But it had barely been dissolved in April when it became necessary to call another. In January the death of Catherine had rejoiced the hearts of Henry and Anne Boleyn, but Anne’s happiness was short-lived. Two miscarriages and the failure to produce the requisite male heir linked her in Henry’s mind and in misfortune to Catherine; unlike Catherine she was unpopular and not above suspicion. The story of her tragedy is still one of the most horrible and mysterious pages in English history. It is certain that Henry was tired and wanted to get rid of her; but if she were innocent, why were charges brought against her which were not brought against Catherine of Aragon and Anne of Cleves? and why were four other victims sacrificed when one would have been enough? The peers a year before could acquit Lord Dacre; would they have condemned the queen without some show of evidence? and unless there was suspicious evidence, her daughter was inhuman in making no effort subsequently to clear her mother’s character. However that may be, Execution of Queen Anne Boleyn. Anne was not only condemned and executed, but her marriage was declared invalid and her daughter a bastard. Parliament was required to establish the succession on the new basis of Henry’s new queen, Jane Seymour. It also empowered the king to leave the crown by will if he had no legitimate issue; but the illegitimate son, the duke of Richmond, in whose favour this provision is said to have been conceived, died shortly afterwards.
Fortunately for Henry, Queen Jane roused no domestic or foreign animosities; Charles V. and Francis I. were at war; and the pope’s and Pole’s attempt to profit by the Pilgrimage of Grace came too late to produce any effect The Pilgrimage of Grace. except the ruin of Pole’s family. The two risings of 1536 in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire were provoked partly by the dissolution of the monasteries, partly by the collection of a subsidy and fears of fresh taxation on births, marriages and burials, and partly by the protestantizing Ten Articles of 1536 and Cromwell’s Injunctions. They were conservative demonstrations in favour of a restoration of the old order by means of a change of ministry, but not a change of dynasty. The Lincolnshire rising was over before the middle of October, the more serious revolt in Yorkshire under Aske lasted through the winter. Henry’s lieutenants were compelled to temporize and make concessions. Aske was invited to come to London and hoodwinked by Henry into believing that the king was really bent on restoration and reform. But an impatient outburst of the insurgents and a foolish attempt to seize Hull and Scarborough gave Henry an excuse for repudiating the concessions made in his name. He could afford to do so because England south of the Trent remained stauncher to him than England north of it did to the Pilgrimage. Aske and other leaders were tried and executed, and summary vengeance was wreaked on the northern counties, especially on the monasteries. The one satisfactory outcome was the establishment of the Council of the North, which gave the shires between the Border and the Trent a stronger and more efficient government than they had ever had before.
Probably the Pilgrimage had some effect in moderating Henry’s progress. The monasteries did not benefit and in 1538-1539 the greater were involved in the fate which had already overtaken the less. But no further advances The “Six Articles.” were made towards Protestantism after the publication and authorization of the “Great” Bible in English. The Lutheran divines who came to England in 1538 with a project for a theological union were rebuffed; the parliament elected in 1539 was Catholic, and only the reforming bishops in the House of Lords offered any resistance to the Six Articles which reaffirmed the chief points in Catholic doctrine and practice. The alliance between pope, emperor and French king induced Henry to acquiesce in Cromwell’s scheme for a political understanding with Cleves and the Schmalkaldic League, which might threaten Charles V.’s position in Germany and the Netherlands, but could not be of much direct advantage to England. Cromwell rashly sought to wed Henry to this policy, proposed Anne of Cleves as a bride for Henry, now once more a widower, and represented the marriage as England’s sole protection against a Catholic league. Henry put his neck under the yoke, but soon discovered that there was no necessity; for Charles and Francis were already beginning to quarrel and had Fall of Thomas Cromwell. no thought of a joint attack on England. The discovery was fatal to Cromwell; after a severe struggle in the council he was abandoned to his enemies, attainted of treason and executed. Anne’s marriage was declared null, and Henry found a fifth queen in Catherine Howard, a niece of Norfolk, a protégée of Gardiner, and a friend of the Catholic church.
Nevertheless there was no reversal of what had been done, only a check to the rate of progress. Cranmer remained archbishop and compiled an English Litany, while Catherine Howard soon ceased to be queen; charges of loose conduct, which in her case at any rate were not instigated by the king, were made against her and she was brought to the block; she was succeeded by Catherine Parr, a mild patron of the new learning. The Six Articles were only fitfully put in execution, especially in 1543 and 1546: all the plots against Cranmer failed; and before he died Henry was even considering the advisability of further steps in the religious reformation, apart from mere spoliation like the confiscation of the chantry lands.
