Henry desired to employ the influence of his minister, Cardinal Wolsey, who had now reached a degree of opulence and pride never before attained by a subject of England. But Wolsey, with all his greatness, could not venture to urge a matter disagreeable to the Pope, who was more his master than King Henry. The process went on for several years, and still his passion for Anne Boleyn continued unabated. Wolsey at length fell under the king’s displeasure for refusing to serve him in this object, was stripped of all his places of power and wealth, and in November 1530, expired at Leicester Abbey, declaring that, if he had served his God as diligently as his king, he would not thus have been given over in his gray hairs. The uncontrollable desire of the king to possess Anne Boleyn, was destined to be the immediate cause of one of the most important changes that ever took place in England—no less than a total reformation of the national religion. In order to annul his marriage with Catharine, and enable him to marry Anne Boleyn, he found it necessary to shake off the authority of the Pope, and procure himself to be acknowledged in Parliament as the supreme head of the English church. His marriage with Anne took place in 1533, and in the same year was born his celebrated daughter Elizabeth.
In 1536, Henry became as anxious to put away Queen Anne as he had ever been to rid himself of Queen Catharine. He had contracted a passion for Jane Seymour, a young lady then of the queen’s bedchamber, as Anne herself had been in that of Catharine. In order to gratify this new passion, he accused Anne of what appears to have been an imaginary frailty, and within a month from the time when she had been an honored queen, she was beheaded (May 19) in the Tower. On the very next day he married Jane Seymour, who soon after died in giving birth to a son (afterwards Edward VI.) His daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, were declared illegitimate by act of Parliament, and therefore excluded from the succession.
Hitherto, though professing independence of Rome, Henry still maintained, and even enforced, by severe and bloody laws, the most of its doctrines. He now took measures for altering this system of worship to something nearer the Lutheran model, and also for suppressing the numerous monasteries through the country. Being possessed of more despotic power, and, what is stranger still, of more popularity, than any former sovereign of England, he was able to encounter the dreadful risk of offending by these means a vastly powerful corporation, which seems moreover, to have been regarded with much sincere affection and respect in many parts of England. No fewer than 645 monasteries, 2374 chanteries and chapels, 90 colleges, and 110 hospitals, enjoying altogether a revenue of £161,000, were broken up by this powerful and unscrupulous monarch. He partly seized the revenues for his own use, and partly gave them away to the persons who most actively assisted him and who seemed most able to protect his government from the effects of such a sweeping reform. By this act, which took place in 1537, the Reformation was completed in England. Yet for many years Henry vacillated so much in his opinions, and enforced these with such severe enactments, that many persons of both religions were burnt as heretics. It was in the southern and eastern parts of England, where the commercial class at this time chiefly resided, that the doctrines of the Reformation were most prevalent. In the western and northern parts of the country, Catholicism continued to flourish; and in Ireland, which was remotest of all from the continent, the Protestant faith made little or no impression.
After the death of Jane Seymour, Henry married Anne of Cleves, a German princess, with whose person, however, he was not pleased; and he therefore divorced her by an act of Parliament. He next married Catherine Howard, niece to the Duke of Norfolk; but had not been long united to her when he discovered that she had committed a serious indiscretion before marriage. This was considered a sufficient reason for beheading the unfortunate queen, and attainting all her relations. Though Henry had thus murdered two wives, and divorced other two, and become, moreover, a monster in form as well as in his passions and mind, he succeeded in obtaining for his sixth wife (1543) Catherine Parr, widow of Lord Latimer, who, it is certain, only contrived to escape destruction by her extraordinary prudence. Almost all who ever served Henry VIII as ministers, either to his authority or to his pleasures, were destroyed by him. Wolsey was either driven to suicide, or died of a broken heart. Thomas Cromwell, who succeeded that minister, and chiefly aided the king in bringing about the Reformation—Sir Thomas More, lord chancellor, the most virtuous, most able and most consistent man of his time—the Earl of Surrey, who was one of the most accomplished knights of the age, and the first poet who wrote the English language with perfect taste—all suffered the same fate with Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard.
When James IV died at Flodden, in 1513, the Scottish crown fell to his infant son James V, who struggled through a turbulent minority, and was now a gay, and, upon the whole, an amiable prince. His uncle, Henry VIII, endeavored to bring him into his views respecting religion; but James, who was much in the power of the Catholic clergy, appears to have wished to become the head of the Popish party in England, in the hope of succeeding, by their means, to the throne of that country. A war latterly broke out between the two monarchs, and the Scottish army having refused to fight, from a dislike to the expedition, James died (December 1542) of a broken heart, leaving an only child, Mary, who was not above a week old. Henry immediately conceived the idea of marrying his son Edward to this infant queen, by which he calculated that two hostile nations should be united under one sovereignty, and the Protestant church in England be supported by a similar establishment in Scotland. This project, however, was resisted by the Scots, of whom very few as yet were inclined to the Protestant doctrines. Henry, enraged at their hesitation, sent a fleet and army, in 1544, to inflict vengeance upon them. The Scots endured with great patience the burning of their capital city, and many other devastations, but still refused the match. The government of Scotland was now chiefly in the hands of Cardinal Beaton, a man of bold and decisive intellect, who zealously applied himself to suppress the reforming preachers, and regarded the English match as likely to bring about the destruction of the Catholic religion.
