Classic Audiobook Collection - The Early Tudors - Henry VII and Henry VIII by Charles Edward Moberly ~ Full Audiobook [history]

Starting point is 00:00:00 The Early Tudors, Henry the Seventh and Henry VIII, by Charles Edward Mowberley. Chapter 1. The Growth of Despotism in Europe during the 15th century. For those who, like ourselves, are trained under free institutions, it is hard to realize that great nations are generally those which have been long under the stern discipline of a despotism, at last shaken off. Yet it cannot be denounced. that this form of government, extending over the whole of a large country, and ruling all things within it, has been more able than any other to create a strong sense of nationality,

Starting point is 00:00:43 overpowering narrow local differences, to establish thorough internal security, and to direct the people to enterprises requiring great exertion in the general cause, and leading to strong enthusiasms, whether through defeat or victory. It has been mostly when their energies have been thus guided that nations have forgotten the jealousies of province against province, county against county, district against district, and learned that the members of one state are immeasurably nearer to one another than any foreigner can be. And when this feeling for the first time gained strength, and a great nation is brought to feel its own unity. How many important consequences spring from the change. A people which has been thus ruled, if only the despotism

Starting point is 00:01:38 does not last long enough to break its spirit, is sure to feel intensely. Loyalty to the power which has made it one becomes a passion, sometimes even a madness. Bravery makes no account of its own life or other men's. Self-devotion prevails in many of its most striking forms. High-spirited men become proud of laying down their freedom at the feet of a master who gives them in exchange for it, the prospect of ruling over their fellow men as his deputies. In such times, we must not indeed expect to find justice, humanity, and peacefulness, or even truth and honor as now understood. These are plants which spring only from the soil of freedom. But we can say that the national mind in order that it may sometime feel truth and right strongly is, at any rate, learning to feel something strongly.

Starting point is 00:02:39 That something may be, and often is perverse. Indeed, it is with the people as with a child, in whom we tolerate a certain violence and misdirection of will, because we know that such strength is the very seedbed of future excellence, and that no one can be really great, of whom we cannot say that quick-quid wollett waldiwollett. Such then is on the whole the meaning of those who say that few nations become really great without having been under despotism for a time. In this sense, eminent Italian politicians, even of the present day, sometimes hold to Machiavelli's opinion, that it is the greatest of national misfortunes to their countrymen, never to have been welded together by passing through this stage, and far-seeing thinkers among ourselves have

Starting point is 00:03:34 considered the present constitution of Russia, not unfavorable to her chance of being great at last, seeing that despotism has certainly built up her unity and inspired her with the spirit of obedience and self-sacrifice, without hitherto breaking down the energy which will sometime achieve her political freedom. Whether the history of England from the 16th century onwards proves the truth of this theory will be best settled when we have gone through it. It is plain enough at any rate that a despotism did establish itself unto the tutors, and that many of the qualities likely to characterize a nation thus governed, did in fact show themselves an Englishman. We do, as a matter of fact, see them proud of their national unity, bearing themselves haughtily towards foreigners, immoderately fond of

Starting point is 00:04:29 aggressive expeditions, recklessly brave, deeply and sometimes even insanely loyal. The object of this work is to trace the rise of the autocracy which had these effects, and as the history of England is seldom or never so cut off from that of the continent as to have nothing in common with what goes on there at the same time, it will be well by way of introduction to show that increasing despotism was in the 15th century the law, so to speak, of advance in the countries of Western Europe. Thus we shall presently be enabled to see what changes among ourselves, sprang from direct imitation of our neighbors, and what others arose from causes of a general character affecting all countries alike. Spain, as might be expected from the mixture of Eastern blood in her people

Starting point is 00:05:25 and the military type of her civilization, had been first to enter upon the course of absolutism, which for a time raised her power to such a portentous height, and then laid it prostrate. Indeed, her feuds of the Trastomari family had been as effective as our wars of the roses, a hundred years later, in clearing off the turbulent nobles, and thus enabling the Crown of Castile to strengthen itself by the help of the Commons. Under the young Henry III, 1390, the husband of Catherine of Lancaster, the third estate was in remarkable prosperity. Commerce and manufactures improved greatly, and the history of the country might have been different, but for Henry's death in 1406 at the early age of 28. He was succeeded by his son John II, whose reign of 48 years

Starting point is 00:06:24 was little else than a perpetual conspiracy against his subjects' freedom. Aided by his imperious minister Alvaro de Luna, he excluded from the Royal Council the Deputies of the Commons, raised taxes without legislative sanction, and issued pragmaticus, asserting his own right to make laws for his subjects. When opposition to these arbitrary measures was threatened, he devised and carried out successfully a wicked scheme for dividing the popular party. Some of the towns were induced, first to petition that they might defray the expenses of their deputies during the session of the Cortes, and then, with a surprising want of political foresight, to allow them to be excused attendance altogether,

Starting point is 00:07:17 in order to save the same charges. Thus, after a while, only 18 towns sent deputies, the rest being obliged to entrust their interests to these. So successfully were the seeds of division thus sown, that in 1506, when some of the excluded towns wished to have their ancient rights back, they were vigorously opposed by the privileged cities, which maintained that the right of representation was theirs alone. The policy of John II was followed by Henry IV, Isabella of Castile's elder brother,

Starting point is 00:07:55 who also threw the trade of the country into utter disorder by debasing the coinage, besides demoralizing society by his own bad example. Isabella herself on her accession in 1474, resolved to resume the old policy of relying on the commons to which she was the more inclined from her earnest desire to benefit the people which she ruled. By decrees obtained from the courts of justice, she rested from the nobles, many of the estates, annuities, and other grants which they had unconstitutionally got from her predecessors. Besides this, both she and her husband, Ferdinand, king of Aragon, employed men of humble birth in posts, which had been always held by nobles. Above all, she adopted and placed under the patronage of the crown,

Starting point is 00:08:48 the Holy Hermandad, an association of the towns for the repression of violence, using it in defiance of the nobles as a national police which she could entirely trust. It must not for a moment be thought that her patronage of the people aimed in the least at restoring their ancient liberties. On the contrary, by establishing and enthusiastically supporting the Inquisition in her dominions, Isabella made any return to constitutional methods impossible, besides deeply staining her own character for honor, patriotism, and humanity. satisfied with making the towns prosper materially and with using their support against the grandees she never foresaw that they would so soon be trying to rest from her grandson by force of arms the liberty which she denied them

Starting point is 00:09:44 Few passages of history are sadder than the account of their rebellion against the young Charles the 5th in 1520. When, amidst a host of quite rational petitions for the better conduct of justice, for the relief of taxation, for a native administration, for the abolition of all privileges obtained at the expense of the commons, for the reform of the courtes, and for sessions once in three years at least, they still, short-sighted, like their fathers, demanded that the estates of the nobles should be re-enexted to the crown, as if they wished to destroy all barriers against despotism except their own. Accordingly, when their forces were beaten on the fatal field of Villelard and their leaders sent to execution by Charles' ministers, the main spring of popular

Starting point is 00:10:36 freedom in Spain was broken, and they entered upon a long period of decay which has not closed even now, and which hardly required that Philip II should ensure it by destroying, as he did in 1592, the last fragments of real power possessed by the Cortes, both in Castile and in Aragon. These changes were the more melancholy because Spain had in her old institutions a thoroughly good foundation for rational freedom. Her Cortes dated from 200 years before the time of Simon de Montfort and had the completest control over state affairs. The accession of each fresh sovereign required their sanction, and they exercised most fully those powers of remonstrating against grievances and of voting supplies, which have always been the two pivots of English freedom. In one point they

Starting point is 00:11:31 went beyond us, for their petitions, if accepted by the king, had at once the force of law. In Aragon, where the ancient liberties were even stronger than in Castile, the hostessia judged officially and of right, whether the king's letters were genuine and his acts constitutional, while the acknowledged privileges of the kingdom acted as Magna Carta did among ourselves. Catalonia and Valencia again had all the free spirit which goes with maritime enterprise. Here the traders were often knights, all being held equal within the mercantile guilds, and the sons of merchants valued as high as those of noblemen, if hostages were required in war. No cause less baleful in the bigotry which created the Inquisition could have destroyed such safeguards,

Starting point is 00:12:24 and the high hopes which might have been founded on them. Before the end of the 15th century, a similar struggle with the nobles in France had also ended in favor of the crown. Yet no sovereign could have been weaker than Louis XI at his accession in 1461, and when four years later his nobles began the war of the Bienpublic against him,

Starting point is 00:12:51 he was surrounded by great feudatories, all of whom he had offended bitterly. Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, held in France, Burgundy proper, with Artois and Fronche-Conte. Beyond it, Brabant, Limburg, Eno, and the wealthy cities of Flanders, and was on the point of excluding France from all communication with the rest of Europe, except through his states, by seizing the Provencal dominions of René of Anjou. The Dukes of Britannia and Bourbon, and the Count of Armagnac, with his Gaskins, were equally opposed to Louis. And there was not one of these potentates who would have scrupled for a moment to call in against him the English or any other foreigners. In spite of all this, he succeeded by unresting vigilance and craft in baffling them, one by one,

Starting point is 00:13:46 and in establishing his own power on the ruin of theirs. On the other hand, the commons were with him, and favor to them was a ruling principle of his reign. He was never tired of encouraging trade, as when he founded the silk manufacture in France, or of increasing the privileges of the cities. As his reign advanced an enemy after enemy fell before him, agriculture flourished more and more from the ever-increasing security of the country. his taxation was heavy, for he bought off such enemies as Edward VIII instead of fighting them. Yet, in spite of Comines' invidious comparison between his revenue of 4,700,000 francs,

Starting point is 00:14:32 and the 1,800,000 paid under his father Charles V, 7th, there is no appearance that his imposts were considered excessive in his lifetime. Such were some of the points marking his government of the masses. He was, to the best of his knowledge, a supporter of the low against the high. Yet all that he tried to do on their behalf was more than counterbalanced by his masterful administration. Other kings had fitfully claimed a right to collect taxes by their sole authority. Precedents to that effect had been common in the reigns of John, Charles V, Charles the 6th, and Charles the seventh. But Louis, all through his long reign of 22 years, never raised money in any other way, and thus made his people forget the very notion of freedom. For though isolated thinkers like Philippe de Comines

Starting point is 00:15:29 still held that a king who levies money unconstitutionally is tyrannous and violent, and that as long as he does so, he will never be really strong, the States General had altogether forgotten such ideas when they assembled at Tour after Louis' death to provide for the Regency. Although they took at first a high tone and claimed the abolition of the tie and other arbitrary taxes, they still allowed themselves to be worsted by a maneuver of the court, and granted the new king the right to levy the taxes of Charles the 7th, with an addition of 25%. Their stipulation that this power should be treated as a concession of their own, and lasted for only years, after which the states were to be assembled again, hardly looks like a serious attempted freedom,

Starting point is 00:16:20 when we remember that a French king could get his revenue from the provincial councils much more easily than he could from the States General, and was therefore most unwilling to summon the latter, at the risk of remonstrances against every act of his government and every detail of his household arrangements. Thus Louis XI 11th, from the success with which he organized a system of arbitrary taxation, and established it by means of his personal popularity, must needs be considered as one of the great overthrowers of liberty in France. As to other points of administration, it is almost superfluous to remark how absolute he was. No purely patriotic care for his subjects' welfare can be ascribe to the king, who had men tried before judges who were to have their property if they were found

Starting point is 00:17:15 guilty. Nor can he be considered tender of their lives, who ordered his guards to shoot down everyone who came near his palace walls before a stated hour in the morning, or of their personal freedom, who enclosed them at pleasure in iron cages. We must therefore ascribe his care for commerce in the towns to the absolute necessity under which, he lay, of finding popular support against his two powerful feudatories. That this view of interest ripened into a positive sympathy with the industrious classes, which showed itself in many simple and natural acts of kindness, we are in no degree called upon to deny. But it is not the less true that he demoralized these very classes, first through the crooked contrivances by which he quelled

Starting point is 00:18:05 the repressers, and then, still more completely by his resolution to allow them nothing like political as distinct from municipal freedom, and thus left them at his death, prepared to submit to any tyranny which the course of time might produce. It is not necessary to enumerate the various tyrannies which had raised themselves at the time we are considering upon the ruins of popular freedom in every great city of Italy, with the one exception of Venice, nor yet those which the weakness of emperors like Frederick III had allowed to begin in the various states of Germany. But the last plantagenet reigns in England were so important as paving the way for Tudor despotism that a few words must needs be said upon them, under the guidance of the latest and most learned of our

Starting point is 00:18:59 constitutional historians. 15th century may be said to begin with the accession of the Lancasterian dynasty in 1399. As regards the points on which political writers most frequently dwell, Henry IV and Henry V were strongly inclined, the former from his defective title, and the latter from an innate power of influencing men as he would, to a really constitutional government. Again and again did Henry the fourth listen to the remote,

Starting point is 00:19:32 monstrences of his parliaments, as in 1401, when they claimed that he should accept no account of their proceedings except from themselves. In 1404, when he consented on their petition to remove any counsellor distasteful to them, and in particular, to dismiss all aliens from the Queen's service. In 1406, when they insisted that he should give an account of his expenditure and dismiss the rascally crew which composed his household, and in 1407, when the Commons protested against any bill of supply originating with the Lords. Besides this, parliamentary grants to him were strictly appropriated to their intended purposes, a restriction which we are inclined to consider an improvement of modern times, and one to which even Cromwell as protector was unwilling to submit. The parliaments of Henry V were

Starting point is 00:20:29 naturally compliant, from the overflowing favor with which a war in France was regarded, whereas Comin repeatedly notes, every Englishman made sure of enriching himself by plunder and the ransom of captives. Thus, in 1417 and 1419, large subsidies were willingly paid. When, however, they did make remonstrances, he was, like his father, always ready to attend, as when they prayed in 1414, that there be never no law made on their petition, and engrossed as statute and law, neither by addition nor diminution, by no manner of term, which shall change the sentence and the intent asked, a point which was to come out as a memorable occasion in after time. As to the safety for life under these sovereigns, it cannot be called unsatisfactory,

Starting point is 00:21:24 except as regards, first, the exercise of martial law in wartime, and secondly, the effective statutes coming from Parliament itself. It has been well said that in beheading Scroopin Mowbray in 1405, and the Southampton conspirators in 1415, Henry IV and his son were sowing the wind that their dynasty might reap the whirlwind. Inasmuch as from these precedents, sprang the practice so universal in the wars of the roses, of putting the captured leaders to death after each battle, either by a mere order or by the sentence of such men as Montague or Tiptoft, who tried prisoners summarily and plainly without any noise and show of judgment, and sometimes according to the law of some foreign state where the judge had received his university education. As for the barbarous executions which follow the

Starting point is 00:22:22 statute de hieredico comberendo. These, of course, were not technically acts of royal tyranny, since the authority for them was parliamentary and grounded on a belief, which, though in itself both cruel and stupid, had yet darkened all counsel ever since the days when it misled the strong intellect of Augustine. Here, accordingly, the state, the crown, and above all the church, had to share the terrible responsibility among them. There was, therefore, under the early Lancasterian kings, some ground for the admiration of England, as contrasted with France,

Starting point is 00:23:02 which is expressed alike by Philippe de Comynne, and by the English Fortescue, whom Comin may have seen during his exile in France. Under these kings, we really had what Fortescue calls, a dominium regaleet Politicum. They would not have ventured, as Edward III did, to assent to a petition of Parliament, and then a few weeks later to rescind the act by their own authority on the ground that they had dissimulated, never having really intended to

Starting point is 00:23:32 grant it. But a woeful change came over England with the accession of the House of York. First, the Privy Council began to assume the powers which made it such a terrible engine of oppression under Henry V. 7 and his successors. This body really had, from Parliament a standing authority, to be exercised, however, under strict supervision, by which they could suspend the execution of various important statutes. In pecuniary matters, they were authorized in case of emergency to pledge, up to a certain limited amount, the credit of the kingdom, a practice which Comene seems to have had in mind when he says that in his judgment, such emergencies as make it really necessary for kings to collect money more quickly than by the normal processes of law

Starting point is 00:24:22 hardly ever occur. As the king had long ceased to judge in person, and the council was considered chiefly as his substitute, its members could not actually try cases. But to examine men before trial when suspected of treason, and to rack them for the purpose of extracting evidence, appears in spite of Fortiscus' declaration that torture was a note, known to the English law, to have been thought within the royal prerogative, and therefore within the competence of the Council. The first registered instances of such torture are in 1468 under Edward V. When more than one of Queen Margaret's messengers were burned in the feet or racked to make them discover their accomplices. The jurisdiction of the constable under which Tiptoft and

Starting point is 00:25:13 Montague acted, the latter even impaling prisoners after death, was part of the same bad system. Edward V. Fourth also introduced the system of perpetual forfeitures for treason. Before his time, restoration after a period of eclipse had been the understood rule. He set this principle absolutely at naught by bestowing the Percy Earldom on a Neville and that of Pembroke on a Herbert. When we add to these changes the well-known extension in Edward's reign of the system of benevolences and forced loans, the extreme and frequency of parliaments, and the trivial character of the business which they were allowed to take in hand, together with the frequent executions of those whom the king feared, including his own brother, the Duke of Clarence, we shall readily understand what a vast breach in the

Starting point is 00:26:08 constitution this reign really made, a breach which the reign of Richard III, inclined as he naturally was to support the weakness of his title and to put his crimes out of remembrance by popular concessions, was much too short to repair, especially as his necessities after a while drove him to collect money by methods hardly differing from the illegal ones which he had professed to abolish. accordingly, Henry the 7th on succeeding to the crown found himself very slightly fettered by constitutional precedents, and would doubtless have been a violently oppressive governor if he had not been far more inclined to the sort of chican natural to one whose early life had been passed in avoiding dangers, and who in many things kept before his eyes the example of Louis XI

Starting point is 00:27:01 11th. He thoroughly realized that to govern as he chose, two main conditions were required. He must need few or no subsidies, and he must avoid the foreign wars, which would make subsidies indispensable, and which might also raise up competitors for the crown. Such then was the starting point of the prince, who was to inaugurate more than a hundred years of autocratic government in England, and by keeping these two principles, constantly, in view, he gave a new political character to the century which followed his accession, which it will in the following chapters be our business to trace. End of Section 1.

Starting point is 00:27:47 Section 2 of the early tutors by Charles Edward Moberly. This Libra Box recording is in the public domain read by Pamela Nagami. Chapter 2. Henry of Richmond, Bosworth Field, The Coronation, The Sweating Sickness, 1485, 1486, Part 1. It is desirable first to sketch the early life and the accession of the sovereign, who was in so many ways to influence the history of England. Henry of Richmond could claim a two-fold royal or quasi-royal descent. his father, Edmund Tudor, by creation, Earl of Richmond, was son to Catherine of France,

Starting point is 00:28:34 the widow of Henry V. Obviously, no original title to the throne could be thus derived, even if it were certain that Catherine was ever married to Owen Tudor, of which unfortunately no evidence is known to exist. Yet with the ideas of succession prevalent in those times, such an origin might add force to other's stronger claims. Henry's maternal descent constituted such a claim inasmuch as his mother, Margaret Beaufort, was great-granddaughter to Edward III's fourth son, John of Gaunt. And although the Beauforts were illegitimate,

Starting point is 00:29:14 yet after their birth, John married their mother, Catherine Roewe, the sister-in-law of the poet Chaucer, and succeeded in inducing Richard II to carry through Parliament in 1397 an act for their legitimation, which, however, did not allow them to bear the name of Plantagenet. This act was confirmed in 1407 by Henry IV, who seems to have thought that by introducing the words ex-kepta dignitante regia into Richard's original grant, as preserved in the patent roles, he was barring the Beauforts from succession to the throne, although the document of confirmation as submitted by him to Parliament contained no such exception. As the latter was, of course,

Starting point is 00:30:01 authoritative, Henry inherited from John of Gaunt, a parliamentary title to the throne in case of failure, first of the lines of John's elder brothers, and secondly, of heirs from his earlier marriages. Both of these contingencies had in great measure occurred. The line of the Black Prince, Edward's eldest son, had ended with the unhappy Richard II in 1399. William, the next brother, died early, and the House of York, the representatives of Lionel, the third brother, had been almost exterminated. As for John's earlier marriages, the Lancasterian line beginning with Henry IV, whose mother was Blanche of Lancaster, had also become extinct, when the young Edward,

Starting point is 00:30:51 son of Henry VI, was murdered by his uncles on the field of Tewkesbury. Thus, when Henry the 7th succeeded to the throne, his only rivals in title were John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln, the son of Richard III's sister Elizabeth, who had been declared by Richard heir to the throne. His brother, the Earl of Suffolk, Edward Plantagenet, Earl of Warwick, the son of the Duke of Clarence, put to death by Edward the 4th, his sister Margaret, afterwards Countess of Salisbury, and Elizabeth, the daughter of Edward IV. Margaret Beaufort, Henry's mother, successively, Countess of Richmond and of Darby, was, as will be shown in a subsequent chapter, one of the most remarkable women in English history.

Starting point is 00:31:43 Her father was John Beaufort, the first Duke of Somerset. On his death in 1444, she became the ward of William de LaPole, Duke of Suffol, and by him was married at the age of nine to his son, who afterwards succeeded to the title. On her guardians attained her, she was transferred to the custody of Edmund Tudor, Earl of Richmond, and his brother, Jasper Tudor, Earl of Pembroke, the former of whom, Edmund Tudor, became her husband in 1455, her former marriage having been simply set aside. Both these noblemen had been treated as brothers by Henry VI, who bestowed great care on their education and received from them loyal support in the Civil War. Jasper Tudor, having been engaged in several of the chief battles, and it tainted with the King and Margaret of Anjou in 1461. Edmund Tudor died five years before, this last event, a few months before his son's birth. The Countess of Richmond, thus widowed at the age of 16, lived for a while in her brother-in-law's castle at Pembroke, and then, in 1459, married her cousin, Lord Henry Stafford, son of the Duke of Buckingham, and through him descended from Thomas of Woodstock,

Starting point is 00:33:07 the sixth son of Edward III, the Duke of Gloucester, who was so foully kidnapped and murdered by Richard the second. In 1482, she was again a widow, but soon married Lord Stanley, a widower with a numerous family. There are circumstances connected with this last union, which give the impression that she entered into it unwillingly and merely in order to gain protection for her son, for whom alone she seemed really to live. For this purpose, her husband was well chosen as he was a strong Yorkist. Indeed, but for this marriage, her life would have been forfeited in 1483 for the part which she took in Buckingham's rebellion against Richard III. Soon after this, she succeeded in gaining over Lord Stanley to her son's party.

Starting point is 00:34:00 In 1471, after the Battle of Tewksbury, Jasper Tudor followed Margaret's advice by sending the young Henry his nephew out of the country. Henry was now 15 years old, and it was his mother's wish that he should take refuge with Louis X 11th of France. This plan, however, failed, for he was wrecked on the Breton coast and had to pursue the life of imprisonment and surveillance which became so familiar to him. Indeed, he once said to Philippe de Comines that from the age of five years he had constantly been kept and concealed as a fugitive in prison. Edward IV and Richard III made repeated attempts to recover him from Francis II, Duke of Britannia.

Starting point is 00:34:49 Richard indeed promised to make him his son-in-law, if surrendered. Accordingly by the contrivance of Landau, Francis's minister during his master's illness, Henry was sent to San Malo to be delivered up. But receiving a hint from his faithful supporter, Bishop, Morton that Landois was trying to get for his master in exchange for his surrender the earldom of Richmond, which had formerly been held by the Dukes of Britannia, he escaped, first into the woods and then into French territory at Angé. Here he was well received, and the circumstances of the country soon made it highly expedient to support his claim to the English throne. For, as Richard

Starting point is 00:35:33 the third was sending archers to France in support of the French nobles in their attempt to raise a second War of the Public Good against the young Charles VIII, who had just succeeded his father on the French throne, the wise and politic Anne of Beauju, Duchess of Bourbon, who was regent during her brother's minority, allowed Henry in 1485 to collect about two thousand men. de plumeichon can put truevé, says Philippe de Comyn, and also supplied a small sum of money to help the descent on England. Accordingly, on August 7th in that year, Henry landed at Milford Haven, and immediately took the decided step of sending circulars calling for help against Richard as an usurper of his rights to the throne and a rebel. He then marched to Shrewsbury,

Starting point is 00:36:24 where he received the adhesion of Reese Op Thomas and other. Welsh chiefs. Op Thomas had sworn that the invader should only enter England over his belly. It is said to have been suggested by high authority that he might discharge himself from this vow by lying down on the ground and letting Henry step over him, or by going under a bridge while Henry crossed it above him. In making not for Worcester and the lower Severn, but for Shrewsbury, Henry had in view his stepfather Lord Stanley's Cheshire influence. At Stafford, he heard that Stanley could not immediately join him without sacrificing the life of his son, Lord Strange, whom Richard had seized as a hostage. But going almost alone in advance of his army to his camp at

Starting point is 00:37:15 Atherston, he received from him the most encouraging promises of support. At almost the same moment, he was joined by Sir Walter Hungerford and Sir Thomas Bursha, two of Richard's trusted officers with a body of choice troops. From Atherston he turned eastward to meet Richard, who was encamped between Hinkley and Market Bosworth. Even with the reinforcements just acquired, he had scarcely 5,000 men, barely half the number of Richard's forces, so that his chance of victory was small, unless more leaders deserted to him in the battle. Mr. Gardner and his excellent history of Richard III has stated very clearly the causes which led to Henry's decisive success. Richard had, it appears, been misled by a prediction which he had heard about his rivals landing at Milford, referring, as he imagined, to a small village of that name near Christchurch in Hampshire.

Starting point is 00:38:15 Accordingly, he had taken very few effective precautions to secure the fidelity of the Welsh leaders or of Sir W. Stanley, who had the chief power in North Wales. As the Lord Stanley, Richard seems to have had the incapacity, not uncommon in tyrants, to reflect that those whom they injure are certain to remember the wrong when they themselves have forgotten it. His soldiers had all but murdered Lord Stanley on the day when he sent Lord Hastings to the block, yet he trusted him in a manner to the last, making, however, a breastwork in rear of his own camp for fear of being attacked by him. As for Sir W. Stanley, he had been declared a traitor even while commanding for Richard. It is most satisfactory to find that Richard's chance of ultimate success had departed from him

Starting point is 00:39:07 as soon as the murder of his nephews in the tower became known. Indeed, revolt after revolt thenceforward made it clear, that even though he might succeed in cajoling the mother and sister of the victims, he could not silence the groans and indignation with which his atrocious act was stigmatized in every street and marketplace of England. The feeling against him was like that against King John for his treatment of Arthur, or against the Emperor Ziegismund during his London visit in 1416 for the murder of John Hus. Making a virtue of necessity, Richard acknowledged, as we are informed, his crime in his final address to his soldiers,

Starting point is 00:39:52 but pleaded that he had washed it away by salt tears and strict penance. He was, however, quite unable to excite the emotion which he desired. Advancing by the road from Hinkley to Stapleton and Market Bosworth, Richard drew out his forces on Sutton Heath. His enemy's position was difficult to force, as Redmore Plain on which the Lancasterian troops were drawn out, was covered on the left and rear by a brook, hard to cross, and on the right by Sutton, Ambien Wood, and a morass, an arrangement which evidently made it necessary for Henry to conquer or die, as retreat would have been most difficult. Yet, after all, Richmond made the common mistake of experienced soldiers, and desired his men to advance beyond the morass, thus running the risk of

Starting point is 00:40:44 seeing them driven in, and the whole position carried by the enemy's rush. Seeing the danger, the veteran Earl of Oxford first ordered the men not to move ten feet from the standard, and then, when he had got them well in hand, seized the right moment for hurling them on the enemy, who seemed indisposed to advance and unlikely to make much resistance. At this moment, Lord Stanley deserted Richard, and with him the Earl of Northumberland, while the Duke of Norfolk, Richard's firm supporter, was slain, and his son, the Earl of Surrey, taken prisoner. Few events in English history are better known than those which immediately followed.

Starting point is 00:41:27 Richard's catching sight of his rival and charging him desperately, his plantagenet prowess in the fight, his refusal to fly, the coming up of Sir W. Stanley, Richard's shouts of treason and treason as he struck right and left, his fall with many wounds, the finding by Reginald Bray in a thorn bush of the crown which Richard had worn on his helmet, and the crowning of Henry with it by Lord Stanley. The battle may be considered typical of the period at which it occurred, combining as it did the use of such modern weapons as canning,

Starting point is 00:42:04 as proved by the balls from time to time dug up on the field, with a medieval encounter almost hand to hand between the competitors for the throne. The victor followed the bad precedent of the Wars of the Roses by ordering some of the prisoners to be at once executed. As however, his vengeance only lighted upon Catesby, the minister of Richard III, and two of his agents, he was considered to have been strangely merciful. The distribution of due honors and rewards was deferred with some exceptions till the meeting of Parliament in November. End of Section 2.

Starting point is 00:42:49 Section 3 of the early tutors by Charles Edward Mowberley. This Libravox recording is in the public domain read by Pamela Nagami. Chapter 2, Henry of Richmond, Bosworth Field, The Coronation, the Sweating Sickness, 1485, 1486, Part 2. It was necessary at once to settle by what title Henry should claim the throne. The right of conquest was suggested, but at once put aside from an instinctive sense of the principle, explained by a great authority of our time in a celebrated judgment, that when a country is conquered, its inhabitants retained for the time their own

Starting point is 00:43:34 laws, but are under the power of the sovereign to alter these laws in any way which to the sovereign in council may seem proper. Men were as clear on this point in 1485, as they were when the conquest theory was broached in 1693, in favor of King William III, and when it excited, as Lord McCauley tells us, a complete tempest of indignation against its unlucky propounder. There was another resemblance between the two periods, namely that Henry was as determined as William was in after days not to be a mere king consort. If he married Elizabeth of York, the daughter of Edward IV, he would not owe his title to her. Accordingly, on August 22nd, he assumed the crown in virtue of his Lancasterian descent without making the least mention of Elizabeth. And in order to guard against Yorkist competition, he imprisoned in the tower the Earl of Warwick, the son of the Duke of Clarence, whom Edward IV had murdered. This unhappy young man had for a time been treated by Richard the third as his heir, but then put aside in favor of another nephew, John de LaPole, Earl of Lincoln,

Starting point is 00:44:55 the son of Richard's sister Elizabeth. The chief part of the Warwick property was dealt with in a manner characteristic of Henry. He ordered its restoration to Anne, Countess of Warwick, the widow of the kingmaker, but forced this aged lady at once to execute a fiefment, granting to the king and his heirs all that had been her husbands and her own. This property included the islands of Guernsey, Jersey, and Sark, the city of Worcester, the town and castle of Warwick, and a vast number of manners and lordships in 19 counties of England. Only a moderate pension and one manner in Warwickshire was left to her, who when young, had been the greatest lady in England. Nothing was reserved for her granddaughter Margaret, who afterwards married Sir Richard Poell

Starting point is 00:45:49 and is well known as the Countess of Salisbury executed by Henry VIII in 1541. On September 28, Henry made his entry into London. London in a close chariot, says Lord Bacon, in order to strike reverence into the people. A theory of Henry's motives, which has been curiously amplified by a German historian of England, who dilates on his strange conduct and thus withdrawing himself, popular and triumphant as he was, from the homage which awaited him in the streets, and yet resuming his military character in order to consecrate his standards in St. Paul's. The truth is, however, that Bernard André, the historian of Henry, really spoke of him as entering London Leitanteur, and that Lord Bacon's close chariot, as well as Polly's longer paraphrase, is due to a misreading of this word as Latentere.

Starting point is 00:46:48 Henry immediately announced his intention of marrying Elizabeth. She was sent for from Sheriff's Hutton and placed under her mother's protection till the coronation was over, and Henry's first Parliament had been held. He thus guarded with almost superfluous care against the chance of being thought to claim the crown through her. There was some fear that the prevalence in London of the sweating sickness might delay the inauguration. But as the force of the disease abated within two months, it was possible to perform it on October 31st following. The marriage did not take place till January 18th in the next year. Henry was sparing of new creations on his accession, but his stepfather, Lord Stanley, was made Earl of Darby, his uncle, Jasper Tudor, Duke of Bedford, and Sir Edward Courtney, Earl of Devon. On the other hand, pecuniary grants were abundant in the first months of the

Starting point is 00:47:51 reign. As a matter of course, the chief sufferers in Henry's cause were reinstated in their property, often with large additions. Such were his mother, the Lady Margaret, now Countess of Darby, Sir Thomas Stafford, the son and heir of the late Duke of Buckingham, Catherine, Duchess of Bedford, the same Duke's widow, and Pierce Courtney, Bishop of Exeter, who, like his brother, Sir Edward, had been with Henry in exile. To John, Earl of Oxford, whose father had lost his life in the Lancasterian struggle, and who had distinguished himself in 1473 by the seizure of St. Michael's Mount, was given the office of Admiral of England, Ireland, and Aquitaine. With this grant were joined many others, among which we should not have expected

Starting point is 00:48:43 to find Lord Oxford's appointment as keeper of the lions, lionesses, and leopards in the tower, with a shilling a day for himself and sixpence for the food of each animal. It may here be remarked once for all that in this rain money was about 12 times its present value. Another highly interesting restoration at this time was that of Henry Lord Clifford, the shepherd lord, whom Wordsworth has celebrated. His family had been attainted in 1461, and he himself concealed in a shepherd's hut to avoid the vengeance of the Yorkists for his father's murder of the child Earl of Rutland at the Battle of Wakefield. In this condition, he passed 24 years, working at Shepard's

Starting point is 00:49:33 tasks and learning to know the stars by watching them from the Cumberland fells. Some manuscripts still remain in the possession of the Clifford family, which prove his fondness for alchemy, a study which, though prohibited under pain of felony by a crime, a statute of Henry IV had flourished in the very court of Henry VI and was destined, as we shall see in a subsequent chapter, long to retain its hold on English belief. He was also given to astrology, which was then held to be the great practical use of star knowledge. Lord Clifford lived till the tenth year of Henry VIII, and in spite of the tranquil soul which the poet describes to him, distinguished himself highly at the Battle of Flodden.

Starting point is 00:50:20 At the same time, an immense number of minor offices, such as the wardenships of royal parks and castles, were transferred from the supporters of Richard to those of Henry. Few comparatively were bestowed on Welshmen, though Cerise Op Thomas, to whom Henry owed so much, was made constable of Brecknach, Chamberlain of South Wales, and a commissioner of mines. Welshmen were, however, freely admitted to the small body of guards which Henry now formed,

Starting point is 00:50:51 in imitation probably of Louis XIth's Scottish archers. Following the same king's example, Henry at once showed himself favorable to trade. Some London merchants claimed that by old custom they were to pay no tonnage between the day of a new king's accession and that on which his first parliament met. This indulgence being considered as counterbalancing the extra expense which they incurred in guarding their property at such times, and their claim was allowed. Several Venetian traders who wished to come to England received a special safe conduct, and some other Italians were relieved from penalties incurred under a statute of Richard III. The sweating sickness above alluded to, which broke out among us for the first time in 1485,

Starting point is 00:51:43 was one of the most alarming of medieval epidemics, and it recurred so often in these rains as to deserve a brief description here. According to Dr. Hecker of Berlin, who has collected all existing notices of it, it was a violent inflammatory fever, prostrating the bodily powers as with a blow, and suffusing the whole body with a fetid perspiration. The internal heat which the patient suffered was intolerable, yet every refrigerant was certain death, and the crisis was almost always over in 24 hours. Shortly after the royal entry on September 28th, it began its ravages in the city, two Lord Mayors and many aldermen dying in a week. From thence it ranged through the great part of England, stopping short, however, at the Scottish border and not spreading to Ireland,

Starting point is 00:52:39 in spite of the constant maritime intercourse with that country. It mostly attacked persons in the prime of health and strength, and not those who were weak from age, sex, or disease, and this appears to disprove the opinion that it was caused by the presence of Henry's army in London and was a consequence of the privations which they had suffered on shipboard and on their march. The disease gained fresh terror from the impotence of medicine to grapple with it. So complete was this that the distinguished Lynn Acre, who afterwards founded the College of Physicians, is not known to have written on the subject. Strange to say, this failure of the profession of medicine probably led to its quicker cessation, for as there

Starting point is 00:53:26 was no scientific guidance, the people treated those attacked by the light of nature, making them go quietly to bed and stay there till better, taking no food and only the mildest beverages. In subsequent years, when the disease returned and medical practice, as then understood, had risen to the occasion, the very opposite treatment to this was adopted in some countries. In the Netherlands, for instance, the patient was loaded with the hottest garments and crushed, sometimes to actual suffocation, under a mass of feather beds kept down by the weight of several men lying at the top. There is no trace of such violent remedies being ever used in England. On the present occasion the methods of common sense were blessed in their results, for the disease

Starting point is 00:54:16 went on diminishing through the autumn, and was at length brought to an end most sudden and complete by the violent storm of New Year's Day 1486. It is always interesting to observe the moral conduct of a people during a time of terrible pestilence. In the present instance we may remark that when hardly one person recovered out of a hundred attacked, and when, moreover, the disease followed Englishmen abroad and spared foreigners resident among us, it did not rouse either the national hatreds or the superstitious terrors which might have been expected. We hear nothing like the execution of Meissen in 1507, of Beuse a bubin suspected of having poisoned the wells, and the theological strife had not yet arisen which induced the citizens of Cologne in 1517 to burn heretics in the hope of

Starting point is 00:55:13 averting a fresh eruption of the same plague. Nor can it be said of England at this time, as Mr. Burton quotes of Scotland in 1569, that in time of plague, selfishness ruled the day, everyone being so detestable to others, and especially the poor to the rich, as if they were not equal with them touching their creation, but rather without soul or spirit as beasts degenerated from mankind. No cases are recorded like those during the black death of near-kinsmen forsaking one another, nor were there any such fierce outbreaks of fanaticism as those of the flagellants, which soon after this maddened Germany and Hungary. Superstition of many kinds was indeed rife in England in 1485,

Starting point is 00:56:02 but its types were at any rate somewhat gentler and more humane than those of other countries. End of Section 3 Section 4 of the early tutors by Charles Edward Mowberley. Libra Box recording is in the public domain, read by Pamelaan Agami. Chapter 3, Lambert Simnel, the Britannia War, 1486 to 1492. On November 7, 1485, Henry V, held his first Parliament, thus seeming to fulfill the general expectation that as a Lancasterian sovereign, he would follow the example of Henry IV and Henry V in taking kind of, in taking kind of, to constitutional government. His House of Lords contained only 27 lay peers, a fact which has been

Starting point is 00:57:02 supposed to prove how many families had become extinct during the Wars of the Roses. In reality, however, only two had thus failed for want of heirs, and the number of peers in this Parliament was so small because no summonses had been sent to 25 who were likely to be malcontent. Henry wished in the first place to have the succession settled upon his own heirs by whatever wife. This was done, and at his strongly expressed desire confirmed by a papal bull. He also wanted the attainders of his supporters to be formally reversed, and not merely cancelled by his act in employing them, as he had done in several cases. He intended to issue a general pardon of his enemies, with some exceptions, yet was unwilling

Starting point is 00:57:51 that Parliament should enact this, choosing rather to deal with individuals, who might be made to pay dearly for it, and thus the better enable him to do for the present without any parliamentary revenue beyond the tonnage and poundage, which was granted to him for life. For the same purpose, he declared invalid, all alienations of property from the Crown made since 1454. He kept also a keen eye on the fines imposed upon foreign merchants for non-employment, that is, for attempting to dispose of their wares in England without buying a return cargo there. As if born to the manner of English royalty, he picked out for his ministers two of the ablest churchmen of the time, Morton, Bishop of Ely, his old and tried supporter, and Fox, Bishop of Exeter. The services of men like these on his

Starting point is 00:58:45 Council would be invaluable, yet would cost him nothing, seeing that they might be paid by translation to richer bishoprics. After giving indemnity to all the King's partisans for any injury done to the opposite party, and enacting that Gascon wines should only be brought to England in English, Irish, or Welsh vessels, the Parliament was on the point of being paroched, when the members humbly petitioned Henry to be pleased to marry a little. Elizabeth. With this request he complied as we have already seen, yet her coronation was not for the present allowed. Considering himself now fairly established on the throne, Henry resolved on a progress to the north, the great home of the Yorkist party, whence Richard III had recently drawn

Starting point is 00:59:36 his best and most faithful troops. On the way thither he kept his Easter joyously at Lincoln, but was rudely disabused of his confidence in his own fortune by an insurrection raised by Lord Lovell, Sir Humphrey Stafford, and Sir Thomas Stafford, who had been in sanctuary at Colchester since Bosworth Field. The Staffords were sons of the Humphrey Stafford slain by Cade in 1450, and like Lord Lovell had fought for Richard at Bosworth.

