The ground being thus opened, and all preparations being completed, the archbishop composed a formal letter to the king, in which he dwelt upon the uncertain prospects of the succession, and the danger of leaving a question which closely affected it so long unsettled. He expatiated at length on the general anxiety which was felt throughout the realm, and requested permission to employ the powers attached to his office to bring it to some conclusion. The recent alterations had rendered the archbishop something doubtful of the nature of his position; he was diffident and unwilling to offend; and not clearly knowing in the exercise of the new authority which had been granted to him, whether the extension of his power was accompanied with a parallel extension of liberty in making use of it, he wrote two copies of this letter, with slight alterations of language, that the king might select between them the one which he would officially recognise. Both these copies are extant; both were written the same day from the same place; both were folded, sealed, and sent. It seems, therefore, that neither was Cranmer furnished beforehand with a draught of what he was to write; nor was his first letter sent back to him corrected. He must have acted by his own judgment; and a comparison of the two letters is singular and instructive. In the first he spoke of his office and duty in language, chastened indeed and modest, but still language of independence; and while he declared his unwillingness to "enterprise any part of that office" without his Grace's favour obtained, and pleasure therein first known, he implied nevertheless that his request was rather of courtesy than of obligation, and had arisen rather from a sense of moral propriety than because he might not legally enter on the exercise of his duty without the permission of the crown.[428]

The moderate gleam of freedom vanishes in the other copy under a few pithy changes, as if Cranmer instinctively felt the revolution which had taken place in the relations of church and state. Where in the first letter he asked for his Grace's favour, in the second he asked for his Grace's favour and licence—where in the first he requested to know his Grace's pleasure as to his proceeding, in the second he desired his Most Excellent Majesty to license him to proceed. The burden of both letters was the same, but the introduction of the little word license changed all. It implied a hesitating belief that the spiritual judges might perhaps thenceforward be on a footing with the temporal judges and the magistrates; that under the new constitution they were to understand that they held their offices not directly under God as they had hitherto pretended, but under God through the crown.

The answer of Henry indicated that he had perceived the archbishop's uncertainty; and that he was desirous by the emphatic distinctness of his own language to spare him a future recurrence of it. He accepted the deferential version of the petition; but even Cranmer's anticipation of what might be required of him had not reached the reality. In running through the preamble, the king flung into the tone of it a character of still deeper humility;[429] and he conceded the desired licence in the following imperial style. "In consideration of these things,"—i.e. of the grounds urged by the archbishop for the petition—"albeit we being your King and Sovereign, do recognise no superior on earth but only God, and not being subject to the laws of any earthly creature; yet because ye be under us, by God's calling and ours, the most principal minister of our spiritual jurisdiction within this our Realm, who we think assuredly is so in the fear of God, and love towards the observance of his laws, to the which laws, we as a Christian king have always heretofore, and shall ever most obediently submit ourself, we will not therefore refuse (our pre-eminence, power, and authority to us and to our successors in this behalf nevertheless saved) your humble request, offer, and towardness—that is, to mean to make an end according to the will and pleasure of Almighty God in our said great cause of matrimony, which hath so long depended undetermined, to our great and grievous unquietness and burden of our conscience. Wherefore we, inclining to your humble petition, by these our letters sealed with our seal, and signed with our sign manual, do license you to proceed in the said cause, and the examination and final determination of the same; not doubting but that ye will have God and the justice of the said cause only before your eyes, and not to regard any earthly or worldly affection therein; for assuredly the thing which we most covet in the world, is so to proceed in all our acts and doings as may be the most acceptable to the pleasure of Almighty God our Creator, to the wealth and honour of us, our successors and posterity, and the surety of our Realm, and subjects within the same."[430]

The vision of ecclesiastical independence, if Cranmer had indulged in it, must have faded utterly before his eyes on receiving this letter. As clergy who committed felony were no longer exempted from the penalties of their crimes; so henceforward the courts of the clergy were to fell into conformity with the secular tribunals. The temporal prerogatives of ecclesiastics as a body whose authority over the laity was countervailed with no reciprocal obligation, existed no longer. This is what the language of the king implied. The difficulty which the persons whom he was addressing experienced in realising the change in their position, obliged him to be somewhat emphatic in his assertion of it; and it might be imagined at first sight, that in insisting on his superiority to the officers of the spiritual courts, he claimed a right to dictate their sentences. But to venture such a supposition would be to mistake the nature of English sovereignty and the spirit of the change. The supreme authority in England was the law; and the king no more possessed, or claimed a power of controlling the judgment of the bishops or their ministers, than he could interfere with the jurisdiction of the judges of the bench. All persons in authority, whether in church or state, held their offices thenceforth by similar tenure; but the rule of the proceedings in each remained alike the law of the land, which Henry had no more thought of superseding by his own will than the most constitutional of modern princes.

The closing sentences of his reply to Cranmer are striking, and it is difficult to believe that he did not mean what he was saying. From the first step in the process to the last, he maintained consistently that his only object was to do what was right. He was thoroughly persuaded that the course which he was pursuing was sanctioned by justice—and persons who are satisfied that he was entitled to feel such persuasion, need not refuse him the merit of sincerity, because (to use the language which Cromwell used at the fatal crisis of his life[431]) "It may be well that they who medelle in many matters are not able to answer for them all."

Cranmer, then, being fortified with this permission, and taking with him the Bishops of London, Winchester, Lincoln, and Bath and Wells (the latter perhaps having been chosen in consequence of his late conduct in the convocation, to give show of fairness to the proceeding), went down to Dunstable and opened his court there. The queen was at Ampthill, six miles distant, having entered on her sad tenancy, it would seem, as soon as the place had been evacuated by the gaudy hunting party of the preceding summer. The cause being undecided, and her title being therefore uncertain, she was called by the safe name of "the Lady Catherine," and under this designation she was served with a citation from the archbishop to appear before him on Saturday, the 10th of May. The bearers of the summons were Sir Francis Bryan (an unfortunate choice, for he was cousin of the new queen, and insolent in his manner and bearing), Sir Thomas Gage, and Lord Vaux. She received them like herself with imperial sorrow. They delivered their message; she announced that she refused utterly to acknowledge the competency of the tribunal before which she was called; the court was a mockery; the archbishop was a shadow.[432] She would neither appear before him in person, nor commission any one to appear on her behalf.

The court had but one course before it—she was pronounced contumacious, and the trial went forward. None of her household were tempted even by curiosity to be present. "There came not so much as a servant of hers to Dunstable, save such as were brought in as witnesses;" some of them having been required to give evidence in the re-examination which was thought necessary, as to the nature of the relation of their mistress with her first boy husband. As soon as this disgusting question had been sufficiently investigated, nothing remained but to pronounce judgment. The marriage with the king was declared to have been null and void from the beginning, and on the 23rd of May, the archbishop sent to London the welcome news that the long matter was at an end.[433]

It was over;—over at last; yet so over, that the conclusion could but appear to the losing party a fresh injustice. To those who were concerned in bringing it to pass, to the king himself, to the nation, to Europe, to every one who heard of it at the time, it must have appeared, as it appears now to us who read the story of it, if a necessity, yet a most unwelcome and unsatisfying one. That the king remained uneasy is evident from the efforts which he continued to make, or which he allowed to be made, notwithstanding the brief of the 23rd of December, to gain the sanction of the pope. That the nation was uneasy, we should not require the evidence of history to tell us. "There was much murmuring in England," says Hall, "and it was thought by the unwise that the Bishop of Rome would curse all Englishmen; that the emperor and he would destroy all the people." And those who had no such fears, and whose judgment in the main approved of what had been done, were scandalised at the presentation to them at the instant of the publication of the divorce, of a new queen, four months advanced in pregnancy. This also was a misfortune which had arisen out of the chain of duplicities, a fresh accident swelling a complication which was already sufficiently entangled. It had been occasioned by steps which at the moment at which they were ventured, prudence seemed to justify; but we the more regret it, because, in comparison with the interests which were at issue, the few months of additional delay were infinitely unimportant.

Nevertheless, we have reason to be thankful that the thing, well or ill, was over; seven years of endurance were enough for the English nation, and may be supposed to have gained even for Henry a character for patience. In some way, too, it is needless to say, the thing must have ended. The life of none of us is long enough to allow us to squander so large a section of it struggling in the meshes of a law-suit; and although there may be a difference of opinion on the wisdom of having first entered upon ground of such a kind, few thinking persons can suggest any other method in which either the nation or the king could have extricated themselves. Meanwhile, it was resolved that such spots and blemishes as hung about the transaction should be forgotten in the splendour of the coronation. If there was scandal in the condition of the queen, yet under another aspect that condition was matter of congratulation to a people so eager for an heir; and Henry may have thought that the sight for the first time in public of so beautiful a creature, surrounded by the most magnificent pageant which London had witnessed since the unknown day on which the first stone of it was laid, and bearing in her bosom the long-hoped-for inheritor of the English crown, might induce a chivalrous nation to forget what it was the interest of no loyal subject to remember longer, and to offer her an English welcome to the throne.

