a moment when Protestantism seemed on the verge of ruin. The confidence of the Lutheran princes in their ability to resist the Emperor had been seen in their refusal of succour from Henry the Eighth. But in the winter of Henry's death the secession of Duke Maurice of Saxony with many of his colleagues from the League of Schmalkald so weakened the Protestant body that Charles was able to put its leaders to the ban of the Empire. Hertford was hardly Protector when the German princes called loudly for aid; but the fifty thousand crowns which were secretly sent by the English Council could scarcely have reached them when in April 1547 Charles surprised their camp at Muhlberg and routed their whole army. The Elector of Saxony was taken prisoner; the Landgrave of Hesse surrendered in despair. His victory left Charles master of the Empire. The jealousy of the Pope indeed at once revived with the Emperor's success, and his recall of the bishops from Trent forced Charles to defer his wider plans for enforcing religious unity; while in Germany itself he was forced to reckon with Duke Maurice and the Protestant princes who had deserted the League of Schmalkald, but whose one object in joining the Emperor had been to provide a check on his after movements. For the moment therefore he was driven to prolong the religious truce by an arrangement called the "Interim." But the Emperor's purpose was now clear. Wherever his power was actually felt the religious reaction began; and the Imperial towns which held firmly to the Lutheran creed were reduced by force of arms. It was of the highest moment that in this hour of despair the Protestants saw their rule suddenly established in a new quarter, and the Lutheranism which was being trampled under foot in its own home triumphant in England. England became the common refuge of the panic-struck Protestants. Bucer and Fagius were sent to lecture at Cambridge, Peter Martyr advocated the anti-sacramentarian views of Calvin at Oxford. Cranmer welcomed refugees from every country, Germans, Italians, French, Poles, and Swiss, to his palace at Lambeth. When persecution broke out in the Low Countries the fugitive Walloons were received at London and Canterbury, and allowed to set up in both places their own churches.