Starting point is 01:00:07 They made for Worcester, apparently trusting for their safety to local connections there. These, however, failed them entirely, and their forces dispersed on Henry's first proclamation of pardon. Lord Lovell fled to Lancashire and thence to Flanders, and the Staffords took sanctuary at Cullum near Abingdon, but were removed from it for trial on the ground that the place had not sufficient privileges as a sanctuary to sheltered traitors. The elder brother was then executed, the younger pardoned as having acted under his influence. This rebellion had little or no connection with the feeling in favor of the House of York,

Starting point is 01:00:49 which was still very strong in England and attributable to two main causes. In the first place, the Lancasterians, including the present king, were hated by the violent and unreasoning part of the community for having lost under Henry VI, the English provinces in France. the wars occasioned by which had been such perennial sources of plunder to Englishmen serving there, and the White Rose was therefore popular as more or less representing the idea of empire abroad. In the second place, traders and manufacturers held the same opinions on different grounds, for from the very accession of Edward IV, the head of the House of York, much had been done for them by the numerous commercial treaties which he made,

Starting point is 01:01:38 with foreign powers, and by his personal interest in trade, especially had the greater strength of his government guaranteed our sea-coasts and trading vessels from those attacks of pirates, which remained for more than a century longer the invariable mark of a weak or careless rule in England. We can therefore readily understand the strength of Yorkist feeling in London and in the north, seeing that so large a part of English trade and English manufacturers belong to these districts. In Ireland, the same sentiment existed, but appears to have sprung chiefly and characteristically from a remembrance of the gentle sway of Richard Duke of York as Lord Deputy there in 1459, when after the defeat of his party at Bloor Heath, he crossed the channel, seized the government of

Starting point is 01:02:31 Ireland in defiance of Ormond and the Lancasterians, and proceeded to hold a parliament there which claimed to be independent of the English Parliament and courts of law. George, Duke of Clarence, had also been loved in Ireland for his father's sake, and had distinguished himself by his courteous behavior to the people between the years 1461 and 1470 and afterwards from 1472 till his death. To arouse and stimulate all these feelings of opposition to Henry's government was the lifelong purpose of Margaret of York, the sister of Edward IV, who had been second wife to Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy. After the death of her husband in his war with the Swiss in 1477, this princess had seen the French part of his dominions absorbed by Louis XI, and the Flemish provinces, passing by the marriage of Mary, her stepdaughter, into the hands of Maximilian of Austria, the young and chivalrous son of Frederick III, Emperor of Germany. She herself, however, retained so much independence in the districts which had been assigned to her as a dowry on her marriage

Starting point is 01:03:50 that it was vain to appeal to the emperor when she did acts hostile to England. The marriage of her niece with Henry had by no means conciliated her. She rather hated Elizabeth as a deserter from the White Rose. Her ill-feeling found its opportunity in 1486, when Lambert Simmel was brought forward as a pretender to the English crown. The broad facts of the imposter were that this youth was represented as being really the Earl of Warwick, whom Henry had under Lock and Key in the Tower. When, therefore, we find that his cause was supported by the Earl of Lincoln,

Starting point is 01:04:32 Richard III's own nephew, who had once been heir-presumptive to the crown, it seems plain that Lincoln's hope must have been to get rid of Henry by means of this deception and then quietly to put the puppet aside and stand up for his own right, adopting, in fact, the plan which Buckingham would probably have pursued toward Henry himself if the rebellion of 1483 had been successful. As so many people knew the true Lord Warwick by sight, and as Henry took care that all London should see him on the way, to and from St. Paul's, it was thought best that Simmel should make his first appearance in Ireland.

Starting point is 01:05:14 There he found men's minds, fully prepared for a Yorkist insurrection. Accordingly, his cause was taken up by Lord Kildare, who was then ruling Ireland as deputy for the Duke of Bedford, and he was actually crowned at Dublin, May 24th, 1487, as Edward the 6th, without a sword being drawn. At this point, Margaret struck in to aid him, showing herself as courageous as her husband, but with a feminine craft that was all her own. She helped a skillful commander named Martin Schwartz to equip 19 vessels carrying about 2,000 veteran soldiers, and Simnel sailed for England with these and with some Irish troops commanded by Lord Kildare, besides a few Englishmen under Lord Lincoln.

Starting point is 01:06:04 landing at Fouldry in Lancashire he made first for York, striving hard as he went to keep his men orderly and humane, so that the impression of his being really the rightful king might strengthen. By this time, however, Henry, after making a pilgrimage to Walsingham, had fixed his headquarters at Nottingham, as Richard III had done just before Bosworth. Both kings, considering this place well situated for commanding the various roads from the north to London. He had also much to encourage him, for popular, though the Yorkist cause might be, most Englishmen dislike the thought of having a king imposed upon them by a mob of Irishmen and Fleming's. Accordingly, Lord Lincoln had to engage at Stoke near Newark, June 16th, with little more than the force which he had brought from

Starting point is 01:06:58 Ireland. The battle was obstinate, there being little thought of giving quarter to foreigners or Irish. Lord Lincoln fell with Martin Schwartz and Lord Lovell. Unless indeed the story is true that Lovell was concealed for several years in a strong room at Minster Lovell in Oxfordshire and at last died there from the negligence of a servant who failed to provide him with food. The unhappy Irish, armed as they were with nothing better than darts and knives, were of course cut. in pieces. Content with the death of his chief enemies in battle, Henry pardoned the nobles who had assisted in the Dublin coronation on their pleading that they had been misled, not only by the very governor whom the king had placed over them, but by the Archbishop of Dublin and the chief part of the

Starting point is 01:07:46 clergy. He even spared Simnel himself, making him first a turn spit in his kitchen, and then by way promotion of falconer. In the course of the next year, he, with not a little quiet humor, exhibited the pretender, dressed in his livery to the Irish nobles who were visiting London, and enjoyed immeasurably the uncourtly execrations into which they burst at the sight. After his victory, Henry thought it prudent to conciliate Yorkist feeling by allowing the coronation of Queen Elizabeth. This took place November 25th, He could afford to comply thus far, as he had just made a northern progress of a very different character from the one which he had designed in the preceding year. His object now had been to punish

Starting point is 01:08:38 all who had adhered to the rebellion, and when we hear that for this purpose he proclaimed martial law, it is easy to judge of the terror which his presence must have caused, in spite of his generally preferring fines to bloodshed. With regard to such proclamations, it is satisfactory to learn from the highest authority that the rebellion being at an end, they were quite illegal. Indeed, an act of indemnity was afterwards required to protect from penalties those who had used force under them. Strangely enough, one of those on whom the king's hand fell heavily was his wife's mother, who, on the first report of Simnel's rebellion, was imprisoned for the rest of her life in a nunnery at Bermansy, with little allowance for her support. This was done by authority of the

Starting point is 01:09:32 king in council, the reason alleged, namely, that she had placed her daughters in King Richard's hands instead of remaining with them in sanctuary, was so plainly frivolous that the object in making it must have been to suggest that there was much more behind. Lord Bacon conjectures that she may have borne apart in teaching Simmel how to make people think him a prince, from a notion that Henry was unkind to her daughter, and a consequent wish that he might be slain or deposed. Yet he appears to have been on the whole an affectionate husband, although we are told some years later that Margaret, Henry's mother, was somewhat tyrannical to her daughter-in-law. On this view, it must be acknowledged that the situation was strained, for the Lady Margaret,

Starting point is 01:10:22 Lancasterian to the backbone, was allowed by Henry to regulate on the most critical occasions all the details of Elizabeth's household to the utter exclusion of her Yorkist mother, who must surely have been more or less than a woman and a mother-in-law, if she could have calmly endured such exclusion. Perhaps we need go no further to account for her ruin. Henry's second parliament was now held, November 9th, 1487. It established for the first time the Court of Star Chamber for reasons and in a manner which will be stated in another chapter,

Starting point is 01:11:02 where also its statute against carrying off women will be described. The main subject which it had to deal with was the critical state of a there's in Britannia. Here, Duke Francis, at whose court Henry had long lived, was now an extreme old age, and as he had no son, the question was what should become of his province when he died. The determined resolution of Anne of Boja to bring about the Union of Britannia to France by a marriage between Charles VIII and its heiress Anne was creditable to her patriotism. Her personal interest was all the other way, as Ferdinand and Isabella had in 1486, promised that if she arranged a marriage between their daughter and Charles VIII, they would support her in claiming a perpetual regency in France, their hope being that she would maintain between the two countries the peace which was certain to come to an end if Charles assumed the full powers of the French crown. England was still more strongly against the Union between France and Britannia, and not

Starting point is 01:12:14 unnaturally so, considering the great danger to our navigation from the long line of coast, which would thus come into French hands instead of being hostile, as it generally had been, while under the separate government. Doubtless our mariners knew well the fact remarked on in our own time by the Duke of Wellington, how clearly ships going along our coast may be detected at a great distance by the light on their sails from the southward sun, while French ships on the other side escape notice and pursuit from their sails being in shade. Troubles between Britannia and France began even in Francis's lifetime, for the Duke received and befriended the Duke of Orleon, afterwards Louis XVI, who, after the fashion of heirs presumptive,

Starting point is 01:13:05 had raised against the region's power the war of the public good already alluded to. Accordingly, in the preceding September, an embassy had been sent to England by the French government requesting Henry to remember his old obligations to France, and either to join in the attack on Britannia or at least to remain neutral in the war. The ambassadors reached him at Leicester, and were almost immediately asked whether it was true that Charles VIII was planning a marriage with Anne. They professed to be scandalized at the very suggestion. It was well known, they said, that their master was a fiancée-a-fiance to Margaret, the daughter of Maximilian, King of the Romans. Indeed, this very young lady had for some time been residing in Paris and receiving a French education.

Starting point is 01:13:57 Besides this, they declared that Charles was arranging an expedition. into Italy. His views, therefore, were in a direction quite opposite to that of Britannia. The ambassadors might have added that Maximilian himself was the only person whom Anne would at the time hear of as a husband, as indeed she afterwards married him by proxy. Henry replied by a counter-em embassy offering his mediation for the re-establishment of peace between Britannia and France. Charles VIII declared that such an arrangement with was just what he most ardently desired. But, would it not be well, he asked, that Erzwick, the English ambassador, should go to Ren on his way home, and come to an equally clear understanding

Starting point is 01:14:43 with the Breton government? This could not well be refused, and the result was just what Charles had foreseen. The answer to Erzwick was really given, not by Francis II, but by the Duke of or Leon, whose interest was entirely against peace. Louis would hear of no terms of accommodation. He also urged most strongly that the Union of France and Burgundy must be contrary to English interests. On this, Charles asked Henry to continue his mediation till peace was brought about, but at the same time announced his own intention of at once going on with the warlike operations.

Starting point is 01:15:23 He therefore invaded Britannia and besieged Nant, June, 1487, and at this time a few English volunteers under Lord Woodville went over to help the Breton, a proceeding at which Henry professed himself very indignant. This was the state of things on which the Parliament of November 1487 had to decide. They were asked, point blank, by Archbishop Morton, whether or no they would advise the king to ally himself with Britannia against France. Morton told them that an honorable foreign war would be better for Henry than the domestic tumults which had given so much trouble of late. The position of England, as to the continent, had he remarked, been much altered for the worse of late by the absorption of Burgundy into the dominions of France and Austria, were they to

Starting point is 01:16:15 allow Britannia their own trusty Confederate to be constantly joined with France against them? Besides, such a precedent of the greater being allowed to swallow up the less would be a fatal one for small countries like Scotland, Portugal, in many of the states of Germany. These arguments seemed conclusive to the members who would naturally also fear the loss of Breton trade, as we then obtained from thence our chief supplies of linen and canvas, and a subsidy for the war was unanimously voted. Henry would not, however, begin hostility. without another embassy, and before this came to an end, the Battle of St. Oban had been fought, the Duke of Orleans taken prisoner, and Lord Woodville slain with most of his men, July 28, 1488.

Starting point is 01:17:07 Somewhat confused, at this effect of his long delay, Henry at once sent over Lord Brooke, one of his companions in exile with 8,000 men. Yet this commander could not or would not bring the French to battle, and after the death of Francis II, which occurred September 9th, the English finding that no one claimed them as ally simply returned to England five months after their departure for France. This, of course, left matters for the present in the hands of the French government, which showed it must be admitted, considerable tact in the management of difficult circumstances, beginning by claiming only Charles' right as suzerain to break the marriage of Anne with Max

Starting point is 01:17:51 a million as being contrary to the interests of France. This was done, and the unlucky king of the Romans had both to lose his wife and to take back the little daughter whom he had hoped to make Queen of France. He had, however, gained more than one point by these transactions, for though Britannia was finally lost to him, and though the Duchess Anne became the wife of Charles VIII, December 1491, yet the lady never forgot that she had once been queen of the Romans and was perpetually plotting in favor of his family. Indeed, on one occasion, she attempted to marry her daughter to Charles of Spain, Maximilian's grandson, and thus in defiance of the Salic law to make France part of his overgrown dominions. Besides this, the English, before the hope of Maximilian's marrying Anne was over,

Starting point is 01:18:46 had supported him vigorously against his own rebellious subjects at Bruges, Ghent, Ipe, and Slush. The popular party in the cities had invited the French to their aid, and under pretense that the safety of the garrison of Calais was threatened by their revolt, Henry sent about two thousand men under Lord's Morley and Dobinie, who inflicted a heavy blow upon the French besiegers of Newport. Thus, both in Britannia and on the northeastern frontier of France, there had been fighting between the English and French, while at the same time Henry and Charles strongly maintained that the peace between the countries was unbroken. The subsidy for the war granted by Henry's third Parliament in 1489 was not levied without great difficulty in the north of England.

Starting point is 01:19:36 It was opposed, most strenuously in Yorkshire and the Bishopric of Durham, the people maintaining that the miseries which they had been suffering made such payments impossible. In fact, they seemed to have been just able to tolerate a Lancasterian sovereign if he, for his part, never asked them for money. The king ordered the Duke of Northumberland to enforce the collection, but on the first attempt he was murdered by the recusance. On this, the Earl of Surrey, who had been lately released from the tower, where he had been prisoner since the beginning of the reign, was ordered to take the command against them, Henry himself, leading, up a reserve force in case of disaster. However, the rebels were put down before it arrived,

Starting point is 01:20:23 their chief leader, Sir John Egremond fled to the Duchess of Burgundy, while the plebeian rioters were hanged in considerable numbers. At about the same time with these events, Henry heard of the death of James III of Scotland, whose friendship he had repeatedly tried to win, obtaining from him in 1487 a truce for seven years, renewable for similar periods. James died miserably in consequence of an accident, which threw him from his horse and left him stunned and defenseless, 1488, to be murdered by one of the rebels who had just defeated his troops at Sokey Byrne. There is something really amusing about Henry's pomp of preparation in 1492 for a war with France to avenge the observance. To avenge the absorption of Britannia, which he had failed in hindering. The warlike spirit of England had been

Starting point is 01:21:20 strongly stimulated by the news of Ferdinand and Isabella's capture of Granada from the Moors, which arrived in the spring of that year, the city having surrendered on the 2nd of January. This indeed was an event of which it would be hard to exaggerate the importance, for the Mohammedan power had till then appeared irresistible, and the fall of Constantinople, in 1453, had invested the sultans with a thousand claims as representing the Empire of Constantine, which might at any moment be pressed in the most alarming manner. In 1486, Muhammad II had made his famous descent upon O'Tronto, intending to use this as a base of operations, first against Rome and Italy, then against the other states of Europe,

Starting point is 01:22:08 an enterprise which was hindered by nothing but his death in the following year, and the succession of the unwarlike Bajazet. The tide had now been turned by Spanish valor. Islam had lost the chief outwork of its power, and the victory had added to the territories of Castile in Aragon, a country of brilliant fertility and resource, the possession of which had an effect in consolidating the Spanish monarchy superior even to that produced in France by the annexation of Burgundy.

Starting point is 01:22:40 England had been represented at the siege of Granada only by one-gallant volunteer, Lord Scales, who had greatly distinguished himself in the early part of the war. Nevertheless, the event was celebrated by a service of triumph held at St. Paul's, and Archbishop Morton, who had now at Henry's express request been made a cardinal, congratulated the vast assembly on the close of the 700 years of war with the unbelievers in Spain, and the certainty that numberless souls would now be gained to the kingdom of Christ. Sturred to the emulation of such prowess the Parliament allowed Henry, a former act notwithstanding, to raise a benevolence for the French war. It was on this occasion that Cardinal Morton devised his celebrated fork,

Starting point is 01:23:29 ordering his commissioners to press hard, men who spent much, as this proved them to be rich, and also men who spent little, as it was plain that they must be saving largely. Tournaments and military exercises were held everywhere to stir the blood of the people, and the striking success in Flanders excited still more enthusiasm. The Duke of Saxony pretending a wish to arbitrate between his ally Maximilian and his his rebellious subjects at Bruges, had been admitted into that city with a small force. Instead, however, of staying there and communicating with the magistrates, he passed out unchecked by the gate leading to Dom and Slush, and seizing the former of these towns cut off Bruges

Starting point is 01:24:16 from the sea, access to which was all important for its trade. On this, Henry allowed his troops to help Maximilian by besieging slush, which commanded the embouchure of the canal leading to Bruges. this he was more inclined to do as ravishstein the leader of the insurgents had made slush the headquarters of a vigorous system of piracy he therefore sent sir e-pointings with a considerable force which assail the castles while the duke of saxony besieged the town after much obstinate fighting the place surrendered and the rebellion against maximilian was practically at an end very mainly through english help this however did did not overcome Henry's reluctance to plunge further into the war. True, he had assembled a force not less than 26,000 strong, but the question of ways and means constantly wait on his mind. Maximilian was above all things impecunious. His father, the old Emperor Frederick III, l'am le plu-sheish which ful-jame, as Philippe de Comines calls him, could not be reckoned on for much.

Starting point is 01:25:26 subsidies were hard to ring from the people at home, and even if collected, their value was trifling compared with the vast expense of such a war in which the commonest archer would be paid at least six pence a day, a sum as we have seen equal to six shillings of our money. Tidings also came that Ferdinand of Aragon had just made a treaty with France on most advantageous terms, receiving back Roussillon and Perpignon, which his father had pledged to France for 300,000 crowns. Accordingly, though Henry sailed for Calais, October 6th, leaving orders for the army to rendezvous there, and even began the siege of Boulogne as an installment of the sovereignty which he claimed over all France. Yet he was not insensible to the advantage of negotiating, and allowed a peace to be

Starting point is 01:26:21 concluded at Etapl, November 3rd, receiving under the name of expenses a sum of 127,000 livres, besides a pension or tribute of 6,000 livres a year to make good what he had spent in Britannia. Thus the war ended, not heroically, we must admit, yet how much better would it have been for England, if Henry's successor had been more like him in hating useless conquests? The present king's motives were doubtless mixed enough. What his enemies called avarice had much to do with his conduct, and he also feared war in general as tending to raise up competitors for a throne in some sense gained by conquest.

Starting point is 01:27:06 Averis, however, is hardly a fault when it takes the form of sparing the people taxes, and when we hear of so many sovereigns plunging into battle in order that their title may not be canvassed. We ought surely to have a good one, word for the king who thought that the permanence of his reign best secured by peace. Thus much at least must be admitted, that inspiration itself would hardly have guided Henry better at this juncture than did his own mental habits and tendencies. For a danger was soon to burst upon him which required his very fullest attention.

Starting point is 01:27:45 Well for him that it did not find him hampered by a dangerous foreign conflict in which success was unlikely and almost sure to be useless even if attained. End of Section 4. Section 5 of the early tutors by Charles Edward Moberly. This Librovox recording is in the public domain read by Pamelaugami. Chapter 4. Warbeck Blackheath Field 1492 to 1496. As early as 1491,

Starting point is 01:28:25 a youth named Warbeck had gone to Ireland in the service of a Breton merchant, Prejean Menot. He was strikingly handsome and well-dressed, and attracted considerable attention on his arrival at Cork. Gradually a report was spread that he was really a plantagenet. What precise member of that illustrious family was now among them was a point on which authorities disagreed. He was first made out to be the Earl of Warwick, then a bastard of Richard the Third, but at last all Ireland was convinced that he was no other than the Duke of York, one of the two youthful prisoners murdered in the tower. Thus encouraged, Warbeck wrote letters to the earls of Desmond and Kildare to enlist them in his cause.

Starting point is 01:29:12 He made little progress for a time in gaining powerful adherence, and had indeed as yet scarcely been heard of in England. Still, his Irish sojourn had given him a good opportunity for studying the part which he was to play. When the war with France was declared in 1492, the French government thought it worthwhile to invite him to Paris. There he was received as a royal prince and attended by a guard of honor. On the conclusion of the peace of Etape, he was not surrendered to Henry, but simply ordered to leave France, upon which Margaret of Burgundy received him with enthusiasm as her nephew, and may also have done something in the way of prompting him for his part, though the stories of her, having been

Starting point is 01:29:59 his chief instructress, are inconsistent with the comparative lateness of his visit to her. It is almost strange that Henry allowed the affair to go on thus long with so little notice. He may have thought even Margaret's genius hardly equal to such a tour de force as the launching of another counterfeit prince, only six years after her first failure in this line. and certainly did not know that Warbeck had many partisans in England and had promised Margaret that in the event of success, her long, unsettled dowry should be paid, and also her expenses for him and for the earlier Yorkist rebellions. Accordingly, he considered it enough for the present to send Sir Edward Pointings and Dr. Warham on an embassy to Flanders, July 1493, and remonstrate against the countenance

Starting point is 01:30:53 given to the pretender, taking at the same time some steps toward having a force ready in case of need. The ambassadors received only an evasive answer from the Archduke Phillips Council. It was impossible, they said, to interfere with the Duchess of Burgundy's actions within the districts which belong to her. The only method now at Henry's disposal, short of actual war, was a prohibition of trade between England and Flanders. So all Fleming's were banished from England, and the marked for English cloth transferred from Antwerp to Calais. The misfortune was that this prohibition

Starting point is 01:31:33 created distress in England as well as in Flanders, besides exciting a furious jealousy in London against the German merchants there who were less affected by it. This feeling reached such a pitch, that the steel yard, which was the, the London center of their trade, narrowly escaped utter destruction. Meanwhile, Henry, as a worthy pupil of Louis XIteenth, was using many artful means for tracking out the conspiracy against him. He directed various spies to pretend loyalty to Warbeck and his party, and thus to ascertain on

Starting point is 01:32:09 whose help they counted in England. At the same time, they were to take every opportunity of detaching Englishmen abroad from the rebellion. It was said, that he took particular care to have these spies cursed at St. Paul's as if they were really his enemies. This, however, would happen in the natural course of things if he kept secret their real intentions. The results of this policy soon appeared in the arrest of Lord Fitzwalter and some other men of rank, several of whom were beheaded. But the most startling revelations still remained. It was found that Sir William Stanley, who had been... deserted to Henry at Bosworth Field had now joined the conspiracy against him.

Starting point is 01:32:55 Little is known about the degree of Sir William's guilt. The indictment against him only specified as having said in conversation with the informer Clifford that if he were sure that the young man was King Edward's son, he would not bear arms against him. The judges held that treason could not escape from being sheltered under such a condition, and Stanley was accordingly executed February 16th, 1495. It appears also that he had deeply offended Henry by applying for the earldom of Chester, which was then, as it still is, an appanage of the crown, and annexed to the title of Prince of Wales. Meantime, Maximilian and his young son Philip were in rapture at the splendid chances which were now presenting themselves. Warbeck appears to have given them the additional promise,

Starting point is 01:33:48 either to abdicate in favor of Philip or to hold the kingdom in subordination to him. It seemed quite probable that Maximilian would soon be able to hurl all the forces of England at the King of France whom he hated so entirely. Henry the 7th, therefore, became suddenly aware that England was to be at once invaded and that Warbeck was held to be really the Duke of York. not only by those who had been maintaining him for two years, but by the Pope, by James the 4th of Scotland, by Charles the 8th of France, by the Duke of Savoy, by the King of Denmark, and perhaps also by Ferdinand and Isabella. To a man habitually prudent and foreseeing,

Starting point is 01:34:35 there is something unbearable in the thought of having allowed danger to accumulate by sheer neglect, and Henry suffered this misery to such an extent, that he became, in a few days, quite like an old man. At the beginning of July 1495, Warbeck's fleet, or rather Maximilians, was off the coast of Kent. Some of the troops on board disembarked near Deal and were at once set upon by the country people. No attempt was made to rescue the prisoners, and the expedition passed on. Its leader's little thinking that the acute Ferdinand would at once divine, that one who acted so pusillanimously could not be a genuine plantagenet. Warbeck made for Ireland and

Starting point is 01:35:23 began the siege of Waterford, which had always been favored as the original landing place of Henry II, and had shown its loyalty eight years before by holding out against Simnel. Its inhabitants now resisted the attack with such spirit for 11 days that the pretender found it necessary to raise the siege, and so little was to be accomplished in Ireland. that he now resolved to try his fortune with James IV, who had promised him help even before his departure for Flanders. Accordingly, he landed in Scotland, was received with considerable ceremony by James at Stirling, November 26th, and an invasion of England was planned for which Scotland was to be compensated by 33,000 pounds and the session of Berwick. Henry, now thoroughly awakened to his

Starting point is 01:36:15 difficulties was attempting the same arts which had prospered in Flanders. He was in constant correspondence with John Ramsey Lord Bothwell, who had promised, if possible, to kidnap the feigned boy and dispatch him to England, and also to intimidate his supporters. Bothwell traitorously pressed upon Henry that war with Scotland was always dear to Englishmen, and that James's government was most unpopular, that it would be easy to send a fleet and destroy all the shipping of the country, and that Edinburgh Castle itself was only half armed. However, before Henry was prepared for such enterprises, the Scottish raid into England took place, September 17th, and was carried out with a cruelty which shocked Warbeck himself. Indeed, he expressed his grief at it in a way which his allies considered as unprincely as his

Starting point is 01:37:12 cowardice at Deal had been. As the invaders numbered only 1400, nothing was really effected. The only reliable hope had been that Warbeck would find support beyond the border, none of which appeared during the four days which the invaders spent in England. By this time, both Charles VIII and Ferdinand had bethought themselves how important it was to compete for Henry's friendship, and each was declaring that he alone could supply undoubtedly evidence of Warbeck's real birth. Henry, not ill-pleased at finding his alliance thus valued, and his danger from Warbeck getting

Starting point is 01:37:52 less every day, nevertheless used the rebellion as an excuse for remaining neutral in the Franco-Austrian quarrel. How, he asked Ferdinand and Maximilian, could he possibly declare against France while such a home danger was close upon him? whether any of the new evidence was now communicated to James is uncertain. At any rate, Warbeck was ordered to leave Scotland and advised to land somewhere on the English coast in the hope of getting support there. That the recommendation was serious, we may judge from the fact that when he embarked at Air July 1497, it was in company with the celebrated Scottish Mariners, Andrew and Robert Barton,

Starting point is 01:38:36 of whom we shall hear more on the next reign. Instead, however, of at once carrying out James's plan, he went for the third and last time to Ireland. But finding that the deputy, Lord Kildare, would now oppose him vigorously, he thought it better to try his fortune in Cornwall, where a rebellion had been repressed only three months before and might perhaps be renewed by his presence. This Cornish dissatisfaction had originally sprung out of the old grievance of subsidies, that a trifling Scottish invasion should be held to justify such exactions all over England appeared intolerable to a sturdy race of minors, who would have thought little of resisting a few hundred foreigners, if any such, had landed in their counties. Being informed by Thomas Flumack,

Starting point is 01:39:28 a Bodman lawyer, that taxes were illegal for such a purpose, they actually resolved to march to London in arms in order to petition against the impost and to call for the punishment of those who advised it, that is, of Cardinal Morton and Sir Reginald Bray. In Devonshire their conduct was peaceful, but on entering Somersetshire near Taunton, they murdered a commissioner for the subsidy and forced Lord oddly to be their general. Under his command, they marched by way of Salisbury and Winchester into Kent, where they hoped to find a population like-minded with themselves, doubtless from the memories of Cade's rebellion. In this they had no success, the Kentishmen being proud rather of their recent resistance to Warbeck than of any achievements of their fathers.

Starting point is 01:40:17 Henry also, fortunately for himself, had forces in hand which had been prepared for the Scottish War. These were immediately ordered to advance toward Blackheath, where the rebels were now encamped, while at the same time bodies of horse were sent to their rear to prevent their straggling in that direction. Officers were also detached to the city of London to organize resistance and check the panic which seemed impending there. Confidence having been thus restored, the commanders spread a report that they intended to attack the rebels on Monday, June 24th, and having thus thrown them off their guard, they ordered their outposts at the bridge over the Ravensbourne at Deptford, to be driven in on the Saturday afternoon. This was done by Lord Dobany,

Starting point is 01:41:04 and as the Cornishman had arranged no supports in case of repulse, he had no difficulty in making his way up Black Heath Hill and charging the main body on the plane above. His victory was soon complete, 2,000 rebels being slain and the other 14,000 completely hemmed in by the troops in their rear. It is remarkable that although the good archery of Cornwall, had cost Henry the lives of 300 men slain on the field, he yet contented himself with inflicting

Starting point is 01:41:35 capital punishment on Lord Audley, Flamack, and the third leader, the Bodman blacksmith, Michael Joseph. Escaping with difficulty from some Waterford pursuers who were overhauling his vessels, Warbeck landed at Whitson Bay, and the Cornishman, no wit, daunted by the results of their excursion to the metropolis, joined him in such numbers that he was able, after a few. fashion to besiege Exeter. Being driven from thence by the Earl of Devonshire, he led about seven thousand men as far as Taunton. Then his heart failed him so miserably that he deserted his wretched followers and made for the sanctuary of Bolia in the new forest. Being taken to Exeter where Henry then was, he made a full confession of his imposter, the substance of which has been

Starting point is 01:42:25 lately confirmed by the discovery of a letter from him to his mother, written at about the same time and with family details closely corresponding to those in the confession. Strange to say, his life too was spared, even after he had made one attempt at escape, but being afterwards imprisoned in the tower, he was allowed to communicate with the captive Earl of Warwick. The two plotted a new evasion and were then both executed. The winding, ivy of a plantagenet, as Lord Bacon says, thus killing the true tree itself. Mr. Gardner, from an appendix to whose work on Richard III, the newer details here given upon Warbeck have been taken, is inclined to believe that the pretender was spared only

Starting point is 01:43:13 that he might entrap Lord Warwick. If Henry really contrived this, he must have been a graduate in treachery worthy to rank beside Louis XI and Richard III. Yet it is hard to be to see why Warwick could not have been destroyed by simpler means, and we should in justice remember that Henry let Simmel live without any such motive. Indeed, with all his faults, bloodthirstiness seems to have been foreign to his character, at any rate when he felt himself safe without capital punishments. There was a quaint kindliness to, which sounds sincere, in his reply to his counsel's condolence on his being so troubled with impostors. It is, he said, the vexation of God himself to be vexed with idols, and therefore let not this trouble any of my friends.

Starting point is 01:44:01 For myself I have always despised them, and am only grieved that they have put my people to such great trouble and misery. Even before these events came to an end, the prohibition had been removed against commerce with Flanders. The intermediate difficulties of the country had been much lightened by the patriotic conduct of the merchant adventurers, a corporation dating from the 14th century, who resolved to buy for cash goods for exportation, exactly as they would have done if there had been trade as usual. This, of course, locked up much of their capital and even hazarded their credit with foreign countries. It was therefore most important that restrictions should cease, and this was finally effected, April 1496, by a treaty called by the Fleming's the intercursus Magnus.

Starting point is 01:44:52 It guaranteed freedom of trade without licenses or passports, and in all commodities between England, Ireland, and Calais, on the one hand, and Brabant, Flanders, Eno, Holland, and Mechlin on the other. Each contracting nation was to be allowed to possess houses suitable for themselves and their merchandise in the dominion of the others, and while the traders were to pay all customary dues, they were also to be reinstated in all their former privileges. So welcome was the treaty to both parties, that the English merchants on arriving at Antwerp were escorted to their house in a kind of triumph by the whole population. It is not without regret that we find the merchant adventurers so far presuming on their services at a critical time as to make in 1497 a determined attempt to engross to themselves the whole foreign trade of the country, and to prevent all who did not belong to their corporation from resorting to countries abroad without its license. They made the matter worse by claiming the license money for a fraternity of

Starting point is 01:46:01 St. Thomas of Canterbury. An intrusion of religious pretences, which was not likely to commend their view to the general community, especially as an old claim of three shillings fourpence was now raised to no less than five pounds, besides further demands for entrance money from individuals. Yet most of this outrageous claim was conceded to them, though with a proviso that six pounds thirteen shillings fourpence should be the highest sum which they were to demand from anyone for a license to trade. And the powers which they thus acquired remained for many years a source of ever-recurring controversy. End of Section 5.

Starting point is 01:46:52 Section 6 of the early tutors by Charles Edward Moberly. This Librovoc's recording is in the public domain read by Pamela Nagami. Chapter 5. Alliances against France. Death of Henry 1497 to 1509. To trace Henry's connections with the French Wars in Italy, and his reason for joining the Italian League against Charles VIII in 1496, it is necessary to go back to events two years earlier. Charles had carried out in August 1494 the attempt on Italy of which his ambassadors had spoken

Starting point is 01:47:34 in England, not heeding either the dissuations of his wise sister with a dying advice of Louis XI 11th to give France at least five or six years of rest. He had in his mind a collection of the strangest and most confused motives and purposes that can be conceived. The strongest feeling of all was the vanity which made him wish to stand forth as a youthful Caesar or Charlemagne at the head of a France which the late annexations had made stronger than it had been for centuries. Besides this, he had a fitful belief that he was divinely ordained to break the power of the Turks. but his notions of the way to accomplish this were as indirect as those of his predecessors, San Luis, who landed at Tunis in order to conquer Jerusalem. First, Naples must be subdued, then the whole of Italy.

Starting point is 01:48:28 After this it would be easy to become king of Greece and to organize the whole for the conquest of the holy city. As to the first step, he might claim Naples as being a titular position of René of Anjou, who had ceded his dominions to Louis XI. 11th. Indeed, René had been nominally king of Jerusalem as well, so that his claim to had been conveyed by the same session. It is hardly possible to imagine a more irrational mode of opposing the victorious Turks, for Charles's plans were sure to shatter, rather than consolidate the means of resistance, by setting one Italian state against another. Besides this, it was necessary before he started to bribe other princes not to attack his own dominions during his absence, and for this purpose he surrendered to Maximilian, Actua and Franchonte,

Starting point is 01:49:24 and to Ferdinand, Rousillon, and the Cerdinia. Of these districts, the first two had been given up to Louis XIteenth and 1481, and their retrocession now laid France open on the northeast. The latter were the keys of Catalonia, also pledged to Louis in exchange for his support at a critical juncture, and their recovery was now regarded by the Spaniards as hardly less important than the conquest of Granada. Yet after all, Maximilian was not conciliated, for he knew that Charles hoped to make himself a kind of Eastern Emperor, and therefore his rival, nor yet Ferdinand, who was sure to take the first opportunity, for supporting the Aragonese dynasty of Naples, which Charles intended to dethrone.

Starting point is 01:50:17 In Italy itself, the only ally of France was Ludovico Svorsa, who had usurped Milan from his nephew Giovanni Galliato Svora, and in order to retain it, was delighted to throw all Italy into confusion by a French invasion. Only the briefest summary of the French operations can be given here. Charles at once alienated Ludovico Svorza by supporting his nephew in a fit of romantic generosity and lost the hope of Florentine friendship by insisting on entering the city as a conqueror and on delivering Pisa from its supremacy. He also began the bad fashion of carrying off works of art to ornament his own capital. In the states of the church he occupied the fortresses and drove the Pope and Cardinals,

Starting point is 01:51:10 to take refuge in the castle of St. Angelo. The result of all these follies was that, although the extraordinary unpopularity of Alfonso of Aragon made the conquest of Naples, as rapid as one within our own memory, it was utterly impossible to hold the country. For a league against France was secretly formed by Venice, Ferdinand, Pope Alexander VI, Maximilian and Sforza. These powers undertook to cut Charles off from France, and if possible, to take him prisoner. He, however, succeeded in making his way through the opposing forces at Fornovo near Piacenza, leaving behind him 9,000 men to hold his conquests, but appearing afterwards to forget all about these unfortunate troops who perished almost entirely by war and disease.

Starting point is 01:52:07 The manner in which these events influenced Henry's policy was curious and characteristic. Of course, it was ordinarily the interest of an English sovereign to form no very close connections, either with France or Spain, but to allow these powers to weaken themselves and each other by perpetual strife, so that neither might be able to join with Scotland in attacking him. The annexation of Britannia had, however, caused in England a positive, hatred of France, while the fact that her king was engaged in enterprises so far away, made it safe to side with Spain against him. Ferdinand and Isabella on their part were willing to draw toward Henry in order to use him as an ally in the rear of their great enemy.

Starting point is 01:52:57 In fact, the Spanish sovereigns had for some time been looking for opportunities of conciliating him, and their ambassador, Don Pedro de Ayala, had been most influential in persuading James of Scotland to give up his support of Warbeck, thus freeing Henry from the great danger to his reign and raising the value of his friendship. Two marriages were now planned with the object of uniting both Scotland and Spain with England and detaching both irrevocably from the French alliance. Henry's eldest son, Arthur, was to be the husband of Catherine, the younger daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella,

Starting point is 01:53:38 and his daughter Margaret, was to become Queen of Scotland. The consequences of these two marriages would be wide-reaching. That with Scotland might lead to the union of the two countries by the succession of a Scottish prince to the English throne. If this happened, Henry acutely remarked that Scotland would still be only in accession to England, and not England to Scotland, inasmuch as the greater would necessarily draw the less.

Starting point is 01:54:07 That with Spain would directly cause firmer friendship and more vigorous commercial intercourse with the Netherlands as the Archduke Philip, Maximilian's eldest son, had married Wana, Catherine's elder sister, and this again would compel the Duchess Margaret of Burgundy to desist from any further Yorkist enterprises against Henry. Yet with all these motives, to conclude Arthur's marriage at once, the negotiations for it went on slowly.