In anticipation of the timely close of the proceedings at Dunstable, notice had been given in the city early in May, that preparations should be made for the coronation on the first of the following month. Queen Anne was at Greenwich, but, according to custom, the few preceding days were to be spent at the Tower; and on the 19th of May, she was conducted thither in state by the lord mayor and the city companies, with one of those splendid exhibitions upon the water which in the days when the silver Thames deserved its name, and the sun could shine down upon it out of the blue summer sky, were spectacles scarcely rivalled in gorgeousness by the world-famous wedding of the Adriatic. The river was crowded with boats, the banks and the ships in the pool swarmed with people; and fifty great barges formed the procession, all blazing with gold and banners. The queen herself was in her own barge, close to that of the lord mayor; and in keeping with the fantastic genius of the time, she was preceded up the water by "a foyst or wafter full or ordnance, in which was a great dragon continually moving and casting wildfire, and round about the foyst stood terrible monsters and wild men, casting fire and making hideous noise."[434] So, with trumpets blowing, cannon pealing, the Tower guns answering the guns of the ships, in a blaze of fireworks and splendour, Anne Boleyn was borne along to the great archway of the Tower, where the king was waiting on the stairs to receive her.

And now let us suppose eleven days to have elapsed, the welcome news to have arrived at length from Dunstable, and the fair summer morning of life dawning in treacherous beauty after the long night of expectation. No bridal ceremonial had been possible; the marriage had been huddled over like a stolen love-match, and the marriage feast had been eaten in vexation and disappointment. These past mortifications were to be atoned for by a coronation pageant which the art and the wealth of the richest city in Europe should be poured out in the most lavish profusion to adorn.

On the morning of the 31st of May, the families of the London citizens were stirring early in all houses. From Temple Bar to the Tower, the streets were fresh strewed with gravel, the footpaths were railed off along the whole distance, and occupied on one side by the guilds, their workmen, and apprentices, on the other by the city constables and officials in their gaudy uniforms, "with their staves in hand for to cause the people to keep good room and order."[435] Cornhill and Gracechurch Street had dressed their fronts in scarlet and crimson, in arras and tapestry, and the rich carpet-work from Persia and the East. Cheapside, to outshine her rivals, was draped even more splendidly in cloth of gold, and tissue, and velvet. The sheriffs were pacing up and down on their great Flemish horses, hung with liveries, and all the windows were thronged with ladies crowding to see the procession pass. At length the Tower guns opened, the grim gates rolled back, and under the archway in the bright May sunshine, the long column began slowly to defile. Two states only permitted their representatives to grace the scene with their presence—Venice and France. It was, perhaps, to make the most of this isolated countenance, that the French ambassador's train formed the van of the cavalcade. Twelve French knights came riding foremost in surcoats of blue velvet with sleeves of yellow silk, their horses trapped in blue, with white crosses powdered on their hangings. After them followed a troop of English gentlemen, two and two, and then the Knights of the Bath, "in gowns of violet, with hoods purfled with miniver like doctors." Next, perhaps at a little interval, the abbots passed on, mitred in their robes; the barons followed in crimson velvet, the bishops then, and then the earls and marquises, the dresses of each order increasing in elaborate gorgeousness. All these rode on in pairs. Then came alone Audeley, lord-chancellor, and behind him the Venetian ambassador and the Archbishop of York; the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Du Bellay, Bishop of Bayonne and of Paris, not now with bugle and hunting-frock, but solemn with stole and crozier. Next, the lord mayor, with the city mace in hand, the Garter in his coat of arms; and then Lord William Howard—Belted Will Howard, of the Scottish Border, Marshal of England. The officers of the queen's household succeeded the marshal in scarlet and gold, and the van of the procession was closed by the Duke of Suffolk, as high constable, with his silver wand. It is no easy matter to picture to ourselves the blazing trail of splendour which in such a pageant must have drawn along the London streets,—those streets which now we know so black and smoke-grimed, themselves then radiant with masses of colour, gold, and crimson, and violet. Yet there it was, and there the sun could shine upon it, and tens of thousands of eyes were gazing on the scene out of the crowded lattices.

Glorious as the spectacle was, perhaps however, it passed unheeded. Those eyes were watching all for another object, which now drew near. In an open space behind the constable there was seen approaching "a white chariot," drawn by two palfreys in white damask which swept the ground, a golden canopy borne above it making music with silver bells: and in the chariot sat the observed of all observers, the beautiful occasion of all this glittering homage; fortune's plaything of the hour, the Queen of England—queen at last—borne along upon the waves of this sea of glory, breathing the perfumed incense of greatness which she had risked her fair name, her delicacy, her honour, her self-respect, to win; and she had won it.

There she sate, dressed in white tissue robes, her fair hair flowing loose over her shoulders, and her temples circled with a light coronet of gold and diamonds—most beautiful—loveliest—most favoured perhaps, as she seemed at that hour, of all England's daughters. Alas! "within the hollow round" of that coronet—

Kept death his court, and there the antick sate, Scoffing her state and grinning at her pomp. Allowing her a little breath, a little scene To monarchise, be feared, and kill with looks, Infusing her with self and vain conceit, As if the flesh which walled about her life Were brass impregnable; and humoured thus, Bored through her castle walls; and farewell, Queen.

Fatal gift of greatness! so dangerous ever! so more than dangerous in those tremendous times when the fountains are broken loose of the great deeps of thought; and nations are in the throes of revolution;—when ancient order and law and tradition are splitting in the social earthquake; and as the opposing forces wrestle to and fro, those unhappy ones who stand out above the crowd become the symbols of the struggle, and fall the victims of its alternating fortunes. And what if into an unsteady heart and brain, intoxicated with splendour, the outward chaos should find its way, converting the poor silly soul into an image of the same confusion,—if conscience should be deposed from her high place, and the Pandora box be broken loose of passions and sensualities and follies; and at length there be nothing left of all which man or woman ought to value, save hope of God's forgiveness.

Three short years have yet to pass, and again, on a summer morning, Queen Anne Boleyn will leave the Tower of London—not radiant then with beauty on a gay errand of coronation, but a poor wandering ghost, on a sad tragic errand, from which she will never more return, passing away out of an earth where she may stay no longer, into a presence where, nevertheless, we know that all is well—for all of us—and therefore for her.

But let us not cloud her shortlived sunshine with the shadow of the future. She went on in her loveliness, the peeresses following in their carriages, with the royal guard in their rear. In Fenchurch Street she was met by the children of the city schools; and at the corner of Gracechurch Street a masterpiece had been prepared of the pseudo-classic art, then so fashionable, by the merchants of the Styll Yard. A Mount Parnassus had been constructed, and a Helicon fountain upon it playing into a basin with four jets of Rhenish wine. On the top of the mountain sat Apollo with Calliope at his feet, and on either side the remaining Muses, holding lutes or harps, and singing each of them some "posy" or epigram in praise of the queen, which was presented, after it had been sung, written in letters of gold.

From Gracechurch Street, the procession passed to Leadenhall, where there was a spectacle in better taste, of the old English Catholic kind, quaint perhaps and forced, but truly and even beautifully emblematic. There was again a "little mountain," which was hung with red and white roses; a gold ring was placed on the summit, on which, as the queen appeared, a white falcon was made to "descend as out of the sky"—"and then incontinent came down an angel with great melody, and set a close crown of gold upon the falcon's head; and in the same pageant sat Saint Anne with all her issue beneath her; and Mary Cleophas with her four children, of the which children one made a goodly oration to the queen, of the fruitfulness of St. Anne, trusting that like fruit should come of her."[436]

With such "pretty conceits," at that time the honest tokens of an English welcome, the new queen was received by the citizens of London. These scenes must be multiplied by the number of the streets, where some fresh fancy met her at every turn. To preserve the festivities from flagging, every fountain and conduit within the walls ran all day with wine; the bells of every steeple were ringing; children lay in wait with song, and ladies with posies, in which all the resources of fantastic extravagance were exhausted; and thus in an unbroken triumph—and to outward appearance received with the warmest affection—she passed under Temple Bar, down the Strand by Charing Cross to Westminster Hall. The king was not with her throughout the day; nor did he intend to be with her in any part of the ceremony. She was to reign without a rival, the undisputed sovereign of the hour.