But Scotland, Ireland and foreign affairs concerned him most. Something substantial was achieved in Ireland; the papal sovereignty was abolished and Henry received from the Irish parliament the title of king instead of lord of Policy in Ireland and Scotland. Ireland. The process was begun of converting Irish chieftains into English peers which eventually divorced the Irish people from their natural leaders; and principles of English law and government were spread beyond the Pale. In Scotland Henry was less fortunate. He failed to win over James V. to his anti-papal policy, revived the feudal claim to suzerainty, won the battle of Solway Moss (1542), and then after James’s death bribed and threatened the Scots estates into concluding a treaty of marriage between their infant queen and Henry’s son. The church in Scotland led by Beaton, and the French party led by James V.’s widow, Mary of Guise, soon reversed this decision, and Hertford’s heavy hand was (1544) laid on Edinburgh in revenge. France was at the root of the evil, and Henry was thus induced once more to join Charles V. in war (1543). The joint invasion of 1544 led to the capture of Boulogne, but the emperor made peace in order to deal with the Lutherans and left Henry at war with France. The French attempted to retaliate in 1545, and burnt some villages in the Isle of Wight and on the coast of Sussex. But their expedition was a failure, and peace was made in 1546, by which Henry undertook to restore Boulogne in eight years’ time on payment of eight hundred thousand crowns. Scotland was not included in the pacification, and when Henry died (January 28, 1547) he was busy preparing to renew his attempt on Scotland’s independence.
He left a council of sixteen to rule during his son’s minority. The balance of parties which had existed since Cromwell’s fall had been destroyed in the last months of the reign by the attainder of Norfolk and his son Surrey, and Edward VI. the exclusion of Gardiner and Thirlby from the council of regency. Men of the new learning prevailed, and Hertford (later duke of Somerset), as uncle to Edward VI., was made protector of the realm and governor of the king’s person. He soon succeeded in removing the trammels imposed upon his authority, and made himself king in everything but name. He used his arbitrary power to modify the despotic system of the Tudors; all treason laws since Edward III., all heresy laws, all restrictions upon the publication of the Scriptures were removed in the first parliament of the reign, and various securities for liberty were Progress of the Reformation. enacted. The administration of the sacrament of the altar in both elements was permitted, the Catholic interpretation of the mass was rendered optional, images were removed, and English was introduced into nearly the whole of the church service. In the following session (1548-1549) the first Act of Uniformity authorized the first Book of Common Prayer. It met with strenuous resistance in Devon and in Cornwall, where rebellions added to the thickening troubles of the protector.
His administration was singularly unsuccessful. In 1547 he won the great but barren victory of Pinkie Cleugh over the Scots, and attempted to push on the marriage and union by a mixture of conciliation and coercion. He Administration of the protector Somerset. made genuine and considerable concessions to Scottish feeling, guaranteeing autonomy and freedom of trade, and suggesting that the two realms should adopt the indifferent style of the empire of Great Britain. But he also seized Haddington in 1548, held by force the greater part of the Lowlands, and, when Mary was transported to France, revived the old feudal claims which he had dropped in 1547. France was, as ever, the backbone of the Scots resistance; men and money poured into Edinburgh to assist Mary of Guise and the French faction. The protector’s offer to restore Boulogne could not purchase French acquiescence in the union of England and Scotland; and the bickerings on the borders in France and open fighting in Scotland led the French to declare war on England in August 1549. They were encouraged by dissensions in England. Somerset’s own brother, Thomas Seymour, jealous of the protector, intrigued against the government; he sought to secure the hand of Elizabeth, the favour of Edward VI. and the support of the Suffolk line, secretly married Catherine Parr, and abused his office as lord high admiral to make friends with pirates and other enemies of order. Foes of the family, such as Warwick and Southampton, saw in his factious conduct the means of ruining both the brothers. Seymour was brought to the block, and the weak consent of the protector seriously damaged him in the public eye. His notorious sympathy with the peasantry further alienated the official classes and landed gentry, and his campaign against enclosures brought him into conflict with the strongest forces of the time. The remedial measures which he favoured failed; and the rising of Ket in Norfolk and others less important in nearly all the counties of England, made Somerset’s position impossible. Bedford and Herbert suppressed the rebellion in the west, Warwick that in Norfolk (July-August 1549). They then combined with the majority of the council and the discontented Catholics to remove the protector from office and imprison him in the Tower (October).
The Catholics hoped for reaction, the restoration of the mass, and the release of Gardiner and Bonner, who had been imprisoned for resistance to the protector’s ecclesiastical policy. But Warwick meant to rely on the Protestant Administration of the duke of Northumberland. extremists; by January 1550 the Catholics had been expelled from the council, and the pace of the Reformation increased instead of diminishing. Peace was made with France by the surrender of Boulogne and abandonment of the policy of union with Scotland (March 1550); and the approach of war between France and the emperor, coupled with the rising of the princes in Germany, relieved Warwick from foreign apprehensions and gave him a free hand at home. Gardiner, Bonner, Heath, Day and Tunstall were one by one deprived of their sees; a new ordinal simplified the ritual of ordination, and a second Act of Uniformity and Book of Common Prayer (1552) repudiated the Catholic interpretation which had been placed on the first and imposed a stricter conformity to the Protestant faith. All impediments to clerical marriage were Establishment of Protestantism. removed, altars and organs were taken down, old service books destroyed and painted windows broken; it was even proposed to explain away the kneeling at the sacrament. The liberal measures of the protector were repealed, and new treasons were enacted; Somerset himself, who had been released and restored to the council in 1550, became an obstacle in Warwick’s path, and was removed by means of a bogus plot, being executed in January 1552; while Warwick had himself made duke of Northumberland, his friend Dorset duke of Suffolk, and Herbert earl of Pembroke.