Starting point is 01:54:38 An agreement was formed about its conditions in September 1496. On August 15, 47, the patrol, though, took place at Woodstock, but the marriage itself was delayed till November 1501. The same kind of caution showed itself in Henry's adhesion, September 1496, to the Italian League. He accompanied this with a stipulation that he should not, like the other members of the Confederacy, be called upon to make war with Charles. Ferdinand was willing to receive him into the league even on these terms, feeling sure that circumstances would soon compel him to take a more decided part. Meantime, the King of Aragon was preparing, as late historical discoveries have shown, a plan for overthrowing the peculiar liberties of the Gallican Church, as established by Charles

Starting point is 01:55:32 the seventh, the grandfather of the present king. But for these, it was thought no king of France would ever dare to wage war against the Pope as Charles had been doing, or to show himself so disobedient to his spiritual authority. That the marriage of Catherine should have been thus planned with a decided object of strengthening the papacy may surely be considered as one of the most striking instances on record of the irony of fate. As having this object, it could not but be religiously dangerous to England and ominous to our liberties. Lord Bacon remarks that prosecutions for heresy were rare under Henry the 7th, yet they were not unknown for Joan Buton, Lady Young and several other persons had been burned as Wycliffeites in 1494 and the following years. And the spirit of heresy was

Starting point is 01:56:27 abroad. What then was likely to be the effect of so close an alliance with Ferdinand and Isabella, who had allowed the Inquisition to burn 500 persons annually for many years together in their dominions? Here again we should feel some gratitude to the sovereign who, whether from timidity and indecision, or from something within him which did not love cruelty, did, after all, guard us from the worst risks which his policy was likely itself to bring on. The proposal of a crusade by Alexander VI in 1500 on different principles from those pursued by Charles VIII produced a fresh indication of Henry's unwillingness to trust the Pope too far. When asked to join with Hungary, Poland, Bohemia, Venice, France, and Spain in a combined attack

Starting point is 01:57:20 against the Turks, he replied with hardly concealed contempt, that no prince on earth should be more forward than he to join so wholly an enterprise, but that surely the Mediterranean powers, being so much nearer than he was to the scene of action, and so much better supplied with ships and galleys, ought to take the initiative in it. Yet if these should refuse, rather than his holiness should go alone, he would wait upon him as soon as he could be ready, always provided that he might first see all differences among Christian princes fully settled, and might have some good Italian ports put into his hands for the retreat and safeguard of his men. That the envoy should be nothing at all discontented with this answer seems to show that the plan was not intended to be

Starting point is 01:58:13 really serious. At the time of Catherine's betrothal when she was only 13 years old and her bridegroom three years younger, the question had been raised in Spain whether she should be sent to England for education. Opinions varied on this point, some maintaining that Henry's court was morally by no means a fit place for the training of a young lady, others that as she would have to go there at last, it would be better that she should have as little remembrance as possible of any. any happier home. At the end of 1500, her journey was at length to take place, and hearing that her entrance into London was to be magnificent, Isabella wrote, entreating Henry to curtail such expenses and give Catherine, more, if possible, of his fatherly affection in lieu of them. She was to be endowed

Starting point is 01:59:05 at once with the third part of the Principality of Wales, of the Dukedom of Cornwall, and of the earldom of Chester, and in case of her becoming queen, she was to be as richly endowed as any former queen had ever been. In exchange for this somewhat hazy promise, she signed a renunciation of her dowry of 200,000 ducats. The young couple was married in the following November, and sent to reside at Ludlow Castle from which the poor young bridegroom wrote to his father after a week or two that he had never conceived the possibility of such happiness as he was then enjoying. His occupations also seemed to have been truly royal. Much of the town of Ludlow had been destroyed in the civil wars,

Starting point is 01:59:53 and he encouraged its restoration by all possible means. Besides this, he devoted himself with the help of the Welsh members of his council to the improvement of the laws by which the principality was governed. He is praised, too, for the peaceable disposition, which made him check at once, all quarrels among the members of his household. But all this genial promise was cut short by a misfortune, like that which carried off at a very early age the two other sons-in-law of the Catholic sovereigns. A neglected cold settled on Arthur's lungs, and he expired within five months of his wedding day.

Starting point is 02:00:34 Before the unhappy Catherine emerged from her retirement, an ambassador came from Spain with a public commission to bring back the princess, at the same time, claiming her dowry and payment of the income guaranteed to her. Yet so important did Henry's alliance appear to Ferdinand and Isabella that they gave their envoy private instructions to arrange, if possible, that the young widow should marry the Duke of York her brother-in-law, a boy five years younger than herself. Of course, such a marriage was irregular and would require a special dispensation from the Pope. Yet considering the object proposed by the League between Ferdinand and Henry, it seemed not impossible that such a point might be conceded, especially if, as reported, Catherine had been Arthur's wife only in name.

Starting point is 02:01:28 Subject to the chances of papal pliancy, the king thought it well to allow the parties to be a fianced to one another. Whether the marriage actually took place or not would depend on future combinations. Meantime, the Archbishop of Canterbury's country house at Croydon was appointed for Catherine's residence, and she was treated, well or ill, according to the ebbs and flows of Henry's goodwill for Spain, holding as she did a kind of political agency for the interests of her native country. At one point, Henry the seventh conceived the outrageous design of marrying her himself, but was deterred from by Isabella's declaration that such a notion was too wicked to be so much as named in Christian ears.

Starting point is 02:02:16 The conclusive reason for Ferdinand and Isabella's urgency in the affair of their daughter's second marriage must be looked for in the state of France, where Charles VIII had been succeeded in April 1498 by his cousin, Louis of Orleon, whom we have seen revolting against him in Britannia. The new king's first care was to bribe Pope Alexander VI, to grant a divorce from his unloved wife, Jean of France, the daughter of Louis XI, and to secure Britannia to the French crown by at once marrying Anne, the late king's widow. Immediately on ascending the throne, he assumed the titles of King of Naples and Duke of Milan, the former as heir to Charles VIII, the latter, as being descended from the Visconti of Milan. Before the year of his accession ended, he allied himself with Venice and the

Starting point is 02:03:14 Pope, overran the Milanese, dethroned Ludovico Sforza, who had been restored to his dukedom after Charles the 8th's retreat from Italy, and imprisoned him in the terrible castle of Lusch near Tur. He then made with Ferdinand the strange agreement that the two powers should divide Naples between them, Apulia and Calabria being assigned to Spain and the Tera di Lavo and Abruzzo to France. For this purpose, the French invaded the country in July 1501, took Frederick, king of Naples' prisoner, and occupied the provinces assigned to them, while Gonzalo di Cordova, Ferdinand's general, reduced Tarento and the southern districts. The natural consequences of this preposterous contract were not long in appearing.

Starting point is 02:04:07 The two kings differed as to the division of the central provinces, each claiming them as belonging to his own portion. This quarrel was rising to a height at the beginning of the year 1502, so that just at the time of Arthur's death, the Catholic sovereigns had the strongest motives to hold fast to the English alliance. Indeed, their ardent desire for this made them as would appear overlook many of the difficulties in the way of Catherine's remarriage. Henry, on his part, was not without scruples, which were strengthened by the decided opinion expressed by Warrum, Bishop-elect of London, against the Pope's power to sanction it. However, Bishop Fox and other high authorities were of the contrary opinion. Indeed,

Starting point is 02:04:55 considering what the Pope had already done in the way of allowing divorces, Henry might think it hard to assign any limits to his power in this direction. At any rate, the magnificent victories of Gonzalo de Cordova in Naples soon made him think no more of his doubts, and he gave full assent to the future marriage, yet by a refinement of caution, made his son execute privately a formal protest against it. The latter years of Henry were once more embittered by the fear of a Yorkist insurrection. The Duke of Suffolk was a still surviving brother. of Lord Lincoln, and had commanded for the king at Blackheath Field. This nobleman, having committed manslaughter in a brawl, was forced by Henry to appear personally

Starting point is 02:05:42 in court and there to sue out his pardon. Affronted at being thus treated like a common person, he fled to his aunt, the Duchess of Burgundy and Flanders. Finding little encouragement there, he made his peace with Henry and returned home. But just before Prince Arthur's marriage, for which he had incurred large debts, he once more retreated to Flanders in the hope that new discontents at home might afford him an opportunity. On this, Henry resorted to his former arts. Sir Robert Curzon was instructed to go over to Flanders, pretend to join Suffolk, and gain information as to his confederates at home. This led to the arrest of the king's brother-in-law, the Earl of Devonshire, husband of Elizabeth's sister Catherine, and of Lord Abogavenny, others of meaner ranks such as Sir James

Starting point is 02:06:36 Tyrrell, the murderer of the princes in the tower, were at the same time executed. The plans of Suffolk were thus deranged, and he was reduced to live in hopeless exile, receiving, however, protection in Flanders from the Archduke Philip, who, by the death of Isabella, was now King of Castile and right of Wana, his wife. Suffolk was, however, driven from this refuge by a singular accident. In January 1506, Philip and Wana were on their way to Spain in order to take possession of their heritage. Their fleet ran down the English Channel, firing guns by way of bravado when they were near the land. But in the midst of this amusement, they were surprised by a storm which shattered and dispersed their vessels, driving the sovereigns themselves into the harbor of Malcolm.

Starting point is 02:07:28 No accident could possibly be more delightful to Henry, for he thus got into his power the prince who had been his most determined adversary, launching Warbeck's expedition against him, and agreeing to receive the Crown of England in the event of its success. He eagerly invited Philip and Wana to visit him at Windsor, where, under cover of an honorable reception, they were to be still more completely in his power. Amid a thousand courtesies he still held firmly to one main point. Suffolk must be surrendered. This was at last agreed to, though with extreme unwillingness.

Starting point is 02:08:08 Henry, on his part, promising not to punish him for his rebellion, and consenting that the matter should be so arranged that the exile might seem to return of his own free will. At the same time, Philip was compelled to make a new commercial treaty which was so unpopular among his subjects that they called it the intercursus malice, by way of contrast with the Great Treaty of 1496, complaining that it sacrificed their interests by allowing English cloth to be sold in Flemish towns generally, instead of only at the two Emporia of Bruges and Antwerp, and thus taking out of their hands the profits of local, trade in their own country. Henry was now a widower of some years standing, the fair and good

Starting point is 02:08:56 Queen Elizabeth having died in 1501. Anxious at the thought that the succession to the throne now depended on the life of one's son, he began to think of marrying again. He was not too old to hope for fresh offspring, though his weak constitution gave him an appearance of age. Several ladies were at different times proposed, and he has been deservedly ridiculed for the catalogue of inquiries which he directed to be made about the personal charms of some of them. He urgently pressed for a portrait of the widowed queen of Naples, Isabella's niece, but met with a blank refusal. The lady would not allow her beauty to be sent about on approval. Maximilian's daughter Margaret, after being first queen-elect of France, then wife to the heir apparent of Spain, then Duchess of Savoy, seemed at one time likely to

Starting point is 02:09:53 end with being Queen of England. Besides this, Henry had been more than suspected of ardently admiring Queen Wana on the Windsor visit, when the evident ill health of her husband gave a prospect of his death, which happened a few months after. All these schemes having failed, the king made a virtue of necessity, and remained for the rest of his life unmarried. A curious attempt was made in 1508, to procure from Pope Julius II, who had succeeded Alexander VI in 1503, the canonization of King Henry VI.

Starting point is 02:10:32 Lord Bacon hints that the fees payable to the Roman court on such occasions were unreasonably high, amounting as they did to nearly 1,000 ducats. He inclines, however, to the view that Julius was too sensible so to honor one who was little better than a natural. That the expense would not have deterred Henry is proved by his having willingly paid similar fees for the canonization of Anselm, which took place at this time. As there were no regular parliamentary subsidies in the last 13 years of Henry's reign,

Starting point is 02:11:05 he had to provide for the expenses of government otherwise and did so by means which have stained his memory deeply. He made money out of every office in his court, received bribes for conferring bishoprics, and sold pardons to those concerned in the Cornish rebellion, the sums paid varying from one pound to 200 pounds. But far the most discreditable exactions were those which are connected with the names of Richard Empson and Edmund Dudley, the former, a toaster tradesman's son, employed by Henry in imitation of Louis XVI's, love for low-born ministers, the latter, the founder, at least, of a great family, as his son John played a considerable part in English history under his successive titles of Lyle, Warwick, and Northumberland.

Starting point is 02:11:57 These men enriched Henry by a course of the most odious chicane directed against wealthy men all over England. We hear of their prosecuting Sir William Capel for being remiss in inquiring about base coin when Lord Mayor of London and fining him two thousand pounds. As this was the second time Sir William had been thus treated, he firmly refused to pay, and remained a prisoner in the tower till the end of the reign. Other persons were indicted of crimes before magistrates, and then left in prison untried in defiance of Magna Carta till they consented to pay fines or ransoms for their freedom. Sometimes, as Lord Bacon tells us, Empson and Dudley even dispensed with the help of magistrates and committed accused persons to prison by their own authority, the pecuniary object in each case being the same.

Starting point is 02:12:53 They got enormous sums for restoration in cases of technical outlawry, and even tried to establish the principle that such a composition should never be less than half a man's income for two years after the outlawry began. Endless vexations were also practiced at times when new heirs were succeeding to landed property by maintaining and aggravating every feudal extraction applicable to such occasions. Especially was this the case with royal wards, whose lands were given up to them only after paying extravagant fines. Empson and Dudley had also agents everywhere employed in the detestable task of hunting out defects in the title of landholders, and trying to revive obsolete rights of the crown. This practice, a return to which had an after-year-so-much to do with the ruin of Charles I,

Starting point is 02:13:47 would almost certainly have overthrown both Henry himself and his dynasty if it had been carried on long. As it was, his feeling of his approaching end made him inclined to listen to remonstrances, some of which were urged, as we are glad to hear, by the honest. boldness of the court preachers. Yet the abuses were not restrained till the king had amassed treasure to the surprising amount of 1,800,000 pounds, while his agents had laid up for themselves a store of public hatred, which only waited for their master's death to discharge itself. Henry's last public act was the conclusion of a project of marriage between his daughter Mary and Charles Prince of Castile, the son of

Starting point is 02:14:34 Philip and Juana. He thus hoped that he had built round his kingdom the longed hoped-for wall of brass, since he was to have for his son-in-law the king of Scotland on the one side and the future Lord of Spain and Burgundy on the other. When he perceived his end approaching, he proclaimed a general pardon for state offenses and also showed some desire that unjust acquisitions of the crown should be restored. Soon after this, he died calmly at Richmond, April 22nd, 509, at the age of only 52, and after a reign of 23 years and eight months, the troubles of which had long ago brought on him infirmities far beyond his years. End of Section 6. Section 7 of the early tutors by Charles Edward Mowberley. This Librovox recording is in the public domain read by Pamela Nagami.

Starting point is 02:15:40 Chapter 6. Legislation for Ireland. English Laws of Henry the Seventh. Foreign trade, Maritime Discovery, 1485 to 1509. The administration of Ireland in this reign, as indeed in most grains, stood in such a different footing from that of England, that it is well to speak of it separately. If indeed, we ought not rather to say, that all administration there had come to an end since the days when the popular government of Richard Duke of York had drawn away so much of the country's strength to perish in the Battle of Wakefield. Of course, as the wars of the roses got fiercer and fiercer, it became more and more out of the question to send either men or money there, or even to forbear from recalling its English colonists. Thus, the purely Irish families recovered much of

Starting point is 02:16:38 their lost ground, especially in Ulster. In the South and West, the few remaining English were content to assimilate themselves to the Native Irish. So the Geraldines, as Spencer tells us, were so enraged at the death of the Earl of Desmond in 1467 that they rose in arms against Edward the Fourth and renounced all obedience to the crown of England, carrying with them the greater part of the English in Munster, while the Norman families of Butler and DeBurr became as Irish as the O'Neils or O'Donels, living according to Brehonelagh and making private war at their pleasure. Many of them took Irish names, adopted the Irish language, dressed in Irish fashion, contracted marriage and fosterage with the natives, formed their retainers into bastard seps, and instead of regular

Starting point is 02:17:33 rents and services, learn to practice the irregular exactions called by the English coin and livery. These renegades to Irishry, says Mr. Goldman Smith, seem to have imbibed even the peculiarities of Irish intellect. For the Earl of Kildare, the head of the Geraldines, being summoned, to answer for an act of sacrilege and burning down the cathedral of Kachel, pleaded in his defense that he thought the Archbishop was in it. To the strange attraction which thus acted upon the English settlers must be ascribed many of the sternest and most repressive Irish laws of the Plantagenets. Thus, if the statute of Kilkenny passed under Lionel, Duke of Clarence in 1367, forbade the English to let the Irish grazed cattle on their lands, its object was not so much to hinder Irishmen from prospering

Starting point is 02:18:28 as to keep Englishmen aloof from the companionship which tempted them so strongly to forswear their country. The uncharted freedom of Irish life carried with it so strange an allurement that it was all which law could do to contend against it. If Ireland had any preference for either of the great contending parties in England, it was, as we have seen for the House of York, and from this cause chiefly sprang the change of Henry V. Seventh's mode of governing the dependency, which on ascending the throne he had found all but severed from his dominions. At first he had thought it best to employ the native nobility for this purpose, and had chosen for deputy, the Earl of Kildare, setting him as the story ran to rule all Ireland, because all Ireland could not rule him.

Starting point is 02:19:22 When, however, he had time to reflect on the dangers springing from the Irish support of Simnel and Warbeck, from which he and his dynasty had escaped so narrowly, he perceived the necessity of bringing the country under a more regular government. Accordingly, he sent over in 1494, at the time when Warbeck was preparing for his descent on England, Sir Edward Pointing's as Lord Deputy, a statesman and commander, well experienced in the most important affairs of the time. Pointing soon found that his military enterprises against Warbeck's wild Irish supporters in Ulster were always foiled in respect of the mountains and fastnesses in which the enemy found refuge, On this, he accused his predecessor Lord Kildare of correspondence with the rebels,

Starting point is 02:20:15 procured his attainder by the Irish Parliament, and ordered him to be arrested and sent to England. Meanwhile, he summoned a parliament at Drogeta and there carried among other acts the two most commonly associated with his name. By the first of these, it was provided that all statutes lately made in England should be deemed good and effectual in Ireland. It had been common, as Mr. Hallam remarks, to extend to Ireland the operation of English statutes, even when that country was not particularly named, if the judges thought that the subject was

Starting point is 02:20:52 sufficiently general to require it, and a majority of them had held in Richard the Third's reign that Burroughs in Ireland were bound by statutes made in England. From the date of Pointing's law, all doubt was held to be clear. appeared away as regards any English statutes passed before it, though it is hard to see how the expression statutes lately passed could be so all-embracing. Those subsequent to that date were not binding on the people of Ireland unless specially named or included under general words, such as all His Majesty's Dominions. It may be well here to remark that a declaratory act of Parliament was passed in comparatively recent times, 1719, making it still more clear that the crown with the consent

Starting point is 02:21:44 of the Lords and Commons of Great Britain and Parliament had power to make laws to bind the people of Ireland. It was the repeal of this law which in 1782 led to the independence of the Irish Parliament, which lasted up to the Union of 1800. Still more important was the provision in another section of the same statute that no parliament should be held in Ireland without the bills intended to pass at it being submitted to the king in council. These were then to be returned to Ireland under the great seal, and either passed or rejected as seemed good to the Irish Parliament, but not altered or amended. Thus the Irish colonists, in spite of the status of Ireland as a separate kingdom were debarred from the privilege of independent legislation. And yet, when we consider how small a portion

Starting point is 02:22:38 of the population of Ireland they formed, and by what oppressive means they habitually aimed at securing the ascendancy, it can hardly be seriously denied that some such control was really imperative. This, in fact, is clear enough from other parts of the same statute which were aimed at curbing the lawlessness of the settlers. In case of one of their number being murdered, they were forbidden by it from pillaging or exacting a fine from the scept of the slayer, though this had been expressly allowed by the Dublin Parliament in 1475. Noblemen were restrained from private war, and from making the citizens of towns their retainers for this purpose, and coin and livery were again forbidden under stronger penalties. In the same year, Henry suppressed the so-called fraternity of St. George in Ireland,

Starting point is 02:23:33 which had been established to meet the anarchy caused there by the Wars of the Roses, and bore some resemblance to the Spanish Hermandad described in Chapter 1. It consisted of 13 deputies sent up by the counties of Kildare, Dublin, Meath, and Laoth, who bound themselves to maintain a small and quickly moving force of 120 archers and 40, horsemen, always ready to arrest rebels and those for whose apprehension warrants had been issued. Every year on St. George's Day, the members met at Dublin and elected a captain for the ensuing year. To defray their expenses, the government had assigned to them the proceeds of attacks of one shilling in the pound on merchandise landed at Dublin. Doubtless the mode in which such a body acted

Starting point is 02:24:24 would have too much of the appearance of private war to find much favor in Henry's eyes. After the recall of Sir Edward Pointings, the country was governed in an irregular way, sometimes under Lord Kildare, whose attainder was reversed by the English Parliament in 1495, sometimes under English governors, one of whom was Henry Dean, Bishop of Bangor, and afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, whose power of persuasion had done much to secure the passing of Pointing's laws by the Irish Parliament. The mention just made of Henry's legislation in Ireland may properly introduce some account of his English enactments, which are most important and practical, founded as they are mainly on the admirable principle that obedience to existing laws and a general

Starting point is 02:25:17 feeling of responsibility are what a good government should chiefly aim at securing. In fact, in spite of the many faults of Henry's administration, Lord Bacon seems quite justified in stating that in legislation he deserves a place among our early kings next to that of Edward I. With regard to the power of the crown, he carried two highly important statutes. The first is that which exempts from the penalties of treason, all who do service to a de facto king. Lord Bacon's view of this law is that it was rather just than legal, rather magnanimous than provident, as it made rebellion easy by securing from punishment those who served any pretender to the crown who might be strong enough to establish his power for a time.

Starting point is 02:26:09 Yet on the other hand, it would make rebels begin sooner to think of an accomplice. accommodation, instead of fighting on as men do whose life is certain to be forfeited in case of defeat, and was therefore so far in favor of a king de jour. And when we think how manifestly just it was, that the same law which made it treason, as in Sir W. Stanley's case, to express the slightest and most hypothetical doubt as to the title of an actual sovereign, should also protect those who upheld it, We may be inclined to recur once more to Burke's admirable dictum that in political matters, magnanimity is always the truest wisdom. This law passed in 1496 was in a manner counterpoised by an earlier one, 1488, which made it a capital crime to conspire the death of any of the king's

Starting point is 02:27:05 council or of any lord of the realm. That of 1496 did not protect persons serving a possible Republic or possible protector of England. Had it done so, Sir Henry Vane could not have been executed at the restoration for the one crime of having been an energetic minister under the Republic. Another class of laws was aimed at the repression of acts of violence. Thus, it was made in 488 a capital crime to carry off heiresses or women of property in order to marry them by force, An instance had occurred in which a widow named Margaret had been so treated by a band of men, a hundred in number, who had been pursued by 40 others, Modo, Guerrino, Armati, armed in warlike manner, into another county, and there overcome and arrested.

Starting point is 02:28:01 In the same year it was ordained that trials for murder should follow while the memory of the deed was fresh and evidence easily attainable. instead of being delayed, as they often were for a year and a day, in order that the friends of the deceased, might have a chance of first proceeding by the private and vindictive mode of action called appeal of murder, which Lord McCauley has described in its application to the case of Spencer Compton. Another act of 1488 allowed justices to determine without a jury all the offenses against unrepealed statutes except treason, murder, and felony. It was on this statute that Emson and Dudley relied in trying men privately in financial cases. But far the most important of the laws passed by Henry in favor of public order was that which in 1488 established the celebrated Court of Star Chamber. Its preamble states that the King,

Starting point is 02:29:00 remembering how by unlawful maintenancees, giving of liveries, untrue demeanings of sheriffs and the making of panels, by taking of money by juries, and by great riots and unlawful assemblies, the policy and good order of this realm is almost subdued, and that for punishing these inconveniences, little or nothing may be found by inquiry, that is, by an ordinary trial before a jury, ordains that the chancellor, treasurer, and privy seal with a bishop, and a temporal order of the council and two judges, shall have authority to call before them offenders, and, and and witnesses, and to examine and punish them according to statute. This was held to be not so much

Starting point is 02:29:45 a novelty as a parliamentary recognition of an ancient authority inherent in the Privy Council. At any rate, it furnished the crown with the most powerful instrument for checking abuses and was soon held to apply to forgery, fraud, perjury, contempt of court and many other crimes, nay, even occasionally, to civil causes. Hardly a term passed without juries being fined by it for acquitting felons or murderers contrary to the evidence. Sir John Hussey, a member of the Privy Council, was prosecuted in the Star Chamber in 1492 by Alice Fortman as accessory to the murder of her husband. Noblemen were indicted before it for sheltering outlaws or for interfering with the election of

Starting point is 02:30:32 sheriffs and justices of the peace punished for neglecting their duties. The fines imposed at this time by it, though mostly less ruinous than those of afterdays, when prosecutor and judges were alike enriched by them, were still such as thoroughly to daunt evil-doers. Sometimes also men of rank had to appear almost naked and sue for pardon. Above all, the Court of Star Chamber aimed at enforcing the statute of livery, which prohibited under heavy penalties, the maintenance by noblemen of large bodies of retainers wearing their livery and ready to wage private war in their behalf. All histories mentioned the enormous fine of 15,000 marks, equivalent to more than 100,000 pounds of our money, which Henry inflicted on his staunch

Starting point is 02:31:22 supporter, the Earl of Oxford, for breaking this statute in order to entertainer. him more splendidly. It appears to be a close imitation of the conduct of Louis XI the 11th in vindicating his sole right of chase by burning all the nets and other implements collected by the seer de Montmorency for his use on a visit. It was, however, far more justifiable than this act of the French king, for it is evident that the Earl of Oxford's conduct, if established as a precedent, would at any time have justified noblemen and surrounding themselves with large bodies of warlike supporters just when the king was going to receive their hospitality, and thus to place himself most completely in their power if they had any treasonable

Starting point is 02:32:14 intentions. Other laws of this period were aimed at benefiting the people according to the ideas than current. Henry, following the example of Ferdinand and Isabella, endeavored to regulate the weights and measures throughout England. He introduced the first Navigation Act, providing that Gwynan woed from Saxony and Longtuck, should be conveyed only in English vessels, and thus sacrificing cheapness in these commodities to the hope of creating a navy. He ordered that the bylaws of trade guilds should not be binding till they have, had been sanctioned by the great officers of state. With a notion of humanity, much in advance of his time, he got Parliament to enact that jailerships should not be patent offices, but should be

Starting point is 02:33:03 always under the control and responsibility of the sheriffs. Abuses in prisons were, however, too deeply rooted to be thus abolished. And he provided the order for suits in Forma Pao Peres and which attorneys and counsel were assigned free of all charges, to very poor men, a fact on which Lord Campbell has made the interesting remark, that in our day, counsel are always anxious to do their very best on such occasions, as also in defending persons accused of treason, when fees are illegal. Another important part of Henry's legislation was that which had to do with foreign trade. This occupied much of his attention, as we might expect from a king who had watched Louis Xer's

Starting point is 02:33:49 exertions in this line. The chief exports of England at this time were wool, cloth, and hides. Our lead mines roofed nearly all the cathedrals and large buildings of Europe, and of tin we had a monopoly. The chief foreign market for wool was afforded by the Netherlands. Accordingly, one of the main objects of our commercial policy was to foster this trade, and also, if possible, to force English cloth into sale in Flanders, in spite of the the jealousy felt there against the rising manufacturers of England, which were bidding fair to supersede their own. As we have seen, the risks from this cause were much aggravated by Margaret of Burgundy's vehement hatred to the Lancasterian king, which had once caused the transference

Starting point is 02:34:38 to Calais of the English staple. When this cause of difference had at length ceased, the intercursus Magnus of 1496, replaced the Flemish trade on a sufficiently liberal basis. Besides its already mentioned provisions, it ordained that custom-house officers were to be polite and not to break up packages needlessly, and that on no account were they to force sales to themselves. In case of injury, the aggrieved party was not to make reprisals, but to appeal to the offender sovereign, and to avoid piracy, each owner was to deposit double the value of his ship and cargo to be forfeited if his mariners could be proved guilty of that crime. Neither party was to allow foreign vessels to be attacked in its ports, by any hostile power, or their plundered to be

Starting point is 02:35:34 sold there. In case of shipwreck, the cargo might be reclaimed within a year and a day on payment of salvage expenses. Care was also taken to foster the Mediterranean trade, which subsequently lost much of its importance through Vasco da Gama's discovery of the sea route to the east by the Cape of Good Hope, 1497, but was still considerable in Henry the 7th's time. It was conducted almost entirely through the Republic of Venice, whose galleys used to come in flotillas to the English Channel, and unload at sandwich, Southampton, and London. Their cargo consisted of spices, including pepper, Malmsey wine from the Moray and Crete, sugar from Cyprus, Crete, and Alexandria, silk from Persia, Syria, Greece, and Sicily, cotton from Egypt and India, glass from the east,

Starting point is 02:36:30 and from the Morano factories at Venice, together with paper, illuminated books, and other articles. The Venetians exported in return the standard English commodities of wool, cloth, hides, lead, and tin, being liable like other merchants to a suit for non-use if they did not take return cargoes of English goods. The trade with France was chiefly for Gaskin wines, woed from Toulouse, and salt linen and canvas from Britannia. when Louis X124 avenged some injuries done to his subjects in England by forbidding the export of wines and French bottoms, this naturally compelled the English to use their own vessels for this purpose, a tendency much strengthened by the Navigation Act already alluded to. From Spain came large quantities of sweet wines, fruit and fine cordovan leather, manufactured from goat and kidskins, with the iron of Bilbao, which was much used for agricultural

Starting point is 02:37:33 purposes because of its flexibility. The Spanish horses were also of a particularly fine breed and much prized as hacks and chargers. Accordingly, the commercial intercourse with Spain was considerable, and our merchants in Spain and Andalusia obtained in 1530 the privilege of meeting at Seville, Calith or Saint-Lucar, and they're electing their own governors, with 12 ancient and expert persons to be their assistants, so that they might be defended from Spanish exactions and the tyranny of the Inquisition. It is remarkable that an unadventurous reign like that of Henry the 7th should have been one of such extensive maritime discovery. The lead in this direction was of course taken by other nations, especially the Portuguese, who were the first to apply the astrolabe to navigation, using it as we do

Starting point is 02:38:30 the sextant for observations of latitude, and also the first to trust the Mariners' compass for ocean voyages. They thus succeeded in reaching Cape Verde in 1443, Cape Sierra Leone in 1462, Cape Lopez in 1469, and the Cape of Good Hope in 1486. The right of discovery along the African, Coast was yielded to them by Spain in a treaty of 1479, in spite of the prior claims of the latter country as having colonized the Canaries in 1393. The establishment of a Portuguese monopoly in this direction naturally turned the thoughts of mariners in another, and as the hour had come when new discovery was almost imperative, so the man inspired to make it was not long wanting. In 1482, Christoval Colon, whose name was Latinized into Columbus, vainly laid his projects for

Starting point is 02:39:29 reaching Asia by sailing westward before the authorities of his native Genoa, who thought them beyond their means, and then, before the Portuguese government, which tried to steal a march on him by privately dispatching a vessel in the direction indicated by him. Deeply resenting this ungenerous conduct, he went to Spain and 14th. and finding the delays they're intolerable, dispatched his brother Bartolomeo to England in the next year. Bartolomeo was, however, taken by pirates and remained long in captivity. Thus it was only on February 13, 1488, that he was able to present to Henry the 7th, a map of the world drawn by himself, and to ask his patronage for his brother. The king liked the scheme so well that his offers actually preceded those made in Spain to Columbus,

Starting point is 02:40:25 yet by a new series of cross-accidents, Bartolomeo reached Spain only after his brother's departure from Palos in 1492, and in fact after he had discovered the West Indies. Never surely since the world began was the fate of nations and continents decided by such a succession of strange casualties as those, which on the one hand produced Columbus's success, and on the other, ordained that Spain, not England, should be the power under whose flag it was achieved, and that the energy of our country should not be frittered away, as that of Spain was, upon a vast system of gold and silver mining by slave labor. meantime, a healthier, though less romantic series of discoveries, was giving England the first claim

Starting point is 02:41:18 to a Western Empire a far superior ultimate value to all than even Mexico or Peru had to offer. As early as 1496, Henry V. 7 issued to John Cabot, Gaboto, a Genoese mariner, long resident at Bristol, a patent of leave to discover unknown lands and to conquer and settle them. The king was to receive a fifth of the profits without paying any part of the charges. Instead of money, he gave a monopoly of trade with the countries to be discovered and their government subject to the English crown. Like Columbus, Cabot hoped to find a passage to the Indies, only his aim was a northwestern instead of a due westward route.

Starting point is 02:42:04 One ship alone could be chartered. This sailed from Bristol on June 24, 1497, and Cabot. was soon rewarded by the discovery of Newfoundland, whose fog banks must have been the strangest contrast to the sunny lands discovered by Columbus five years before. He then reached Cape Breton, which is called Prima Vista, and probably also Nova Scotia, thus seeing the mainland of America before Columbus, who only in his last voyage of 1498, coasted along the isthmus of Panama. There is infinite reason to regret that Sebastian Cabot, John's son, and successor, had not more of Columbus's enthusiasm and literary power, so as to put his memoirs in a shape

Starting point is 02:42:49 which would have preserved them. We only know that he made, almost immediately after his father's death, one or more voyages on the original track, going as far north as the Arctic Circle, but being hindered from pressing beyond it or into Hudson's Bay by a mutiny of his crews who were naturally alarmed at the masses of ice surrounding them. After this, he entered the service of Spain, and in 1525 was commissioned to make a voyage to the Maluccas by the newly discovered Strait of Magellan. The discontent of his officers was, however, so threatening that he turned up the Rio de la Plata and spent some years in exploring the countries near it, ascending in boats the rivers Piranha and Paraguay, and asking in vain for help to colonize these

Starting point is 02:43:37 fine plains. In the course of one of his voyages, it is hard to say which, he ran along the American coast as far south as Florida, thus surveying not less than 1,800 miles of low and featureless shore. During his absence, the Bristol merchants sent light vessels westward almost every year in quest of new lands, and had he been in England in 1509, there is at least a possible chance that Henry the 8th's ambition might have been turned to discovery rather than war. Under Edward the 6th, he came here again receiving a pension of 250 marks in the title of Grand Pilot, an office which appears to have been created for him. Curiously enough, the only personal glimpse of the great navigator which we can obtain is an account of his

Starting point is 02:44:28 deathbed. Few men have ever lived a more active life, nor were his efforts without immediate effect on the national welfare, considering the wealth ever since derived from the New Finland fisheries. But his chief glory will ever be that he provided against the time to come a reserved space practically inexhaustible for the swarming thousands of northern Europe, where every nerve would be strung by hardship and peril, where in spite of the vast scale of obstacles, nature might still be subdued to men's needs, and where freedom would have a natural home. Such was the noble region discovered for England by this Italian mariner. Nor ought we to ignore the mental effect of such additions to knowledge and the extraordinary stimulus which they gave to thought, just as

Starting point is 02:45:20 learned Romans felt that the world became grander to them when the mystery of Britain was at length revealed by Caesar's invasion, so thinking men at the close of the 15th century saw with a kind of rapture, creation thus broadening on their view. Before these days, says Peter Martyr in a letter to Cardinal Sforza, hardly half of the world's circumference was known to geographers. Of the rest, only the feeblest and most uncertain mention had ever been made. But now, glorious to relate, light has, under the auspices of our sovereigns, been thrown on the secret of the ages. I feel my heart elated with real blessedness, when I confer with intelligent men who have been in those countries. Let others delight in avarice or the lusts of the flesh, but let us be filled

Starting point is 02:46:15 with rapture and thinking of God, who has revealed such wonders in our day. End of Section 7. Section 8 of the early tutors by Charles Edward Mulberry. This Librovox recording is in the public domain read by Pamela Nagami. Chapter 7. The Revival of Classical Learning, 1390 to 150, Part 1. When the great masterpieces of ancient literature were first rediscovered and then spread far and wide by means of manuscript and printed copies, the effect on intellectual minds was not a little like that described at the end of the last chapter.

Starting point is 02:47:07 A wide and grand America of inward thought was restored after centuries of oblivion, and that with the effect, not merely of increasing knowledge, but of revolutionizing, all methods of reasoning, placing all opinions in a different point of view, and awakening a new and energetic trust in the future. There could be no doubt whatever that life was worth living when any day might restore to students some new treasure of lost wisdom, and when, moreover, each new discovery through ever-increasing light upon those already made, and brought nearer and nearer, the final victory over the old learning, which not seldom employed its crabbed and debased Latin in investigating by hopeless logical methods, a variety of questions which had better

Starting point is 02:48:00 have been left alone. Knowledge now showed herself once more enrobed in beauty. Accordingly, the time was one of progress, such as it is hard for us even to imagine. Of course the knowledge of Latin writers had never thoroughly died out in medieval Europe. Monks had cultivated their domains according to the precepts of the Roman writers on agriculture. At a very early date, Virgil and Horace, with Staceous and Ovid, were read in German schools, and at home we have only to look through a few pages of Chaucer to see his familiarity with these poets. Infinite pains were every now and then employed in ransacking libraries for manuscripts of the great Latin authors. In this way, the celebrated Pogo Bracolini, while attending the Council of Constance

Starting point is 02:48:53 in 1415, discovered at the monastery of Sangal, covered with filth and rubbish, and on the point of perishing from age and neglect, what turned out to be a complete copy of Quintilian and another of the greater part of Valerius Flacus's Argonautica, the same distinguished bookfinder afterwards lighted upon the last twelve comedies of Plautus and Cicero's Verrine Orations, De Aratore, and Brutus. Others of Cicero's orations had been discovered about a century before. After adding a manuscript of Lucretius to his discoveries, Pojo sought with the utmost anxiety, but in vain for the works of Tacitus. These were not discovered

Starting point is 02:49:42 till nearly a hundred years later when a copy of the histories came to light in Germany and was presented to Pope Leo the 10th. Most passionate of all was the longing to discover the lost works of Livy. A monk assured Pojo

Starting point is 02:49:57 that he had seen a copy in the Cistercian monastery of Sora, but all inquiries for it were in vain and the blank still remains unsubes. applied, except as regards about 30 books. The enthusiasm for classical works was in proportion to their rarity. Alfonso of Oregon, king of Naples, refused, even when engaged in a campaign, to miss his daily lecture on Livy, and is said to have been cured of a severe illness by the delight of hearing Quintus Curtius Red. Even at an earlier date, Giovanni Diravena, a pupil of

Starting point is 02:50:37 Petrarcha, knew by heart all the classics which had been discovered up to his time. Nor had Petrarcha himself been far behind on this point, for he tells us that in the course of a walk, he went over in his own mind the whole works of Virgil, Erosius, Pliny, Mela, and Claudian in order to remember all that these authors had said about the position of Ultimatul. Indeed, this great man who was reverenced as the father of Italian patriotism may also be said to have done more than any other single person in restoring scholarship, and that more than a century before the times of the Great Renaissance. From him, the enthusiasm for these pursuits spread very widely in Italy, and even strongly affected politics, inasmuch as Rienzi's rebellion against the papal power in 1347, was an attempt to set up once more in Rome, the authority of the Sanatus Popolusque Romanus, and was entirely founded on classical ideas, thus gaining Petrarcha's strongest sympathy.

Starting point is 02:51:47 Yet even the enthusiasm of this period was slight, in comparison with that of the later time when Greek teachers and Greek books came at last to exhibit ancient thought, not in the form which Roman eclecticism had to, given it, but in its simple and native beauty. The more advanced knowledge of Greek began with Manuel Chrysolorus. This eminent man came to Venice about 1390 to entreat help against the Turks who were already threatening Constantinople. When his embassy was over, he was persuaded to return and settle at Florence as professor of his native language. In 1422, Francesco Philelpho, Chrysolorus's son-in-law and two other Italians Guarino and Orispa were dispatched to Constantinople to collect books.

Starting point is 02:52:42 Guarino was shipwrecked on his return, and one of two valuable cases of manuscripts went down with the vessel. A disaster which is said to have turned his hair completely white, though he was hardly 20 years old. Orispa, more fortunate, arrived at Venice in the next year. bringing 238 precious volumes, among which were the works of Plato, Lucian, Xenophon, Deodoris, Arian, Strabo, Kalamachus, and Pindar. Velao himself remained abroad till 1427, and then returned to become the master of Greek learning in his native country. After him, a succession of magnificent scholars maintained in this new field the honor of Italy. When Henry the 7th came to the throne, the celebrated Polition, so named from his birthplace,

Starting point is 02:53:38 the Tuscan Monte Pulciano, his family name, being Amborogini, was 30 years old and had greatly distinguished himself by his knowledge of the classical authors and of Roman laws. Contemporary with him was Marsilio Ficino, the translator of Plato, and Pico di Mirandola, who before his death at the age of 31, had studied Jewish literature with the most unwearied industry, was planning a gigantic defense of Christianity to be founded upon it, and lived in hope of being allowed to preach this doctrine, going from town to town barefooted with crucifix in hand. At this point began the connection of English scholars with Italian learning.