Saturday being passed in showing herself to the people, she retired for the night to "the king's manour house at Westminster," where she slept. On the following morning, between eight and nine o'clock, she returned to the hall, where the lord mayor, the city council, and the peers were again assembled, and took her place on the high dais at the top of the stairs under the cloth of state; while the bishops, the abbots, and the monks of the abbey formed in the area. A railed way had been laid with carpets across Palace Yard and the Sanctuary to the abbey gates, and when all was ready, preceded by the peers in their robes of parliament, the Knights of the Garter in the dress of the order, she swept out under her canopy, the bishops and the monks "solemnly singing." The train was borne by the old Duchess of Norfolk her aunt, the Bishops of London and Winchester on either side "bearing up the lappets of her robe." The Earl of Oxford carried the crown on its cushion immediately before her. She was dressed in purple velvet furred with ermine, her hair escaping loose, as she usually wore it, under a wreath of diamonds.

On entering the abbey, she was led to the coronation chair Where she sat while the train fell into their places, and the preliminaries, of the ceremonial were despatched. Then she was conducted up to the high altar, and anointed Queen of England, and she received from the hands of Cranmer, fresh come in haste from Dunstable, with the last words of his sentence upon Catherine scarcely silent upon his lips, the golden sceptre, and St. Edward's crown.

Did any twinge of remorse, any pang of painful recollection, pierce at that moment the incense of glory which she was inhaling? Did any vision flit across her of a sad mourning figure which once had stood where she was standing, now desolate, neglected, sinking into the darkening twilight of a life cut short by sorrow? Who can tell? At such a time, that figure would have weighed heavily upon a noble mind, and a wise mind would have been taught by the thought of it, that although life be fleeting as a dream, it is long enough to experience strange vicissitudes of fortune. But Anne Boleyn was not noble and was not wise,—too probably she felt nothing but the delicious, all-absorbing, all-intoxicating present, and if that plain, suffering face presented itself to her memory at all, we may fear that it was rather as a foil to her own surpassing loveliness. Two years later, she was able to exult over Catherine's death; she is not likely to have thought of her with gentler feelings in the first glow and flush of triumph.

We may now leave these scenes. They concluded in the usual English style, with a banquet in the great hall, and with all outward signs of enjoyment and pleasure. There must have been but few persons present however who did not feel that the sunshine of such a day might not last for ever, and that over so dubious a marriage no Englishman could exult with more than half a heart. It is foolish to blame lightly actions which arise in the midst of circumstances which are and can be but imperfectly known; and there may have been political reasons which made so much pomp desirable. Anne Boleyn had been the subject of public conversation for seven years, and Henry, no doubt, desired to present his jewel to them in the rarest and choicest setting. Yet to our eyes, seeing, perhaps, by the light of what followed, a more modest introduction would have appeared more suited to the doubtful nature of her position.

At any rate we escape from this scene of splendour very gladly as from something unseasonable. It would have been well for Henry VIII. if he had lived in a world in which women could have been dispensed with; so ill, in all his relations with them, he succeeded. With men he could speak the right word, he could do the right thing; with women he seemed to be under a fatal necessity of mistake.

It was now necessary, however, after this public step, to communicate in form to the emperor the divorce and the new marriage. The king was assured of the rectitude of the motives on which he had himself acted, and he knew at the same time that he had challenged the hostility of the papal world. Yet he did not desire a quarrel if there were means of avoiding it; and more than once he had shown respect for the opposition which he had met with from Charles, as dictated by honourable care for the interests of his kinswoman. He therefore, in the truest language which will be met with in the whole long series of the correspondence, composed a despatch for his ambassador at Brussels, and expressed himself in a tone of honest sorrow for the injury which he had been compelled to commit. Neither the coercion which the emperor had exerted over the pope, nor his intrigues with his subjects in Ireland and England, could deprive the nephew of Catherine of his right to a courteous explanation; and Henry directed Doctor Nicholas Hawkins in making his communication "to use only gentle words;" to express a hope that Charles would not think only of his own honour, but would remember public justice; and that a friendship of long standing, which the interests of the subjects of both countries were concerned so strongly in maintaining, might not be broken. The instructions are too interesting to pass over with a general description. After stating the grounds on which Henry had proceeded, and which Charles thoroughly understood, Hawkins was directed to continue thus:—

"The King of England is not ignorant what respect is due unto the world. How much he hath laboured and travailed therein he hath sufficiently declared and showed in his acts and proceedings. If he had contemned the order and process of the world, or the friendship and amity of your Majesty, he needed not to have sent so often to the pope and to you both, nor continued and spent his time in delays. He might have done what he has done now, had it so liked him, with as little difficulty as now, if without such respect he would have followed his pleasure."

The minister was then to touch the pope's behaviour and Henry's forbearance, and after that to say:—

"Going forward in that way his Highness saw that he could come to no conclusion; and he was therefore compelled to step right forth out of the maze, and so to quiet himself at last. And is it not time to have an end in seven years? It is not to be asked nor questioned whether the matter hath been determined after the common fashion, but whether it hath in it common justice, truth, and equity. For observation of the common order, his Grace hath done what lay in him. Enforced by necessity he hath found the true order which he hath in substance followed with effect, and hath done as becometh him. He doubteth not but your Majesty, remembering his cause from the beginning hitherto, will of yourself consider and think, that among mortal men nothing should be immortal; and suits must once have an end, si possis recte, si non quocunque modo. If his Highness cannot as he would, then must he do as he may; and he that hath a journey to be perfected must, if he cannot go one way, essay another. For his matter with the pope, he shall deal with him apart. Your Majesty he taketh for his friend, and as to a friend he openeth these matters to you, trusting to find your Majesty no less friendly than he hath done heretofore."[437]

If courtesy obliged Henry to express a confidence in the stability of the relations between himself and Charles, which it was impossible that he could have felt, yet in other respects this letter has the most pleasant merit of honesty. Hawkins was so much overcome by "the sweetness of it," that "he nothing doubted if that the emperor read the same, by God's grace he should be utterly persuaded;" and although in this expectation he was a little over sanguine, as in calmer moments he would have acknowledged, yet plain speech is never without its value; and Charles himself after he had tried other expedients, and they had not succeeded with him, found it more prudent to acquiesce in what could no longer be altered, and to return to cordiality.

For the present he remained under the impression that by the great body of the English the divorce was looked upon with coldness and even with displeasure, that the king was supported only by the complacency of a few courtiers, and that the nation were prepared to compel him to undo the wrong which had been inflicted upon Catherine and the princess. So he was assured by the Spanish party in England; so all the disaffected assured him, who were perhaps themselves deceived. He had secured Ireland, and Scotland also in so far as James's promises could secure it;[438] and he was not disposed to surrender for the present so promising a game till he had tried his strength and proved his weakness. He replied coldly to Hawkins, "That for the King of England's amity he would be glad thereof, so the said king would do works according. The matter was none of his; but the lady, whose rights had been violated, was his aunt and an orphan, and that he must see for her, and for her daughter his cousin."[439]

The scarcely ambiguous answer was something softened the following day; perhaps only, however, because it was too plain a betrayal of his intentions. He communicated at once with Catherine, and Henry speedily learnt the nature of the advice which he had given to her. After the coronation had passed off so splendidly, when no disturbance had risen, no voice had been raised for her or for her daughter, the poor queen's spirit for the moment had sunk; she had thought of leaving the country, and flying with the Princess Mary to Spain. The emperor sent to urge her to remain a little longer, guaranteeing her, if she could command her patience, an ample reparation for her injuries. Whatever might appear upon the surface, the new queen, he was assured, was little loved by the people, and "they were ready to join with any prince who would espouse her quarrel."[440] All classes, he said, were agreed in one common feeling of displeasure. They were afraid of a change of religion; they were afraid of the wreck of their commerce; and the whole country was fast ripening towards insurrection. The points on which he relied as the occasion of the disaffection betrayed the sources of his information. He was in correspondence with the regular clergy through Peto at Antwerp, and through his Flemish subjects with merchants of London. Among both these classes, as well as among the White Rose nobles, he had powerful adherents; and it could not have been forgotten in the courts, either of London or Brussels, that within the memory of living men, a small band of exiles, equipped by a Duke of Burgundy, had landed at a Yorkshire village, and in a month had revolutionised the kingdom.