But his ambition and violence made him deeply unpopular, and the failing health of Edward VI. opened up a serious prospect for Northumberland. He was only safe so long as he controlled the government, and prevented the administration of justice, and the knowledge that not only power but life was at stake drove him into a desperate plot for the retention of both. He could trade upon Edward’s precocious hatred of Mary’s religion, he could rely upon French fears of her Spanish inclinations, and the success which had attended his schemes in England deluded him into a belief that he could supplant the Tudor with a Dudley dynasty. His son Guilford Dudley was hastily married to Lady Jane Grey, the eldest granddaughter of Henry VIII.’s younger sister Mary. Henry’s two daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, the descendants of his elder sister Margaret, and Lady Jane’s mother, the duchess of Suffolk, were all to be passed over, and the succession was to be vested in Lady Jane and her heirs male. Edward was persuaded that he could devise the crown by will, the council and the judges were browbeaten into acquiescence, and three days after Edward’s death (July 6, 1553), Lady Jane Grey was proclaimed queen in London. Northumberland had miscalculated the temper of the nation, and failed to kidnap Mary. She gathered her forces in Norfolk and Suffolk, Northumberland rode out from London to oppose her, but defection dogged his steps, and even in London Mary was proclaimed queen behind his back by his fellow-conspirators. Mary entered London amid unparalleled popular rejoicings, and Northumberland was sent to a well-deserved death on the scaffold.
Mary was determined from the first to restore papalism as well as Catholicism, but she had to go slowly. The papacy had few friends in England, and even Charles V., on whom Mary chiefly relied for guidance, was not eager Queen Mary. Restoration of the old religion. to see the papal jurisdiction restored. He wanted England to be first firmly tied to the Habsburg interests by Mary’s marriage with Philip. Nor was it generally anticipated that Mary would do more than restore religion as it had been left by her father. She did not attempt anything further in 1553 than the repeal of Edward VI.’s legislation and the accomplishment of the Spanish marriage. The latter project provoked fierce resistance; various risings were planned for the opening months of 1554, and Wyat’s nearly proved successful. Only his arrogance and procrastination and Mary’s own courage saved her throne. But the failure of this protest enabled Mary to carry through the Spanish marriage, which was consummated in July; and in the ensuing parliament (Oct.-Jan. 1554-1555) all anti-papal legislation was repealed; Pole was received as legate; the realm was reconciled to Rome; and, although the holders of abbey lands were carefully protected against attempts at restitution, the church was empowered to work its will with regard to heresy. The Lollard statutes were revived, and between February 1555 and November 1558 some three hundred Protestants were burnt at the stake. They began with John Rogers and Rowland Taylor, and Bishops Ferrar of St Davids and Hooper of Gloucester. Ridley and Latimer were not burnt until October 1555, and Cranmer not till March 1556. London, Essex, Hertfordshire, East Anglia, Kent and Sussex provided nearly all the victims; only one was burnt north of the Trent, and only one south-west of Wiltshire. But in the Protestant districts neither age nor sex was spared; even the dead were dug up and burnt. The result was to turn the hearts of Mary’s people from herself, her church and her creed. Other causes helped to convert their enthusiastic loyalty into bitter Unpopularity of the Spanish marriage. Philip II. hatred. The Spanish marriage was a failure from every point of view. In spite of Mary’s repeated delusions, she bore no child, and both parliament and people resisted every attempt to deprive Elizabeth of her right to the succession. Philip did all he could to conciliate English affections, but they would not have Spanish control at any price. They knew that his blandishments were dictated by ulterior designs, and that the absorption of England in the Habsburg empire was his ultimate aim. As it was, the Spanish connexion checked England’s aspirations; her adventurers were warned off the Spanish Main, and even trade with the colonies of Philip’s ally Portugal was prohibited. They had to content themselves with the Arctic Ocean and Muscovy; and they soon found themselves at war in Philip’s interests. Philip himself refused to declare war on Scotland on England’s behalf, but he induced Mary to declare war on France on his own (1557). The glory of the war fell to the Spaniards at St Quentin (1557) and Gravelines (1558), but the shame to England by the loss of Calais (Jan. 1558). Ten months later Mary died (Nov. 17), deserted by her husband and broken-hearted at the loss of Calais and her failure to win English hearts back to Rome.