Starting point is 02:54:25 Inasmuch as William Grossin, after having been for some time Greek professor at Oxford, spent two years, somewhere between 1485 and 1491, at Florence, attending the lectures of Poletian and Calcondolas, and about the same time the celebrated Linacre, afterwards founder of the College of Physicians, was selected because of the elegance and modesty of his manners as the associate in study of Lorenzo de Medici's children. On their return, these heroes of learning communicated their own ardor to kindred spirits in England, above all to Colette, afterwards Dean of St. Paul's, who himself spent some time in Italy, and to Sir Thomas Moore. What rank was held by these last in the Republic of Letters, we can in some degree judge from the account of them

Starting point is 02:55:19 given by Erasmus, who, on coming to Oxford in 1498 to study Greek there, declares that to be in company with such men as Colette, he would not refuse to live even in Scythia. When I hear my friend Colette, he says on another occasion, it is like listening to Plato himself. In Grossin, who does not admire the wide range of his knowledge? What could be more searching, deep, and refined than the judgment of Linacre? And when did nature ever mold a character more gentle, endearing, and happy than Thomas Moore. We may judge two of the boldness with which literary research was then pursued by the recorded fact that Grossin after giving at St. Paul's the one or two first lectures of a course on the

Starting point is 02:56:10 celestial hierarchies, which were supposed till then to have been written by Dionysius the Ariapagite, the disciple of St. Paul, suddenly announced to the astonished audience that continued study had made him absolutely disbelieve the genuineness of this work, and that the course was therefore at an end. No such bold assertion had been made since Lorenzo Vala had dared to prove the letter of Abgaras to our Lord and the donation of Constantine to be forgeries. And in uttering it, Grossin may be said to have inaugurated that English love of truth in matters of knowledge, and science, which has borne ever since then such noble fruits among us. Thus classical literature soon became in England a pursuit most generous and inspiring,

Starting point is 02:57:05 never getting pedantic as in Italy, where men quarreled almost to the death on the smallest matters of philology, and on such questions as whether Lucius and Arunthius were sons or grandsons of Tarquinius Priscus. Still less was there ever. in England, any of the strange longing for heathenism, which appeared every now and then in Italy, as when Pomponius Lytus raised an altar to Romulus, and imitated in private the worship described by Avid. Nor were Englishmen ever inclined to heathenize Christianity by classicizing the language of the Bible, as when an Italian expressed God the Father by Nimborum Pater imbripotens, the Holy Ghost by Kylestis Zephyrus, and the Eucharist by Sin Karum Kerum.

Starting point is 02:58:00 Far different were the thoughts which occupied such men as Moore, Colette, Grossin, and Erasmus. We find Moore, for instance, lecturing at St. Lawrence Church in the old Jewry on the Kiwitate Day of Augustine, that is, on the ways of God to man. A very singular occupation remarks Sir James McIntosh, for a young lawyer. His house was, according to Erasmus, a school and exercise of the Christian religion. All its inhabitants, male and female, applied their leisure to liberal studies and profitable reading, though piety was their principal care. From purely classical work, Moore was debarred in later life, both by his civil employments and by the practical turn of his mind. What his taste in such matters was, we may guess from his sending to his imaginary utopia, a pretty fardle of books,

Starting point is 02:58:58 containing the most part of Plato's works, some of Aristotle's, and Theophrastus on plants. Of the poets he continues, they have Aristophanes, Homer, Euripides, and Sophocles, in Aldus small print. Of the historians, Thucydides, Herodotus, and Herodian. They set great store by Plutarch's books and are delighted with Lucian's merry conceits and jests. Learning like this had been thoroughly transfused into Moore's mind and had in manner become his very self. Instead of merely quoting Plato, he tried to think as Plato would have thought, if placed among the exigencies of modern life. In the same manner, Collette, Dean of St. Paul's, looked upon all classical acquirements as valuable, mainly from its power of ordering the mind for thought purposes and raising it to the noblest objects.

Starting point is 02:59:58 A theologian above all things, he loved chiefly to dwell on St. Paul's epistles, the gospel history, the Apostles' Creed, and the Lord's Prayer. But all these subjects were animated by him with the new spirit which springs from a liberal education. He delighted, as Mr. Seabom says, to trace in St. Paul's epistles, the marks of the Apostle's character, the vehemence of speaking, which would not allow him to perfect his sentences, the rare prudence with which he would temper his speech to meet the needs of the different classes by whom his epistle would be read. His eager expectation soon to visit Spain, which, however, did not make him impatient when it was disappointed. Like Dr. Arnold, in our own time, Colette would illustrate St. Paul by reference to the state of

Starting point is 03:00:49 Roman society as described by Suetonius. In all these and many other ways, the choicest results of scholarship were as thoroughly employed by him for religious purposes as they were by more to bring about reforms in state administration. Unlike his two cherished friends, Erasmus was the scholar, pure and simple, the man who had no occupation apart from his books. Moreover, he was a thorough cosmopolite. Born in 1467 at Rotterdam, he had as little of the typical Dutchman in him as can be imagined. Indeed, nothing was ever so intolerable to him except indeed the monastic life at Stein, from which he had escaped in order to study at Paris, as the interminable feasts of his native country, and the utter disesteem in which learning was held there.

Starting point is 03:01:43 From the terrible wretchedness to which his poverty condemned, him at Paris, he was rescued by Lord Montjoy, who brought him for the first time to England in 1498, settling on him a small life pension. With this in the presence which he soon began to receive, Erasmus contented himself, refusing the offer of a semi-royal pupil James Stanley, the king's stepbrother, who was to be equipped with sufficient learning to allow of his being made Bishop of Ili when just out of his teens. Before the time of Erasmus's second visit to England in 1505, he had become confessedly the first classical scholar in Europe, and was well received by Archbishop Whorem and by Bishop Fisher, who were both patrons of the new learning. Utterly rejecting any use whatever of

Starting point is 03:02:36 modern languages, he had formed for himself a Latin style of surpassing excellence, which seemed able, without departing from the old forms and structure to express all the 10,000 objects and circumstances of modern life. He had in 1500 taken the world by storm with his adagia, a work in which, after the fashion of Italian politicians, he grouped round a number of proverbs, all the associated thoughts which he could remember in ancient writings. As specimens of these may be mentioned, too, on which he was forever harping, Neil Manaco in Docteus, and Dulke-Belham inexpertis. His bitter hatred for the old life at Stein was brought out in the first,

Starting point is 03:03:24 his deep grief at the devastation of Italy in the second. It is striking to find that amid the manifold hardships of his third journey to England, which immediately followed the accession of Henry VIII, the terrible weather through which he rode and the filth and the filth and rudeness of the roadside inns, he could quietly occupy himself in planning his wonderfully witty and comium Moriye, the praise of folly, in which he most impartially satirizes, bookworms, grammarians, rhetoricians, lawyers, schoolmen, pilgrims, partners, schoolmas, sportsmen, monks, courtiers, princes kings, and even the Pope himself. His colloquia are still more admirable from the

Starting point is 03:04:10 brightness of their style and their beautiful description of religion working amidst all the various circumstances and accidents of common life. In reading them, we are perpetually reminded of Socrates's gentle and kindly persuasiveness as described by Xenophon, for like the Athenian philosopher, he is occupied in showing how youth can be delightful and gracious, how old age and death may be disarmed of all their terrors, and how a simple heart, void of superstition, is able to bear up against even the extremist hardship and danger. Above all, there stands out in this as in all his writings a heartfelt admiration for the simple life of a kindly household. Like Luther, he is never weary of contrasting this with the so-called religious life of monasteries. Even apart from the

Starting point is 03:05:06 corruptions found in the cloister, he is firmly persuaded that those who adopt such a life choose not the better but the worst part. Strongly indeed were these admirable works calculated to influence England, where indeed more than one of them were written. In point of fact, their author seemed at one time likely to stamp the age with a mark of his own moderation, thoughtfulness, and humanity. In the course of the subsequent history, we shall see what he thought of the wars which were soon to disappoint his best hopes, and what farther contributions he was in spite of them to make to the welfare of both church and state in England. The question now occurred to thinking minds, by what educational institutions

Starting point is 03:05:54 there would be the best chance of giving the rising generation a firm hold on the new learning, and new and noble foundations for this purpose soon came into existence. Richard Fox, who had distinguished himself while Bishop of Durham and repelling Scottish invasions, afterwards when Bishop of Winchester founded the grammar schools of Grantum and Taunton. At Oxford, he had thought of erecting a monastery, but was dissuaded by Oldham, Bishop of Exeter, who, with remarkable foresight, inquired, Would it not be better for us to provide for the increase of learning, and for such as shall do good to the church and commonwealth, rather than build houses and provide livelihood for monks,

Starting point is 03:06:41 whose end and fall we may live to see? Accordingly, Bishop Fox founded Corpus Christi College, the statutes of which strongly enjoined the fellows to pursue the new learning. The professor of Latin then was particularly ordered to extirpate barbarism, that is, monkish Latin, Utbarbarium anostro alwayario exterpet, and the Greek professor was to read and explain all the best writers in that language. Benefits of the same kind had been conferred on Cambridge by the munificence of the Lady Margaret.

Starting point is 03:07:18 Herself a person of simple and uncritical piety, and as disinclined as possible, to go in search of new things, she was nevertheless so thoroughly under the influence of Bishop Fisher, her chaplain and confessor, that she was induced to erect Christ's and St. John's colleges in that university in the interest of the newer studies. Both of these were old institutions much decayed. She gave them suitable buildings and provided for the masters, fellows, and scholars' incomes, not splendid according to our notions, but such as would supply the low living which was then thought to lead to high thinking. Of Christ's college, which alone was completed in her lifetime, she made Fisher the visitor, thus securing that its members should live up to their founder's idea.

Starting point is 03:08:10 The fellows were to have an annual stipend of 13 shillings 4 pence to 16 shillings 8 pence according to their degrees, with one shilling a week for commons and 13 shillings 4 pence a year for their livery, which was to be of cloth of one color, bought at the celebrated national emporium of Starbridge Fair. In all elections, the poorer candidate was to be preferred. Anyone who had a private income of 10 pounds was ineligible for a fellowship. Dogs and hawks were forbidden in college. Cards and dice were to be played only in Hall at Christmas time when other jurisdictions were for the time superseded by that of the Rex Natalitius or King of Noel. What precisely was meant to be made?

Starting point is 03:08:58 by secular, that is non-monastic education in those days we are quite clearly informed in the detailed accounts which remain of the foundation of St. Paul's School in 1510 by Dean Collette. This was to contain 153 boys, the number being taken from that of the fish in St. John 21, and to be taught the old Latin speech, the very Roman tongue used in the time of Tully and Salus and Virgil and Terrence, the Latin adulterate, which blind fools brought into the world being absolutely banished. They were also to learn Greek if such can be gotten, a cautiously worded injunction, and probably meant to avoid exciting suspicion against the school as teaching the language of heresy. Collette commissioned the learned Lynn Acre to draw up a Latin grammar to be used at St. Paul's,

Starting point is 03:09:49 but when it was done, thought it too long and involved for his little beginners. The first headmaster was William Lilly, the godson of Grossin and friend of Moore. He had learned Latin in Italy and had lived for years at Rhodes to perfect himself in Greek. In the opinion of Erasmus, who thought a teacher as important to the Commonwealth as a bishop, Lily was a thorough master in the art of educating youth, which meant as another letter of Erasmus shows, that among other qualifications he had studied Plato and Aristotle among philosophers, among poets Homer and Ovid in geography Mela Tolemy Pliny Strabo.

Starting point is 03:10:31 The teacher, Erasmus continues, should be able to trace the origin of words and their gradual corruption in the languages of Constantinople, Italy, Spain, and France. He should know the ancient names of trees, animals, instruments, clothes, and gems, with regard to which it is incredible how ignorant even educated men are. are, I want the teacher to have traversed the whole field of knowledge that he may spare each of his pupils doing it. The good dean of St. Paul's, though unwilling to give up the stimulus of learning which corporal punishment affords, was yet vehement against the tyrants, who thought that only by flogging could boys' unruly spirits be tamed. Doubtless there was room for change in this

Starting point is 03:11:18 point, when it was thought a proper evidence of discipline to scourge an undergraduate of Christ's College Cambridge under the Lady Margaret's window, she not interfering except by calling Lente, Lente, and when little boys used to be whipped in the presence of guests during dinner, not because they had done anything wrong, but because they might. Finally, instead of appointing ecclesiastics as visitors of St. Paul's school, Colette placed it under the most honest and faithful fellowship of the Mercers of London, under married citizens of established reputation, as Erasmus puts it, among all men to whom life had introduced him, the dean had found, he said, least corruption in these.

Starting point is 03:12:05 End of Section 8. Section 9 of the early tutors by Charles Edward Moberly. This Librovox recording is in the public domain read by Pamela Nagami. Chapter 7. The Revival of Classical Learning 1390 to 150-1509, Part 2. Few people at this time contributed more to the spread of literature than the printers, whose business was then held to include the correction of the press, as it was not usual to send proof sheets to the author or editor.

Starting point is 03:12:46 Hence the heads of such establishments as that of the Frobenz at Basel and the Aldi at Venice, the Ateens of Paris, required to be, and actually were, men of great learning, who took care to have their sons specially educated in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew for the purposes of their business. In the workshop of the Froben's, it is said that everyone, compositors and all, used Greek as their daily language. Though not quite up as regards printing to the standard of Italy, France, or Switzerland, England still was faithful to the noble tradition of Caxton. Winkend de Werd, who had been Caxton's assistant, having printed not less than 66 works between 1510 and 1520. This is not to be taken as indicating that English writers were then numerous. On the contrary, hardly any time in our history

Starting point is 03:13:42 has added so little to our literature as that of Henry the 7th and his son. England was then going to school and gathering materials for future effort. Our polite literature for this period is represented almost entirely by Barclay's Ship of Fools, printed by a Winkender word in 1508. Even this was an adapted translation from a German work. The author, however, has some personal touches, as when he confesses that he himself is like other clerks, who so forwardly them guide, that when once they have got promotion they give up all study. To be made parson of Honington or Clist, it is required he intimates, to be skillful rather in flattery and field sports than in divinity. Yet he seems to show this self-blame is more or less ironical, as in another place. He speaks of the delight of having

Starting point is 03:14:38 many books always in hand and binding them handsomely in damask satin or else in velvet pure. Haas's pastime of pleasure came from the same press in 1517, having been finished in 1506. In contrast to its title, this poem, which is dedicated to Henry the Seventh, is a moral and learned allegory, in which the seven sciences and a host of virtues are personified, something in Bunyan's manner, though without his raciness. It is characteristic of the time that Haas' pilgrim, choose, chooses the way of active rather than of contemplative life, while he also equips himself with all-known sciences as the right preparation for a chivalrous career, especially with that lore of the stars in which

Starting point is 03:15:29 God himself is chief astronomer, for it is precisely this mixture of learning with energetic action, which made the best men of the period what they were. A few shorter poems belonged to this time and were more influential by far than anything in Barclay or Hawes. Among these was the ballot of the Nut Brown Maid, which appeared for the first time in 1502 in Arnold's book on London Customs. A little jest of Robin Hood was published by Winkin-DeWord in 1489, and established on a firm basis the reputation of this popular hero, ever ready to support the weak against the strong. above all should be remarked that the oldest known copy of the noble Chevy Chase is thought to date from the year 1500 and is self-evidently much nearer the origin than the later forms of the ballad the native prose works most honorable to England at this time are of course those of Sir Thomas Moore whose style has indeed the fault common to him with Erasmus of inordinately long paragraphs yet leaves

Starting point is 03:16:41 little to be desired in the way of clearness. His history of Edward V was written about 1506, though not published till 1513. It is in the classical style with speeches for the principal characters, but his reputation will always rest on his utopia, published in its Latin form in 1515. Indeed, this deserves to rank as a masterpiece beside the works of Philippe de Comyn and of Moore's contemporary Machiavelli, but far beyond either in right-mindedness and reforming enthusiasm. Its arguments are supposed to be those of a companion of the traveler Amerigo Vespucci named Raphael Hithladei, who has discovered and describes at Cardinal Morton's table the notable island of nowhere, whose inhabitants are models of practical wisdom. Strong in the experience thence derived, the traveled, the traveled man finds fault with

Starting point is 03:17:41 many things in England. A good specimen of his charges against our institutions is his declaration that in other countries of Europe, there is trouble from disbanded soldiers who like robbery better than work, but that English thieves are not generally soldiers. The high price of wool tempts landlords to throw into large walks for sheep, inhabited only by the shepherd and his dog, those estates which had maintained many small farmhouses. Thus the old tenants are driven away, and when their small means are spent, they can but steal and be hanged for it. We shall see in a subsequent chapter that the English Parliament had already made one law to remedy this state of things, and was to make many more, nor can it be doubted that the country benefited much by the

Starting point is 03:18:31 changes thus introduced. In this and many other ways, the rule of the rule of the rule of the rule of rule of common sense had now begun in England, and found support and encouragement in more than one influential quarter. Cardinal Morton cast his weight into this scale. Indeed, his life had been so full of accident and change that it would have been strange if he had not had a practical turn. Narrowly escaping from the route of Taughton in 1461, he had weathered, Lancasterian, as he was, the dangerous reigns of Edward IV and Richard III. His persuasive power had induced the Duke of Buckingham to rebel in 1483, and as we have seen, he had warned Henry Tudor of Landoah's plots against him.

Starting point is 03:19:21 After Bosworth Field, his attainder was reversed, and in March, 1486, he became Chancellor of England. A few days after this, Archbishop Bouchier died, and it soon appeared that more than, was to succeed him. If the new archbishop could have simply followed his own tendencies, reform in the church might have gone far in his hands. As it was, he was over-anxious to conciliate the popes of his time and thus to obtain their help in establishing the despotic power of the crown. The consequence was that his reforms, though in the right direction, were far less vigorous than they should have been. He insisted that all rectors should reside in their benefits, and in each benefits in turn, if they were pluralists, and procured an act of parliament

Starting point is 03:20:11 to punish incontinent clergy, that is, those who lived in quasi-marriage. With a naive reliance on the effect of strictness in externals, he expresses great dismay at the clergy having given up the tonsure in the clerical dress, insists that they should be shorn so as to show their ears and wear coats, Clausus A Parte Antiriori, that only graduates of the university shall have fur on their garments, and that no swords or daggers

Starting point is 03:20:42 shall be carried by priests. As to the monasteries, which required even more correction, though he procured from Pope Innocent the 8th, a bill authorizing him to carry out reforms there, he still exercised this power with preposterous

Starting point is 03:20:58 lenity, as the celebration case of the Abbey of St. Albans is enough to show. Here, the abbot was charged with offenses enough to fill a chronic scandaleuse, in particular with promoting ladies to high conventional offices for reasons as opposite as possible to those which should have guided his choice. Yet this libertine was not degraded from his post of responsibility. It was held sufficient to warn him that the rule of St. Benedict must be restored to St. Albans within 30 days under pain of severeer animadversion. Probably the moral and religious effect of the Cardinal's visitations would have been greater if he had not sometimes been attended by royal commissioners for the purpose of raising

Starting point is 03:21:48 benevolences whose zeal he was unlikely, as we have already seen, to think of mitigating. In his judgments as Chancellor, he occasionally carried. the notion of common sense and equity somewhat beyond the ideas of Westminster Hall, now and then maintaining that what the law of God ordains must be the law of England, and still more extra-legally threatening a dishonest executor, quill seret dom, ne'en-el. At any rate, no reserve, no love of despotism, or fear of touching abuses in church or state hindered Erasmus, from the loudest and most unmistakable remonstrances against religious corruption.

Starting point is 03:22:32 The superstitions connected with pilgrimages, relics, and alleged miracles, appeared to him in a very different light, from that in which even Sir Thomas Moore viewed them, at a later time, when he maintained that no one who had the ordinary intelligence required for a juryman could doubt the working of miracles at the great centers of devotion. by way of sapping such beliefs at their base. Erasmus wrote his celebrated colloquy on pilgrimages, in which with ultra- Aristophanic humor,

Starting point is 03:23:06 he makes the saints in heaven address a letter to Luther, thanking him for teaching that they are not to be invoked, and thus freeing them from a thousand importunities. He then goes on quaintly to describe the old-fashioned O'Gurgius, making toilsome expeditions to Campesella and elsewhere, to fulfill a vow made by his mother-in-law in view of a happy event in his family. Next, he tells of the little postern at the Abbey of Walsingham, to which a knight once fled, but finding it shut, prayed to the Virgin Mary and was instantly on the other side of it,

Starting point is 03:23:44 horse and all. And of the authentic tablet guaranteeing the genuineness of all the relics in the place, but put up too high to be read. The colloquy, proceeds to describe a visit to the shrine of St. Thomas at Canterbury, which the author made in company with Dean Collette. As the friends brought a recommendation from Archbishop Warham, they could ask a few skeptical questions with less danger of being considered sacrilegious heretics than they would have incurred elsewhere. Erasmus describes the beauty of the two towers which seemed to salute pilgrims from afar, the sculptured figures of Beckett's murderers, who, he says, are locally called Tuskis, Fuscus, and Berius,

Starting point is 03:24:30 the apocryphal gospel of Nicodemus fastened to one of the pillars, the disgusting relics which they had to kiss, till Colette's patience failed him at the sight of an arm to which the flesh was still adhering. Presently Colette began questioning the sacristan. Was not St. Thomas in his lifetime a very charitable person? Certainly. And whatever virtues he had in this,

Starting point is 03:24:55 this world? Ought we not to suppose that he now has the same in a much higher degree? Of course. Well, then, if he was as liberal as you say toward the poor, may I ask your opinion on this point? Suppose he saw a poor widow with starving children, or with daughters whose modesty is in danger because they cannot be married for want of a dowry. Do you not think that he might perhaps wish some of the immense mass of wealth collected in his shrine to be expended for the relief of such necessities? To this sacrilegious question, no answer was made except looks of horror, and the friends were handed over to the guidance of the prior himself, who showed them first the jewel sent by various crowned heads to the shrine, and then some personal relics of the saint,

Starting point is 03:25:45 of a kind perhaps hardly describable. Here Colette's disgust became so manifest that the prior thought it better to change the current of his reflections by ordering some wine for the highly recommended visitors. It certainly is a striking proof of the respect for learning in these times that Erasmus should have been able with impunity to write such scathing satires on the practices of the church. Had he not been the best Latin scholar in the world, he would not have dared on other occasions to treat the notion of indulgences for for 40 days as an absurdity, on the ground that there are no days and nights in the other world, or to fling continued charges of immorality at the monastic bodies,

Starting point is 03:26:33 or to declare that the man who looks after his workman and cares for the welfare of his wife and daughters is doing better than if he visited all the stations at Rome and made a prayer at each. And when we consider the immense popularity of his works, we see clearly how much doubt as to the doctrines and practices of the church must have lived on from Lollard days to gain force and cohesion from the utterances of his genius. Had he done no more than to give this doubt words, his work would have still been important, as it was, it rose much higher and tended to simplify and a noble religion far beyond what his contemporaries could conceive as possible, for he deprecated the practice of developing doctrines into all their logical consequences and thus turning religion into dogma.

Starting point is 03:27:26 He explained Christian faith as one with the Christian life, in a way which Luther would have thought half-heathen, and he was by no means anxious for rapid and violent reforms, believing as he did that false notions of religion would be more wholesomely corrected by the slow advance of sound knowledge. The Reformation that has been, says an eminent writer, is Luther's monument. Perhaps the Reformation that is to be will trace itself back to Erasmus. This chapter may properly end by noticing the architecture of Henry the 7th's reign. The time produced several great constructors. Cardinal Morton nearly rebuilt his residences at Maidstone,

Starting point is 03:28:11 Addington and Charing, as well as what is now the old part of Hatfield House. His arms appear several times on the fine tower of Wissbeach Church, which he probably restored. He promoted the building of Rochester Bridge, obtaining for this and for other works, which he was executing, the power of impressing stone masons, and also proclaiming that those who gave money for it should have 40 days remission of purgatory. At Oxford, he contributed to the restoration of the Divinity School and of St. Mary's Church. At Canterbury, the building of the Angel's steeple is described to him. While Bishop of Ely, Morton had also distinguished himself as an engineer

Starting point is 03:28:57 by executing the great cut or drain through the fens from Whiz Beach to Peterborough, which is still called Morton's Lem. The people in the neighborhood of these towns had complained that the River Nennae and the ancient works connected with it, were no longer able to carry the fenwaters to the sea, and that after rain the flood destroyed its banks and drowned the fields. The bishop, having long lived in the Netherlands, had thoroughly observed the management of waters there, and had no need to call in Dutch professional men. In fact, the lem was executed under his own superintendents, and it justified his claim to be called the earliest of modern engineers in

Starting point is 03:29:40 England, by at once bringing more than 4,000 acres into cultivation, and by serving up to the year 1725 as the great outlet to the river. Henry V. Seventh himself left several stately monuments of his reign. One of these was the palace of Sheen, a small fragment of which still remains at Richmond and Surrey. It contained a noble hall 100 feet long by 40 wide, and its very appearance with its numerous towers and fronts, all pierced with large windows, must have told clearly of a positive delight in the feeling that security was at length established. Fair houses, says Lord Bacon, being so full of glass, that one cannot tell where to come to be out of the sun or cold. An important feature of this building was that besides the great hall, it contained a private dining room for the king

Starting point is 03:30:36 and another for the queen. This was a new and growing fashion. In large mansions of this period, the Lord's dining room was often separated by a partition from the hall, or in some cases built over it. In smaller houses, the hall was dispensed with altogether. The change was not made without admonitions against it from high quarters. Even down to Elizabeth's time, government used every now and then to renew Gross Tests old exhortation, which said, As much as ye can, without peril of sickness or weariness, Eat ye in the hall before your many, for that shall be for your profit and worship. Now, however, nobles and gentry were getting too fastidious for this,

Starting point is 03:31:25 much delighting and used to dine in corners and secret places. Such retreats also contributed much to the growth of luxury by being furnished better than rooms were in earlier times, and more after the fashion long established in the Netherlands. Henry the 7th Chapel in Westminster Abbey is the chief ecclesiastical monument of the period. It was built under the King's personal superintendence, the first stone being laid in 1503. His intention was to honor the burial place of his ancestress Catherine of France and of Henry the 6th, and also to provide a splendid tomb in it for himself and Elizabeth. Externally, the chapel is remarkable for the beauty of its octagonal turret buttresses

Starting point is 03:32:12 and of the carved flying buttresses which pass from them to support the clear story. Every stone in the building except those of the few lowest courses is profusely ornamented, either with foliage of great beauty or with heraldic devices. The roof within is a magnificent, specimen of the later English fan tracery vaulting. Many of the fans form unsupported pendants from the roof, and the whole is most richly ornamented. This kind of work has been sometimes spoken of as debased by its fondness for superfluous ornament. It is therefore satisfactory to find that it has been most heartily admired by Ville Le Duc, the chief of modern French

Starting point is 03:32:58 architects, who considers it both richer and more scientific than any kind of vaulting known to the builders of his own country. To the right of the South Isle stands the magnificent tomb of Henry and Elizabeth, the work of the celebrated Pietro Torreggiano, and also that of the Lady Margaret. Here Henry ordered that prayers for his soul and for the remission of his sins should go on as long as the world lasted. To ensure their maintenance, he gave the dean more than 5,000 pounds for the purchase of manners, besides, at Vousins producing more than 450 pounds a year. The uses, however, to which this income was to be applied were so strictly defined as not to leave much margin of profit. The new building was on the site of the old Lady Chapel,

Starting point is 03:33:51 besides which the ground was cleared of St. Erasmus' Chapel, the work of Elizabeth Woodville, of a tavern called the White Rose, and probably of a house once inhabited by the poet Chaucer. The stone, like that of the modern houses of Parliament, was brought from Yorkshire at great expense. Yet it did not justify the selection, as unlike that of some great medieval cathedrals, which is as fresh now as when put up, It required to be renewed after about 300 years. End of Section 9. Section 10 of the early tutors by Charles Edward Moberly.

Starting point is 03:34:39 This Librovox recording is in the public domain, read by Pamela Nagami. Chapter 8. The Peaceful Beginnings of the New Rain, 1509 to 1511. With the accession of Henry VIII, new prospects began for England. The country, which had been scantily grateful for the economy and homely ways, by which the late king had gone far to repair the waste of the civil wars, now felt abounding joy at seeing its own mental power, heartiness, bravery, and magnificence, visibly presented in the person of an 18-year-old sovereign. What a change from the timorous invalid whom they had just lost to the splendid youth now before them, with his glowing complexion and short-cropped golden

Starting point is 03:35:29 hair, whose beauty grave ambassadors described in their dispatches home, who could speak French, Italian, and Spanish, played and sang to admiration, and composed music, which a high authority describes as not too clear or masterly, to have been really the work of a royal dilettante. and this accomplished person could also overthrow night after night in the lists and tire out half a dozen second horses carefully stationed for him along the probable line of the hunt. He also liked well to stake his hundreds like a man at the gaming table, and as Bonomi was such that he would on great holidays every now and then encourage the lieges to scramble for the ornaments on his own dress and that of his courtiers. It seemed little that he had not been trained in political or economic knowledge. This would come in time, and meanwhile he was not worse off than many of his brother's sovereigns. For the master interests of the period, he might probably do much.

Starting point is 03:36:34 The classicists might expect everything from one who at nine years old had written good Latin, uncorrected by tutors, the church reformers from a prince with so strong a turn for theology. Was there danger that the fatal passion for war and glory might sometime engross his mind and overthrow all this fair promise? This was, of course, possible. Yet as far as the beginnings of such feeling could yet be discerned, it took the form which has always been most justly popular in England, that of naval rather than military enterprise. instead of schemes for reconquering the French dominion lost by Henry the 6th, and thus letting loose among his people the frantic passion for plunder which would be the bane of industry, he was mainly bent on making his fleet effective for the defense of his own shores. He would himself show foreigners over the

Starting point is 03:37:30 great Harry, his new and magnificent man of war with her seven tiers of guns one over another. His admirals never feared that he would weary over the details in their letters. How, for the whole of Palm Sunday, we stirred not, for the wind was east by south, which was the course we should draw. But on Monday it came west-southwest, which was very good for us, and that night we slept it not, for at the beginning of the flood we were all under sail, when Catherine Fort Eliza sailed very well. Your good ship, the sovereign, is the flower of all vessels that ever sailed. My letter is long, but Your Highness did command me to send word how every ship worked. When the days of war began, the same writer Lord Edward Howard tells his

Starting point is 03:38:20 master with the cheerfulness of a Nelson or a Collingwood that he expects a fight within five or six days, as he hears that a hundred sails are coming toward them, or bids him by no means doubt that the first wind that ever cometh, the enemy shall have broken heads that all the world shall hear of it. Thus protected, England could have nothing to fear from without, and might therefore have continued to isolate herself without loss or damage of any kind, from the embryos of foreign politics, with quite sufficient occupation for all her energies in the problems of internal government and enterprises which belong to peace.

Starting point is 03:39:02 Even before Henry the 7th was buried, his tyrannical ministers, Empson and Dudley, were dealt with much as Oliver Lidane had been on the accession of Charles VIII of France. In order to hinder their being included in the general pardon at the accession, they were summoned to appear before the Privy Council, and articles were at once prepared against them, stating in general terms, the financial oppressions of which they had been guilty. Their plea of having acted according to existing laws was summarily put aside on the ground that they had misapplied the laws to which they appealed. While in the tower, they were further accused of having plotted to seize and put to death a young king immediately on his father's decease. It was on this charge, for which no evidence exists, and which appears simply incredible, that Dudley was tried and condemned at the Guildhall, and Empson at Northampton. Both remained in prison till August 1510, when a report that Catherine was interceding for them, produced a shower of petitions that they might be executed. This Henry,

Starting point is 03:40:17 therefore, ordered, acting as Lord Bacon says, more like a good king than a good master. Several of their inferior agents were either torn to pieces by the mob or first pilloried in Cornhill, and then thrown into Newgate to die of harsh treatment. We are told by Lord Herbert of Cherbury that Dudley sent a request to the Privy Council, that my indictment may be entered on no record, nor divulged to foreign nations, lest they hear in my condemnation all that may argue a final dissolution in government, they invade and overcome you. Such a mode of pleading was not likely to mollify Henry, yet Dudley's attainder was reversed some years after his death, and his family afterwards rose, as we have seen, to the highest rank in importance. Thus sternly was one great keynote of the rain

Starting point is 03:41:10 struck at its very outset. On June 7, 1509, took place Henry's long-delayed wedding with his sister-in-law in virtue of the dispensation obtained from Pope Julius II in 1503. Marriages between persons thus related were so completely understood to be forbidden by the actual words of the Bible that under ordinary circumstances it would have been held, that even the Pope would not grant dispensation for it. It had, however, been declared that Catherine had been Arthur's wife only in name, and as a visible symbol of this, Catherine was now married with her hair loose after the fashion of virgin brides. The Privy Council, with the exception of Wormum, was strongly in favor of the men. marriage, such objections as were raised having been answered by King Ferdinand's argument

Starting point is 03:42:02 that the King of Portugal had married two sisters successively without bringing on himself any mark of divine anger. On her wedding day, Catherine again signed away her dowry of 200,000 crowns, the difficulty of repaying which had been one of the arguments for the original dispensation, receiving in exchange for it lands and rents of Bristol-Bedford-Norritory, Ipswich and about 150 other towns and parishes, with the right of receiving felons goods, fines, waifs, and strays, and treasure trove on all manners granted her. On June 20th, Margaret, Countess of Richmond and Darby died, full of years and honors, in the precincts of Westminster Abbey.

Starting point is 03:42:48 One of her last public acts was advising her grandson in his choice of privy counselors. Of her two foundations at Cambridge already mentioned, she left Christ College complete. St. Johns was erected some years later according to her plans. A small but graceful memorial of her taste still remains in the little Gothic canopy over St. Winifred's Spring at Holywell in Flintshire, which is even now a place of Roman Catholic pilgrimage. Her divinity professorships at Oxford and Cambridge continue to bear her name. yet her chief and best memorial will always be the record of her simplicity and nobleness, of the care she took that justice should be done to all her dependence, of her patronage,

Starting point is 03:43:33 of all kinds of learning, and of her deep and humble-minded affection to her son as king. To all the learned men of England, says Bishop Fisher in her funeral sermon, she was a mother, to all virtuous and devout persons a loving sister, and to all the common people of the realm, she was in their causes a common mediatrice and took right great displeasure for them. The dream of her life had been a crusade against the all-conquering Turks, in which she would have been content to join the defenders of the truth and to help them by washing their clothes. This may be considered one of the last flashes of the genuine crusading spirit in England. Henceforward, our kings, though they did not, like those of France,

Starting point is 03:44:19 ally themselves with the port, were not inclined to do more for Christianity in the East than was implied in a casual present to the monks of Mount Athos, or an aid, toward the redemption of illustrious prisoners at Constantinople. Henry's government at this time was not less determined than his fathers in preserving order at home and repressing according to its lights some of the chief influences against it. The Star Chamber was encouraged by him to strike at even the first nobles of the land. In 1510, we find the Duke of Buckingham in spite of his royal blood, pleading in vain before it for restoration to the office of High Constable. Men of less quality were heavily fined for taking part in riots, as were also juries who

Starting point is 03:45:08 acquitted them on such charges contrary to the evidence. Indeed, the procedure in this court had now become so peremptory that men of rank who knew themselves to be innocent still sometimes found it safer to submit and pray for pardon. As a farther effort in behalf of public morality, the growing passion for games of chance was opposed in 1511 by a tolerably strict statute, which reserved the pernicious pleasure of gambling for gentlemen only, the commons being forbidden to play at dice or cards and even at tennis or bowls, except at Christmas, and under the eye of their superiors. When this law was reenacted and completed in 1542, it gave power to justices to make raids on gambling houses and imprison their proprietors. It has remained

Starting point is 03:46:01 enforced till our own time, and recently enabled the police to break up the hells in St. James Street. Even ball play in public places was prohibited by the earlier statute. This appears to have been a stroke aimed at the London Apprentices and their games in cheapside, alarming to stage citizens, the rudeness of which may have given the sting to Shakespeare's epithet, base football player. As a substitute for such games, archery was to be zealously pursued, every man or boy between the age of seven and sixty,

Starting point is 03:46:36 being bound to practice the long bow, with its formidable range of 220 yards, which the law did not allow to be diminished, and to discard all such newfangled weapons as crossbows and handguns. Archery, in fact, was considered to supply just the mixture of exertion, courage, and intelligence which was good for Englishmen. It was also, as Ascom maintained a few years later, the kind of exercise most profitable for scholars, and all the more so, as he quaintly says, because it was invented by Apollo, the God of Learning, whereas dice and such games were brought in by the ungracious God called Thuth, which for his naughtiness came never into other gods' company, so that Homer doth despise once to mention him in all his works. The subject of benefit of clergy was now resumed,

Starting point is 03:47:30 and with a clearer insight than in the preceding reign. It was seen not only that the power of reading a verse from the Latin Psalms and thus proving clerkly learning ought not to free men from the penalties of their crimes, but that even ordained priests ought to have no exception. Seeing church rules thus assailed, bishops not only adhered strongly to the laws it was, but even ventured on a prosecution of Dr. Standish, who was advising change. This, however, they had to drop upon a threat of Pramunir. On the general question, they argued that

Starting point is 03:48:07 our Lord himself had said Nolite Tangare Christos Meos, an unfortunate quotation, which laid them open to the retort that these words were spoken not by our Lord, but by David more than 1,000 years before his time, and moreover that the anointed of the Psalm meant all true believers and not exclusively the clergy. In spite, however, of this foil and reasoning, the clergy were for the time successful. A temporary act upon the subject was allowed to expire, and it was only after Henry's breach with the Pope that the Parliament ventured again to abridge these particular privileges of the Church. By a remarkable coincidence, the throne of Scotland was now occupied by a brother-in-law who had the same naval tastes as Henry himself. James IV,

Starting point is 03:48:57 the husband of Margaret Tudor had built under his personal superintendence a vessel called the Michael, which was a worthy rival of the largest ships in the English Navy. She was 240 feet long. Her hull of solid oak was 10 feet thick, so that the artillery of the time had no effect upon her, and she carried nearly 1,500 men. Yet she never did any such exploits as those of the smaller vessels commanded by Sir Andrew Wood of Lags and the Bartons. Sir Andrew, with the caravell and the flower, succeeded in bringing into Leith five English pirate ships. When Stephen Bull, a celebrated English seaman, was sent to encounter him, he carried on a running fight from the fourth to the Tay, and at last took the Englishman into Dundee. The other great naval captain, Andrew Barton,

Starting point is 03:49:51 had been aggrieved by the Portuguese government and held a letter of reprisal from James III against them. After a while, he began to extend his violences to English vessels also. On this, the Earl of Surrey declared in 1512 that the narrow seas should not be so infested while he had a state enough to furnish a ship or a son to command her, and no less a person than Sir Edward Howard, the Lord Admiral, took charge of the vessels he prepared. Sir Thomas, the Admiral's elder brother who was serving under him, parted company in a storm, and came up alone with Andrew Barton and the Lion. A desperate engagement ensued, Barton cheering his men to his last breath, and they refusing to submit as long as he lived. Meanwhile, Sir Edward himself had taken this sister vessel, and all who

Starting point is 03:50:45 remained alive of the crews were carried to London as prisoners. Yet they were afterwards allowed to return to Scotland, a plain proof that they were not considered as absolutely foes to mankind, although Henry replied to the Scottish remonstrances that punishing pirates had never been held to be a breach of peace among princes. The question where the wrong lay thus remained unsettled, and in the depression following the Battle of Flodden, the principal Scottish men of war were sold to France, and Scotland's short period of naval glory came to an end. Early in 1511, it became too clear that the young king intended to plunge into the continental wars arising out of the French invasions of Italy and thus to disappoint the thinking men

Starting point is 03:51:37 who had looked for an era of kindness and improvement. Erasmus, the unfailing spokesman of sound opinion at the time, was in despair at the prospect for the future. Folly it seemed to him, was resuming her ancient reign under the auspices of the tyrants who ruled Europe, and trade, learning, humanity, religion would all go to wreck. Oh, that God, he says, would deign to still the tempest of war. What madness is it? The wars of Christian princes begin, for the most part out of ambition, hatred, or lust, or like diseases of the mind. You may see even decrepit old men display all the vigor of youth, sparing no cost, shrinking from no toil, stopped by nothing, if only they can turn law,

Starting point is 03:52:27 religion, peace, and all human affairs upside down. Think two of the crimes which are committed under the pretext of war, for among the din of arms good laws are silent, what rapine, what sacrilege, what other crimes which decency forbids to mention. The demoralization, too, goes on for years after the war, over. Let any physiognomist, he says, on another occasion, consider the look and feature of an eagle. Those rapacious and cruel eyes, that threatening curve of the beak, those wicked jaws that stern front, will he not recognize at once the image of a king? Add to this that threatening scream at which every animal trembles. At this scream of the eagle, the people quake. The Senate yields, the nobility

Starting point is 03:53:19 cringes, the judges concur. Laws and constitutions give way, neither right nor religion, neither justice nor humanity avails. Of all birds, the eagle alone has seemed to wise men the type of royalty, carnivorous, greedy, hateful to all, the curse of all, and surpassing even its great powers of doing harm by its desire for doing it. Nor did Erasmus's friend Collette shrink from expressing quite clearly his hatred for a warlike policy, even before Henry himself. We are told that he preached wonderfully on the victory of Christ, exhorting all men to fight and conquer under the banner of this their king. He showed that when wicked men destroy one another out of hatred and ambition, they fight under the banner not of Christ, but of the devil. How difficult a thing it is,

Starting point is 03:54:15 said he, to die a Christian death on a field of battle. How few undertake a war except from hatred and ambition? How hardly possible is it for those who have brotherly love, without which no one can see the Lord, to thrust their sword into their brother's blood? The king, after hearing this sermon, was anxious lest it should stand in the way of volunteering, and sent for the preacher to Greenwich.