In the eyes of Charles there was no reason why an attempt which had succeeded once might not succeed again under circumstances seemingly of far fairer promise. The strength of a party of insurrection is a power which official statesmen never justly comprehend. It depends upon moral influences, which they are professionally incapable of appreciating. They are able complacently to ignore the existence of substantial disaffection though all society may be undermined; they can build their hopes, When it suits their convenience, on the idle trifling of superficial discontent. In the present instance there was some excuse for the mistake. That in England there really existed an active and organised opposition, prepared, when opportunity offered, to try the chances of rebellion, was no delusion of persons who measured facts by their desires; it was an ascertained peril of serious magnitude, which might be seriously calculated upon; and if the experiment was tried, reasonable men might fairly be divided in opinion on the result to be expected.

In the meantime the government had been obliged to follow up the coronation of the new queen by an act which the situation of the kingdom explained and excused; but which, if Catherine had been no more than a private person, would have been wanton cruelty. Among the people she still bore her royal title; but the name of queen, so long as she was permitted to retain it, was an allowed witness against the legality of the sentence at Dunstable. There could not be "two queens" in England,[441] and one or other must retire from the designation. A proclamation was therefore issued by the council, declaring, that in consequence of the final proofs that the Lady Catherine had never been lawfully married to the king, she was to bear thenceforward the title which she had received after the death of her first husband, and be called the Princess Dowager.

Harsh as this measure was, she had left no alternative to the government by which to escape the enforcement of it, by her refusal to consent to any form of compromise. If she was queen, Anne Boleyn was not queen. If she was queen, the Princess Mary remained the heir to the crown, and the expected offspring of Anne would be illegitimate. If the question had been merely of names, to have moved it would have been unworthy and wicked; but where respect for private feeling was incompatible with the steps which a nation felt necessary in order to secure itself against civil convulsions, private feeling was compelled not unjustly to submit to injury. Mary, though still a girl, had inherited both her father's will and her mother's obstinacy. She was in correspondence, as we have seen, with the Nun of Kent, and aware at least, if she was not further implicated in it, of a conspiracy to place her on the throne. Charles was engaged in the same designs; and it will not be pretended that Catherine was left without information of what was going forward, or that her own conduct was uninfluenced by policy. These intrigues it was positively necessary to stifle, and it was impossible to leave a pretext of which so powerful a use might be made in the hands of a party whose object was not only to secure to the princess her right to succeed her father, but to compel him by arms either to acknowledge it, or submit to be deposed.[442]

Our sympathies are naturally on the side of the weak and the unsuccessful. State considerations lose their force after the lapse of centuries, when no interests of our own are any longer in jeopardy; and we feel for the great sufferers of history only in their individual capacity, without recalling or caring for the political exigencies to which they were sacrificed. It is an error of disguised selfishness, the counterpart of the carelessness with which in our own age, when we are ourselves constituents of an interested public, we ignore what it is inconvenient to remember.

Thus, therefore, on one hot Midsummer Sunday in this year 1533, the people gathering to church in every parish through the English counties, read, nailed upon the doors, a paper signed Henry R., setting forth that the Lady Catherine of Spain, heretofore called Queen of England, was not to be called by that title any more, but was to be called Princess Dowager, and so to be held and esteemed. The proclamation, we may suppose, was read with varying comments; of the reception of it in the northern counties, the following information was forwarded to the crown. The Earl of Derby, lord-lieutenant of Yorkshire, wrote to inform the council that he had arrested a certain "lewd and naughty priest," James Harrison by name, on the charge of having spoken unfitting and slanderous words of his Highness and the Queen's Grace. He had taken the examinations of several witnesses, which he had sent with his letter, and which were to the following effect:—

Richard Clark deposeth that the said James Harrison reading the proclamation, said that Queen Catherine was queen, Nan Bullen should not be queen, nor the king should be no king but on his bearing.

William Dalton deposeth, that in his hearing the above-named James said, I will take none for queen but Queen Catherine—who the devil made Nan Bullen, that hoore, queen? I will never take her for queen—and he the said William answered, "Hold thy peace, thou wot'st not what thou sayest—but that thou art a priest I should punish thee, that others should take example."

Richard Sumner and John Clayton depose, that they came in company with the said James from Perbalt to Eccleston, when the said James did say, "This is a marvellous world—the king will put down the order of priests and destroy the Sacrament, but he cannot reign long, for York will be in London hastily."[443]

Here was the later growth of the spirit which we saw a few months previously in the monks of Furness. The mutterings of discontent had developed into plain open treason, confident of success, and scarcely caring to conceal itself—and Yorkshire was preparing for rebellion and "the Pilgrimage of Grace."

There is another quarter also into which we must follow the proclamation, and watch the effect of the royal order in a scene where it is well that we should for a few moments rest. Catherine was still at Ampthill, surrounded by her own attendants, who formed an inner circle, shielding her retirement against impertinent curiosity. She rarely or never allowed herself to be seen; Lord Mountjoy, with an official retinue, was in attendance in the house; but the occupation was not a pleasant one, and he was as willing to respect the queen's seclusion as she to remain secluded. Injunctions arrived however from the court at the end of June, which compelled him to request an interview; a deputation of the privy council had come down to inform the ex-queen of the orders of the government, and to desire that they might be put in force in her own family. Aware probably of the nature of the communication which was to be made to her, she refused repeatedly to admit them to her presence. At length, however, she nerved herself for the effort, and on the 3rd of July Mountjoy and the state commissioners were informed that she was ready to receive them.

As they entered her room she was lying on a sofa. She had a bad cough, and she had hurt her foot with a pin, and was unable to stand or walk. Her attendants were all present by her own desire; she was glad to see around her some sympathising human faces, to enable her to endure the cold hard eyes of the officials of the council.

She inquired whether the message was to be delivered in writing or by word of mouth.

They replied that they had brought with them instructions which they were to read, and that they were further charged with a message which was to be delivered verbally. She desired that they would read their written despatch. It was addressed to the Princess Dowager, and she at once excepted to the name. She was not Princess Dowager, she said, but queen, and the king's true wife. She came to the king a clear maid for any bodily knowledge of Prince Arthur; she had borne him lawful issue and no bastard, and therefore queen she was, and queen she would be while she lived.

The commissioners were prepared for the objection, and continued, without replying, to read. The paper contained a statement of worn-out unrealities; the old story of the judgment of the universities and the learned men, the sentence of convocation, and of the houses of parliament; and, finally, the fact of substantial importance, that the king, acting as he believed according to the laws of God, had married the Lady Anne Boleyn, who was now his lawful wife, and anointed Queen of England.

Oh yes, she answered when they had done, we know that, and "we know the authority by which it has been done—more by power than justice." The king's learned men were learned heretics; the honest learning was for her. As for the seals of the universities there were strange stories about the way in which they had been obtained. The universities and the parliament had done what the king bade them; and they had gone against their consciences in doing it; but it was of no importance to her—she was in the hands of the pope, who was God's vicar, and she acknowledged no other judge.

The commissioners informed her of the decision of the council that she was no longer to bear the title of queen. It stood, they said, neither with the laws of God nor man, nor with the king's honour, to have two queens named within the realm; and in fact, there was but one queen, the king's lawful wife, to whom he was now married.

She replied shortly that she was the king's lawful queen, and none other.

There was little hope in her manner that anything which could be said would move her; but her visitors were ordered to try her to the uttermost.

The king, they continued, was surprised that she could be so disobedient; and not only that she was disobedient herself, but that she allowed and encouraged her servants in the same conduct.

She was ready to obey the king; she answered, when she could do so without disobeying God; but she could not damn her soul even for him. Her servants, she said, must do the best they could; they were standing round her as she was speaking; and she turned to them with an apology, and a hope that they would pardon her. She would hinder her cause, she said; and put her soul in danger, if on their account she were to relinquish her name, and she could not do it.

The deputation next attempted her on her worldly side. If she would obey, they informed her that she would be allowed not only her jointure as Princess Dowager and her own private fortune, but all the settlements which had been made upon her on her marriage with the king.

She "passed not upon possessions, in regard of this matter," she replied. It touched her conscience, and no worldly considerations were of the slightest moment.

In disobeying the king, they said; seeing that she was none other than his subject, she might give cause for dissension and disturbance; and she might lose the favour of the people.

She "trusted not," she replied—she "never minded it, nor would she"—she "desired only to save her right; and if she should lose the favour of the people in defending that right, yet she trusted to go to heaven cum fama et infamia."

Promises and persuasions being unavailing, they tried threats. She was told that if she persisted in so obstinate a course, the king would be obliged to make known to the world the offers which he had made to her, and the ill reception which they had met with—and then he would perhaps withdraw those offers, and conceive some evil opinions of high displeasure towards her.