EDWARD VI—QUEEN MARY.
Henry died, January 28, 1547, leaving the throne to his only son, a boy of ten years of age, who was immediately proclaimed king under the title of Edward VI. The Duke of Somerset, maternal uncle to the young king, became supreme ruler under the title of Protector, and continued to maintain the Protestant doctrines. Under this reign, the church of England assumed its present form, and the Book of Common Prayer was composed nearly as it now exists. Somerset being resolved to effect, if possible, the match between Edward VI and Mary of Scotland, invaded that country in the autumn of 1547, and was met at Musselburgh by a large army under the governor, the Earl of Arran. Though the Scotch were animated by bitter animosity against the English, against their religion, and against the object of their expedition, they did not fight with their usual resolution, but were defeated, and pursued with great slaughter. Finding them still obstinate in refusing to give up their queen, Somerset laid waste a great part of the country, and then retired. Previous to this period, Cardinal Beaton had been assassinated by private enemies; but the Scotch were encouraged to persevere by the court of France, to which they now sent the young queen for protection.
In the reign of Edward VI the government was conducted mildly, until the Protector Somerset was degraded from his authority by the rising influence of Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, who caused him soon after to be tried and executed. Northumberland, who was secretly a Roman Catholic, was not so mild or popular a ruler. Yet, throughout the whole reign of Edward VI which was terminated by his death on the 6th of July 1553, at the early age of sixteen, no religious party was persecuted, except those who denied the fundamental doctrines of the Christian religion. It would have been well for the honor of a church which has produced many great men, and to which the modern world is indebted for the very existence of Christianity, if it had not been tempted after this period to commence a very different course of action. The crown now belonged by birthright to Mary, the eldest daughter of Henry VIII, who was a zealous Catholic. Northumberland, however, assuming the illegitimacy of that princess and her sister Elizabeth, set up as queen the Lady Jane Grey, who was descended from a younger sister of King Henry, and who had been married to a son of the Duke of Northumberland. Lady Jane was the most beautiful, most intelligent, and most amiable of all the females who appear in the history of England. Though only seventeen, she was deeply learned, and yet preserved all the unaffected graces of character proper to her interesting age. Unfortunately, her father-in-law Northumberland was so much disliked, that the Catholics were enabled to displace her from the throne in eight days, and to set up in her stead the Princess Mary. Northumberland, Lady Jane, and her husband, Guildford, Lord Dudley, were all beheaded by that savage princess, who soon after took steps for restoring the Catholic religion, and married Philip II, king of Spain, in order to strengthen herself against the Protestant interest. Mary experienced some resistance from her Protestant subjects, and being under great suspicion of her sister Elizabeth, who professed the reformed faith, but took no part against her, was almost on the point of ordering her to execution also. As soon as she had replaced the Catholic system, and found herself in possession of sufficient power, she began that career of persecution which has rendered her name so infamous. Five out of fourteen Protestant bishops, including the revered names of Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley, were committed to the flames as heretics; and during the ensuing part of her reign, which was closed by her death, November 17, 1558, nearly three hundred persons suffered in the same manner. These scenes did not take place without exciting horror in the minds of Englishmen in general, including even many Catholics; but the royal authority was at all times too great under this line of princes to allow of effectual resistance. Such a persecution, however, naturally fixed in the minds of the British Protestants a hereditary horror for the name of Catholic, which has in its turn been productive of many retaliatory persecutions, almost equally to be lamented. In the latter part of her reign, she was drawn by her husband into a war with France, of which the only effect was the loss of Calais, the last of the French possessions of the sovereigns of England. The natural sourness of Mary’s temper was increased by this disgraceful event, as well as by her want of children, and she died in a state of great unhappiness.
ELIZABETH—MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS—REFORMATION IN SCOTLAND.
A more auspicious scene opened for England in the accession of Elizabeth, a princess of great native vigor of mind, and who had been much improved by adversity, having been kept in prison during the whole reign of her sister. From the peculiar circumstances of Elizabeth’s birth, her right of succession was denied by all the Catholics at home and abroad. This party considered Mary, Queen of Scots, who was descended from the eldest sister of Henry VIII, and had been brought up in the Catholic faith at the court of France, as their legitimate sovereign. Elizabeth had no support in any quarter, except among her Protestant subjects. The Pope issued a bull, which directly or indirectly, pronounced her a usurper, and gave permission to her subjects to remove her from the throne. The court of France professed to consider the Queen of Scots, who had recently been married to the Dauphin, as the Queen of England. Under these circumstances, Elizabeth found no chance of safety except in restoring and maintaining the Protestant religion in her own country, and in seeking to support it in all others where the people were favorable to it. The Scottish nation being now engaged in a struggle with their regent, Mary of Guise, in behalf of Protestantism, Elizabeth gladly acceded to a proposal made by the nobles of that country, and sent a party of troops, by whose assistance the reformed religion was established (1560). In bringing about this change, the chief native leaders were James Stuart, a natural son of King James V, and John Knox, who had once been a friar, but was now a Protestant preacher. As a natural consequence of the obligation which the English queen had conferred upon the Scottish reformers, she acquired an influence over the country which was never altogether lost.