Starting point is 03:54:42 After an hour and a half of conversation, he still remained persuaded that his war was exceptionally just. but those who hoped for Colette's disgrace were disappointed by Henry's declaring that this was the kind of doctor for him. This incident happened after the first campaign of the war was over. Before it began, Henry had been strongly dissuaded from it by his counsel, who warned him that the use of firearms had destroyed the advantage which England had hitherto derived from her archery, that islands should not make conquests on the continent, that England alone was quite sufficient as a kingdom,

Starting point is 03:55:22 and that voyages of discovery were the one means of extending it profitably. It was perhaps unfortunate that Sebastian Cabot was now away, and that there was no one in the country equally capable of turning Henry's thoughts in the latter direction. As it was, all expostulation was in vain, and the fancy of a youth of one-and-twenty had its own way. There was to be a war, which was, was in its turn to originate many others. Its causes and conduct belonged to the next chapter. End of Section 10. Section 11 of the early tutors by Charles Edward Moberly. This Liberovox

Starting point is 03:56:09 recording is in the public domain read by Pamela Nagami. Chapter 9. The War of Tournai 1511 to 1514. In 1512, Henry Xen 11, Henry the 8th began his attack on France in defense of Pope Julius II, and the causes of the war in which he was about to mingle required to be clearly stated, as illustrating the political feeling of the time, and as accounting for things farther on. It sprang originally from the jealousy of Venetian power, felt alike by the Emperor Maximilian, by Ferdinan of Aragon, by Louis XIV, the 12th of France, and above all by the Pope. Between these powers was formed in 1508 the League of Cambrai, so-called from the secret negotiations at that place, between Margaret of Savoy,

Starting point is 03:57:07 Maximilian's daughter, and Cardinal Dambois as French plenipotentiary. Venice had of late been losing territory in the east, Lepanto, Saint-Mora, and others of her possessions having been taken by the tur. Accordingly, she had wished to extend her dominions in Italy itself and had seized Riemini and Fienza amid the confusion which followed the death by poison of Pope Alexander VI in 1503, thus controlling much of the seaboard of the papal states. Her territories now included Ravenna, Treviso, Padua, Verona, Crema, and Brescia, and in ruling these, she should showed such a liberal spirit as to be able in time of trial to rely on them implicitly.

Starting point is 03:58:00 She had even made the beginnings of a settlement on Neapolitan soil by lending Ferdinand of Aragon 200,000 crowns, and receiving in pledge the ports of Trani, Bindisi, Galipoli, Pulliniano, and Otranto. Besides this wide dominion, she was still the queen of maritime enterprises. in trade, her supremacy not having been yet destroyed, in spite of the discoveries of Columbus and Vasco da Gama. Her factories still extended to the mouth of the Don, and her linen, gilt, leather, silks, and glass were, as we have seen, the best in the world. Moreover, printing had been established there within 15 years of its first invention, and carried to high perfection by the Aldi.

Starting point is 03:58:51 All this magnificence excited the utmost envy in the poverty-stricken monarchies of Western Europe. The theory being, as Bayar puts it, that God was certainly angry with the Venetians for living so gloriously and gorgeously

Starting point is 03:59:07 in making such small account of the other princes of Christendom. Under these circumstances, a plan of spoliation was easily settled beforehand. The hope was to recover Riemini, Fienza, and Ravenna, Ferdinand, his Neapolitan harbors, without paying the sum for which they had been pledged, and Maximilian, the noble cities of Padua, Verona, and Vicenza

Starting point is 03:59:33 with several others. For the conquest of these last, the king of the Romans was promised help from the native nobles, who hoped that the Austrian power would re-establish against their fellow citizens, the feudal privileges of which the Venetian rule favored by the middle and lower classes had deprived them. The war began disastrously for Venice, as her troops were terribly defeated, May 14, 1509 at Anya Delo, a village near Krema, where they had proposed to stop the French after their passage of the Adda. And so little were they able to recover themselves that the enemy advanced as far as Mestre and Fuzina in the environs of Venice, and even threw some hundreds of cannonshot across the lagoon into the city. In the midst of this confusion, the Venetians resolved

Starting point is 04:00:28 upon a stroke of that magnanimity which seldom fails in political affairs. They released from their allegiance to the cities on the mainland and allowed them to make the best terms they could with the victors. This created such an enthusiasm in their favor that Treviso, Padua, and other places took the earliest opportunity of rising against Maximilian and returning to the Venetian rule. And when the king of the Romans tried to punish Padua for this, its stern resistance made him glad to raise the siege. Very soon the usual vices of a coalition had begun to show themselves. The French, too, offended Julius, by taking Bologna from him, and were also promoting a church council at Pisa in opposition to his power. Ferdinand's natural jealousy of France had reappeared with her victories,

Starting point is 04:01:24 while the Pope had already recovered Reggio, Mirandola, and Parma, and was ready to listen to the Venetian offer of restoring Ravenna to him. As therefore Julius had only wished to use the League of Cambre for his own purposes, he now contrived, October 15, 11, a new treaty under the name of the Holy League, by which he himself, the Venetians and Ferdinand, were to expel the French from Italy. Against this coalition, the French fought bravely under Gaston de Foix, taking by storm the city of Brescia, which was one of those most devoted to Venice, and utterly defeating the Spaniards at Ravenna, April 11th, 1520.

Starting point is 04:02:10 Here, however, Gaston was slain, and the loss of the victors was so enormous that their power in Italy collapsed, and they found difficulty even in holding on at a few scattered points. At this point, Henry VIII resolved to strike in with his fresh and unimpaired forces. He professed to be scandalized at the impiety of waging war with the Pope, who he maintained had no superior on earth. and must be born with, however, forward, but at the same time had the preposterous hope that he might reconquer France, though its population and revenue were four times those of England. On his marriage he had professed that he and Catherine would thenceforward be subjects of Ferdinan

Starting point is 04:03:02 the first. Now his astute father-in-law took him at his word by inducing him to send a force to the Spanish frontier and invade France from thence, while he himself thus sheltered from attack, was adding Navarre to his dominions. From the English point of view, there may have been an idea of waking up old feelings of attachment to our rule at Bordeaux. At any rate, attempts to conquer the Garun country were sure to be popular, as if successful, they would make wine cheaper by half in England. Accordingly, an army of 10,000 men was organized by the genius of Woolsey, who had lately entered the king's service, and dispatched under the Marquis of Dorset to Fuent Arabia, where they landed June 7, 1512. Ferdinand had promised that an army of his under the Duke of Alva would join them in the invasion of

Starting point is 04:03:57 Guienne, but instead of making this good, he continued his operations in Navarre, while all kinds of misfortunes befell his unhappy allies. They found no tents provided for them, though the season was most rainy, and no sufficient provisions, though their own had been plundered by the mariners while they were seasick. The hot Spanish wines produced fever and beer there was none. The officers were almost useless from inexperience, and discontent became rife in the camp. many of the men refusing to serve unless their pay was raised from sixpence to eight pence a day, as on the lower sum they were in danger of starvation. On August 28th, the Council of War was held at

Starting point is 04:04:46 San Sebastian, and the army took the strange resolution of returning home without orders. In vain did Henry write to Ferdinand, desiring him to detain it by force. By October 7th, They were on the way home, and a shower of epigrams from all Europe was preparing for the warriors, so soon weary of the field. Unable, however, to fix the responsibility on anyone in particular, Henry resolved by the advice of his counsel to let the matter drop, with the satisfaction of knowing that the influence of France had been increased by the failure of his attack thus far. Soon, however, an act of peculiar, the unsuccessful daring, came to restore, both king and nation to better humor. In March 1513, Sir Edward Howard, with 43 vessels,

Starting point is 04:05:38 sailed for the Breton coast as the forerunner of the larger expedition planned for the year and longing to avenge the loss of the sovereign which had been burned in the preceding August. He soon drove the French fleet opposed to him to shelter under the guns of breast, where they fortified themselves in order to wait for six of their galleys from the Mediterranean. Hearing the thieves were near, and had anchored between two forts and water too shallow for his ships to approach, Sir Edward resolved to attack all six with the only two galleys which he had, being it is said stung by a hint from the council at home that in inviting Henry to command in person at the destruction of the French fleet, he had wished to evade his duty. He laid his own galley

Starting point is 04:06:27 close to a hostile one and had already boarded her in person when the vessels happened to part, and he was left almost unsupported on the enemy's deck. Unwilling that they should have the spoils of an English admiral, he threw his gold chain and whistle into the sea, and next moment was thrust overboard and perished. To reward the Howard services, Henry, after Flodden, restored Lord Surrey to his father's dukedom of Norfolk, dormant since Bosworth Field, and made Sir Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey. On July 26, 1513, Henry advanced in person from his city of Calais to join Maximilian at Ar, and was hardly less beguiled by him than he had been by Ferdinand. For not only did the poverty-stricken emperor obtain pay as Henry's soldier,

Starting point is 04:07:20 but he induced him to attack two places, not really important to his interests, but very much so to those of his confederate. These were Terouin and Tournay. The former of these was a French frontier town just outside Maximilian's province of Artois. He had vainly striven to conquer it in 1479, and it had lately been a constant annoyance to his Artois subjects, who ardently desired to see it reduced and its fortifications leveled with the ground. Tournay, though in the rear of Maximilian's advanced dominions, had remained as a French outlier in his territory and was therefore a thorn in his side. Both places were quite beyond the true line of an English invasion, which would naturally have been straight towards Paris. However, the siege of Teruene was formed. On August 16th,

Starting point is 04:08:16 a French force under the Duke of Longville tried to relieve it, but was defeated by a charge of Maximilian's men-at-arms, supported by the English. English army, an exploit which gained for the emperor in England the title of the second Mavours, and which the French, with a satire which did not spare themselves, called the Battle of the Spurs. The French general La Palis and the celebrated Bayre remained prisoners. On August 22nd, Teruene surrendered, and on the 28th, Tournay, in spite of the strength of its walls and gates. On leaving home, Henry had made Catherine Regent, and in order to secure her position had ordered the execution of Edmund de la Pole, whose life had been promised in 1506 to the Archduke Philip. It is said that Henry the 7th had charged his son on his deathbed to regard the pledge as made for the reign only.

Starting point is 04:09:16 During the French campaign, in fact on the same day as the Battle of the Spurs, James IV of Scotland, who had thrown in his lot with France, was defeated and slain by Lord Surrey in the Battle of Flodden Field. This disaster to Scotland is so well known that it is only necessary to notice its salient points. After capturing the castles of Norum, Wark, and Ford, James took up his position on the defensible ridge of Flodden, an offshoot of the cheviets between the till on the east and the tweed near Coldstream on the north, a proceeding which Surrey regarded as shabby and one who had accepted his challenge to fight the matter out on equal ground. James's camp had the till on its left and an impassable marsh on the right, and was defended in front by the whole of the splendid Scottish

Starting point is 04:10:09 artillery. It was therefore unassailable, and Surrey could only turn it. This he did splendidly by carrying his 30,000 men, first by Wheatwood Bridge to the right bank of the till, as if he were retreating to Berwick, and then back by Twistle Bridge, near the junction of the rivers, thus placing himself between James and Scotland. Fourthwick, the commander of the Scottish artillery, entreated permission to cannonade the enemy while recrossing the river, but the distance from Flodden, which was six miles, would not allow of the guns being properly supported, even if they could be brought up in time. Surrey was therefore allowed to get clear over and form on the left bank before James was near enough to attack. Even when he did so, everything was mismanaged.

Starting point is 04:10:59 The Highlanders, who for the first time in recent warfare, were then fighting beside a lowland force, were not allowed to rush on in the peculiar manner which made them formidable. The Scottish guns did little, while Surrey's were most effective, and worst of all, James. James himself, instead of acting as a general should, plunged into the fight as soon as his center was engaged in hope of meeting Surrey in single combat, and fell when he had all but reached his enemy, the chief men of his army being slain around him. His body was discovered among a heap of slain and wrapped in lead but not buried as he had died under excommunication. There is a sad story of its being shamefully misused some years after at the monastery of Sheen,

Starting point is 04:11:50 a still sadder one, that the Scots believed that he had escaped from the field and gone on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Nearly the whole of the Scottish peerage were among the ten thousand who fell, and of the gentry almost every family had lost one or more of its members. Well might the graceful and pathetic ballad, which records the calamity say, that the flowers of the forest were a weed away. Yet this overthrow of the ally of France did little to strengthen the Confederacy against Louis the 12th, which was at this time dying of an ignition. Julius II had died in 1513, and had been succeeded by the Pacific Leo X, one of Linacre's young fellow scholars at Florence. Maximilian had been bribed off by the promise of Louis's daughter Renee for his grandson Charles

Starting point is 04:12:44 with the French claims on Milan for her dowry, and Ferdinand was content with his acquisition of Navarre in the Neapolitan ports. In a frenzy of anger at being deserted when Maximilian and Louis made peace at Muayon, Henry meditated the wildest schemes of vengeance. He grasped eagerly at the offer of a French alliance and was ready even to stultify himself by helping Louis to recover Navarre. A marriage was to cement this new friendship, the French king having just become a widower by the death of Anne of Britannia, and Henry's young and lovely sister, Mary, being still undisposed of, though she had thought of marrying the Duke of Suffolk. The poor girl was therefore sacrificed to the new alliance, Henry engaging that she should be allowed to please herself next time,

Starting point is 04:13:39 and the bridegroom's age and state of health affording a pleasing hope that this time was not far off. In fact, indigestion and late hours soon ended the ill-assorted union, and Mary, resolved not to be again a victim to her brother's policy, married Suffolk privately on the earliest opportunity and managed, though with difficulty to disarm the royal anger, by agreeing to pay a large sum yearly toward the expenses of her first marriage. Louis was succeeded, January 1, 1515, by his cousin and son-in-law, the Duke Dangulem, under the name of Francis I. And from Mary's second and happier marriage, ultimately sprang the great family of the Grays. We cannot but see that these campaigns left Henry and England politically where they were, except indeed that

Starting point is 04:14:35 no one would now deny, that the islanders were stout men of their hands, and good backers for emperor or king in a struggle. The sum spent must have been prodigious, for each archer was paid what would now be six to eight shillings a day. Indeed, the war devoured the income of 12 years. Public order was for the time at an end. In 1514, the royal treasure wagons were robbed by a bold gang of whom 80 were captured and executed, the rest escaping to sanctuary. Taxation rose to an astonishing height, twice over in 12 months, an income tax of sixpence in the pound exacted from the very day laborers between two and three weeks wages. At the same time, an act was passed, in 1515 to restrain the rise in the cost of labor,

Starting point is 04:15:28 naturally resulting from the drain of men for the army, of which the first draft is, as Mr. Brewer remarks in Woolsey's own hand. The want of laborers, in turn, converted more fallows into sheep farms, still farther decreasing the rural population. Nor did the war deal more tenderly with traders, for besides the preposterous taxation which crippled them, their business was liable to interruption even by the quarrels of Confederates, as when Henry in 1515 stopped the export of wool to Holland and Zeeland on some notion that Maximilian's grandson

Starting point is 04:16:06 Charles had affronted him. Well had the war justified its dissuaders, and what was worse still, the notion that we ought to reconquer France might revive and renew it at any moment. It had also fostered in Henry the ruthlessness, which his portraits alone would prove to have been natural to him, and which afterwards made his times of peace, like those of Alexander the Great, more dangerous to those about him than many battles would have been. Such is ever the bitter fruit of wars like his, alike causeless, ill-managed, cruel, and inconclusive as they almost always were. End of Section 11 Section 12 of the early tutors by Charles Edward Mowberley

Starting point is 04:17:01 This Librovox recording is in the public domain read by Pamela Nagami. Chapter 10 Domestic Affairs After the Peace with France 1515 to 1518 Peace was now restored to England The question was whether or no the government would restore national prosperity after the trials which it had sustained. The task was not hopeless, for those sorely burthened at home, our commerce had been extended

Starting point is 04:17:33 abroad at the expense of Venice. Ships from London and Southampton, having found their way to Sicily, Crete, Kios, and even to Tripoli and Beirut. English merchants had also been profitably employing vessels hired at Dragoosa and other Mediterranean ports. Indeed, neither Henry nor his great minister Woolsey could be charged with general indifference to trade interests, for they founded the Corporation of the Trinity House for the management of pilotage and lighthouses, spent not less than 65,000 pounds on the pier at Dover, and improved the harbors of Hull, Southampton, Newcastle, Scarborough, and Calais. The inland communications of the country were also by degrees made better, and the Navy yards and storehouses of Woolwich and Depford

Starting point is 04:18:24 founded. In order to increase trade with the Netherlands, Woolsey obtained a Congress at Antwerp in 1515, where England was represented by Cuthbert Tunstall, Sir E. Poinnings, and the young Thomas Moore. In the hope of replacing England on the footing of the intercursis malice described in Chapter 5, The Fleming strongly maintained that this had been a personal arrangement of the Archduke Phillips and had fallen through with his death. To this the English replied that he had expressly agreed for his heirs after him, and that no other agreements had been substituted for it, and that no documents could be quoted to prove that it had ever stopped. From this subject, the Congress passed to the discussion of grievances, Tunstall complaining that his countrymen

Starting point is 04:19:14 had been forced to pay illegal tolls, even when driven in by storms, and that embargoes were sometimes laid on their vessels for years, after which they had to pay anchor money for the time of detention. The quarrels on points like these rose so high that one of the commissioners was excommunicated in the Antwerp churches, and the others were calumniated frightfully. Fortunately for them, political circumstances just then made Charles' advisor, more anxious than ever for an English alliance, and therefore all difficulties solved themselves. The question of the intercursus malice was adjourned for five years, but meantime it was to remain in force. As to other grievances, our merchants must have been hard to please if they were not satisfied.

Starting point is 04:20:06 All English privileges were extended. They might choose their own brokers and porters. All legal remedies should be freely open to them. their cases should take precedence of all others and be always decided within six days. Quarrels of Englishmen among themselves were to be settled in their own consular courts, which should be supported by the magistrates in the case of resistance, and the factory at Antwerp was to remain theirs in full property. About this time, a curious incident arose out of Henry's anxiety for the welfare of seaports, A Cornish member named Strode had promoted an act of parliament hindering Cornish mine owners

Starting point is 04:20:49 from throwing rubbish into the rivers and thus forming bars below. He had overlooked the fact that the Cornish and Devonshire miners lived under a constitution of their own, holding a small district parliament under the warden of the Stanneries, the enactments of which had the force of local laws. This body had passed an ordinance in 1510 that everyone might dig for tin where he could find it, and carry the waters to his works according to old custom, all hinderers, being liable to a fine of 40 pounds. This they proceeded coolly to inflict on Strode for his doings at Westminster, and as he would not pay, they threw him into irons in a damp dungeon and fed him there for three weeks on bread and water.

Starting point is 04:21:38 Fortunately, he was wanted at the end of that time to do his duty as a collector of taxes, and a royal order set him free. But before he was released, his captors added insult to injury by making him give a bond of 100 pounds for costs. The sentence and the bond were of course canceled by Parliament, which also asserted that no one could be punished either for bringing or procuring a bill to be brought into Parliament, or for any opinion delivered in speaking to a motion. Nothing was at that time done to remedy the damage to the rivers, but 20 years later, when Plymouth, Falmouth, Dartmouth, Tinmouth, and Foy were all suffering from the same cause, and a ship of 100 tons could hardly get up where there had been water enough for one of 800,

Starting point is 04:22:30 a law was passed for bidding the use for mining purposes of any river flowing into a harbor. Even in this it was thought necessary to guard by an express clause against Parliament being said it not by the Court of Stannery's. In the latter part of the reign, parliamentary privileges were farther established by the decision of the judges in 1542 that the Commons had acted legally in setting free by their own authority and without any legal process, Ferrer's, the member for Plymouth, who had been imprisoned for debt by the city authorities. The quarrel was not settled until the sheriffs and all parties concerned in the arrest had been sent to prison, and the king himself had expressed strong approbation

Starting point is 04:23:17 of the vigor displayed by the House of Commons and the maintenance of its time-honored exemption. As our traders were anxious to sell their cloths by retail in as many Flemish towns as possible, it might be supposed that they would have been ready to admit the idea of reciprocity. But fairness and such claims is not always thought of where great interests are at stake, and our merchants were in point of fact not less anxious to keep foreigners' goods out of England than to sell their own elsewhere. Good reasons for restricting imports were, of course, ready. It was argued in the first place that foreigners made their profits by tempting people to buy fancies and trifles, such as England might well do without, and in the second,

Starting point is 04:24:06 with doubtful consistency, that foreign competition was destroying all wholesome English trade. Dutchmen were bringing over timber-ready cut and leather-ready manufactured, with nails, locks, baskets, cupboard, stools, tables, chests, girdles, saddles, and printed cloths. The merchant strangers, men quarrelessly said, were importing silk, wine, oil, and iron, and, moreover, carrying away so much wool, tin, and lead, that Englishmen can have no living. By thus taking imports and exports separately and not as balancing one another, and by showing, to their own satisfaction, then England was parting with what she most wanted, in exchange either for superfluities or for what should be made by English hands, the grumbling,

Starting point is 04:24:57 raised the jealousy against foreigners to a white heat, and on Mayday, 1517, it burst out with great violence through a protectionist sermon preached by Dr. John Bell at the Spittle Church a few days before. Taking for his text, Terramededit fili is hominem, the orator proceeded to descant on the public grievances. The land, he said, was given to Englishmen, and as birds defend their nests, so ought Englishmen to cherish and defend themselves, and to hurt and grieve aliens for respect of their commonwealth. As it began to be rumored that May Day would be chosen for an attack upon the steel yard, which was the London Center of German Trade, Woolsey took care to send for the Lord Mayor on April 30th, and commanded him by all means to preserve the peace.

Starting point is 04:25:54 accordingly a meeting of the alderman was held, and they were ordered to proclaim in their several wards that every houseowner must stay at home and keep in all his household from nine o'clock that evening till the same hour of the following morning. The announcement, however, produced in the notoriously turbulent ward of cheap, the very disturbance which it was intended to prevent. The cry of clubs was at once raised, and hundreds of apprentices came pouring from the precincts of St. Paul's. The rioters broke open the Comptor and Newgate, and released some prisoners who had been committed in the last few days for attacks on foreigners. After this they proceeded, in defiance of the magistrates, to plunder private houses, especially those of strangers, the masters of which they announced

Starting point is 04:26:47 their intention of beheading by Lynch law. In the midst of the tumult, the lieutenant of the tower actually opened fire upon the city from his batteries, creating immense terror, but doing little real damage. Not finding any foreigners at home, the mob began to disperse, but the last who retreated to the number of 300 were intercepted and sent to prison. In order to strike more terror, the government prepared ten movable gibbets as if to execute the prisoners at all parts of the town. But whether from the influence of bribes judiciously applied, or from a certain sympathy with the rioters felt by men in power, the only person finally executed was a broker named Lincoln, by whose persuasion the

Starting point is 04:27:36 unlucky sermon had been preached. The day was long remembered in London as the evil May Day, and it is said that the gaieties proper to the season were never again celebrated as freely as before this untoward event. That foreign trade after this was thought to require some restriction we may infer from the Act of 1525, which forbade alien merchants to take any foreigners as apprentices or to have more than two foreign journeymen. A blow evidently aimed at the peculiar constitution of the German factory of the steel yard in London, whose managers with their employees, all foreigners alike, lived in a half monastic fashion within their fortified buildings, unmarried and avoiding connections with their neighbors.

Starting point is 04:28:24 A still unkinder stroke was that the same act placed every alien practicing a handicraft in London under the search and reformation of the fellowship of his particular craft there. The population of England, which had been about 2,500,000, at the time of the poll tax of 1377, had now increased to about 3,500,000. Yet curiously enough, there was a general impression that the number of people in the country was diminishing. It was evident that the larger corporate towns such as Norwich were getting less populous, there being obviously little inclination to rebuild decayed houses or to restore them after a fire.

Starting point is 04:29:09 but the cause of this phenomenon quite escaped the notice of political thinkers. This was, in fact, the pressure of the guild regulations in the large borough towns, which people were glad to escape by living beyond their limits. Thus, an employer might be comparatively free as to his mode and hours of working, the number of his apprentices and hands and the wages which he paid. Accordingly, manufacturers now spread themselves over several new, districts. Among others, the towns of Birmingham and Manchester increased much at this time. As even accurate observers could not see the whole country at once, they were naturally misled by

Starting point is 04:29:52 the appearance of decay in the older and more celebrated towns and thought that the same process was going on everywhere. A far less imaginary depopulation of the country districts, such as the Utopia had lamented, had excited alarm as early as 1480. when it was remarked that the Isle of White, which as being particularly exposed to French attack required to be well-peopled, was becoming desolate and not inhabited, but occupied by beasts and cattle. It was therefore enacted in that year that no one of any rank whatever should hold more than one farm there of the maximum value of six pounds, 13 shillings, fourpence a year, and that those who occupied several such should elect which they would retain,

Starting point is 04:30:40 and their leases be void as regarded the remainder. This restored the population of the island, and enabled it, as Mr. Froud has remarked, to foil the French invasion of 1546. In the present reign, the same principle was carried out more broadly by an act of 1515, which ordered, that if the holder of any estate in England destroyed farmhouses upon it, The superior lord should resume possession of half of it until they were rebuilt, and by another

Starting point is 04:31:10 twenty years after, which gave the same power to the king if no immediate lord had exercised it. The change in the hands of new proprietors, from customary to competition rents, was also bitterly complained of. It produced, as Bishop Latimer shows in a well-known passage, a fatal change in the position of the smaller tenants. My father, he says, was a young, and had no lands of his own. Only he had a farm of three or four pounds by a year, and hereupon tilled so much as kept half a dozen men. He had walk for a hundred sheep, and my mother milked thirty kine. He was able and did find the king a harness with himself and his horse, until he came to the place where he should receive the king's wages. I can remember that I

Starting point is 04:32:01 buckled this harness when he went into Blackheath Field. He kept me to school, or else I had not been able to have preached before the king's majesty now. He married my sisters with five pound or twenty nobles apiece. He kept hospitality for his poor neighbors and some alms he gave to the poor. And all this he did off the said farm, where he that now hath it payeth sixteen pounds by year or more, and is not able to do anything for his prince, for himself, nor for his children, or give a cup of drink to the poor. This agrees with Moore's declaration in the utopia that tenants were pilled and polled by their landlords, who not only drove off their tenants to make sheep walks, but constantly managed either by fraud or violence to make small freeholders sell their lands.

Starting point is 04:32:54 and the trouble continued through Henry the 8th's reign into that of his son, when the protector Somerset's ill-planned endeavor to remedy it was one of the great causes of his fall. In the miserable state of Scotland, after the Battle of Flodden, two courses had been open to Henry. He might either have ordered Surrey to advance and conquer the country once for all, or he might have answered Queen Margaret's appeal for a brotherly help, and supported the infant king by all means in his power. Yet he took neither, but allowed his victorious army to be disbanded and Scottish affairs to fall into hopeless confusion without interference.

Starting point is 04:33:37 A parliament was at once held at Edinburgh which appointed Margaret Regent and Guardian of the King, but in August 1514 she forfeited all public confidence by marrying Lord Angus, who was considered as the head of the English party in Scotland, and a rebellion at once arose against her. Her opponents entreated Francis I the first to send over to their help the Duke of Albany, the son of a brother of James III, who had lived all his life in France and held the rank of Lord High Admiral there. Escaping with some difficulty from the English cruisers of Saint-Malo, Albany reached Dumbarton on May 1515 with a considerable train of Frenchmen, whom he proceeded to raise to positions of authority, thus exciting a jealousy second only to that against England. Yet he was appointed protector till James V reached the age of 18,

Starting point is 04:34:36 and at once besieged Stirling Castle in order to get possession of the royal children. All this time, Lord Dacre, who commanded on the border, was trying various means. to support the English interest in Scotland. He aided as strongly as possible the resistance to Albany, received all those who were exiled for rebelling against him, tried to carry off the princes by the help of Angus, and failing in this at last persuaded Margaret herself to take refuge in England. The Queen escaped to Berwick in September 1515 and was immediately after this delivered of a fair young lady, afterwards well known as Lady Lennox the mother of Henry Darnley, and considered nearer the English succession from having been born on our soil. Ill and miserable, Margaret was carried on men's

Starting point is 04:35:29 shoulders to Morpeth and soon heard that her husband and his partisans had been defeated by the protector. Angus himself was sent prisoner to France, but he soon escaped to join his wife, and Henry was glad to welcome both as instruments for any. future plan against Scotland. Meanwhile, Albany was getting so weary of his position as regent that to escape from it, he would, as he said, gladly have walked on foot all the way to London, and in 1516 he returned to France on business of his own, leaving French garrisons in the chief fortresses, but with little idea of returning at the time fixed. In 1517, the Treaty of Nooyon allowed Margaret to return to Scotland, where she found that her friends had been put to death

Starting point is 04:36:17 for favoring her escape, and that she would not be allowed to take any part in the administration. Great and various also were the Irish troubles at this time, though they did not burst into actual war. Only five-half counties were really under English law, and in these the vexations of the courts were compelling landowners to sell the smaller estate. The power of the colonists had been also weakened by a pestilence which had raged among them, by the death of several eminent leaders without heirs, and by their disuse of English weapons. The only possible remedy seemed to be to call for more colonists, if possible, one from each parish in England, to civilize Irish chieftains perforce, by making them Lords of Parliament if they had 1,000 marks a year,

Starting point is 04:37:10 and to induce them to send their sons to Dublin or Drogetta to be taught reading and writing with the English manners and language. But at this time, Henry had not sufficient interest in their country to make him carry through reforms of such importance. Consequently, things went from bad to worse, and the Reformation was soon to make every difficulty tenfold. In 1517, the Pope produced a fresh scheme for a crusade. as well he might having himself been all but taken prisoner by a Turkish fleet, which was sweeping the coast of Italy from Pisa to Terracina. The plan was as usual all too vast, including as it did the enlistment as allies of the Sophie of Persia, Prester John of the Indies, and the kings of Nubia, Ethiopia, and Georgia. It was hoped that by these strong measures it would be possible in three

Starting point is 04:38:07 years and at the cost of 12 million ducats to seize and fortify Mount Zion and several other points in Palestine, to invade Turkey from the side of Hungary and Poland, to support Fez and Morocco against the Turks, to reconquer Philippopolis and Adrianople, and then, after securing Ubea or Calcedon for a seaport, to crown the enterprise by the seizure of Cairo, Alexandria, and Constantinople. To arrange these matters, Pompejo was sent to England as Leggett Al-Latere, and after some doubt whether English law would recognize him in that capacity was welcomed with much pomp. But papal crusades were not believed in, and neither clergy nor laity would vote money for any such purposes. Thus, the progress of the Turks remained unchecked, and the risk was from time to time most imminent that the nations of Europe

Starting point is 04:39:03 might be subdued by them. Indeed, though such dangers gradually diminished, they were brought absolutely to an end only by too much later events, the Great Sea Fight at Lepanto in 1571, and Prince Eugène's land victory over the Turks at Petro Varadine in 1716. End of Section 12. Section 13 of the early tutors by Charles Edward Mulberley. This Librovox recording is in the public domain read by Pamela Nagami. Chapter 11, The War of Pavia, 1515 to 1527, Part 1. On succeeding Louis X12th and 1515, Francis I had instantly resolved on a career of military enterprise, feeling quite unable to endure the loss of Milan and the exclusion of French influence from Italy, which had followed the death of Gaston de Foix,

Starting point is 04:40:07 in 1512. An application from Venice, for aid against the tyranny of the Spaniards, Maximilian and the Pope, served as a plea for a new Italian expedition. As the usual descent into Italy by the Monseigne and Sousa was strongly guarded by the Swiss mercenaries of Spain, Francis, after collecting his army at Lyon, was persuaded to cross the Alps by the Vali Varaita, leading from Barcelona, net to Saluzzo, the head of which is even now a trackless ridge covered with loose rocks. Forcing its way thus, in spite of great perils and losses to the junction of the Varaita with the Po, the French army appeared in Italy as if it had dropped from the skies, and the Swiss, who formed the greater part of the Spanish and papal army, retreated in some confusion on Milan.

Starting point is 04:41:03 Francis was prudently trying to bribe off their opposition when his plan was frustrated by the arrival of 20,000 more Swiss from the Saint-Gauderd under Shiner, the Cardinal of Sion, a bitter enemy of the French. This leader immediately harangued his men, reminding them that ever since the fall of Charles the Bold in 1477, they had been the arbiters of Europe, that no sovereign could either move. or stand without their help, and that if they did but stretch out their hands, there was money enough in France's military chest to enrich them all for life, and glory enough in defeating his forces to prove them the most redoubtable nation in the world. With these and other persuasions, he induced them to make a hurried attack on the French, who were ten miles from Milan at the village of Madignano. The battle began late in the evening, and before dark, this had gained the superiority, and even taken 15 French guns, but Francis employed the knight

Starting point is 04:42:11 in posting his forces afresh, and supported them so ably with his remaining artillery, that on the next day, the enemy with all their valor could not break his lines, and were themselves crushed by charges of the men at arms. At least 10,000 Swiss were slain, and what was more, their prestige of victory. was broken. The survivors fell grimly back on Milan and then retreated to their own country in consideration of a payment from Francis. The victory was decisive, for the Spanish and people commanders both asked for peace, leaving Milan to Francis as the prize of his few days' campaign. Every sovereign of Europe envied the young king of France the glory so quickly won. Henry, above all,

Starting point is 04:43:02 could not hide his chagrin at the victory, which had so far outdone his own prowess. His eyes were so red, says the French ambassador, Bapom, that it seemed as if the tears would come. His chagrin was the greater because both he and the emperor had assumed that Francis would certainly come to grief in Italy. In vain did the nobles around him urge that he ought to be glad that Francis, his good brother and ally, had defeated the Swiss, who were so fierce and haughty that they presumed to call themselves the rulers and correctors of princes. Henry confessed that he ought to be glad, for that the Swiss were indeed mere villains, and he had ever known them as such. However, this did not hinder him from sending to Switzerland

Starting point is 04:43:49 some clever agents charged to subsidize both Maximilian and the Swiss and to excite them against France. Money never came amiss to the emperor. Indeed, in this case, he tried to possess himself of the Swiss subsidy as well as his own, and, after leading his army up to the gates of Milan, crowned all by accepting 200,000 crowns from the French, selling Verona to the Venetians, and withdrawing by the Valtalina to Trent and the Troll. As the bargain leaked out, it is no wonder that the English envoys Tunstall and Knight exhort Henry to close his purse for the future and entertain Maximilian with words devised, thus treating the emperor as the emperor treated him. In the following February 1516, occurred the death of Ferdinand of Aragon. His grandson, Charles, was now

Starting point is 04:44:48 king of all Spain, having been before this the possessor of the Netherlands, Flanders, Naples, Sicily, Actois, and Franchonte. Thus, the chief states of Europe were in the hands of three young sovereigns, Charles being 16 years old, Francis 24, and Henry 25, and the rest of Henry's reign, so far as it was concerned with foreign politics, was chiefly occupied in hindering alternately Francis and Charles from becoming supreme in Europe. For the present, he was in a manner friendly to both. He lent Charles the sum necessary for his voyage to Spain, and when he was thus out of the way, gradually made overtures to Francis, disarming suspicion by pretending to hate him beyond measure. One strong inducement to this was Francis's offered to pay 400,000 crowns, for the restoration of Tournay.

Starting point is 04:45:48 Hence Henry was willing in 1518 to go so far as to marry his two-year-old daughter, Mary, to the newborn Dauphin of France. Accordingly, the Admiral Bonnevae was sent over to represent the prince, and in that capacity, placed a splendid wedding ring on Mary's tiny finger. Little appears to have been thought of the risk that England might thus become a province of France. Probably it was assumed that Henry and Catherine would still have sons. Thus Woolsey had succeeded for the time in placing England in a very unassailable position as regarded the two sovereigns. The time-honored requirement of English trade, was peace with Charles and the Netherlands,

Starting point is 04:46:34 but the engagements with France were too elastic and too easily repudiated to be inconsistent with this main purpose. At the same time, we had gained the power of calling France to our help, and thus secured an object still higher, that of freedom from Spanish control. In any case, England might make her own terms

Starting point is 04:46:56 for aiding either of the great rivals, and how valuable this power was appeared when on Maximilian's death in 1519, Charles of Spain was elected emperor against the competition of both Francis and Henry, and immediately began trying to enlist England on his side. For Woolsey's private ambition also, the quasi-frenship with both the great powers was very desirable, as new circumstances might put it in the power of either Charles or Francis, singly to make him pope if a vacancy occurred during a war, and both might agree to do this if no war was going on at the time.

Starting point is 04:47:41 Meanwhile, the Cardinal toiled on as usual in London. Business had always been his fort from the time when he had been first recommended to Henry by his speedy return from a mission to France and by the boldness with which he had faced the responsibility of filling up a gap in his instructions. all matters of organization during the late wars had been carried out by him. Now he was at the height of his power, the whole direction of home and foreign affairs being absolutely in his hands. As Chancellor, he was constantly at Westminster Hall or the Star Chamber,

Starting point is 04:48:17 judging causes in a manner which even his rivals could not help admiring. After this came a daily multitude of state affairs whose pressure was so great that his friends entreated him, though in vain, to do no business after six in the evening for his health's sake. He kept a strong hand over the accounts of the country so that even Henry's wastefulness was in a measure controlled, and therefore was of course unpopular with those who, like Lord Montjoy, had congratulated themselves at the beginning of the rain because Averis was now at an end and wealth flowed like water. To these tasks were added his duty. as cardinal and as Papal Leggett Alateray. Both these dignities had been conferred upon him by Henry's

Starting point is 04:49:04 expressed desire, the former as the price of the kings joining the league against Francis in 1515, the latter as the only condition on which Compeggio would be received in 1517. As Legget, his rule over the church in England had a terrible completeness, for his jurisdiction extended over all bishops, superseded all privileges, and was final for all appeals. His enemies declared that he gained his influence over Henry by witchcraft. So completely did he eclipse, Warham, Fox, Norfolk, Suffolk, and the other members of the council. His taste force blender was intuitive. It seemed rather a part of his general greatness than a sign of vanity that he should like to see the tapestries of his antechambers changed every week, to have round him curious clocks or pictures by Quentin Massise, to be followed by

Starting point is 04:50:04 many attendants mounted on beautiful and well-trained horses. His choir was held to surpass the kings, although Sagadino says that the voices in the chapel royal were more divine than human. Indeed, in all such things, he seemed to aim at absolute perfection. Of course, this demanded vast wealth, and so he was not precisely scrupulous how he obtained it. But he was still more eager to obtain money for the king. Curious proofs of this are his standing out for an unusual proportion of the proceeds of indulgences in England in 1517 and his declaration in 1525, that he considered it a minister's duty to enrich his master at the expense of the people,

Starting point is 04:50:51 as Joseph did Pharaoh. Hastening back from Spain for the purpose in the spring of 1520, the young emperor visited England, thus performing in the eyes of all genuine lovers of etiquette, an act of extraordinary condescension to Henry, who by papal ordinance ranked only ninth among sovereigns. But Charles was anxious to forestall the effect of the personal interview between Henry and Francis, which had been already planned for the ensuing summer. accordingly he landed at Dover on May 25th, was visited by Henry there, and like a dutiful nephew, returned with him to Canterbury to visit Catherine, who was on her part wild with delight

Starting point is 04:51:35 at seeing the head of her family and hearing her native language spoken. The two monarchs held much secret conference, the purport of which was unknown. But the presence of the emperor, with his small and plainly dressed suite, was clearly exercising a powerful influence, and we shall soon see that the heartless splendors of the field of the cloth of gold were quite unable to counterbalance it. When the emperor was gone, Henry sailed for Calais, May 31st. Woolsey having obtained a promise that no French war vessel should leave any channel port as long as the interview lasted. The forlorn town of Gein was appointed for the meeting, but the English architects had during the preceding weeks, raised on the castle green there a splendid summer palace, 328 feet square, pierced after the fashion of the day with many orial windows.