She answered that there was no manner of offers neither of lands nor goods that she had respect unto in comparison of her cause—and as to the loss of the king's affection, she trusted to God, to whom she would daily pray for him.

The learned council might as well have reasoned with the winds; or threatened the waves of the sea. But they were not yet weary, and their next effort was as foolish as it was ungenerous. They suggested, "that if she did reserve the name of queen, it was thought that she would do it of a vain desire and appetite of glory; and further, she might be an occasion that the king would withdraw his love from her most dear daughter the Lady Princess, which should chiefly move her, if none other cause did."

They must have known little of Catherine, if they thought she could be influenced by childish vanity. It was for no vain glory that she cared, she answered proudly; she was the king's true wife, and her conscience forbade her to call herself otherwise; the princess was his true begotten child; and as God hath given her to them, so for her part she would render her again; neither for daughter, family, nor possessions, would she yield in her cause; and she made a solemn protestation, calling on every one present to bear witness to what she said, that the king's wife she was, and such she would take herself to be, and that she would never surrender the name of queen till the pope had decided that she must bear it no longer.

So ended the first interview. Catherine, before the commissioners left her, desired to have a copy of the proposals which they had brought, that she might translate and send them to Rome. They returned with them the next day, when she requested to see the report which they intended to send to the council of the preceding conversation. It was placed in her hands; and as she read it and found there the name of Princess Dowager, she took a pen and dashed out the words, the mark of which indignant ink-stroke may now be seen in the letter from which this account is taken.[444] With the accuracy of the rest she appeared to be satisfied—only when she found again their poor suggestion that she was influenced by vanity, she broke out with a burst of passionate indignation.

"I would rather be a poor beggar's wife," she said, "and be sure of heaven, than queen of all the world, and stand in doubt thereof by reason of my own consent. I stick not so for vain glory, but because I know myself the king's true wife—and while you call me the king's subject, I was his subject while he took me for his wife. But if he take me not for his wife, I came not into this Realm as merchandise, nor to be married to any merchant; nor do I continue in the same but as his lawful wife, and not as a subject to live under his dominion otherwise. I have always demeaned myself well and truly towards the king—and if it can be proved that either in writing to the pope or any other, I have either stirred or procured anything against his Grace, or have been the means to any person to make any motion which might be prejudicial to his Grace or to his Realm, I am content to suffer for it. I have done England little good, and I should be sorry to do it any harm. But if I should agree to your motions and persuasions, I should slander myself, and confess to have been the king's harlot for twenty-four years. The cause, I cannot tell by what subtle means, has been determined here within the king's Realm, before a man of his own making, the Bishop of Canterbury, no person indifferent I think in that behalf; and for the indifference of the place, I think the place had been more indifferent to have been judged in hell; for no truth can be suffered here, whereas the devils themselves I suppose do tremble to see the truth in this cause so sore oppressed."[445]

Most noble, spirited, and like a queen. Yet she would never have been brought to this extremity, and she would have shown a truer nobleness, if four years before she could have yielded at the pope's entreaty on the first terms which were proposed to her. Those terms would have required no humiliating confessions; they would have involved no sentence on her marriage nor touched her daughter's legitimacy. She would have broken no law of God, nor seemed to break it. She was required only to forget her own interests; and she would not forget them, though all the world should be wrecked by her refusal. She denied that she was concerned in "motions prejudicial to the king or to the Realm," but she must have placed her own interpretation on the words, and would have considered excommunication and interdict a salutary discipline to the king and parliament. She knew that this sentence was imminent, that in its minor form it had already fallen; and she knew that her nephew and her friends in England were plotting to give effect to the decree. But we may pass over this. It is not for an English writer to dwell upon those faults of Catherine of Arragon, which English remorse has honourably insisted on forgetting. Her injuries, inevitable as they were, and forced upon her in great measure by her own wilfulness, remain among the saddest spots in the pages of our history.

One other brief incident remains to be noticed here, to bring up before the imagination the features of this momentous summer. It is contained in the postscript of a letter of Cranmer to Hawkins the ambassador in Germany; and the manner in which the story is told is no less suggestive than the story itself.

The immediate present, however awful its import, will ever seem common and familiar to those who live and breathe in the midst of it. In the days of the September massacre at Paris, the theatres were open as usual; men ate, and drank, and laughed, and cried, and went about their common work, unconscious that those days which were passing by them, so much like other days, would remain the dies nefasti, accursed in the memory of mankind for ever. Nothing is terrible, nothing is sublime in human things, so long as they are before our eyes. The great man has so much in common with men in general, the routine of daily life, in periods the most remarkable in history, contains so much that is unvarying, that it is only when time has done its work; and all which was unimportant has ceased to be remembered, that such men and such times stand out in their true significance. It might have been thought that to a person like Cranmer, the court at Dunstable, the coronation of the new queen, the past out of which these things had risen, and the future which they threatened to involve, would have seemed at least serious; and that engaged as he had been as a chief actor, in a matter which, if it had done nothing else, had broken the heart of a high-born lady whom once he had honoured as his queen, he would have been either silent about his exploits, or if he had spoken of them, would have spoken not without some show of emotion. We look for a symptom of feeling, but we do not find it. When the coronation festivities were concluded he wrote to his friend an account of what had been done by himself and others in the light gossiping tone of easiest content; as if he were describing the common incidents of a common day. It is disappointing, and not wholly to be approved of. Still less can we approve of the passage with which he concludes his letter.

"Other news we have none notable, but that one Frith, which was in the Tower in prison,[446] was appointed by the King's Grace to be examined before me, my Lord of London, my Lord of Winchester, my Lord of Suffolk, my Lord Chancellor, and my Lord of Wiltshire; whose opinion was so notably erroneous that we could not dispatch him, but were fain to leave him to the determination of his ordinary, which is the Bishop of London. His said opinion is of such nature, that he thought it not necessary to be believed as an article of our faith that there is the very corporeal presence of Christ within the host and sacrament of the altar; and holdeth on this point much after the opinion of Oecolampadius.

"And surely I myself sent for him three or four times to persuade him to leave that imagination. But for all that we could do therein, he would not apply to any counsel. Notwithstanding now he is at a final end with all examinations; for my Lord of London hath given sentence, and delivered him to the secular power when he looketh every day to go unto the fire. And there is also condemned with him one Andrew a tailor for the self-same opinion; and thus fare you well."[447]

These victims went as they were sentenced, dismissed to their martyr's crowns at Smithfield, as Queen Anne Boleyn but a few days before had received her golden crown at the altar of Westminster Abbey. Twenty years later another fire was blazing under the walls of Oxford; and the hand which was now writing these light lines was blackening in the flames of it, paying there the penalty of the same "imagination" for which Frith and the poor London tailor were with such cool indifference condemned. It is affecting to know that Frith's writings were the instruments of Cranmer's conversion; and the fathers of the Anglican church have left a monument of their sorrow for the shedding of this innocent blood in the Order of the Communion service, which closes with the very words on which the primate, with his brother bishops, had sate in judgment.[448]



CHAPTER VI

THE PROTESTANTS

Where changes are about to take place of great and enduring moment, a kind of prologue, on a small scale, sometimes anticipates the true opening of the drama; like the first drops which give notice of the coming storm, or as if the shadows of the reality were projected forwards into the future, and imitated in dumb show the movements of the real actors in the story.

Such a rehearsal of the English Reformation was witnessed at the close of the fourteenth century, confused, imperfect, disproportioned, to outward appearance barren of results; yet containing a representative of each one of the mixed forces by which that great change was ultimately effected, and foreshadowing even something of the course which it was to run.

There was a quarrel with the pope upon the extent of the papal privileges; there were disputes between the laity and the clergy,—accompanied, as if involuntarily, by attacks on the sacramental system and the Catholic faith,—while innovation in doctrine was accompanied also with the tendency which characterised the extreme development of the later Protestants—towards political republicanism, the fifth monarchy, and community of goods. Some account of this movement must be given in this place, although it can be but a sketch only. "Lollardry"[449] has a history of its own; but it forms no proper part of the history of the Reformation. It was a separate phenomenon, provoked by the same causes which produced their true fruit at a later period; but it formed no portion of the stem on which those fruits ultimately grew. It was a prelude which was played out, and sank into silence, answering for the time no other end than to make the name of heretic odious in the ears of the English nation. In their recoil from their first failure, the people stamped their hatred of heterodoxy into their language; and in the word miscreant, misbeliever, as the synonym of the worst species of reprobate, they left an indelible record of the popular estimate of the followers of John Wycliffe.