Starting point is 04:52:33 Its entrance was adorned with olive-crowned statues of antique appearance, and the secret passage led from it to the castle. Francis, on his part, had imitated in a distant kind of way the English magnificence, having in vain asked that costly tents should be forbidden on either side. He had also proclaimed in order to limit his suite that none of his subjects should come unbidden within two leagues of the royal procession. When the signal for starting was fired from Gein and answered from the French headquarters at Ardre, there was a moment's anxiety. Lord Abergavenny, declared that Francis had brought with him twice the stipulated number of soldiers. Henry, however, readily believed that his men were frightening the French quite as much and did not hesitate to advance.

Starting point is 04:53:24 The sovereigns embraced first on horseback, then on foot, while the English made the best use possible of their few words of French, the main part of which seems to have been Bonami. At the next meeting, Henry laughed outright at hearing a herald described him as king of France, and jovially declared this to be a very great lie indeed. On June 11th, the jousts began and were continued for a week. During them, two notable events occurred, the death of a French knight by a two royal thrust of Henry's lance, and Francis's chivalrous act in coming to the English palace at breakfast time with only four attendants, and thus deriding the precautions which had hitherto guarded their interviews. Such was an outward seeming, the field of the cloth of gold.

Starting point is 04:54:14 Of the inward heart-burnings which attended it, no record has been kept, but we can easily imagine the feelings of those who, like the Duke of Buckingham and Lord Abergavenny, hated the whole thing as Wolsey's work, and would have been thankful if some quarrel had sprung from it to shake his power. There was no need for anxiety as to its effect in strengthening the French alliance, for it was hardly over when Henry betook himself straight to the Emperor at Grovelin to renew the Canterbury Conference, not vouchsafing to Francis the slightest hint of what the two were planning together. His next step was to send an ominous remonstrance against the French

Starting point is 04:54:56 repairs of the Ard' Fortifications. Was his good brother intending to disquiet, the English subjects of the pale? Of course, Francis's right was clear on his own side of the boundary. Still, he thought it better to yield, in the hope of at least delaying Henry's enmity. Meanwhile, Charles's motives for conciliating Henry became stronger every day. The cities of Spain were engaging in the struggle for liberty mentioned in Chapter 1, and neither from thence nor from the Netherlands could he get any supplies of money. He had pledged himself to hold a diet at Worms in the course of the year and settle there, not only the Luther affair, but all the outstanding feuds and disputes of Germany,

Starting point is 04:55:44 and it was most desirable for him to be in Italy, and hinder the consolidation of French influence there. To accomplish even a part of these objects, the Alliance of England was indispensable, and negotiations to strengthen it were therefore going on a pace, when the attention, not of England only, but of the foreign powers, was distracted by the striking episode of the trial and execution of the Duke of Buckingham in May 1521. As this nobleman was descended from Thomas of Woodstock, the sixth son of Edward III, his royal blood made him constantly fret against Woolsey's domination. His anger, too, is dangerous from his powerful connections,

Starting point is 04:56:31 for he had married the daughter of the Earl of Northumberland, Lord Surrey was his son-in-law, and Ursula, the daughter of Lady Salisbury, his daughter-in-law. He had offended the king as early as 1509 by inducing Sir W. Balmer to leave the royal service for his own, and had also excited suspicions at the field of the cloth of gold. Charges were now brought against him by a steward named Nevet, whom he had dismissed, detaining it is said his property unjustly, and by Sir Gilbert Park, his chancellor, and others.

Starting point is 04:57:11 By way of precaution Northumberland was arrested and Surrey sent to Ireland. Then the Duke himself was summoned from Thornbury to London, and found that all along the road he was watched by armed men at a distance. On arriving in London, he tried in vain to see Woolsey and was presently lodged in the tower. On May 13th, he was arraigned before the Lord High Stewards Court, and the depositions were read and asserted by the witnesses to be true. If so, they certainly amounted to treason according to the ideas of the time, for the Duke had listened to prophecies that he should soon be king, and rewarded them with valuable presence. This appeared to throw a new light on an attempt of his to get the king's sanction to a levy of troops, which he thought of making on the Welsh border,

Starting point is 04:58:02 perhaps also on some presence which he had made to the king's guardsmen. He was also sworn to have said that the death of the king's children was a judgment for the murder of Lord Warwick, and that have questioned on the Bulmer affair, he would not hesitate to plunge his dagger into Henry's breast. Of course, none of the trials of the time can inspire any real confidence, for the accused had no counsel, and could not cross-examine or bring counter-evidence. And wherever the means of discovering truth was thus neglected, it is impossible to believe that substantial justice was generally or even frequently done. The Duke labored under the farther difficulty that Henry had let it be known before the

Starting point is 04:58:48 trial, that he had gone through the evidence and considered him guilty. It is said that Buckingham admitted some of the charges while in the tower. At any rate, when condemned, he refused to ask for mercy, and on May 17th died as his father had died in 1483. Some of his estates were afterwards given back to his son, Lord Henry Stafford, who was also allowed by Edward V. 6th to succeed to the barony of Stafford from which his father had taken one of his titles. While the trial was proceeding, Francis had been pressing on the war in Italy, hoping to secure himself there while Charles was still embarrassed by the revolt of the Spanish cities. The emperor therefore called for English help, according to what was now acknowledged to have been the last year's agreement, namely, that

Starting point is 04:59:40 England should help whichever of the two contending parties was first attacked by the other. On the plea that it was necessary to ascertain which was the aggressor, Woolsey was sent by way of Calais to the Netherlands, and his quasi-mediation was made to occupy not less than four months, during which we were preparing for war, and Francis losing instead of gaining ground in Italy. On his return, Henry gave him the rich Abbey of St. Albans and reward for his skillful tactics, and it seemed that these would also win him a far higher prize, Inasmuch as the news of Pope Leo's death arrived toward the close of the year, and so recent disservice to the Emperor was a strong claim on his support.

Starting point is 05:00:25 But in spite of all his promises, Charles did very little in his favor, and the choice fell on Adrian of Utrecht, Charles's tutor, who is now enthroned as Adrian the 6th. It may be mentioned here that in the next papal election, 1523, Charles did write strongly enrol, but at the same time sent orders that the courier should be detained till the new pope was chosen end of section 13 section 14 of the early tutors by charles edward mowberley this libravox recording is in the public domain read by pamela nagami chapter 11 the war of pavia 1515 to 1527, Part 2 The great French and Spanish War of 1521 was fierce and deadly beyond all precedent,

Starting point is 05:01:27 aiming at nothing less than the complete dismemberment of France. When Henry took the Spanish side openly in the following June, Francis was called upon to surrender to the emperor, Burgundy, Champagne, Dauphine, Long Duck, and Proven. and to Henry the Isle of France, Picardy, Normandy, and Guienne, and of the brutalities committed by both invaders of France, we may judge by the letters of Lord Surrey to his master, in which he calmly announces that the Bologna is so burned and ravaged, that the French have good reason to be angry. All the country he continues that we have passed through has been

Starting point is 05:02:09 burned, and all the strong places thrown down. When we have burned, Durlons, Corby, Angc, Bray, and the neighboring country, I do not see that we can do much more. The Emperor's Council are willing that Aidan should be burnt, which shall be done within three hours. In 1523, Surrey was superseded, and the army placed under the Duke of Suffolk. It approached within a few miles of Paris, but its sufferings from the severe winter were terrible. many soldiers being frozen to death and others losing their fingers or toes. It was impossible to persevere under such difficulties, and for the second time in his reign an English army went home without orders,

Starting point is 05:02:57 having thus added another to the random and ineffective military operations which mark the period. The war went on without us and produced many striking events, one of which was the capture of Francis I first by the Emperor's Generals at Pavia. After relieving Marseille from its siege by the imperialists in the autumn of 1524, Francis had resolved on crossing Montceny and surprising Milan, which was defended by only 16,000 of Charles's troops. This he affected with signal success, the Spanish garrison retreating to the Adda.

Starting point is 05:03:38 Instead of pursuing and finishing the war on the spot, the French king occupied himself for three whole months in besieging Pavia on the Tazino, at the same time detaching 6,000 men to make a diversion on Naples, and thus leaving his army no more than equal to the enemy in numbers. In spite of this, he held himself bound an honor to persist in the siege, because he had declared that he would reduce the place or die in the attempt. He was therefore attacked in his position by Charles' generals from the outside, while Léva, the governor of the city, made a desperate sally from within. The double shock threw the French army into complete disorder.

Starting point is 05:04:25 First its Swiss mercenaries fled. Then a well-arranged attack broke its cavalry. Francis himself lost his horse and narrowly escaped, being killed by some Spanish foot soldiers who did not recognize him. His ruin was complete. For 10,000 of his soldiers had fallen, and he himself had to bear a long and bitter captivity in Spain from which he was only released upon intolerably hard conditions. Among those who fell at Pavia was a leading member of the House of York, Richard de la Poul, the younger brother of the Lord Lincoln who fell at Stoke.

Starting point is 05:05:05 Another consequence of the Pavia War was our being engaged in a new struggle with Scotland, to which Francis had again dispatched the Duke of Albany in 1521 in order to keep up the French interest there. Even Margaret herself now took that side because Henry had refused to sanction her divorce from Angus, whom she had begun to detest most heartily. So when the King of England demanded,

Starting point is 05:05:33 at Albany's expulsion, he was on the contrary placed at the head of an army of 60,000 men with a strong artillery and sent to invade England. The old jealousy against his French companions, however, prevented anything important from being done. The Scots failed in the siege of Warwick Castle and then retreated. This opened the way for a more conciliatory policy. Henry tried all means for gaining the affection of the young king his nephew. and even thought for a while of marrying him to his daughter Mary so as to renew the scheme of uniting the kingdoms. But such a measure was too wise and wholesome for the times, and it was held to be enough for the present to raise up a party in Scotland which should declare James of full

Starting point is 05:06:22 age and capable of governing. This plan succeeded, and in August 1524, James appeared before his nobles with sceptre and crown and undertook to rule the country, with the advice of his most beloved mother and the lords of the council. In the following November, this step was sanctioned by an act of the Scottish Parliament, and the hopes of France in that country were for the present at an end. The wars of this time appear wanton and perverse in themselves, and much more so would we consider how impossible they made expeditions to which Europe was really bound by every tie of honor and interest. Henry VIII, like his father, was the official protector of the Knights of St. John, who had since 1310 constantly made their island of Rhodes the outwork of Christendom in the East.

Starting point is 05:07:18 Yet in 1523, he, in common with the other great powers, allowed them to be besieged by the Sultan Solomon in person without raising a finger to help them. The events of the siege are admirably related by Nicholas Roberts, a member of the order. The Turks had 150,000 men at least, and the besieged, not more than 6,000, so that rest was almost impossible. Even the grandmaster, the noble Liel Adam, slept as he best might upon the ground. Numbers of huge stone balls were fired into the city from the Turkish mortars, shattering as they fell with an effect like that of shells. Breaches were made over and over again, but as often repaired by the skill of the engineer Marteningo. After a while, the Turks began a system of mines, yet even when whole bastions were blown into the air,

Starting point is 05:08:17 the knights continued to repulse the storming parties. But at length, the enemy drove horizontal galleries 150 paces within the walls, and a breach was made which 30 horsemen could enter abreast. Then, and not until then, the place surrendered and was treated, not ungenerously, by the conqueror. Transferred by Charles V in 1530 to the island of Malta, the order within 40 years recovered strength for the equally firm and more fortunate defense against their old enemies of the harbor and walls of Valletta, the capital of their new domain, which they continued to occupy till the island was taken by Napoleon in 1800. The French war, however useless and ineffective, had, of course, to be paid for by the people of England, and Woolsey made in 1523 the terrible demand of 26% on real and personal property

Starting point is 05:09:16 and of half a year's income from the clergy. It was estimated that this would produce about 800,000 pounds, but the unwillingness to submit to such taxation was extreme. Woolsey himself came to the House of Commons to argue the point, and Sir Thomas Moore, who was Speaker, recommended the House to receive him with all his pillar and poll axe-bearers. The Cardinal, he said, has been blaming us for not keeping our debate secret. We can turn the tables upon him if he brings his attendance into the House and runs the risk, of their making known what passes in it. When the great minister had made his speech, there was a complete silence. On his asking more for a reply, he was told in the most respectful language

Starting point is 05:10:05 that it was the manner of his grace's faithful commons to debate matters only among themselves, and that the speaker, though trusted, beyond his deserts by the House, could not venture to declare their views without an express commission from them. Except by this, spirited declaration, more does not seem to have displeased the government by his conduct in the debate, and about half the sum demanded was voted by the House. An exception was given to the northern counties which had borne the burden of the Scottish War, and also to the district of Brightham Stone and Sussex, doubtless because the place had been burned by the French in 1514. Even with these deductions, the pressure of the subsidy was simply ruinous, and when in 1525 Woolsey farther proposed to raise what he called an amicable loan, England was brought to the verge of a peasants war, like that which was horrifying Germany in the same year.

Starting point is 05:11:08 The Kentishmen complained to Warham that as the subsidy of 1523 was not yet fully paid, it was too bad to ask for more money already. and were not mollified by his reminder that His Majesty was born in Kent. They wept, pleaded poverty, and then began to speak cursedly, there would be no rest from payments as long as someone lived. Woolsey, it may be remarked, was already unpopular in that county for suppressing Tunbridge Priory and devoting its funds to his new college in Oxford. Strong remonstrances also came from other quarters. The Bishop of Ely wrote to say that there was no ready money in his diocese, and that to procure it,

Starting point is 05:11:54 people had to sell their cattle at half its value. In Norwich, folks tendered their spoons and salt sellers for want of cash, and there was every appearance that the clothmakers would have to stop work and dismiss their hands. In an interview with Woolsey, the Lord Mayor of London reminded him of Richard the Third Statute against Benevolences and failed to see the force of his reply that he wondered his lordship should quote the law of a bad king who murdered his nephews and who being also an usurper could not make laws binding a legitimate king. But the end was that the cardinal was struck with the arguments alleged and himself persuaded Henry to allow people to give only what they chose. No one, of course, came forward

Starting point is 05:12:43 and the benevolence was heard of no more. Though Woolsey might have truly said that it had been no plan of his, yet his loyal silence left its unpopularity to weigh on him, and at the same time the king was not less angry that the scheme had failed than the people were that it had been attempted. After the Battle of Pavia, the European War still went on in Italy. Hence arose in 1527, one of the most frightful catastrophes of the Middle Ages. For the Constable Bourbon, having deserted his country to take the command of a mixed force belonging to Charles, found himself unable to pay his troops and was obliged to connive at all their excesses. At last they forced him to attack Rome,

Starting point is 05:13:33 and after two repulsors made their way into the Leonine city at the back of St. Peter's, as Bourbon himself was killed in the assault, perhaps by a shot from the celebrated sculptor Benvenuto Cellini, Even the slight control which he might have exercised was at an end. The Pope and Cardinals just escaped into the castle of Sant'Angelo, and then had the gates closed against the crowd of distractive fugitives. For the twelve next days the city suffered the most indescribable horrors. Fanatical German Protestants, renegade Italians, and ruthless Spaniards,

Starting point is 05:14:13 vying with one another in the crimes which they committed, and the unhappy people being tortured by those of each nation in turn to make them produce the valuables of which they had already been robbed by the others. Clement the 7th, who had been elected Pope in 1523, remained the Emperor's prisoner in Rome till December when he escaped in disguise to Orvieto. Even there he was far from free or safe, and the next chapters will show the important consequences to England of his quasi-captivity. End of Section 14.

Starting point is 05:14:56 Section 15 of the early tutors by Charles Edward Moberly. This Libravox recording is in the public domain read by Pamela Nagami. Chapter 12, The Early Reformation Abroad, The Divorce, Fall of Woolsey, 1521 to 1530, Part 1. The time was now at hand when differences on religion, which had for many years only slightly influenced English state affairs, were to become all-powerful both in changing the character of the nation and in breaking up society into new party combinations. England was to recall all the memories of former struggle with the popes and to consolidate them into a system of permanent revolt. The existing laws against papal encroachment were neither few nor unimportant. The constitutions

Starting point is 05:15:52 of Clarendon, 1164, as long as they were in force, had prohibited appeals to Rome without the royal consent. Edward I's outlawry of the clergy, and the execution of Archbishop's group in 1405 had proved that priests were not inviolable, and of the three great statutes of Richard II, that of Mortmain, 1391, limited the church's power of acquiring property, that of provisors, 1390, protected our benefices from being filled up by the Pope, and that of Premuneri, 1393, vindicated the power of the state to exclude bulls. moreover a statute of thirteen ninety five forbade the exercise in england of any jurisdiction derogatory to the kings england too was inclined to the anti-papal party on the continent and had been represented at the council of constance which exercised the power of deposing popes by no means however endorsing its act and murdering john huss the disciple of her own wickcliff as was shown by the already noticed escape

Starting point is 05:17:09 from a furious London mob of the Emperor Sigismund, who had given and broken Husse's safe conduct. After this, English opposition to papal claims had flagged for a time. France had sided with the reforming Council of Basel in 1431, and this had been thought a sufficient reason for our taking the other side. Thus was shown the inherent weakness of a mere political opposition in religious matters. It was lost. liable at any moment to collapse, because while the papal practice was unvarying, the ebbs and flows of state affairs were constantly suggesting fresh combinations, which made the help of Rome desirable, and therefore induced kings to purchase it by concessions and by starving church reform in the

Starting point is 05:17:59 manner described in Chapter 6. Public fury might be aroused for a while by some instance of clerical exaction or immorality, but, when the burst of feeling had spent itself, things were apt to settle down into just their former condition. There was as yet no deep-seated and burning persuasion that such evil sprang from a root of falsehood and would end only when its last fibers were torn from the soil. Fortunately for the world, however, some of the best intellects living had now for years been concentrating themselves on religious thought. The simple goodness of John Hus, had naturally made a deep impression, which was increased by the unparalleled infamy of his

Starting point is 05:18:47 murder, and at the end of the 15th century, his disciples under the name of the Brothers of Unity still formed 200 churches in Bohemia. In 1489, this body decided that if God anywhere raised up faithful doctors and reformers of the church, they, for their part, would make common and cause with them, nor did they fail to keep their promise when the time came. Elsewhere, similar associations were formed on semi-Catholic principles, as in the Netherlands by the so-called brothers of the common lot, to which belonged Thomas Acampus, the celebrated author of the imitation of Christ. These good men lived together involuntary communities without vows, and devoted themselves to preaching, to the instruction of the young in Latin and

Starting point is 05:19:39 Greek, and to the transcription and printing of books. They held that the Bible contains a sound and simple doctrine accessible to all, and evident of itself to any reader without great pains or learned controversy. It is therefore, they thought open to all and should not be forbidden, a doctrine which drew on them the strongest opposition from the mendicant friars, who were also aggrieved by their being only half monks and accepting the rule of no order. In England, there were still relics here and there of an even exaggerated Lollartism, as in the ten inhabitants of Tentreden, who were summoned before Worm in 1511, for maintaining that the elements are mere bread and wine,

Starting point is 05:20:25 rejecting baptism, holding confirmation and confession to be needless, and refusing extreme unction, pilgrimages, and saint worship. Sometimes eminent foreign teachers, though remaining in communion with the church, aimed at nothing short of a revolution in theology. Such was John of Goch, who about the year 1470 boldly called Thomas Aquinas, the Prince of Error, and was before Erasmus in maintaining that monastic vows were so far from indicating a higher religious standard that they are tolerable only as supports to those who cannot do their duty without them. With still greater boldness, the celebrated vessel who died in 1481 had maintained

Starting point is 05:21:14 that the treasure of good works has not been left to be distributed by papal indulgences on earth, since Scripture says of the dead that their works do follow them. He had also taught that the father's interpretation of the Bible are not the work of the Holy Spirit, that the monastic state is not favorable to salvation, and that Christ has left no vice regent on earth. All this shows us how open men's minds had long been to the notion of deeply seated church abuses and how ready the world was for thinkers like Erasmus, especially for those of his works which simplified Bible interpretation. It is highly remarkable that the starting point of all wholesomeer ideas of religion was both in England and abroad.

Starting point is 05:22:05 that preference for family over monastic life, which made Sir Thomas Moore's household what it was, which dictated, as we have seen, Collett's arrangements for the government of his school, and which formed so large a part of the teaching of Erasmus, Goch, Vessel, and Luther. It was not accident, but the very spirit of the time that made the young Luther in his cell at Erfurt dwell with such delight on the history of Hannah and Samuel, and declare that he wanted no more happiness than to be always reading of such fathers, mothers, and children. The notion being once conceived, that the very ideal of holiness had been distorted in this

Starting point is 05:22:49 main point, many farther steps were easy. Might not other church maxims be equally groundless, such, for instance, as the power of priestly absolution, apart for real change in enlightenment of the soul? And above all, might it not be true that all the evils and superstitions of the church had sprung from forgetfulness of the true old religion, that of enthusiasm, the religion of St. Paul and of Augustine, which looked for justification, not in anything which we do or can do, but in faith only. A strong and converting faith founded on denial of self and the acceptance of Christ's redemption.

Starting point is 05:23:35 This and this alone, Luther began to think could give value to the moral life by quickening and spiritualizing action. Our deeds are accepted not for anything in themselves, but in proportion as they express and, as it were, utter this faith. Hence all merely formal modes of obtaining God's favor appeared to Luther anti-Christian. Consequently, when in 1517 the Pope's agent, Tetzel, ventured to offer indulgences for sale close to his own parish of Wittenberg, he could not but make his celebrated protest, as

Starting point is 05:24:14 Hus had done before him. For the theory of these documents was the very antithesis to that on which he considered all religion to be founded. According to them, something of the name. of a spiritual gift might be obtained without any spiritual condition whatever. They did not indeed profess to take away sin. This belonged to the power of the keys, which was different from that of indulgence. But they did assert that anyone in the outward communion of the church might, by paying a small sum, and it was expressly said, without any other condition,

Starting point is 05:24:54 obtain participation in all good works done by the church militant, and also relief of departed souls from purgatory. By 1520, Luther, having much cleared and strengthened his views by the study of Greek, had farther come to maintain that both councils and fathers might err concerning doctrine, and was expressing his high admiration for Melanchthon, who denied transubstantiation and the sacerdotal theory. He also saw objections to the seven sacraments of the Roman Church and treated the Pope's infallibility as an arrogant pretension. In that year, he also declared against auricular confession and the refusal of the cup to the laity, publishing in October his book on the Babylonish captivity of the church and on the 10th of December, burned at the gate of Wittenberg, the Pope's

Starting point is 05:25:52 bull of condemnation. On April 19th, 1521, he appeared by the Emperor's command before the Diet of Worms, and declined to retract his theological opinions unless convinced out of the Bible, thus creating among the German princes a strong enthusiasm in his favor. He was indeed by the single act of Charles placed under the ban of the empire, yet in spite of much pressure from those who wished to repeat the Constance tragedy by burning the new heretic and throwing his ashes into the Rhine, his safe conduct was not violated as that of Hussein. A few weeks later, the elector of Saxony, his own sovereign, had no difficulty in arresting him

Starting point is 05:26:39 collusively and concealing him in the safe retreat of the Vartburg, a castle close to Eisenach. Before the end of 1521, Henry VIII wrote his book on the seventh sacraments in answer to Luther's Babylonish captivity, and for this, Pope Leo gave him the title of Defender of the Faith. The king, it seems, considered that the new doctrines were making their way in his own kingdom, and was thus stimulated to authorship. It is certain that Luther's works were read in Oxford and elsewhere at the time, for Archbishop Warrum as Chancellor thought it necessary in the same year to order a search for them in the university. Similar inquiries were set on foot in the Diocese of Hereford, and Bishop Fisher preached an anti-Lutheran sermon in St. Paul's,

Starting point is 05:27:31 at which some German merchants had to do penance for eating meat on Friday. Henry uses against the Hary Ariziarch the customary arguments. Was it conceivable that not only Pope Leo, whose character was so high, but all other Holy popes were in error when they enjoined indulgences? And was the Church to believe that so many teachers, by whom and at whose graves, miracles had been done, should be after all in error as to the papal power, and that Amir Fraterculus was born to set them right? Considering the resemblance of these arguments to the after-reasonings of Sir Thomas Moore, there is no reason to doubt the statement that at least one illustrious convert was brought over to a belief in the Pope's supremacy

Starting point is 05:28:22 by the very controversialist who was afterwards to behead him for retaining it. So far as it could be proved by zeal in controversy, Henry's Orthodoxy may therefore be considered as beyond question, as he had fought for the Pope in the days of the Holy League, so he argued for him now. But all these fences and their strong array were to be scattered to the winds by one violent temptation. His wife, Queen Catherine, had for some time been distasteful to him from age and other reasons, and either the remembrance of the secret protest which his father had caused him to make against his betrothal in 1496, or some other evil suggestion brought to his mind the notion that his marriage had been unlawful from the first.

Starting point is 05:29:15 It has been maintained that the first hint came in 1526 from the Bishop of Taub, who in one of the manifold negotiations for the Princess Mary's marriage had expressed some doubts of her legitimacy. It is not, however, uncharitable to say, that dates prove passion and not policy to have suggested the notion. for from the time when the young and beautiful Anne Boleyn appeared at court in 1522 on her return from France, her father, Sir Thomas Bolin, had received a shower of honors and profitable employments, such as nothing but a strong fancy on the king's part for his daughter would be enough to account for.

Starting point is 05:30:00 It is therefore superfluous to discuss Henry's alleged qualms of conscience as to his marriage, and his misgivings that God had warned him of its unlawfulness by the death of so many of his children in infancy. However strong and even sincere, these may have become at last, their first origin is perfectly plain. Woolsey seems first to have realized the king's intentions in 1527, and the Cardinal's manner of seconding them justly earned all the misfortunes which it afterwards brought upon him. He first advised Henry to put away Catherine by his own authority, giving as a reason that she had been married to Arthur in Fokiae Ecclesi, and that after this no more could be said, she could not thenceforward be her brother-in-law's wife, all appearances notwithstanding. As the king thought this

Starting point is 05:30:56 plan likely to fail, Woolsey next lent himself to a shameless mockery of law, collusively citing the king to appear before himself as Leggett and Warham, and to answer for his misdemeanor in co-habiting with his sister-in-law for 18 years. The idea seems to have been that this might be enough to make Catherine yield at once. As she never thought of such an act of weakness, the hypocritical procedure came to an end of itself, and it then became necessary to appeal to the Pope, since Catherine certainly would at last. It seemed, for many reasons, safe to do so, for such a supporter of the papacy as Henry would surely not be refused, nor were precedents hard to find either a broader at home. Both the daughters of Louis X11th had been divorced, and in Scotland, Henry's own sister had since 1526 been striving not unsuccessfully to be set free from her husband, Lord Angus, on the impudent plea that James IV was not killed at Flodden, but lived till after her second marriage. Moreover, the first nobleman at the English court, the Earl of Suffolk, had, as Mr. Brewer

Starting point is 05:32:12 remarks, twice committed bigamy, and been three times divorced, his first wife having been his aunt and his last his daughter-in-law. With such instances full in view, what fear could there be a failure? But Woolsey had neglected to allow for the one, undecisive circumstance that Pope Clement had been taken prisoner by Charles's army just a month before Henry thought of applying to him, and that if he decided against the Emperor's aunt, there was every chance of a second sack of Rome. The unhappy pontiff tried to gain time by twice sending dispensations which would not work, and it was only on a third embassy from England that something like an agreement was arrived at. In order that will be able to,

Starting point is 05:33:02 he might not bear the whole odium of the transaction. Cardinal Compeggio was to act as papal commissioner along with him. Even thus much concession was dangerous to the Pope, besides which there was no little fear of disorder in England, where the sound instincts of the people were all for Catherine and passionately against her rival. An unpopular war with Charles was plainly in the air, for Henry had sent him a defiance on hearing of the of Rome, and had forced Woolsey once more to transfer the English staple to Calais. All this threw trade into still further disorder, and that just at a time when several harvests had been bad. The cloths of Essex, Kent, Wiltshire, Suffolk, and other counties found

Starting point is 05:33:51 no sale. Formidable disturbances again arose in Kent, the rioters declaring that they would seize the cardinal and place him on the sea in a leaky boat. The continued suppression of small monasteries had added to his unpopularity, as had also the search which he had ordered for Lutheran books, nor was he held in high favor even with Henry himself, having offended him, apparently, through inadvertence, with regard to a trifling appointment in which Anne Boleyn was interested. There was also difficulty in finding an opportunity of justifying himself, since Henry, an alarm at finding Anne attacked with the sweating sickness, was hurrying from one house to another in unkingly fear for his own safety. On arriving in London, October 17, 1528, Compeggio discussed a proposal that the queen should retire to a religious house, on condition that if no son was born, from any other marriage, her daughter should succeed to the throne. But Catherine would not hear of the

Starting point is 05:35:02 arrangement. He then intimated that he must report to the Pope before he judged the case. In fact, he was being constantly urged by no means to omit this as the emperor was advancing on Italy, and a false step might be ruinous. Meanwhile, Catherine's enemies were plotting against her in many ways. her Flemish advocates were ordered to leave the kingdom before the trial. She was accused of popularizing herself and thus causing conspiracies against her husband. Attempts were made to get away from her a paper most important to her cause. It was threatened that her daughter should not be allowed to see her, and Mary's establishment was broken up on pretense of economy,

Starting point is 05:35:48 while Anne was brought to live in the palace. All the time, Compeggio did not. tell even Woolsey what his commission from the Pope really was, but as this reserve was not generally known, delays were attributed to the minister, and his power began to crumble under him. Things got still worse when seven months passed without any step being taken toward a decision. At length, the case took a more definite shape. For Charles being manifestly resolved on supporting his aunt to the uttermost, the Pope was obliged to. to receive Catherine's protest against her judges, and determined on revoking the cause,

Starting point is 05:36:29 that is, on reserving it for his own consideration. It therefore became an object for the promoters of the divorce to get the Legatine Court held in London before the revocation arrived, and it was opened on the 21st of June, 1529. At this session, the well-known scene took place. the queen knelt at Henry's feet, be sought him to have pity on her as a poor woman and a stranger born out of his dominions, and urged him to consider her own honor and her daughters, and that of the Spanish nation and her relatives. Finally, she informed him in the assembly that she had appealed directly to the Pope,

Starting point is 05:37:12 before whom it was only reasonable that the cause should be decided, without partiality or suspicion, to Rome only would she make. her answer. She then left the room and being thrice summoned in vain to return was declared contumacious. The next sessions of the court were for taking evidence. On the 28th, the aged Bishop Fisher, the faithful servant of Henry's family for three generations, appeared to maintain that Catherine's marriage was indissoluble, seeing that every defect in its legality had been made good by dispensations which the Pope was perfectly competent to give. He ended by putting in, for the information of the court, a book which he had written on the subject. Great was the astonishment

Starting point is 05:38:00 at this act of boldness and at the fervor and eloquence with which the old man pressed his view. The judges replied lamely enough that it was not his business to pronounce so decidedly on the cause, as it had not been committed to him. But Henry himself made up for all. deficiencies by a reply still extant, which bears unquestionable marks of the royal style. I never thought, judges, says this document, to see the Bishop of Rochester taking upon himself the task of accusing me before your tribunal, an accusation more befitting the malice of a disaffected subject, and the unruly passions of a seditious mob, than the character and station of a bishop. Why has he kept silence for so many months, and then declared his opinion thus unseasonably?

Starting point is 05:38:53 It would have been more dutiful to begin by private admonition, and thus avoid discrediting, both the king who is pressing for the divorce, and the Pope who has been entertaining the question, and what need was there to talk of maintaining the truth even to the fire, as if any harsh measures had ever been taken or were likely to be taken against the Queen, defenders. End of Section 15. Section 16 of the early tutors by Charles Edward Moberly. This Librovox recording is in the public domain read by Pamela Nagami. Chapter 12, the early reformation abroad, The Divorce, Fall of Woolsey, 1521 to 1530, Part 2. Through the greater part of July, the cause dragged on, Compeggio, getting constantly, more and more unwilling to decide it,

Starting point is 05:39:55 because the emperor's agents were constantly pressing the Pope and opposition to Henry's wishes, and thus keeping him, as he said, between the hammer and the anvil. The 23rd of July, 1529, was at last appointed for the decision, and Henry was present to hear it. To his utter disgust, Compeggio only said that the Roman court, courts always had vacation from the end of July to the beginning of October, and that he must therefore adjourn the case till the next term began. As July was not yet over, this of course signified that the sentence, if given in London, would require a farther process at Rome, and it more than implied that the Legatine Court was now sitting for the last time,

Starting point is 05:40:43 seeing that the revocation would certainly arrive before October. No good ever came of Cardinals in England, cried Suffolk with an oath. You at least should not say so, rejoined Woolsey quietly. For Cardinal as I am, your head would have fallen on the scaffold but for me. But in spite of this spirited reply, he knew well that the words just spoken by Compeggio were the signal for his destruction. and it was not long before the tempest was upon him. The attack took the strange form of a prosecution directed against him

Starting point is 05:41:22 by royal permission in the court of King's bench, for having exercised, in violation of the statute of 1395 already referred to, the legateen jurisdiction which Henry had invoked, and this involved a writ of premuneri with the forfeiture of all his property to the king. nor was Henry restrained by any feelings of honor or delicacy from pressing his claim to the uttermost, though the case was much as if Charles I had of himself broken with Strafford and taken pains to get him prosecuted for the illegal things which they had done and planned together, or George III punished Lord North for his own obstinate enmity to America. The Cardinal was ordered at once to give up the great seal,

Starting point is 05:42:11 passed much shorn of its power into the hands of Sir Thomas Moore, the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk as president and vice-president of the council were to do much of what had been Woolsey's work. His experience of his master induced him to submit at once and to sign a paper confessing that he had vexed many of the king's subjects by his proceedings as legate, and deserved to suffer imprisonment at the royal pleasure. He accordingly prayed Henry to take into his hands all his temporal possessions and benefices. His reason for thus abandoning all defense was, as he afterwards explained, that Henry, after once getting possession of his property, would do anything however harsh rather than resign it again. Consequently, even if he were

Starting point is 05:43:00 acquitted on this charge, others would be brought against him, and if found guilty on any one of them, he would certainly be sentenced to perpetual imprisonment. Having arranged for the delivery to the royal officers of York Place, the modern Whitehall, and all that it contained, the Cardinal went by water to Putney on the way to Escher, to which he had been ordered to withdraw, and thousands of boats thronged the river to see the outward signs of the great minister's fall. At Escher, he remained almost destitute for some weeks, paying his servants' wages with money borrowed from his chaplains. But even while thus degraded and impoverished, he was hardly less formidable to his enemies than when his

Starting point is 05:43:46 power was at the highest. So well known was his administrative talent that it hardly required Henry's frequent taunts as to the blundering way in which business was now done, to make Norfolk and Suffolk apprehend that on the first great emergency, he would be recalled to office and revenge himself on those who had ill-treated him. Accordingly, they fretted him continually with small affronts, hoping that he might thus be goaded to some unseemliness of language or action. Day by day he was either informed of some new charge against him or robbed of more property. We read with amazement that after having a cheering message which Henry sent him at Christmas, when he was seriously ill, the council persuaded the king that a gallery lately erected at Escher would be a suitable ornament for the palace at Westminster,

Starting point is 05:44:44 and that accordingly the work was torn away before its owner's face. A bill was pressed on in Parliament, making him incapable of serving the crown, but it fell through it the prerogation. The next best thing was to banish him as far as possible from Henry's presence, and with this object the council refused his request. to be allowed to retire to Winchester, and insisted that he should go to York, the place from which he had his honor. Winchester was given to Gardner, except a pension of a thousand pounds a year for Woolsey. At the same time, the courtiers secured for themselves a number of assignments out of his other benefits, and the king tried very hard to manage that his pensions from foreign powers should for the future be paid to himself. On the 12th of February, 1530, a formal pardon was given him,

Starting point is 05:45:41 together with about 6,000 pounds of his property. As soon as the roads were fit for traveling, he started for the north, April 15th, by way of Royston, Peterborough, and Southe, the last dependency on the Sea of York. Both on the way and during his short residence at Southe, the goodwill of the gentry towards him was strongly manifested. Sir William Fitzwilliams, whom he had supported in a struggle against the Corporation of London, received him at his house near Peterborough with the most generous affection. In starting from Soutle, he had to rise before day to escape from the friendliness of those who wished to lodge a great stag or twain for his amusement, by the way.

Starting point is 05:46:27 His first occupation on arriving at his own seat of Caywood Castle was to hold a confirmation of children which he continued, like Wollstone of old, till he almost dropped with exhaustion. He also succeeded in setting at rest a feud between two neighboring gentry, expostulating not with them only but with their turbulent retainers. He listened with kindness to the claim of the dean and canons that he should not enter the choir of York Minster till he was formally installed as Archbishop,

Starting point is 05:47:02 but directed that the ceremony should be less magnificent than they had intended, refusing in particular to have cloth laid down as usual from the city gate to the cathedral. Of all the trials inflicted on him, the hardest to bear was the treatment of his colleges. As he had founded them before the premoneri, the judges held univocal.

Starting point is 05:47:26 unanimously that they had lapsed to the crown. Therefore, the king confiscated the property of that at Ipswich and seemed inclined to do the same with regard to Cardinal College or Christchurch, Oxford. For this noble foundation, Woolsey pleaded in a tone which he had ceased to use for his own sake. About the same time, the college authorities on appealing to the king were angrily reminded by him that several of their members had been against the divorce. and the Duke of Norfolk told them that their foundation would be dissolved and the buildings pulled down. However, they managed to avert the storm, fees to courtiers being, as they said in confidence, a chief means of effecting what they wished, and the king at last consented that Christ Church

Starting point is 05:48:14 should retain a portion of its endowments. It was, he said, perhaps, with more wisdom than is generally recognized, not for the welfare of the kingdom that it should be completed on the splendid scale planned by the Cardinal. But before this matter was brought to a close, its great founder was dead. To understand the last events of his life, it is necessary to go back a few weeks. Shortly after leaving Escher, he had made a rash attempt through Dubelais, the French ambassador, to secure the intercession of Francis I. His message to Du Bole was sent by Agostino, an Italian physician in whom he had great confidence. But this man, having received from Norfolk a bribe of 100 pounds to betray his master, revealed Woolsey's secret mission, which was interpreted into a wish

Starting point is 05:49:08 to bring about political changes for his own interest. Nor were suspicions wanting that he was urging the Pope to excommunicate Henry unless he parted with Anne. Yet it may be questioned, whether according to the ideas of the time, what he had actually done would not have been held to justify the harshest measures. For the crime of asking for the intercession of a foreign prince was the same for which in 1456, Jacobo Foscati was racked at Venice 30 times in the presence of his aged father the doge. Intercession meant interference, and as we shall see in another chapter, was considered a form of aggression. Cavendish gives a complete account of Woolsey's arrest which he himself witnessed. It was effected by the young Earl of Northumberland, who had been brought up in his household,

Starting point is 05:50:04 but had become his enemy on receiving a reprimand for misconduct in the North. Woolsey was not allowed to see the warrant. It contained, Northumberland said, secret matters which were not to be made known to him. On the next, The next day the prisoner was sent southward under the care of Sir Roger Lassels, the Earl remaining behind at Caywood to search for papers, and once more to take an inventory of his effects. At the end of the third day's journey, the party reached Sheffield Park, where Lord Shrewsbury received the Cardinal with great respect

Starting point is 05:50:43 and tried to persuade him that the king would certainly comply with his request and give him a personal hearing. But on learning that Sir W. Kingston, the lieutenant of the tower, had come to take charge of him, Woolsey thought the very name so ominous as to outweigh all the Earl's encouragements. I perceive, he said, more than you can imagine or know, Experience of old hath taught me. Nor was he more cheered when Kingston told him of the king's belief that he would clear himself of all charges. Such comfortable words were intended only.