The Lollard story opens with the disputes between the crown and the see of Rome on the presentation to English benefices. For the hundred and fifty years which succeeded the Conquest, the right of nominating the archbishops, the bishops, and the mitred abbots, had been claimed and exercised by the crown. On the passing of the great charter, the church had recovered its liberties, and the privilege of free election had been conceded by a special clause to the clergy. The practice which then became established was in accordance with the general spirit of the English constitution. On the vacancy of a see, the cathedral chapter applied to the crown for a conge d'elire. The application was a form; the consent was invariable. A bishop was then elected by a majority of suffrages; his name was submitted to the metropolitan, and by him to the pope. If the pope signified his approval, the election was complete; consecration followed; and the bishop having been furnished with his bulls of investiture, was presented to the king, and from him received "the temporalities" of his see. The mode in which the great abbots were chosen was precisely similar; the superiors of the orders to which the abbeys belonged were the channels of communication with the pope, in the place of the archbishops; but the elections in themselves were free, and were conducted in the same manner. The smaller church benefices, the small monasteries or parish churches, were in the hands of private patrons, lay or ecclesiastical; but in the case of each institution a reference was admitted, or was supposed to be admitted, to the court of Rome.

There was thus in the pope's hand an authority of an indefinite kind, which it was presumed that his sacred office would forbid him to abuse, but which, however, if he so unfortunately pleased, he might abuse at his discretion. He had absolute power over every nomination to an English benefice; he might refuse his consent till such adequate reasons, material or spiritual, as he considered sufficient to induce him to acquiesce, had been submitted to his consideration. In the case of nominations to the religious houses, the superiors of the various orders residing abroad had equal facilities for obstructiveness; and the consequence of so large a confidence in the purity of the higher orders of the Church became visible in an act of parliament which it was found necessary to pass in 1306-7.[450]

"Of late," says this act, "it has come to the knowledge of the king, by the grievous complaint of the honourable persons, lords, and other noblemen of his realm, that whereas monasteries, priories, and other religious houses were founded to the honour and glory of God, and the advancement of holy church, by the king and his progenitors, and by the said noblemen and their ancestors; and a very great portion of lands and tenements have been given by them to the said monasteries, priories, and religious houses, and the religious men serving God in them; to the intent that clerks and laymen might be admitted in such houses, and that sick and feeble folk might be maintained, hospitality, almsgiving, and other charitable deeds might be done, and prayers be said for the souls of the founders and their heirs; the abbots, priors, and governors of the said houses, and certain aliens their superiors, as the abbots and priors of the Cistertians, the Premonstrants, the orders of Saint Augustine and of Saint Benedict, and many more of other religions and orders have at their own pleasure set divers heavy, unwonted heavy and importable tallages, payments, and impositions upon every of the said monasteries and houses subject unto them, in England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, without the privity of the king and his nobility, contrary to the laws and customs of the said realm; and thereby the number of religious persons being oppressed by such tallages, payments, and impositions, the service of God is diminished, alms are not given to the poor, the sick, and the feeble; the healths of the living and the souls of the dead be miserably defrauded; hospitality, alms-giving, and other godly deeds do cease; and so that which in times past was charitably given to godly uses and to the service of God, is now converted to an evil end, by permission whereof there groweth great scandal to the people." To provide against a continuance of these abuses, it was enacted that no "religious" persons should, under any pretence or form, send out of the kingdom any kind of tax, rent, or tallage; and that "priors aliens" should not presume to assess any payment, charge, or other burden whatever upon houses within the realm.[451]

The language of this act was studiously guarded. The pope was not alluded to; the specific methods by which the extortion was practised were not explained; the tax upon presentations to benefices, either having not yet distinguished itself beyond other impositions, or the government trusting that a measure of this general kind might answer the desired end. Lucrative encroachments, however, do not yield so easily to treatment; nearly fifty years after it became necessary to re-enact the same statute; and while recapitulating the provisions of it, the parliament found it desirable to point out more specifically the intention with which it was passed.

The popes in the interval had absorbed in their turn from the heads of the religious orders, the privileges which by them had been extorted from the affiliated societies. Each English benefice had become the fountain of a rivulet which flowed into the Roman exchequer, or a property to be distributed as the private patronage of the Roman bishop: and the English parliament for the first time found itself in collision with the Father of Christendom.

"The pope," says the fourth of the twenty-fifth of Edward III., "accroaching to himself the signories of the benefices within the realm of England, doth give and grant the same to aliens which did never dwell in England, and to cardinals which could not dwell here, and to others as well aliens as denizens, whereby manifold inconveniences have ensued." "Not regarding" the statute of Edward I., he had also continued to present to bishopricks, abbeys, priories, and other valuable preferments: money in large quantities was carried out of the realm from the proceeds of these offices, and it was necessary to insist emphatically that the papal nominations should cease. They were made in violation of the law, and were conducted with simony so flagrant that English benefices were sold in the papal courts to any person who would pay for them, whether an Englishman or a stranger. It was therefore decreed that the elections to bishopricks should be free as in time past, that the rights of patrons should be preserved, and penalties of imprisonment, forfeiture, or outlawry, according to the complexion of the offence, should be attached to all impetration of benefices from Rome by purchase or otherwise.[452]

If statute law could have touched the evil, these enactments would have been sufficient for the purpose; but the influence of the popes in England was of that subtle kind which was not so readily defeated. The law was still defied, or still evaded; and the struggle continued till the close of the century, the legislature labouring patiently, but ineffectually, to confine with fresh enactments their ingenious adversary.[453]

At length symptoms appeared of an intention on the part of the popes to maintain their claims with spiritual censures, and the nation was obliged to resolve upon the course which, in the event of their resorting to that extremity, it would follow. The lay lords[454] and the House of Commons found no difficulty in arriving at a conclusion. They passed a fresh penal statute with prohibitions even more emphatically stringent, and decided that "if any man brought into this realm any sentence, summons, or excommunication, contrary to the effect of the statute, he should incur pain of life and members, with forfeiture of goods; and if any prelate made execution of such sentence, his temporalities should be taken from him, and should abide in the king's hands till redress was made."[455]

So bold a measure threatened nothing less than open rupture. The act, however, seems to have been passed in haste, without determined consideration; and on second thoughts, it was held more prudent to attempt a milder course. The strength of the opposition to the papacy lay with the Commons.[456] When the session of parliament was over, a great council was summoned to reconsider what should be done, and an address was drawn up, and forwarded to Rome, with a request that the then reigning pope would devise some manner by which the difficulty could be arranged.[457] Boniface IX. replied with the same want of judgment which was shown afterwards on an analogous occasion by Clement VII. He disbelieved the danger; and daring the government to persevere, he granted a prebendal stall at Wells to an Italian cardinal, to which a presentation had been made already by the king. Opposing suits were instantly instituted between the claimants in the courts of the two countries. A decision was given in England in favour of the nominee of the king, and the bishops agreeing to support the crown were excommunicated.[458] The court of Rome had resolved to try the issue by a struggle of force, and the government had no alternative but to surrender at discretion, or to persevere at all hazards, and resist the usurpation.

The proceedings on this occasion seem to have been unusual, and significant of the importance of the crisis. Parliament either was sitting at the time when the excommunication was issued, or else it was immediately assembled; and the House of Commons drew up, in the form of a petition to the king, a declaration of the circumstances which had occurred. After having stated generally the English law on the presentation to benefices, "Now of late," they added, "divers processes be made by his Holiness the Pope, and censures of excommunication upon certain bishops, because they have made execution of the judgments [given in the king's courts], to the open disherison of the crown; whereby, if remedy be not provided, the crown of England, which hath been so free at all times, that it has been in no earthly subjection, should be submitted to the pope; and the laws and statutes of the realm by him be defeated and avoided at his will, in perpetual destruction of the sovereignty of the king our lord, his crown, his regality, and all his realm." The Commons, therefore, on their part, declared, "That the things so attempted were clearly against the king's crown and his regality, used and approved of in the time of all his progenitors, and therefore they and all the liege commons of the realm would stand with their said lord the king, and his said crown, in the cases aforesaid, to live and die."[459] Whether they made allusion to the act of 1389 does not appear—a measure passed under protest from one of the estates of the realm was possibly held unequal to meet the emergency—at all events they would not rely upon it. For after this peremptory assertion of their own opinion, they desired the king, "and required him in the way of justice," to examine severally the lords spiritual and temporal how they thought, and how they would stand.[460] The examination was made, and the result was satisfactory. The lay lords replied without reservation that they would support the crown. The bishops (they were in a difficulty for which all allowance must be made) gave a cautious, but also a manly answer. They would not affirm, they said, that the pope had a right to excommunicate them in such cases, and they would not say that he had not. It was clear, however, that legal or illegal, such excommunication was against the privileges of the English crown, and therefore that, on the whole, they would and ought to be with the crown, loialment, like loyal subjects, as they were bound by their allegiance.[461]

In this unusual and emphatic manner, the three estates agreed that the pope should be resisted; and an act passed "that all persons suing at the court of Rome, and obtaining thence any bulls, instruments, sentences of excommunication which touched the king, or were against him, his regality, or his realm, and they which brought the same within the realm, or received the same, or made thereof notification, or any other execution whatever, within the realm or without, they, their notaries, procurators, maintainers and abettors, fautors and counsellors, should be put out of the king's protection, and their lands and tenements, goods and chattels, be forfeited."

The resolute attitude of the country terminated the struggle. Boniface prudently yielded, and for the moment; and indeed for ever under this especial form, the wave of papal encroachment was rolled back. The temper which had been roused in the contest, might perhaps have carried the nation further. The liberties of the crown had been asserted successfully. The analogous liberties of the church might have followed; and other channels, too, might have been cut off, through which the papal exchequer fed itself on English blood. But at this crisis the anti-Roman policy was arrested in its course by another movement, which turned the current of suspicion, and frightened back the nation to conservatism.

While the crown and the parliament had been engaged with the pope, the undulations of the dispute had penetrated down among the body of the people, and an agitation had been commenced of an analogous kind against the spiritual authorities at home. The parliament had lamented that the duties of the religious houses were left unfulfilled, in consequence of the extortions of their superiors abroad. The people, who were equally convinced of the neglect of duty, adopted an interpretation of the phenomenon less favourable to the clergy, and attributed it to the temptations of worldliness, and the self-indulgence generated by enormous wealth.

This form of discontent found its exponent in John Wycliffe, the great forerunner of the Reformation, whose austere figure stands out above the crowd of notables in English history, with an outline not unlike that of another forerunner of a greater change.

The early life of Wycliffe is obscure. Lewis, on the authority of Leland,[462] says that he was born near Richmond, in Yorkshire. Fuller, though with some hesitation, prefers Durham.[463] He emerges into distinct notice in 1360, ten years subsequent to the passing of the first Statute of Provisors, having then acquired a great Oxford reputation as a lecturer in divinity, and having earned for himself powerful friends and powerful enemies. He had made his name distinguished by attacks upon the clergy for their indolence and profligacy: attacks both written and orally delivered—those written, we observe, being written in English, not in Latin.[464] In 1365, Islip, Archbishop of Canterbury, appointed him Warden of Canterbury Hall; the appointment, however, was made with some irregularity, and the following year, Archbishop Islip dying, his successor, Langham, deprived Wycliffe, and the sentence was confirmed by the king. It seemed, nevertheless, that no personal reflection was intended by this decision, for Edward III. nominated the ex-warden one of his chaplains immediately after, and employed him on an important mission to Bruges, where a conference on the benefice question was to be held with a papal commission.

Other church preferment was subsequently given to Wycliffe; but Oxford remained the chief scene of his work. He continued to hold his professorship of divinity; and from this office the character of his history took its complexion. At a time when books were rare and difficult to be procured, lecturers who had truth to communicate fresh drawn from the fountain, held an influence which in these days it is as difficult to imagine as, however, it is impossible to overrate. Students from all Europe flocked to the feet of a celebrated professor, who became the leader of a party by the mere fact of his position.

The burden of Wycliffe's teaching was the exposure of the indolent fictions which passed under the name of religion in the established theory of the church. He was a man of most simple life; austere in appearance, with bare feet and russet mantle.[465] As a soldier of Christ, he saw in his Great Master and his Apostles the patterns whom he was bound to imitate. By the contagion of example he gathered about him other men who thought as he did; and gradually, under his captaincy, these "poor priests," as they were called—vowed to poverty because Christ was poor—vowed to accept no benefice, lest they should misspend the property of the poor, and because, as apostles, they were bound to go where their Master called them,[466] spread out over the country as an army of missionaries, to preach the faith which they found in the Bible—to preach, not of relics and of indulgences, but of repentance and of the grace of God. They carried with them copies of the Bible which Wycliffe had translated, leaving here and there, as they travelled, their costly treasures, as shining seed points of light; and they refused to recognise the authority of the bishops, or their right to silence them.

If this had been all, and perhaps if Edward III. had been succeeded by a prince less miserably incapable than his grandson Richard, Wycliffe might have made good his ground; the movement of the parliament against the pope might have united in a common stream with the spiritual move against the church at home, and the Reformation have been antedated by a century. He was summoned to answer for himself before the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1377. He appeared in court supported by the presence of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, the eldest of Edward's surviving sons, and the authorities were unable to strike him behind so powerful a shield.

But the "poor priests" had other doctrines besides those which they discovered in the Bible, relating to subjects with which, as apostles, they would have done better if they had shrunk from meddling. The inefficiency of the clergy was occasioned, as Wycliffe thought, by their wealth and by their luxury. He desired to save them from a temptation too heavy for them to bear, and he insisted that by neglect of duty their wealth had been forfeited, and that it was the business of the laity to take it from its unworthy possessors. The invectives with which the argument was accompanied produced a widely-spread irritation. The reins of the country fell simultaneously into the weak hands of Richard II., and the consequence was a rapid spread of disorder. In the year which followed Richard's accession, consistory judges were assaulted in their courts, sanctuaries were violated, priests were attacked and ill-treated in church, church-yard, and cathedral, and even while engaged in the mass;[467] the contagion of the growing anarchy seems to have touched even Wycliffe himself, and touched him in a point most deeply dangerous.

His theory of property, and his study of the character of Christ, had led him to the near confines of Anabaptism. Expanding his views upon the estates of the church into an axiom, he taught that "charters of perpetual inheritance were impossible;" "that God could not give men civil possessions for ever;"[468] "that property was founded in grace, and derived from God;" and "seeing that forfeiture was the punishment of treason, and all sin was treason against God, the sinner must consequently forfeit his right to what he held of God." These propositions were nakedly true, as we shall most of us allow; but God has his own methods of enforcing extreme principles; and human legislation may only meddle with them at its peril. The theory as an abstraction could be represented as applying equally to the laity as to the clergy, and the new teaching received a practical comment in 1381, in the invasion of London by Wat, the tyler of Dartford, and 100,000 men, who were to level all ranks, put down the church, and establish universal liberty.[469] Two priests accompanied the insurgents, not Wycliffe's followers, but the licentious counterfeits of them, who trod inevitably in their footsteps, and were as inevitably countenanced by their doctrines. The insurrection was attended with the bloodshed, destruction, and ferocity natural to such outbreaks. The Archbishop of Canterbury and many gentlemen were murdered; and a great part of London sacked and burnt. It would be absurd to attribute this disaster to Wycliffe, nor was there any desire to hold him responsible for it; but it is equally certain that the doctrines which he had taught were incompatible, at that particular time, with an effective repression of the spirit which had caused the explosion. It is equally certain that he had brought discredit on his nobler efforts by ambiguous language on a subject of the utmost difficulty, and had taught the wiser and better portion of the people to confound heterodoxy of opinion with sedition, anarchy, and disorder.

So long as Wycliffe lived, his own lofty character was a guarantee for the conduct of his immediate disciples; and although his favour had far declined, a party in the state remained attached to him, with sufficient influence to prevent the adoption of extreme measures against the "poor priests." In the year following the insurrection, an act was passed for their repression in the House of Lords, and was sent down by the king to the Commons. They were spoken of as "evil persons," going from place to place in defiance of the bishops, preaching in the open air to great congregations at markets and fairs, "exciting the people," "engendering discord between the estates of the realm." The ordinaries had no power to silence them, and had therefore desired that commissions should be issued to the sheriffs of the various counties, to arrest all such persons, and confine them, until they would "justify themselves" in the ecclesiastical courts.[470] Wycliffe petitioned against the bill, and it was rejected; not so much perhaps out of tenderness for the reformer, as because the Lower House was excited by the controversy with the pope; and being doubtfully disposed towards the clergy, was reluctant to subject the people to a more stringent spiritual control.

But Wycliffe himself meanwhile had received a clear intimation of his own declining position. His opposition to the church authorities, and his efforts at re-invigorating the faith of the country, had led him into doubtful statements on the nature of the eucharist; he had entangled himself in dubious metaphysics on a subject on which no middle course is really possible; and being summoned to answer for his language before a synod in London, he had thrown himself again for protection on the Duke of Lancaster. The duke (not unnaturally under the circumstances) declined to encourage what he could neither approve nor understand;[471] and Wycliffe, by his great patron's advice, submitted. He read a confession of faith before the bishops, which was held satisfactory; he was forbidden, however, to preach again in Oxford, and retired to his living of Lutterworth, in Leicestershire, where two years later he died.