Starting point is 05:51:19 to bring him into a fool's paradise. Meantime, a dysentery had been coming on, and his strength was failing. Yet he held on for three days longer, and by way of Hardwick Hall and Nottingham arrived at Lester Abbey. On the next morning, Kingston found him too weak to be questioned, according to orders, about a sum of fifteen hundred pounds, which should have been at Caywood, but had not been found. Henry being concerned that the money should be embezzled away from both of us. In the course of the same day occurred the celebrated conversation with Sir W. Kingston, containing a character of Henry the 8th, of which every true history of the reign must be an expansion.

Starting point is 05:52:05 He is a prince of royal courage, and hath a princely heart, and rather than he will miss or want part of his appetite, he will hazard the law loss of one half of his kingdom. I assure you I have often kneeled before him in his privy chamber the space of an hour or two to persuade him from his will and appetite, but I could never dissuade him. Sad to relate, Woolsey's last message to his master contained an earnest entreaty that he would have a vigilant eye upon this new pernicious sect of Lutherans, which if allowed to grow up unheeded, enact over again in England, the horrors of the Hussite War in Bohemia. His whole administration, like that of Richelieu and Aftertime,

Starting point is 05:52:55 had been marked by a scornful neglect of merely theological questions. At this supreme moment, worldliness resigned its sway, yet in favor, alas, not of true religion, but of the persecuting spirit. Had he lived longer to carry out such views of the religious life, all England might have had cause to regret the day when he began to serve God as faithfully as he had served his king. He died on the 29th November, 1529, just as the clock struck eight. The very hour which he had foretold would be his last. Within a week of Wolsey's condemnation by the Court of King's Bench met the celebrated Reformation Parliament of 1529.

Starting point is 05:53:42 Unlike its forerunners in the rain, it was to be carried out. in successive sessions till 1536, because being made up entirely of the king's servants, it was ready implicitly to follow his lead against the clerical body, which had as a whole been opposed to the divorce. The House of Commons began evidently, according to arrangement, with a petition complaining that convocation often made, without reference to the crown or to any civil authority, laws and ordinances against the king's prerogative, as well as vexatious and oppressive to the people. Among the resulting grievances, they mentioned the long journeys which had to be made by persons cited to the Archbishop's courts, the money often charged for the administration

Starting point is 05:54:30 of the sacraments, the vexations of summoners and informers, the questions asked in the church courts to entrap people into heresy and the abuse of conferring benefices on children. This paper Henry sent to Archbishop Warham, calling on him for a reply, and at the same time directing Parliament to prepare bills remedying the grievances of which they complained. After laying the paper before the bishops, Warham made a singular reply in their name. They made laws, he said, only according to the warrant of Holy Scripture and the Catholic Church, consequently, it would be only right that the king should temper his own laws into conformity with these. Although he continues, we may not submit the execution of our duty

Starting point is 05:55:21 prescribed to us by God to Your Highness's assent, yet we most humbly desire your grace to show your mind and opinion to us, which we shall most gladly hear and follow if it shall please God to inspire us to do so. This meant in brief that the clergy legislated in religious matters, though the civil power might advise them, a view which did not show any profound knowledge of English constitutional precedence. The Archbishop laid down in the later paragraphs of his answer, that open penance for sin may rightly be commuted for money, where it is desirable to maintain the party's good fame, that severity must be used to repress the beginnings of Lutheranism in England,

Starting point is 05:56:10 that witnesses even of bad character should be received in such prosecutions if their tale is likely, that the jurisdiction of the archbishops had been exercised for centuries and ought to be so still, in spite of the inconveniences to those cited out of the diocese in which they lived, and that when a quite young person is appointed to a benefit, its income may properly be spent on his education. Such an answer proved that the clerical mind was running in a groove of its own and unlikely to understand the statesman's view of things, especially when it was considered what kind of a comment upon the archbishop's principles was furnished by familiar aspects of church rule.

Starting point is 05:56:57 Here an ignoble squabble about the coverlet of a man just dead, there an arbitrary increase of tithes, elsewhere a fine of a few shillings inflicted on a clergyman as sufficient punishment for a grave delinquency, so that as Wharum himself complains, priests were hooted in the streets or knocked into the kennel. Obviously, therefore, no question more required settlement than whether church or state law was to be supreme, and this was soon decided by a stratagem which in a moment turned the defenses of the ecclesiastics, suggested, as it is said by Cromwell, a servant of Woolseys, who after his fall had become the king's secretary, having earned golden opinions by his bold defense of his master in Parliament. Henry suddenly announced that the whole body of the clergy had subjected themselves to premuneri

Starting point is 05:57:55 with its two consequences of imprisonment and forfeiture of goods by acknowledging Woolsey's legateen jurisdiction. They might reply that they had done so only as all England had, and as the king had ordered them. Indeed, it seems strange that a body of men not wanting in spirit failed to see that consequences could not easily be enforced against them if they showed an even front and stated their case well. As it was, the audacity of the charge seemed to strike convocation with a kind of panic, and they consented to pay 119,000 pounds as a fine for their misdemeanor. But over and above this, they were under the same penalty to acknowledge the king's supremacy in church affairs, which would plainly involve the abandonment of their claim to make canons

Starting point is 05:58:51 without his permission. Convocation voted the subsidy on the 24th of January 1531, and a fortnight later the king was most reluctantly recognized as the singular protector and only supreme governor of the English church and as far as the law of Christ permits its supreme head. On the 13th of May 1532, they agreed for themselves and their successors to frame no new canons without the royal license, and farther consented that whatever in the existing body of church law appeared not to stand with

Starting point is 05:59:28 God's law should be abrogated by the united action of king and clergy. For the present, nothing was expressly said about the power of the Pope, inasmuch as Clement might possibly still decide on the marriage as the king wished. The act of convocation was not quite unresisted by the general body of the clergy. As to the fine, they vainly argued that it ought to be paid only by those who had done things really acknowledging the legateen jurisdiction, that is, only by the bishops and superior clergy, and on the other point, a protest was numerously signed against any interference with church liberties or the Pope's authority. At Rome itself, the enforced submission of the church was treated as

Starting point is 06:00:20 revolt on Henry's part. Therefore, all delays were put aside, and he was informed, May 31, 1531, that the revoked cause would at once be reopened there, and that the court would proceed to a decision whether he appeared or no. Before the session of 1529, 1530 ended, Parliament passed bills for the reduction of the probate duty and the partial abolition of mortuaries, that is, of the offense of perquisites claimed by the clergy on the death of a parishioner. Another bill was to restrain clerical trading and farming, with pluralities and non-residents, but this was shown to press so hard upon many of the poorer incumbents that it was passed only in a mitigated form. Such was the first session of the celebrated Parliament of 1529, which was to be continued session after session

Starting point is 06:01:19 till 1536, ready to pass, suspend, or recall measures according to the royal word of command, yet on the whole deserving our gratitude for much of the work which it accomplished. For the evil attending its measures at the time has long been purged away from church and state, while the good has grown with our growth and strengthened with our strength. End of Section 16. Section 17 of the early tutors by Charles Edward Mulberry. This Libravox recording is in the public domain read by Pamela Nagami. Chapter 13, Moore and Fisher, 1531 to 1535, Part 1.

Starting point is 06:02:11 As the year 1531 proceeded, things began to appear as if Henry might possibly shake off his ignoble bondage. the insolence of the favorite alienated many of her friends, while others, when promoted, became far less inclined than before to hazard anything for her. Both her father and her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, began to fear the results of popular anger if they sanctioned the marriage. Even some of Henry's agents at Rome, while seeming to press the Pope hard, were privately conjuring him to remain firm. The cause they said, ought to be heard at Rome and decided in favor of Catherine, and Henry would certainly give way if the Pope persisted. The king still saw his wife sometimes, and curiously enough, used to refer to her when his wardrobe required attention. It seemed more than doubtful whether he would long endure being raided by his mistress for timidity in not putting obstacles aside, and above all for not holding his own in disputes with Catherine on her marriage. Warham was dying and repentant for former concessions. There was therefore no hope of assistance from him. Anne herself appeared to be providing for

Starting point is 06:03:30 adversity. She was created Martianess of Pembroke, and property was settled upon her and the heirs of her body, whether legitimate or not, so that it appeared as if she might soon be a mere discarded mistress. She was to go with Henry to meet Francis the first near Calais, but there was a world of difficulty in procuring either English ladies to attend or French ladies of any character to meet her. Indeed, any French alliance was in itself as unpopular as ever. And would hardly have weathered the storm, but for the help she got from Cromwell, who had been in the King's confidence since 1530, and from Cranmer, who succeeded Worme as Archbishop of Canterbury in 1533. Cranmer had been first a tutor in Lord Wilcher's family, then chaplain to Lord Rochford and to the king.

Starting point is 06:04:28 He had also gone abroad on the king's service and had married the niece of the German reformer, Asiander, an act which made him liable to prosecution at any moment. His great claim to Henry's favor had been his scheme of 1534 coercing the Pope in the divorce question by the opinions of English and foreign universities. This obtained something like what it desired from the heads of houses, doctors and proctors of Oxford, all other resident members having been prudently shut out from the deliberation. The other university yielded somewhat more easily to Cranmer as it came, Cambridge man. Among the German Protestants, Kranmer had little success, in spite of his connection

Starting point is 06:05:15 with them. At Paris, a faintly approving opinion was obtained by Francis's management, and that this might not be cancelled afterwards the registers of the university were spirited away. The academic bodies under the Emperor's control would, of course, have no liberty of action, so that the net result of the appeal was meager in the extreme, and what there was had been obtained either by threats or bribery. The questions which arose on Kranmer's promotion were first, whether the Pope would sanction it, and then whether he would issue the bulls for it without the usual payment of annates to the amount of 10,000 ducats. Henry met this difficulty in a characteristic way. Parliament had enacted in 1532 that Annates should not be paid in future to Rome, but they had appended to their bill,

Starting point is 06:06:09 a provision that it should not come into force before Easter 1533, unless the king ordered that it should do so by letters patent. Henry, therefore, allowed it to be understood that if Cranmer's business was expedited, this unwelcome law might never be enforced, and the Pope, in his ignorance of the new Archbishop's real character fell helplessly into the snare. Even the Emperor did not see what was coming, in spite of the warning of the acute Chappuis, his ambassador in England, but thought it impossible that Henry should persist so long in a whim. He must surely have made Anne a Martianess in order to get rid of her. The result was that the Bulls were passed, and only half the usual fee exacted. Before they arrived, however, the state of the Martianess of Pembroke made a prompt

Starting point is 06:07:04 resolution necessary if appearances were to be saved. A public wedding was out of the question. It would at once have stopped Cranmer's bulls and led to an excommunication. The only remedy was that it should be solemnized privately, and with such success was this done, that even now it is not known certainly by what priest it was performed or when. The date, however, was about January 25, 1533. The secret remained an open one for a few weeks, during which, with some difficulty in act of parliament was passed, forbidding appeals to Rome and matrimonial causes,

Starting point is 06:07:46 and the convocation of the clergy was induced by various maneuvers to declare the king's first marriage invalid. On the 10th of May, the new archbishop opened a court at Dunstable, summoned Catherine to appear, declared her contumacious for not doing so, and then gave sentence that her marriage had been invalid all along. A few days afterwards another session was held, and the king's last marriage declared to be regular. But when Anne went in state to the tower, the people would by no means take off their caps or shout God save the queen. And when she was first prayed for in a church, the congregation went out in a body.

Starting point is 06:08:30 Meanwhile, Catherine on her enforced journey from Amt Hill to Buckton was cheered by crowds of people who cried, God bless her, and declared that she was the one true queen. The Princess Mary was equally popular, and owed her quiet succession long after, to the still living memories of this time. Anne tried in vain to make Henry punish such disloyalty. Her influence was already abating, and within three months he was telling her that she must shut her eyes to his amourette, as her betters had done before her. On the 11th of September, the long-expected child was born, but it was a daughter, after all, in spite of the predictions of a host of astrologers and wizards who had been consulted, in the midst of the king's disappointment,

Starting point is 06:09:23 he was mean enough to order that his daughter Mary should come to Hatfield and enter the service of the infant Elizabeth, while Anne, with characteristic coarseness, declared that she would make Mary act as her ladies' maid, and even after a while give petulant orders that she should be beaten if she claimed the title of Princess. The course taken by the Pope and Emperor was now dangerously serious and dignified. when asked whether he would undertake the deposition of Henry if the Pope pronounced it, Charles replied that he could not give such a pledge upon a mere contingency, but that his holiness would always find him an obedient son of the church. The Pope, therefore, annulled Cranmer's axe at Dunstable, July 11, 1533,

Starting point is 06:10:14 and declared that Henry would be excommunicated at the end of September if he had not separated from Anne before that time. This was likely to be no Brutum Fulman, for English discontent was quite prepared to welcome the Emperor, who, as the Supreme Authority of Europe, might place on the throne either James of Scotland or one of the Pole family, the descendants of George Duke of Clarence, Edward V's brother.

Starting point is 06:10:45 Henry had tried to meet the excommunication beforehand by an appeal to a general counsel. Not only, however, was this clearly against the papal constitutions, but it annoyed Francis I, who was unwilling to offend the Pope by repeating the very demand for a council, which the emperor was constantly making. To reinforce his position, he asked the Privy Council in the following December to advise him first

Starting point is 06:11:12 whether the Pope is superior or inferior to a general counsel, And secondly, whether he has by God's law more authority than other bishops. Cranmer was the only prelate who gave the negative answer fully in at once, but the replies were on the whole considered sufficient, and orders were issued that all preachers at St. Paul's Cross, as well as the heads of the four orders of friars, should declare their assent to this doctrine. The king was farther encouraged by an opportunity which seemed to offer itself

Starting point is 06:11:46 of heading a North European League, independent of French and imperial politics. A Lubick captain named Marcus Meyer, who was charged with piracy for attacking Dutch vessels in English harbors, had the address to persuade him that as the King of Denmark was just dead, he might get himself chosen as his successor, and then form with Lubbock, as the head of the still-powerful Hanseatic League, a combination strong enough to face all enemies. Though this fanciful project came to nothing, it still inspirited Henry at one of the most difficult and cheerless periods of all his life. Thus encouraged, he declared that unless the Pope consented in nine weeks to cancel the sentence of July by declaring his first marriage null and void

Starting point is 06:12:37 and his second valid, he would separate England from the Roman obedience altogether. Yet it was most doubtful whether he would be able to carry the people with him. Indeed, within a few weeks a bold preacher said to his face that the Pope's authority is the highest on earth, and what Hugh Latimer thus dared to tell him openly, tens of thousands must have been feeling in their hearts. Henry was now threatened at home by the terrors of superstition. A peasant girl named Elizabeth Barton had for some years been known as a kind of estatica. She constantly fell into convulsions during which she uttered words surprising

Starting point is 06:13:20 for their persuasive or terrifying power and also appeared to no events of which she could not have been informed in any natural way. She must evidently be inspired, people thought, either by the spirit of God or by Satan. And as all her utterances were in favor of holiness, the latter could hardly be her case. The rector of Aldington in which parish she lived

Starting point is 06:13:46 thought it well to make her known to Worm as his diocesan. The Archbishop felt much as St. Bernard did when the sayings of Hildegard were reported to him. He declared that the words which she had spoken came from God and commended her to the care of Father Bocking of Christchurch, Canterbury, and some other monks. Under these auspices, she was miraculously cured of her random and irregular trances. Thence forward, they returned upon her at intervals of a fortnight, and on these occasions,

Starting point is 06:14:20 she was consulted as an inspired person about church matters of all kinds. Her answer strongly denounced the system of interference with church privileges, and when the divorce question arose, she issued, in the name and by the authority of God, a solemnly solemn prohibition to the king declaring that if he parted from his wife, he should not reign a month but should die a villain's death. And the Pope was similarly threatened if he complied. No punishment, however, was for the time inflicted on her, and she presently entered the priory of St. Sepulcher Canterbury, and was known as Sister Elizabeth, the nun of Kent. When Henry was returning from Calais with Anne, she met him on the way with her raven

Starting point is 06:15:07 prophecies of evil to come. But the days were at hand when statesmen would hold her inspiration as cheaply as Voltaire himself might have done. A spy of Cromwell's was the first to put him on the track of an important conspiracy in which she was to be an instrument. Cranmer was ordered to examine her,

Starting point is 06:15:28 and by feigning to believe, as Worm had believed in her visions, he obtained a good deal of information. The papers of her account, accomplices were seized, and it actually appeared that among those who were in correspondence with her was Sir Thomas Moore, who had resigned the Great Seal, May 16, 1532, from disgust at the anti-Papel measures then passing through Parliament, with Bishop Fisher, the Martianess of Exeter, who was a strong friend of Mary's, the Countess of Salisbury, Reginald Pohl's mother, and many other

Starting point is 06:16:06 eminent persons. Nothing was, however, found implicating either Catherine or Mary. The juncture was indeed a serious one. A war with Charles was impending, which if it took place would ruin English trade. Some fresh measures lately taken for the punishment of Lutheranism and the prohibition of foreign books were beyond measure unpopular, and the feeling for the injured Mary was more passionate than ever. It was not hard to foretell the consequences if at some critical moment, a band of fanatical friars, backed by the nun's inspiration, went abroad among the people to preach that Henry was God-forsaken, especially as everyone knew that the fearful peasant war in Germany had been stirred up by an enthusiast of the nun's type. Accordingly, the nun was made to read at St. Paul's

Starting point is 06:17:01 cross and acknowledgement of her imposter, and then committed with her accomplices to the tower to wait for the meeting of Parliament in January 1534. A bill of attained her was then brought in against her and the monks who had helped her, and they were all executed April 21st. The bill at first included the names of Sir Thomas Moore as well as of Bishop Fisher. The House of Lords, however, were of opinion that there was no sufficient evidence against Moore. Fisher was held to be guilty of misprision of treason, that is of having countenanced and favored it, and was committed to the tower. His only defense being that though he had really thought the nun inspired, he had never had the least notion of fulfilling her warnings by conspiracy.

Starting point is 06:17:50 With regard to the other person suspected in various degrees, the risk which they had run and the knowledge that they were liable to be questioned again at any time might perhaps keep them from farther plans against Henry, therefore no steps were taken against them. At the same time, Parliament abolished Peters Pence and all the varieties of payment to the Pope from England, yet intimated that the act was not irrevocable if His Holiness should consent to the divorce. The mode of appointment to Bishop Ricks was also nakedly and statutorily reduced to what had been essentially the established practice. In the case of a vacancy, that is, the cathedral chapter was to be admonished by a conge de lir from the crown to choose, as they regarded the welfare of their souls,

Starting point is 06:18:41 a fit and proper person for the sea. But at the same time, a second document was to be placed in their hands naming the person whom they were to elect, with a communeerian case of refusal. On this footing, such elections have remained ever since. except in part of Edward V. 6th's reign, during which bishops exercised their office on a simple patent from the crown, as indeed those of the Irish Church did up to its disestablishment in 1869. In the same session, Parliament settled the succession of the throne on Elizabeth, as born from the king's only lawful marriage, and enabled him to appoint a commission consisting of Cranmer, Audley, who had succeeded Sir Thomas Mour's chancellor,

Starting point is 06:19:26 and the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, which should impose on all English subjects, an oath to defend the act of succession, and all the whole contents and effects thereof. They then drew up a bill of forbidden degrees in marriage, in conformity with the Book of Leviticus, and as Blackstone says, on the general principle that marriage is not barred by a relationship more remote than that between Uncle and Nice. Finally, the Parliament declared that on separating from the Pope, they had not intended to decline or vary from the articles of the Catholic faith of Christendom or from anything declared in the Word of God to be necessary for salvation.

Starting point is 06:20:11 End of Section 17. Section 18 of the early tutors by Charles Edward Moberly. This Libra Box recording is in the public domain read by, by Pamela Nagami. Chapter 13, Moore and Fisher, 1531 to 1535, Part 2. By the middle of 1534, the discontent against Henry

Starting point is 06:20:43 was getting still more dangerous. We can trace, almost day by day, the steps of the conspiracy. On the 9th of July, Lord Dacre of the North was indicted before the peers for treasonable correspondence with the Scots, but they voted his acquittal with a boldness which astonished everyone and gave great confidence to the

Starting point is 06:21:04 malcontents, as in case of failure they might be able to safeguard one another in the same way. All through September, several noblemen were trying to arrange an invasion from Flanders with Chappui, Charles's ambassador. Lord Darcy promised to raise 8,000 men in eight of it, Lord's Dacre and Derby, and even the Duke of Northumberland, the last loyal pier north of the Trent were prepared to join. Men like the acute Lord Sands and Dr. Butts, the King's physician, thought that Charles would have no difficulty whatever in conquering the country, which had now scarcely any Navy left. Even the courtiers hardly made a secret of their contempt for Anne, paying visits to the Princess Mary under her very eyes. If Mary was sent to the tower, Sir W. Kingston was ready to take up her

Starting point is 06:21:56 cause, while if Henry was once dethroned, he was pretty sure to find that for him there was no prison but the grave. At almost the same time, Lord Thomas Fitzgerald, who had been made Irish deputy when his father, Lord Kildare, was summoned to England, threw up his office on hearing of Kildare's imprisonment, June 11th, and immediately plunged into rebellion, calling on Charles for help. He was, he declared, of the Pope's sect and ban. him he would serve against the king and all his partakers. Henry and all who took his part were accursed. Sir John White, the governor of Dublin, was unable to defend the city,

Starting point is 06:22:38 as the Fitzgeralds, while in power, had stripped it of military stores. Alan, the Archbishop of Dublin, tried to make his way to England for help, but was intercepted and murdered near Clontarf. Dublin Castle was besieged till October, but saved at last by the Earl of Ornard. who made a diversion by attacking the besiegers' homes in Kildare. After much delay, some forces were sent over from England. Lord Kildare's castle of Manut, which was supposed to be impregnable, was battered down by Henry's artillery, and by what is called an Irish tradition the pardon of Menuth, the greater part

Starting point is 06:23:18 of its defenders were hanged on the ruins. Lord Thomas was thenceforward a fugitive, yet he was bold enough to stay in Ireland in the hope that imperial troops might be on the way to help him. As none arrived, he tried in August 1535 to make his peace with Lord Leonard Gray the new deputy, who was his relation by marriage. Gray on his own showing allured him with comfortable words to surrender, and it seems too clear, promised that his life should be spared. But the pledge was broken. He remained in prison for about a year and was then executed with his five uncles, leaving the male part of the family to be represented by one youth whom his friends had concealed. Instead of really sounding the depths of the conspiracy against him,

Starting point is 06:24:10 Henry seems to have thought in the latter part of 1534 that it would be enough to terrify consciences by the new act of succession. If they were firm, honest and resistant consciences, so much the better for his purpose. His new commission of oaths might be made a crucial test of loyalty, if applied, not to nobles like Darcy or Northumberland, who would have made any professions without giving up their plans, but to such men as Moore, Fisher, and the monks of the Charterhouse, who were likely to swear what they meant and mean what they swore. The Carthusian community had a high reputation for hold. holiness. Houghton, its prior, was known to have warned his penitence against admitting the royal

Starting point is 06:24:57 supremacy in church affairs with whatever mental reservation, and it was certain that he would himself refuse the oath. On his doing so, he was prosecuted with two other priors of his order, and on the 15th of May, 1535, they suffered the penalty for treason in its fullest horror, giving God thanks as they passed to the rope and quartering knife, that they were held worthy to suffer for the truth. Many others of the Brotherhood were either executed later on or chained two posts in Newgate, and there, by express order,

Starting point is 06:25:36 so starved and otherwise ill-treated that nine out of ten thus imprisoned died within a fortnight. Somewhat earlier than this, the first steps had been taken for the trial of certifying, Thomas Moore. On the 13th of April, he had been ordered to appear before the commission of oaths. As he went to his boat at Chelsea, he closed the garden gate behind him that his children might not follow him as usual to the waterside, and whispered after a few minutes to roper his son-in-law, I thank our Lord the field is one. He had overcome all fears and was ready to meet any consequences,

Starting point is 06:26:15 being called upon to swear to the act of succession, he replied by a distinction. Parliament, he said, had complete power to settle the succession to the throne, and he would willingly swear true allegiance to the heir named by it. But to no nullifying of the first marriage, such as the preamble of the act contained, would he consent to commit himself? He was therefore sent to the tower where Bishop Fisher had been ever since his conviction in the nun's affair. Just then, it occurred to the ministers that Moore's crime, after all, was not capital, as the act had made it only misprision of treason to refuse the oaths.

Starting point is 06:26:57 It was therefore thought better to challenge him on the subject of the royal supremacy over the church, as admitted in 1531, and established by Act of Parliament in 1534. Accordingly, Cromwell went to the tower and called upon him to swear on this point which he at once refused to do, and thus brought his life within the reach of the law. Cardinal Fisher, for the new Pope, Paul III had given him this title since his imprisonment, thus in sensing Henry far more against him, made the same noble answer, and was within a few days tried, sentenced, and executed. June 22, 1535. Moore's trial, began on the 6th of May. He was prosecuted as having originally dissuaded the king from marrying Anne, as refusing to acknowledge him for head of the church, and as having written treasonable letters to Fisher

Starting point is 06:27:56 from his prison. To the first charge, he replied that a privy counselor's honest advice to the king cannot be treasonable, to the second, that he kept silence without malice, and only because anything he said would have been misconstrued. to the third that the letters to Fisher were burnt and that no evidence was offered of their contents, which he declared had no relation to the matter of the charge. Sir Richard Rich, the Attorney General, then swore that the accused, while in prison, had expressly stated to him that Parliament had no power to make anyone head of the Church. I never said so, retorted Moore, nor is it likely that what I concealed from his majesty, I should reveal to one of light tongue and not commendable fame.

Starting point is 06:28:48 After his sentence, some attempts were made to bring him to submission by a sidewind, but they were all in vain and he was executed on the 6th of July. His quiet humor, both at the foot of the scaffold and just before the axe fell, has often excited admiration, yet perhaps less than if it were considered that Sir W. Kingston was his dear friend whom he was anxious to cheer in that supreme moment. Never perhaps was this great man better described than in a passage of the spectator, which, though not ascribed to Addison, still is serene and pure like him. The innocent mirth, which had been so conspicuous in his life, did not forsake him to the last. His death was of a peace with his life. There was nothing in it new, forced, or affected.

Starting point is 06:29:37 He did not look upon the severing of his head from his body as a circumstance which ought to produce any change in the disposition of his mind, and as he died in a fixed and settled hope of immortality, he thought any unusual degree of concern improper. His head was savagely set up on London Bridge, stolen from thence by his beloved daughter Margaret Roper, and seen many years afterwards in her coffin close to what had been her. her heart. We sometimes meet with men whose turn is so far skeptical that they sympathize for a while with the freest inquiry and lead on others by their apparent acquiescence, while at the same time a deeply seated and almost physical conservatism rules their heart and conscience, and they are likely at any moment to fall back with unshaken conviction upon arguments which they seemed long ago to have outgrown.

Starting point is 06:30:35 such a man was Sir Thomas Moore. Hence, toward the end of his life, he was intellectually much more like his early patron, Cardinal Morton, than the Erasmus who had been his delight in early manhood. Now he saw nothing unlikely in the idea that God might work miracles by means of particular images or relics. If more than one place claimed to possess the body of a saint, he thought it enough to reply that part of the body might be in one place, part in another. or that there might be two saints of the same name, or that relics genuine in themselves might have been wrongly styled.

Starting point is 06:31:13 It was, he thought, easy to believe, that specially beautiful or specially old images might be the channels of great blessing. For getting Laurentius Valas' refutation, he boldly appealed to our Lord's portrait sent by him to Abgarus of Edessa as justifying the use of images in general. above all arguments he constantly refers to the indefectibility of the church any taint of real idolatry would he thought have falsified our lord's promise and therefore nothing that the church ever did can have this character and as a corollary to this he always thought it enough to justify any superstition if he could show that it was practiced by the fathers of the first four centuries he has been accused as chance

Starting point is 06:32:03 of great and even extrajudicial cruelty to Lutherans, and it must be admitted that the peculiar dogmatism of Luther had always been odious to him as putting aside the sounder views of Reformation in union with culture which he had learned from Erasmus and Collet. But on the charge of torturing Protestants out of court, there is no need to doubt his assertion that only twice did he ever do anything even distantly resembling this. Once when he ordered a moderate whipping to a boy who used profane language, and once when he cured a man whose madness took the form of heresy, by stripes applied with much vigor.

Starting point is 06:32:46 As to the latter case, we must not, of course, forget that beating and starvation were almost up to our memory the accepted treatment for insane persons, and that here and there the same notion still survives. It cannot unfortunately be denied that he allowed his jurisdiction, to be invoked by the bishops and misused it by keeping men in prison when they ought legally to have been released, nor that he was too deeply concerned in the death of Bilney, whose chief heresy was charging the priesthood with immorality, and of Bainham who held, that if a Jew or Saracen trusts in God and keeps his law, he is a good Christian man, and was therefore racked in the tower by the

Starting point is 06:33:28 Chancellor's order. It is impossible not to feel deep sorrow and contrasting more spirit as regards persecution with that of Woolsey, who was said to have found some means to save every heretic brought personally before him. Indeed, we find with pleasure that the Tenterdin men already mentioned, whom Worme judged in 1511 for denying the chief Roman doctrines, were not executed after all. even the threatening persecution of 1527 at Oxford, which deliberers personal narrative given by Froud and Maitland describes with so much life, was ended without bloodshed by the accused persons, making a kind of recantation and bearing a faggot at St. Paul's.

Starting point is 06:34:13 Yet if Moore is less humane than Woolsey, he is far above both Audley, his successor in the chancellorship, and Cranmer. He would not have racked people with his own hands like the form. and would have been incapable of the levity with which Cranmer speaks in 1533 of one frith, who looketh to go to the fire for holding concerning the sacrament after the manner of Ecolompadius. And if we condemn some of his actions, we must remember that the very standard by which we test them was first created by him. He it is who first assigned to human life its true value, maintaining that it ought never to be taken for any short of murder, because, as he puts it, law has the same right to give a man a dispensation

Starting point is 06:35:01 for robbery or adultery as for killing another because he steals. His was the first protest against the perpetual pairing away of poor men's wages and against the constant and increasing sycophancy of judges. Above all, he declares that in utopia, anyone may be of what religion he will, and that even atheists, though excluded from government, because they cannot rule nobly, are still not to be visited with any farther punishment. The least then that can be required of a real student of history is, first that such a man's life, character, opinions, and practice shall all be taken into account in judging of him, and then that it should be considered whether a man of high honor,

Starting point is 06:35:47 who resolves to die for a noble cause, does not thus irresistibly, claim that the balance of judgment should be in his favor, even if all his actions cannot be approved. End of Section 18. Section 19 of the early tutors by Charles Edward Moberly. This Librovox recording is in the public domain read by Pamela Nagami. Chapter 14. The Dissolution of the Monasteries The Pilgrimage of Grace 1535 to 1538, Part 1 The death of Moore and Fisher soon appeared to have been acts not less stupid than wrongful.

Starting point is 06:36:37 They were as much against Henry's interests as they should have been against his conscience. From the time of his excommunication, he had been wishing to conciliate foreign Protestants, and in the course of 1535, he sent Fox, bishop of Hereford to the various reformed states of Germany in order to counteract the schemes of Francis I for the re-establishment of Catholic unity there. But the Germans, while firm and resisting French persuasion, yet valued the learning of the Renaissance of which Moore had been such a noble

Starting point is 06:37:11 representative and distrusted the king who was Protestant in nothing but in murdering him and in hating the Pope. Moreover, both he and Fisher were considered to have been witnesses, on the whole, to evangelical truth and opposing Anne's marriage. As to foreign sovereigns, Charles V announced Moore's death with grave and sincere concern to the English ambassador who had not yet heard of it. Francis ventured to suggest that banishment might in future cases of the kind be a better punishment than death, and was vehemently raided by Henry for such unfriendly interference. in our internal affairs. At Rome, of course, the death of Cardinal Fisher destroyed the last hope of accommodation, so that the bull of deposition was at once drawn up, although the influence of both Charles

Starting point is 06:38:02 and Francis was used to hinder its publication. By this instrument, had it been published, all officers of the Crown would have been released from their oath of allegiance, the entire nation forbidden under pain of excommunication to acknowledge Henry, and orders given to the clergy to forsake the land and to the nobles to rise in rebellion, helped by the faithful princes of Europe. Charles V, who had just been achieving some real and undoubted glory by the capture of Tunis from the pirate Barbarossa, and the recovery of 20,000 Christian prisoners there, seemed marked out to execute the papal sentence. and as in crushing the ruler of Tunis he had deprived Francis of a powerful ally and therefore disposed him to peace in Italy,

Starting point is 06:38:53 it was not impossible that both powers might unite against England. The death of Catherine, which happened that Kim Bolton in January 1536, was a gleam of light among Henry's manifold embarrassments. So much had he wished for it that in the preceding November he had sworn to his counsel, that his next parliament should rid him of both her and Mary. This Chappui reports to the Emperor as having been told him by the Martianess of Exeter. Anne at first showed signs of great joy at her rival's death, but it was observed a few days later that she seemed to recognize its true effect upon her position. Hitherto, Henry had been able to choose only between her and Catherine. But now there were many ladies by whom she might be supplanted.

Starting point is 06:39:48 Soon after this, her hope of a son was again disappointed, and she saw too clearly that her last hold on her husband was gone. Indeed, he was already planning to marry Jane Seymour. By Catherine's death, the main ground of quarrel with the emperor had, of course, been removed. Therefore, it was not impossible, from his point of view, for Henry to be reconciled, either to him or to the Pope. To show his disposition that way, he censured an untimely sermon of Cranmers against imperial usurpations, and was quite willing to help Charles V against the Turks, with whom Francis, on the contrary, had just been making a commercial treaty. Although adhering

Starting point is 06:40:33 after the fashion of weak men to a fixed idea, he even then demanded, that Charles should allow himself to have been wrong from the first in opposing the marriage with Anne. Seeing that things were taking this direction, Cromwell became convinced that he had been rash in pressing things so far against Rome, and about the middle of April, it seems to have struck him that nothing would tend so much to conciliate the Catholic Party as the sacrifice of Anne Boleyn, who was detested by them, not only because England had broken with the Pope for her sake, but because, she had herself shown some Protestant leanings. He is reported with apparent truth by Chapui as declaring

Starting point is 06:41:18 that he began to contrive and conspire the said affair. He seme a fantasy and conspura the d'it affair against the queen. And the way in which he managed the prosecution seemed strongly to confirm this view of his conduct. For he induced Henry to sign on the 24th of April 1536, a commission by which the Lord Chancellor, the Duke of Suffolk, with some other nobleman, and any four of the judges were to inquire not into anything about Anne, but generally, into all kinds of treason by whomsoever committed, and to try the offenders. Among the commissioners were the Queen's father, the Earl of Wiltshire, and the Duke of Norfolk, her uncle. The court being thus constituted, a charge against Anne, and its evidence were next to be provided. Accordingly, on the 30th of the same month,

Starting point is 06:42:13 the conversation was reported to Cromwell as having taken place on the previous day between Anne and Mark Smetton, a musician of the household, which indicated improper relations between them. Smetton was immediately arrested, and with what encouragements or under what threats we know not, confessed adultery with the queen. At any rate, what he said, implicated several other young courtiers, particularly Sir Francis Weston, Henry Norris, and William Brayerton, and to these Anne's brother Lord Rocheford was afterwards added. She was accused of grossest misconduct with all five, and with having conspired with them to kill the king. It is not desired here to go into the details of these most revolting trials,

Starting point is 06:43:02 yet it must be remarked that Anne was said to have done acts of unchastity at times when from the state of her health, they were all but impossible, and that the charge of compassing Henry's death is absurd, seeing that the moment it happened, she would have been exposed, defenseless, to the whole vengeance of Catherine's party. Her guilt has been supposed to be proved by the fact that her father and uncle were among the judges who recognized it, but to this it is replied that Wilcher was excused from sitting on her trial, and that Norfolk had long been hostile to her. Great stress has also been laid on the dying confessions or non-denials of Smetton and the other accused persons, but here again there is uncertainty.

Starting point is 06:43:48 They all said on the scaffold that they had deserved death, but not that they had done the crime for which they suffered, and as for Smetton's earlier confession, may he not have made it to escape torture? Just as in this very year, Sebastiano Monte Cuculli confessed for the same reason that he had poisoned the dauphin of France, who was not poisoned at all. Besides this, the prisoners were simply hanged or beheaded, none of them suffering the more horrid penalties of treason, and it is at least conceivable that they paid for this remission by not protesting their innocence at last, caring as a traveler of the period remarks of Englishmen in general, much more for bodily pain than for death. Anne was found guilty, May 15th, by the Duke of Norfolk as Lord High Steward and 26 peers.

Starting point is 06:44:42 On the 17th, Cranmer held a court at Lambeth in which he decided, apparently because of a shameful confession by Henry, that Anne's marriage was null and void ab initio. It seemed to occur to no one that if she, she had never been married, the charge of treasonable adultery fell to the ground of itself. On the 19th, the sword of the Calais headsman freed Henry from his hated wife. People were surprised at his revelries during the trial. He was perhaps somewhat elated by seeing how many sovereigns were thinking how to find him a new queen. He chose, however, to carve for himself and married Jane Seymour on the day after the execution. Against the general expectation he did not recognize Mary as legitimate.

Starting point is 06:45:32 The Duke of Richmond, his favorite child, the son of his early mistress Elizabeth Blout, was now 17 years old, and as Parliament had allowed him to appoint his successor by will, there was some thought of first legitimating the Duke, as in the case of the Beauforts, and then making him heir to the crown. Authority, both Romish and Protestant, had even suggested the strange notion that he should marry his half-sister Mary and thus close all controversy. The Protestant Tyndall advised this, and it had been considered as a possibility by Pope Clement the 7th, until informed by his counsel that such a permission was ultra-weir-res. Richmond's death, however, in the course of 1536, frustrated all such schemes.