With him departed all which was best and purest in the movement which he had commenced. The zeal of his followers was not extinguished, but the wisdom was extinguished which had directed it; and perhaps the being treated as the enemies of order had itself a tendency to make them what they were believed to be. They were left unmolested for the next twenty years, the feebleness of the government, the angry complexion which had been assumed by the dispute with Rome, and the political anarchy in the closing decade of the century, combining to give them temporary shelter; but they availed themselves of their opportunity to travel further on the dangerous road on which they had entered; and on the settlement of the country under Henry IV. they fell under the general ban which struck down all parties who had shared in the late disturbances.

They had been spared in 1382, only for more sharp denunciation, and a more cruel fate; and Boniface having healed, on his side, the wounds which had been opened, by well-timed concessions, there was no reason left for leniency. The character of the Lollard teaching was thus described (perhaps in somewhat exaggerated language) in the preamble of the act of 1401.[472]

"Divers false and perverse people," so runs the act De Heretico comburendo, "of a certain new sect, damnably thinking of the faith of the sacraments of the church, and of the authority of the same, against the law of God and of the church, usurping the office of preaching, do perversely and maliciously, in divers places within the realm, preach and teach divers new doctrines, and wicked erroneous opinions, contrary to the faith and determination of Holy Church. And of such sect and wicked doctrines they make unlawful conventicles, they hold and exercise schools, they make and write books, they do wickedly instruct and inform people, and excite and stir them to sedition and insurrection, and make great strife and division among the people, and other enormities horrible to be heard, daily do perpetrate and commit. The diocesans cannot by their jurisdiction spiritual, without aid of the King's Majesty, sufficiently correct these said false and perverse people, nor refrain their malice, because they do go from diocess to diocess, and will not appear before the said diocesans; but the jurisdiction spiritual, the keys of the church, and the censures of the same, do utterly contemn and despise; and so their wicked preachings and doctrines they do from day to day continue and exercise, to the destruction of all order and rule, right and reason."

Something of these violent accusations is perhaps due to the horror with which false doctrine in matters of faith was looked upon in the Catholic church, the grace by which alone an honest life was made possible being held to be dependent upon orthodoxy. But the Lollards had become political revolutionists as well as religious reformers; the revolt against the spiritual authority had encouraged and countenanced a revolt against the secular; and we cannot be surprised, therefore, that these institutions should have sympathised with each other, and have united to repress a danger which was formidable to both.

The bishops, by this act, received arbitrary power to arrest and imprison on suspicion, without check or restraint of law, at their will and pleasure. Prisoners who refused to abjure their errors, who persisted in heresy, or relapsed into it after abjuration, were sentenced to be burnt at the stake—a dreadful punishment, on the wickedness of which the world has long been happily agreed. Yet we must remember that those who condemned teachers of heresy to the flames, considered that heresy itself involved everlasting perdition; that they were but faintly imitating the severity which orthodoxy still ascribes to Almighty God Himself.

The tide which was thus setting back in favour of the church did not yet, however, flow freely, and without a check. The Commons consented to sacrifice the heretics, but they still cast wistful looks on the lands of the religious houses. On two several occasions, in 1406, and again 1410, spoliation was debated in the Lower House, and representations were made upon the subject to the king.[473] The country, too, continued to be agitated with war and treason; and when Henry V. became king, in 1412, the church was still uneasy, and the Lollards were as dangerous as ever. Whether by prudent conduct they might have secured a repeal of the persecuting act is uncertain; it is more likely, from their conduct, that they had made their existence incompatible with the security of any tolerable government.

A rumour having gone abroad that the king intended to enforce the laws against heresy, notices were found fixed against the doors of the London churches, that if any such measure was attempted, a hundred thousand men would be in arms to oppose it. These papers were traced to Sir John Oldcastle, otherwise called Lord Cobham, a man whose true character is more difficult to distinguish, in the conflict of the evidence which has come down to us about him, than that of almost any noticeable person in history. He was perhaps no worse than a fanatic. He was certainly prepared, if we may trust the words of a royal proclamation (and Henry was personally intimate with Oldcastle, and otherwise was not likely to have exaggerated the charges against him), he was prepared to venture a rebellion, with the prospect of himself becoming the president of some possible Lollard commonwealth.[474] The king, with swift decisiveness, annihilated the incipient treason. Oldcastle was himself arrested. He escaped out of the Tower into Scotland; and while Henry was absent in France he seems to have attempted to organise some kind of Scotch invasion; but he was soon after again taken on the Welsh Border, tried and executed. An act which was passed in 1414 described his proceedings as an "attempt to destroy the king, and all other manner of estates of the realm, as well spiritual as temporal, and also all manner of policy, and finally the laws of the land." The sedition was held to have originated in heresy, and for the better repression of such mischiefs in time to come, the lord chancellor, the judges, the justices of the peace, the sheriffs, mayors, bailiffs, and every other officer having government of people, were sworn on entering their office to use their best power and diligence to detect and prosecute all persons suspected of so heinous a crime.[475]

Thus perished Wycliffe's labour,—not wholly, because his translation of the Bible still remained a rare treasure; as seed of future life, which would spring again under happier circumstances. But the sect which he organised, the special doctrines which he set himself to teach, after a brief blaze of success, sank into darkness; and no trace remained of Lollardry except the black memory of contempt and hatred with which the heretics of the fourteenth century were remembered by the English people, long after the actual Reformation had become the law of the land.[476]

So poor a close to a movement of so fair promise was due partly to the agitated temper of the times; partly, perhaps, to a want of judgment in Wycliffe; but chiefly and essentially because it was an untimely birth. Wycliffe saw the evil; he did not see the remedy; and neither in his mind nor in the mind of the world about him, had the problem ripened itself for solution. England would have gained little by the premature overthrow of the church, when the house out of which the evil spirit was cast out could have been but swept and garnished for the occupation of the seven devils of anarchy.

The fire of heresy continued to smoulder, exploding occasionally in insurrection,[477] occasionally blazing up in nobler form, when some poor seeker for the truth, groping for a vision of God in the darkness of the years which followed, found his way into that high presence through the martyr's fire. But substantially, the nation relapsed into obedience—the church was reprieved for a century. Its fall was delayed till the spirit in which it was attacked was winnowed clean of all doubtful elements—until Protestantism had recommenced its enterprise in a desire, not for a fairer adjustment of the world's good things, but in a desire for some deeper, truer, nobler, holier insight into the will of God. It recommenced not under the auspices of a Wycliffe, not with the partial countenance of a government which was crossing swords with the Father of Catholic Christendom, and menacing the severance of England from the unity of the faith, but under a strong dynasty of undoubted Catholic loyalty, with the entire administrative power, secular as well as spiritual, in the hands of the episcopate. It sprung up spontaneously, unguided, unexcited, by the vital necessity of its nature, among the masses of the nation.

Leaping over a century, I pass to the year 1525, at which time, or about which time, a society was enrolled in London calling itself "The Association of Christian Brothers."[478] It was composed of poor men, chiefly tradesmen, artisans, a few, a very few of the clergy; but it was carefully organised, it was provided with moderate funds, which were regularly audited; and its paid agents went up and down the country carrying Testaments and tracts with them, and enrolling in the order all persons who dared to risk their lives in such a cause. The harvest had been long ripening. The records of the bishops' courts[479] are filled from the beginning of the century with accounts of prosecutions for heresy—with prosecutions, that is, of men and women to whom the masses, the pilgrimages, the indulgences, the pardons, the effete paraphernalia of the establishment, had become intolerable; who had risen up in blind resistance, and had declared, with passionate anger, that whatever was the truth, all this was falsehood. The bishops had not been idle; they had plied their busy tasks with stake and prison, and victim after victim had been executed with more than necessary cruelty. But it was all in vain: punishment only multiplied offenders, and "the reek" of the martyrs, as was said when Patrick Hamilton was burnt at St. Andrews, "infected all that it did blow upon."[480]

There were no teachers, however, there were no books, no unity of conviction, only a confused refusal to believe in lies. Copies of Wycliffe's Bible remained, which parties here and there, under death penalties if detected, met to read;[481] copies, also, of some of his tracts[482] were extant; but they were unprinted transcripts, most rare and precious, which the watchfulness of the police made it impossible to multiply through the press, and which remained therefore necessarily in the possession of but a few fortunate persons.