Starting point is 06:46:21 Instead of being diminished by Anne's death, Henry's unpopularity with the Roman Party was now increasing daily for many reasons. One of these was his already mentioned wish to form an anti-papel league in Northern Europe. The Confession of Augsburg, 1530, had now embodied the views of the Lutheran body, and he had held out hopes in 1535 that he might sign it. He had also urged the bishops to produce a correct translation of the Bible, and, as they hesitated, had employed Miles Coverdale to collect and edit the various portions, perhaps with Tyndall's help. Six copies of the work when printed were ordered to be attached to Stans and St. Paul's, and one to be bought for every church in England and placed in the choir. But what seemed most clearly to define his position was his issuing in

Starting point is 06:47:16 1536, the so-called articles to establish Christian quietness, apparently composed by himself, in which, while on the whole adhering to the Roman doctrine, he yet partially adopted the Protestant expressions about justification and spoke severely about the papal corruptions connected with purgatory and indulgences. But above all, he had with a strong hand carried out his plans with regard to the monasteries as a reply to Paul III's Bull of Deposition, which he well knew to exist, although it appears in spite of the assertions of many historians never to have been published at all. For it has been pointed out that there is no contemporary copy of it in England, that Bishop Burnett printed it for the first time, not from the records but from a Roman bularium,

Starting point is 06:48:08 that Hall and Fox make no mention of his publication, and that for several years, years after this it is spoken of by the Romish party only as likely to be published. The monasteries of England had almost from a fatal necessity degenerated from the principles on which they were founded. It may be said in general that decay in such institutions can be hindered only by a system of vigorous inspection and control, combined with authority such as the popes had exercised, to break up and remodel them according to the needs of the time. Of late, however, the popes, as already noticed, had been little inclined to interfere with such an ally as England, and besides this, the superiors of the various orders, being foreigners, could not well

Starting point is 06:48:55 exercise regular and effective discipline here. Thus the rules enforcing labor, study, or mission work had become relaxed. Numbers of servants were kept in the large foundations to work for the monks, and the inmates had in many cases begun to fret against the law of celibacy to which they were subject. Their position as feudal superiors also from time to time embroiled them with their dependence, so that most violent, armed rebellion against their authority was not unknown. Warham, as we have seen, had feebly tried to abate the monastic disorders of his day, and Woolsey had suppressed a few of the poorer foundations in order to obtain funds for endowing Christchurch. Now the establishment of the royal supremacy laid the abbey's open

Starting point is 06:49:43 to attack. So, in the summer of 1535, just after the death of Sir Thomas Moore, Cromwell, as the King's Vice Regent and Ecclesiastical Matters, ordered a visitation of the universities, the religious houses, and all other spiritual corporations in the kingdom. That there was no thought of any such reform as that which had produced the self-devotion of the Teotines in Italy, or the exertions of the Franciscan body there during the plague of 1528 is plain enough from the character of the commissioners. These were doctors Lee, Layton, and a priest. Ecclesiastical lawyers of no great standing, but apt at ferreting out clerical scandals,

Starting point is 06:50:27 such as Leighton soon began relating to Cromwell with huge gusto and self-gratulation at having found such desirable evidence. Laura was the time allowed for the inquiry a less clear evidence of its intention. This was only four months. after which the commissioner's report was to be ready for the session of Parliament. As there were more than 1,000 monasteries to be reported on, it was clear that the work could not be got through in the time, especially as each foundation was as a rule visited by two of them successively,

Starting point is 06:51:00 and there was a schedule of 80 questions to be gone into with each community. Plainly, therefore, the reporters must have adopted very short methods of getting evidence. together, indeed, they seemed to have chiefly aimed at having something to say about each, and this something, if evil, was generally about the abbot or superior, who, as we have seen, had often been appointed by the king or some other patron, for reasons quite unconnected with the discipline or welfare of the house. It would have been well if all the commissioners' work had been like what they did at Oxford, making very real reforms and carrying off no plunder. At Maudlin New College in All Souls, they established classical lectures and provided for their support,

Starting point is 06:51:47 imposing loss of commons on all resident students who did not attend one of them at least daily. They commanded that no monastic scholar under pain of being sent down to his cloister should be found in any tavern. They also ordered the works of Duns Scotus to be disused. A shallow way, says the analyst of Oxford, to treat an author so profound, that wise men could hardly understand him after 30 years study. Accordingly on a second visit to New College, we found reports Layton, all the great quadrant court full of the leaves of duns,

Starting point is 06:52:23 the wind blowing them into every corner, and Mr. Grenfell, a Buckinghamshire gentleman, gathering them up to trim sewers or blanchers to keep the deer within the wood, thereby to have the better cry with his hounds. As the agitation in the church was driving clerks to try for a living through medicine, the commissioners also ordained that no member of the university should practice it till he had satisfied the professor of medicine as to his knowledge. From Oxford, Layton went down into Kent, and on Monday, October the 22nd, had the pleasure of detecting the Abbot of Langdon

Starting point is 06:53:01 in a breach of morality. On the next day, as it appears, he went on to Canterbury to Ville, to visit the Archbishop C, intending, as he says, to be at Fabersham by the evening. If so, the late October day must have been well occupied, as beside the two journeys, there was an anti-papal sermon by Cranmer at the cathedral, and an inventory to be taken of the Christchurch valuables. At Faversham, the abbot was found too old to visit his domains actively. He had been in office since 1498. But when called upon in the following march to resign, he quietly replied that he was not so far enfeebled, neither in body nor in remembrance, but that he might well accommodate himself to the

Starting point is 06:53:47 governance of his poor house and monastery. On the 5th of November, a priest wrote to Cromwell that the abbot of Barry St. Edmunds delighted much in playing at dice and cards and spent much money in this and in building for pleasure. He was also fond of staying at the various granges. The monastery too was full of false relics, pieces of the true cross enough to make a cross of some of the coals with which St. Lawrence was burned, and the like. Meanwhile, Lee had joined Leighton for the visitation of the northern abbeys. At Chick-Sand, they found that two nuns had been ill-conducted. At Leicester, they exceptionally commend the authorities of St. Mary's colleges and hospitals as keeping these well and honestly, and having 300 pounds ready for use in their treasury. The monks

Starting point is 06:54:36 of Lester Abbey, they say, are Confederate and will confess nothing. Leighton, therefore, intends to object against them things which he had heard elsewhere, though not of them. In Yorkshire, the commissioners found instances of disgusting vice, they do not say where. At St. Mary's Abbey at York, they expect to find much evil disposition, both in the abbot and the convent. At Fountains, the abbot, a mere fool and idiot, and said to be grossly immoral, had stolen the sexton keys, possessed himself of a jeweled cross, and sold it with other valuables to a London jeweler.

Starting point is 06:55:15 The commissioners announced that he has been deposed, but secretly, for fear that the Earl of Cumberland should claim the appointment. Layton recommends for it a monk of the house called Marmaduke, who will pay 400 pounds for the appointment and 1,000 pounds of first fruits. As not many of the letters sent by the visitors now survive, there was little to add from this source to the extracts just made. When the visitation of fountains took place, the meeting of Parliament was at hand, and the commissioners set about preparing their report, which is said to have been commonly called the Black Book, and to have excited so much anger when read in the House of Commons that all with one voice cried out, down with them.

Starting point is 06:55:58 Selden, on the contrary, states that Henry had to threaten the members with death if they did not pass the act of suppression, and there is no doubt that the debate upon it was long and bitter. The black book itself, if there ever was such a document, has perished. Three manuscripts, however, remain generally called the Comperta, which purport to be extracts from it, and to analyze the confessions made at different monasteries. In some instances, the Comperta can be compared with the visitor's letters, as, for instance, with regard to fountains. We have seen what was said of this by Leighton, which is far from describing the place as the Universal's sink of iniquity of which the compare to speak, nor can it well be replied that the original and

Starting point is 06:56:43 detailed confessions may have been in writing and therefore different from what the commissioners received orally, for if so, some of them would have been still among the records, which is not the case. According to Burnett's account, the black book itself was destroyed by Reginald Pohl under Queen Mary, but if it was in Henry's reach at the time of the pilgrimage of grace, why did he say nothing of what would have been the best of all proofs that he had done well and not ill in destroying the monasteries? To this it must be added on the highest authority, that as a rule, documents discreditable to Romanism were not destroyed under Queen Mary. End of Section 19

Starting point is 06:57:28 Section 20 of the early tutors by Charles Edward Mulberry. This Liberovacs recording is in the public don't. Maine, read by Pamela Nagami. Chapter 14, The Dissolution of the Monasteries, The Pilgrimage of Grace, 1535 to 1538, Part 2. After all, the act distinguished the houses that were to be suppressed, not by their greater immorality, but as Woolsey had done by their less wealth. Parliament had heard from the king, so said the act, of enormities done in the abbeys, He, in turn, had learned these from his commissioners and from other credible witnesses. It was therefore ordained that those which had an income less than 200 pounds a year

Starting point is 06:58:23 should revert to the crown instead of to the founder's heirs as we might have expected. But Henry was authorized to preserve as many of them as he pleased by letters patent, and out of the 376 then confiscated, 37 were re-founded in the following August, and remained till the general dissolution. At first a fresh commission had been formed, in which neighboring gentlemen were in each case included, to settle which should be preserved.

Starting point is 06:58:53 But the reports from this were so uniformly favorable to the abbeys that Henry rudely accused the members of receiving bribes and soon cancelled it. He, at the same time, placed the remaining monasteries under a rule which aimed at shutting up monks rather than utilizing them, and rather than submit to this, a number surrendered to him of their own accord. Such was the celebrated visitation of the monasteries. Instead of being made centers of learning and education, they were generally demolished and the materials sold by the courtiers to whom Henry granted them.

Starting point is 06:59:30 How far the monks deserved their fate, there is little evidence to show. As church writers of earlier times seldom spared accusations of immorality against the regular clergy, and as these bodies had very little effective visitation, it is natural to suppose that their morals would in some cases be those of a large school or college left to itself. But it is not to be supposed that the record office contains a huge mystery of iniquity and documents which escape publication by being too bad for it. It is to be feared that historians will always be reduced, in the absence of sufficient evidence either way, to acquit or condemn these institutions, rather by their own notions of the probable,

Starting point is 07:00:19 than on any convincing arguments. As the year 1536 rolled on, it was plain that the conspiring lords had lost their opportunity. The emperor, in whose help they trusted, was now most unlikely to send troops either to England or Ireland, as a fresh war with France for Milan had broken out, and by August in this year, the sovereigns were engaged in a cross-invasion with the result that Francis fortified himself in Turin, while the emperor lost 30,000 of his veterans from famine and disease in his attack on Provence. Consequently, the northern peers remained inactive, though sullen, and the conspiracy would probably have died out, had not the commons of the same counties suddenly blazed into an

Starting point is 07:01:09 insurrection from motives partly the same as those of the nobles and partly peculiar to themselves. Like their bedders they objected to the plebeian advisors of the king, the promotion of Kranmer and other heretics in the church, and the suppression of the monasteries, and a new statute of uses which made it very difficult for landowners to throw on their estates the charge of providing for their younger children. But as a revolution is seldom really vigorous, unless a question of land is at the bottom of it, so to these grievances was added a deep-felt middle-class discontent at the system of enclosures and sheep-feeding, which still continued to harass farmers of the old school in a manner which they only half understood, but entirely resented.

Starting point is 07:02:01 The town of Laoth and the marshes of East Lincolnshire is even now somewhat out of the world. The country round it is so intersected with cuts, so liable to inroads of the sea and so incapable of growing trees, that field sports were out of the question in it. Therefore, the resident gentry are few, and a system of small holdings still prevails there, creating as usual a most independent spirit in the owners. This was the district where revolt was first to show itself. The nunnery of Legborn close to the town was on the point of suppression, and Henneage, one of the visitors, was expected with the Chancellor of Lincoln Cathedral

Starting point is 07:02:43 on this unpopular errand. On Monday, the 2nd of October 1536, he arrived, and a furious riot instantly broke out, from which he took refuge in the church, but was brought back and forced to swear that he would be true to the commons. The book containing Cromwell's commission was torn in pieces and his servants placed in the stocks. Shortly after this, a similar rising began at Horncastle and was joined by a number of gentry and by the abbot of Barlings, who appeared with his cannons in full armor. there too the celebrated banner of the five wounds of Christ was raised for the first time the unhappy chancellor fell into the hands of the mob and was murdered and on the same day there was arising at lincoln and bishop longland's palace was plundered if the nobles had now come forward to head the movement and strengthened it by the forces at their command henry's reign and life might soon have come to an end together however lord hudson who had spoken much of rebellion, could not persuade himself to take either side, but remained

Starting point is 07:03:54 inactive at Sleafid, and within a week from the outbreak, the advanced guard of the royal forces arrived at Stamford. Two days later, the Duke of Suffolk with the main body joined them to hear that the insurrection was already breaking up. In this emergency, Henry had shown a really royal firmness, not ill-pleased, perhaps, to have nobler occupations than those which had sold long enthralled him. To the written demands of the rioters for the dismissal of low counselors and the like, he replied that the rude commons of one shire, and that one of the most brute and beastly of the whole realm, should not be allowed to rule their prince. His orders were that they should disperse at once and surrender a hundred of their chief men. Expecting on this to be delivered up,

Starting point is 07:04:44 the leaders thought of cutting their way through and placing themselves in suffix hands. They were, however, allowed to pass without resistance, and the first act of the pilgrimage of grace was at an end. But a far harder trial was to come, for on the 8th of October, a much better organized insurrection burst out in Yorkshire. A paper, urging a rebellion for the sake of God's truth, had been circulated in that county under the signature of a popular young lord. lawyer named Robert Ask, who had been watching the Lincolnshire events, and on returning home, although he declared that he knew nothing of the paper, he found himself stormily welcomed as leader.

Starting point is 07:05:27 Lord Darcy, the chief person in Yorkshire, followed Lord Hussey's example in temporizing, and shut himself up with a few foreigners in Pontefract Castle, although he had been all along one of the conspiring nobles, and was favorable to the objects proposed by the rebels, who, on the 14th of October, mustered on Waiton Heath about 18 miles east of York, their troops being picked men, well-armed, and equipped for war. Having summoned Hall in vain, they left half their forces to besiege it, while the rest marched on York, and were unhesitatingly welcomed there. The monasteries were cleared and their old,

Starting point is 07:06:09 inhabitants restored. They then marched to Pontefract, where, after some hesitation, Lord Darcy joined them just when Lord Shrewsbury was at hand with forces for his relief. Soon Hull surrendered and at length the small castle of Skpton, which still remains entire, was the only strong place in Yorkshire unsubdued, while large rebel reinforcements were arriving from Durham under Lord's Latimer and Lumley, and two sons of the Duke of Northumberland, had already brought up the standard of St. Cuthbert for a southward march. Even the Archbishop of York, who had been with Lord Darcy at Pontefract, had for the time given in his adhesion. Thirty thousand excellent troops now moved under Asks' command against

Starting point is 07:06:57 Doncaster, more than a third of them being mounted and clad in armor. But Henry, mingling prudence with firmness, used a variety of means to break it up. reminding Lord Latimer and others how disgraceful to them it was to be serving under a man of such low rank as ask, and explaining by means of papers scattered all over the north, that a plan of Cromwell's four parish registers had no reference to taxation, and that none of the recent church measures had been hostile to true religion. When the rebels reached the banks of the Don, they found that he had wisely opposed to them the Duke of Norfolk and Lord's Shrewsbury, Rutland, Huntington, and Talbot, all men popular in the north, yet evidently resolved to obey

Starting point is 07:07:46 the king's orders whatever happened. It was impossible to force Doncaster Bridge in face of their artillery, and twice, when an attack had been planned, a storm made the river too deep to cross, the flood seeming as fatal to the pilgrimage of grace as that of the Severn had been to Buckingham's revolt in 1483. Thus, Ask was compelled to negotiate, his terms being that all concerned should receive a pardon, and that their articles of accommodation should be transmitted to the king. These included restoration of the Pope's authority, and condign punishment for all concerned in overthrowing it, among whom Cromwell, Leighton and Lee, and the reforming bishops were especially named, the penalty he suggested for the last being fire or such other.

Starting point is 07:08:37 Remission of taxes, enforcement of the acts against enclosure, and a few others. But Henry now began to feel that the game was in his own hands. Ask and Darcy were he plainly saw, men who wished for revolution only if it could be had without overt acts of rebellion. He therefore detained Asks messengers for a fortnight, firmly refusing to hold a parliament till the crisis was over, or even to grant an unreserved pardon. The leaders would, he, felt sure, find their scheme of a northern parliament impracticable, and be unable to get help in time from the emperor,

Starting point is 07:09:16 or to bring over to them the country south of the Trent. He therefore ordered Norfolk to reoccupy the line of the Don, which he had abandoned, and to maintain it at all hazards. Yet, as more and more insurgents gradually came in from the North, and the severe weather made it difficult to keep the field against them, Henry was at last induced to relent. On the 2nd of December, news came that he had granted a full pardon, promised to hold a parliament at York, and consented to inquire into the question of enclosures. On hearing this, Ask instantly threw off his badge with the five wounds, and declared that

Starting point is 07:09:57 henceforth he would wear no device but the kings. Nor was Henry unfaithes, for the time at least to his part of the compact. He had before checked and reproved as dishonorable Norfolk's desire to make terms with the intention of breaking them, and he now admitted to his presence the insurgent leaders and explained to them how little reason there had been for the outbreak. One of these was ask himself. The king said that he took him now for his faithful subject and wished to hear from him the history of the rebellion. in return, warned the king of the dangerous discontent still remaining in Yorkshire, and of the general fear that the pardon would be delusive. In fact, early in 1537, partial insurrections,

Starting point is 07:10:47 entirely disavowed by the late leaders, were raised by Sir Francis by God in Yorkshire and by Nicolmusgrave in Cumberland. As these were believed to have been instigated by the monks, express and stern orders were sent to put to death any who were taken, and in obedience to these about 74 persons were hanged on the walls of Carlisle. Of the Lincolnshire prisoners, 19 with Lord Hussey were executed after trial, and saddest of all, the new insurrections drew on the death of ask and his colleagues, who were alleged unslight evidence, to have gone against the government in them and thus to have forfeited their pardon. Lady Bomer was burned alive in Smithfield for a plot to carry off the Duke of Norfolk.

Starting point is 07:11:37 The abbots of Fountains and Jorvo were hanged, and, strangely enough, Lancaster Herald, the king's own messenger, who had boldly faced Ask at Pontefract, now shared the same fate, because he had disgraced his tabard by kneeling to a rebel in order to dissuade him from his enterprise. In spite of the treasons of the Northern Abbot's, their monasteries were not at once confiscated, but their offense was held to be a sufficient reason for claiming possession at any time. There is a curious Lancashire tradition that the Abbot of Wally had been driven into insurrection by a stratagem of Asks, who managed to get the great convent beacon fired, and so made it appear that the signal had been given by the abbot himself.

Starting point is 07:12:26 self. If this is true, it did not save the unfortunate man's life nor his monastery. Soon the great abbeys of Jervaux, Bridlington, and Furness were suppressed, and not long after this, Chertsey, Castleacre, Lewis, and Lester surrendered under the old act. To these must be added St. Augustine's Canterbury, the mother of English Christianity, which has been so nobly and happily restored, in our own. own time as a hard-working missionary college. The point to which the English Reformation had now advanced doctrinally is indicated by two events. One of these was Henry's passionate refusal to let England be represented at the Council of Montua, which even Luther had accepted in 1535

Starting point is 07:13:16 on the proposal of the lately elected Pope Paul III, and his vehement exertions to hinder the German Protestants from attending it, on the grounds that it belonged, not to the Pope, but to princes to summon such assemblies. The other was the publication by authority in 1537 of the institution of a Christian man, drawn up chiefly by Cranmer and Bishop Fox, and generally called the Bishop's Book. Its plan was to represent the Christian faith, article by article, not as bare dogmas, but as powerful to influence men's hearts and lives. It is anti-Roman mainly as teaching that wherever the faith is held there the church is, and that no church has rule over any other, in contrasting strongly the church militant and its admixture of evil, with the invisible and unfailing church unseen, and in speaking

Starting point is 07:14:15 much more of the work of the priesthood and their obedience to civil rule than of inherent powers possessed by them. while in terms admitting seven sacraments, it still defines them much as Protestants would have done. It is curious that it repeatedly prohibits as offensive to God, all divination, palmistry, or witchcraft, and an act of parliament passed in 1541 throws light on this by showing that a system had grown up of searching by supernatural means for the treasures built up or buried in the ruined monasteries, whose exact position was now forgotten. On the 20th of October, 1537, the long-wished-for Prince of Wales was at length-born,

Starting point is 07:15:02 and many regulations were made for watching a life so precious. At the same time, the Queen's brother, Sir Edward Seymour, was made Earl of Hartford, Sir William Fitzwilliams, Earl of Southampton, and Sir W. Russell, Lord Russell. As if it were faded that the hope of the dynasty was to rest on one son, the queen who seemed at first to be doing well, took cold and died in four days. Her virtues and graces have been exaggerated by history, yet Henry's grief was sincere

Starting point is 07:15:37 and proved by his ordering 1,200 masses for her soul and remaining a widower until 1539. The submissions which the Princess Mary had been long offering were now accepted, and though not acknowledged as legitimate, it was understood that she was placed in the line of succession. About the same time, the Navy, which was in the utmost decay, was so far restored as to be able to guard our coasts from the secure insolence of pirates. Considering Henry's early predilection for the sea, it is strange to hear of Spaniards and Frenchmen daring to attack one another in our harbors and of English vessels being plundered by corsairs within sight of land. However, a small fleet was now fitted out which successfully fought a French plundering squadron in Mounts Bay,

Starting point is 07:16:29 single pirates were captured here and there, and our harbors put in a state of defense. The expenses were paid out of the abbeys, this being the chief national purpose, except indeed the foundation of six new bishoprics, achieved by the many spoliation which went on through 1538 and 1539. One remarkable instance of them was the destruction of the shrine of St. Thomas of Canterbury, from which 26 cartloads of treasure were taken. A paragraph added at this time to the unpublished bill of deposition gives some credit to the story that St. Thomas himself was summoned to appear, much as the dead Pope Formosus was by his successor and plead to the charge of treason against Henry II. On the same view of history, a friar named Forrest, who had asserted that Beckett and Fisher were

Starting point is 07:17:26 alike martyrs, was burned in a fire made from the wood of a celebrated Welsh image called Darful Gadarn, which had been supposed to have power to draw souls out of hell. An exhibition was also made at court of the mechanism by which the Statue of Christ at Boxley had been made to move its head and weep. It really seemed as if the Reformation had taken the holding turn. Such certainly was Latimer's view when he preached Forrest's death sermon in the firm belief that the birth of Edward had secured the victory of Protestantism among us and made God, as he expressed it, really an English God.

Starting point is 07:18:08 But causes of an opposite tendency were also at work, undivined by the simple-minded Bishop of Worcester. negotiations had been going on for the king's marriage with the Duchess of Milan, Charles V's niece, and this required, from the ladies' point of view, a papal dispensation. Such difficulties might possibly be got over by inducing the emperor to break with the Pope as Henry had done, but there was absolutely no hope of this, unless England could be shown to be Orthodox in spite of the schism. Henry was also moved in the same direction by a letter from the Langegrave of Hesse against Anabaptism, which had shocked all Germany in 1535 by its unbridled rule of polygamy and murder at Munster. It is also clear that he felt deeply scandalized by the profanity and mockery of

Starting point is 07:19:04 holy things, which was getting rife in his own dominions. All these motives made him wish to give some striking proof that his faith was sound, and a suitable opportunity soon occurred. John Lambert, who had been a friend of Tyndall, was condemned in the Archbishop's court for denying transubstantiation and appeal to the king. Henry heard the cause in person at Whitehall, showing his animus against the prisoner by taunting him, with having two names, forced him to say, I or no without qualification to the question whether Christ's body is in the sacrament, crushed him with the text, this is my body and left him to die, saying that the king would be no patron of heretics. This was evidently no freak or accident, but the sign of a settled policy.

Starting point is 07:19:59 The next chapter will show how it was to be carried out, how resisted, and in what the resistance was to end. End of Section 20. Section 21 of the early tutors by Charles Edward Mowberley. This Libravox recording is in the public domain read by Pamela Nagami. Chapter 15. The Yorkist Conspiracy, Anne of Cleves, Six Articles, The Fall of Cromwell, 1538 to 1539, Part 1. It seemed faded that revolts against Henry should fail for want of combination. This, as we have seen, had been the case with the conspiracy of the nobles and the two acts of the Pilgrimage of Grace, and now the fourth division of the same general movement was to be managed still more impotently and to bring still

Starting point is 07:21:00 wider ruin on its promoters. The House of York in 1538, chiefly represented by the Marquis of Exeter, whose mother, Lady Courtney, was Edward V. Fourth's daughter, and by Lady Salisbury, who was the daughter of George Duke of Clarence, niece to King Edward and sister to the Earl of Warwick who had perished with Warbeck. The sons of this venerable lady were Lord Montague, and Arthur, Reginald, and Geoffrey Pole. The Marquis of Exeter had unwillingly joined in the suppression of the pilgrimage of grace, yet remained bitterly hostile to Cromwell and the new teaching. Since then, he had been complained of as hindering the course of justice in his own county, and now information came from members of his household that he was raising men in Cornwall with

Starting point is 07:21:55 the view of getting himself named heir to the crown, and from a painter at the turbulent, Cornish village of St. Kevern, that orders had been given for a banner of the Five wounds. On farther inquiry, it appeared that the tenacious Cornishman had not forgotten Black Heath Field and still long to overthrow the Tudor dynasty. That the polls shared in the plot was presently made too clear by the cowardice of Sir Geoffrey, who, to shield himself, volunteered evidence that his brother, Lord Montague and Lord and Lady Exeter were all in correspondence with Cardinal Reginald pole. The danger was serious, for other evidence showed that Paul III was plotting a Spanish conquest of Ireland and had sent pole to liege that he might be near enough to hold all the threads of the

Starting point is 07:22:48 intrigue together. And worst of all, the emperor had for some unexplained purpose, collected 200 ships at Antwerp. The strongest measures were therefore adopted. Exeter and Montague were put on their trial and condemned, not for the conspiracy, which it was better to keep as secret as possible, but as traitors in word. Lady Exeter and Lady Salisbury were attainted and imprisoned in the tower. On this occasion, Henry asked the judges whether Parliament could a taint without giving any reason. Their reply was that the question was dangerous, that Parliament is bound to set an example not of lawlessness but of justice, yet that if it did so deal with anyone, his attainder would hold. It might have been expected that being thus attacked by the Pope would have made Henry

Starting point is 07:23:43 more Protestant. Yet it had not this effect, as he seemed, still anxious to prove himself as faithful as any rebel could be to the old religion, undeterred by a danger which after all had not been extreme. He also really hated as we have seen the spirit of ribaldry which had set in a under the pretense of religion. To meet this, he first published, an earnest and even touching exhortation to decent reverence in externals, and then, after proclaiming an amnesty for past offenses against religion, set himself to consider how they might be prevented in the future.

Starting point is 07:24:23 Even on the principles of our own time, some punishment was required to check disorder, for a Bible reading aloud in church had been made an excuse for interrupt. the service and abusing its minister. And if a zealous Protestant disliked any church ceremony, he was not unlikely to rate the clergyman performing it and tell him loudly that he did not. Some were reported as common singers against the sacraments and ceremonies. Others as players of interludes railing on the priesthood. Others, again, as mimicking the elevation of the host with the most odious profanity. To deal with this state of things, commission was formed of Cromwell, the two archbishops and six bishops representing various

Starting point is 07:25:09 parties. But as these could not agree on their report, or at any rate did not send it in at once, the Duke of Norfolk moved in the House of Lords that Parliament as a whole should discuss the main points of controversy and settle the law concerning them. The result was an act imposing by lay authority alone the celebrated six articles, the very sound of which was thought, certain to daunt the profane. In the first of these, transubstantiation, the very antithesis of Protestantism, was again and finally affirmed. Anyone denying it was to be burned without any chance of saving himself by retractation. In the next four, communion in one kind was asserted to be sufficient, the observance of vows of chastity was enjoined, and private masses and auricular concessions.

Starting point is 07:26:03 confession maintained, whoever twice denied any of these was to suffer death as a felon. All marriages contracted by priests were pronounced void, and the wives were to be dismissed by a certain day. To refuse communion or confession was also felony. Of course, if this act had been fully enforced, there would have been a persecution worthy of Alva or Torquemada, and for a few days the risk of this appeared considerable, as in the city of London, where the Roman Party formed a committee at Mercer's Hall and denounced not less than 500 of their fellow citizens as heretics. But the king was not inclined to persecute on this scale. He allowed the accused to be securities for one another and so dismissed them. Partly from his backwardness and partly from Cromwell's

Starting point is 07:26:56 opposition, the six articles, though professedly enforced for eight years, were really so only at intervals, and when Henry gave permission. As there were four of these short persecutions in the remainder of the reign, some of them specially cruel, and costing, on the whole, 27 lives, the result of the act is sufficiently lamentable not to need exaggerations. Historians, therefore, should not have spoken of Gardner and the bishops as daily sending men to the stake under it. One of its first consequences was that Cranmer sent his wife abroad, and Latimer and Shaxton were deprived of their seas. At about the same time, an act of Parliament vested the Abbeylands and the King, and those to whom he granted them, thus establishing, as Mr. Hallam remarks,

Starting point is 07:27:48 the wealth of great families like the Russell's, who were to be famous in after years, and at last to become the surest barrier against tyranny in England. So was completed the dissolution of the monasteries, which every historian must be glad at last to dismiss. Unhappily, some of its last scenes were also the ugliest, as when the abbot of Glastonbury, who had hidden his plate in the hope of better times, was hanged for his crime at the top of the tour close by, to be seen far and wide across the Somersetshire Plain. In strong contrast with such horrors, stands the admission of Wales into the English polity, which is the most honorable thing Henry ever did. Indeed, its effect on Welsh turbulence has been compared by Burke to the calming of the tempest when the twins are

Starting point is 07:28:41 first seen above the horizon. According to existing laws, no Welshman could buy land or house in or near any city or town in the marches, or be a burgess of any corporate English town, or an apprentice in any English town whatever. The manufacture and import of armor was forbidden in Wales, and all Welsh meetings were unlawful except by special license. The vernacular poet Glyn Cothie complains bitterly that his furniture had been confiscated on his presuming to marry an Englishwoman. had he been English and his wife Welsh, he would have forfeited all franchises and made himself a Welshman in the eye of the law. Unlike his father, Henry the 8th thought much of the principality in the latter years of his reign, and it was settled by various statutes, that the English law alone

Starting point is 07:29:36 should be current there, that instead of the despotic jurisdiction of the Lord's marchers, justices of the peace should be established and hold sessions in each county twice a year, that Welsh-born subjects should have the same privileges as Englishmen, and that each county and each county town should send a member to Parliament. As raids into England might still happen, it was ordered that no ferry boat should take any Welshman across the Severn by night, and by way of compliment to this, English disorder was repulsory. by the vigor of Roland Lee, the warden of the marches, both in Cheshire, which had long presumed

Starting point is 07:30:18 on its privileges as a county palatine not subject to the royal courts by sending bans out to plunder neighboring counties, and in Shropshire, in Herefordshire, which used their positions on the border for the same purpose. When Henry's hand was refused by the Duchess of Milan, Cromwell, finding the six articles passed in spite of him, devised a singularly bold plan for saving Protestantism in England by marrying Henry to some lady who would lead him in that direction. Anne, sister to the Duke of Cleves, seemed well suited for this purpose, for the Duke was a Protestant and his dominions which included Yulie Esperk and part of Hanover, placed him in the closest connection with the Protestant states of Hesse and Saxony, and with Hermann, Archbishop of Cologne,

Starting point is 07:31:13 who was already showing the Protestant tendencies, which led to his deposition in 1543. He was therefore a most important member of the Schmalcaldic League against the Emperor, which had been formed in 1531, and had on the 10th of July, 1536, been enlarged and renewed for 10 years, the contingent of troops which each of its members was to supply, being also arranged against emergencies. Moreover, he had claims on Gelderland, which, if established, would make his territory like an open gate for anyone wishing to attack the emperor, either in Holland or Germany, and having France for an ally. Cromwell, therefore, threw his whole force into the negotiation, hoping thus to checkmate the party which had carried the six articles and which wished to see Charles invade England.

Starting point is 07:32:10 On the 27th of December, 1539, the lady landed at Deal. On the 31st, Henry met her at Rochester and found her lamentably unlike Holbein's portrait, quite devoid of accomplishments, knowing no language but her own and much marked with the smallpox. His consternation was extreme. He could hardly utter a word, and forgot to take from his pocket the present which he had prepared. Foreigners in those days were sometimes half-surprised and more than half-amused at our caring so much for female beauty, and Henry was as English in this point as his father had been. Hardly would he have submitted to such an infliction even for a cherished purpose of his own,

Starting point is 07:32:59 much less for one with which he only half-sympathized. Could not a pre-contract be made out? No, the lady was very decidedly free. And after all, it was not due to throw the Duke into the alliance between Charles and Francis, which was now assuming the most threatening appearance, Charles being actually on a visit to the French court, and ominously refusing all inquiry into the treatment of Englishmen in Spain by the Inquisition. So the marriage took place on the 6th of January, 1540, hateful though it was to the bridegroom, and unpopular because of the risk from it to Flemish trade.

Starting point is 07:33:41 For the next five months, a life and death struggle went on between the two religious parties. Cromwell seemed for a while to be scoring at all points. He was created Earl of Essex on the 17th of April, and afterwards a night of the good. garter, and succeeded in imprisoning some of his antagonists or driving them from the council. It was expected every day that Gardner would be sent to the tower. The minister also carried the attainder of some priests, one of Queen Catherine's household,

Starting point is 07:34:12 who had been contumacious ever since, and succeeded in checking the action of the six articles and in abolishing many rights of sanctuary. But all the time, his main scheme was collapsing miserable. He could not persuade Francis to join the League of Protestant Germany, and its members in alarm made their peace with Charles for the time. This was the opportunity for which Cromwell's enemies had been waiting. Now their charges, carefully gathered for years, might securely be hurled at him. On the 10th of June, Henry allowed him to be arrested at the council table, the other members loudly proclaiming him a traitor and tearing the ribbon of the garter from his neck. He was immediately attainted on eight charges, the substance of which was that he had planned to crush the nobles of England and to form a confederacy of heretics in the country

Starting point is 07:35:09 by means of which he might raise a rebellion. He was truly or falsely sworn to have said that if the king and realm varied from his opinions, he would fight against them sword in hand, and that if he lived a year or two, he would bring matters to such a state. that the king would have no power to change it even if he desired. Events then rushed on with lightning speed. The attainder was passed by acclamation about the 19th of June. On the 1st of July, Norfolk and the new government carried a bill for the better observance of the six articles.

Starting point is 07:35:46 On the seventh, the king's late marriage was brought before convocation and annulled on the wonderful plea that it had been extorted under compulsion by external causes. On the 12th, an act of Parliament was carried to the same effect, and Anne of Cleves, intending to remain in England, was endowed with 3,000 pounds a year in the grotesque title of the King's sister. On the 28th, Cromwell laid his head on the block, and two days later, Barnes, Garrett and Jerome, who had rashly put themselves forward as opponents of Gardner were sent at the stake as gainsayers of the six articles. The priests attainted by cromwell being hanged at the same place in time for denying the supremacy.

Starting point is 07:36:34 Soon after this, Parliament, which had in the previous year given to Henry's proclamation the force of laws, thus going near to establish a kind of Turkish despotism in the state, did nearly the same in church matters by enabling a committee of the archbishops, bishops, and certain doctors of divinity, acting with the king's sanction, that is, the king himself, to declare absolutely the judgment of the English Church on all questions of theology, whether raised here or on the continent, and to enforce it by pains and penalties. End of Section 21. Section 22 of the early tutors by Charles Edward Moberly.

Starting point is 07:37:22 This Librovoc's recording is in the public domain read by Pamelae. Malinagami. Chapter 15, The Yorkist Conspiracy, Anne of Cleves, Six Articles, The Fall of Cromwell, 1538 to 1539, Part 2. In April of this year, James V of Scotland on his way back from France, stopped for a short time off Scarborough, and boldly received a deputation of Yorkshire gentleman asking for the help against Henry, which he was well-disposed to grant. After 1524, he had soon begun drifting back toward the French alliance. True, the negotiations for his marriage with Mary were more than once renewed, but neither side would take the first step.

Starting point is 07:38:13 The Scottish statesman declaring that a lasting peace would be easy after the marriage and Henry wishing for a reliable treaty before it. Till Margaret's divorce from Angus was granted in 1528, and she was allowed to marry a new favorite, Lord Methuen, she had been quite resolved to seek for help wherever she could find it. And as none came from Henry, this meant that she would appeal to France. Therefore, two political parties became clearly defined, that of the Lord's Angus, Lennox, Merri, Glencairn, and Sir George Douglas, who were prepared to go all lengths for the English connection, being opposed to Methuen,

Starting point is 07:38:56 Aden and James and David Betten, successive archbishops of St. Andrews, who were in the French interest. From 1528 forward, the beginnings of the Reformation in England made the Scots anti-reformers, inclined to ally themselves with our enemies, still more closely and to mark their religious zeal by persecution. Thus, Patrick Hamilton, the proto-martre of the Scottish Reformation, was burned in that year for denying pilgrimage, purgatory, prayer to the saints and such trifles, says Knox. And for some time, there was an exodus from Scotland of gentlemen and clerks escaping with their lives from charges of reading the Bible in English and asking Lord Dacre for relief when they were across the border. James, as time went on, was heard to boast that he was to be made Duke of York, not by his uncle,

Starting point is 07:39:53 but by the emperor. And when Henry went to, he was to be made, Duke of York, and when Henry went to, to York to have an interview with him, the rash young man was induced by the bribes of the church party to break his engagement, thus giving up the chance of seeing how widely different from his own kingdom was that which might fall to him as Henry's son-in-law and which his grandson was at length to inherit. As the Catholic partisans were quite determined to stop the English negotiations altogether, they also induced James to Mary Magdalene, the beautiful but delicate daughter of Francis I, who died within a few months from the change of climate. It was in bringing home this bride that he received the Scarborough deputation

Starting point is 07:40:38 and heard how they were robbed and murdered, and how much they longed for him to come and have all. On arriving at Leith, he bade farther defiance to England by prosecuting some of anger, his relations and supporters, his sister, Lady Clamas, a woman of great beauty and intelligence, was burned alive for treason as Lady Bulmer had been in England. After Magdalene's death, Henry renewed his advances, but found James fatally resolved on a second French wife, Mary of Gies, the widow of the Duke de Longville, whom he married in June 1538. Henry, meanwhile, was preparing two deadly blows against his recreate nephew. The first of these was an attempt to get him kidnapped while hunting on the border. A paper still remains in which the English Council remarked that they find in the scheme many difficulties, above all the risk of a struggle in which James might be killed and the infamy thence arising. They admit that the proposer, Sir Robert Wharton, and English commander,

Starting point is 07:41:49 on the border, may have had a good meaning in proposing it, but think that he ought to be strictly charged to carry it no farther and not to communicate it to any living creature. The second scheme bore a still more threatening aspect, for Henry ordered that search should be made by Lee, the Archbishop of York, for all ancient records of homage paid by Scotland to England, manifestly intending to take up his old quarrel where Edward the South second had been compelled to leave it. He also allowed his parliament in an address to him to call James and usurper of the kingdom which rightly belonged to his majesty. Thus the two parties were bent on a war which might have wrecked the fortunes of both countries. Fortunately, neither

Starting point is 07:42:39 possessed organizing power sufficient for a great enterprise, and though each side was well inclined to push on with reckless haste, material of war was almost entirely wanting. The Duke of Norfolk was ordered to advance with 30,000 men by barrack to the Lothians, but provisions soon failed him, and he was obliged to disband his troops for fear of starvation. On this, James vindictively insisted on crossing the Esk and ravaging Cumberland, but the nobles told him that they had done their feudal duty in defending Scotland, and had no idea of going any farther. Maddened by their refusal, he declared that they were all traitors, and not obscurely hinted that he should sweep off a hundred of them by proscription.

Starting point is 07:43:28 Meanwhile, he called for volunteers who were to meet at Loughmaven and received their orders there, and about 10,000 men obeyed the summons. It was only when they were already in England that they found they were to be commanded, not by the king in person, but by Oliver Sinclair, a most unpopular court favorite. This produced a commotion in the army in the midst of which they were suddenly charged by a few hundreds of English border horsemen. Imagining that Norfolk was upon them, they actually turned and fled homewards. But missing the way, most of them reached the solway when the tide was up and were either drowned in attempting to cross it or taken prisoners on the English side. The king had remained at Keralavric Castle during the expedition. He now returned in the deepest

Starting point is 07:44:20 dejection to Falkland, with bad news dogging him at every step and his health daily drooping more and more. His two infant sons had both died shortly before, and Mary of Gies was expecting her third confinement at Edinburgh. On the 7th of December, 1542, the news came of the birth of another Mary, so soon to be known by the faded name of Queen of Scots. It came with alas, and it will go with alas, said the hapless father, in allusion to the throne coming to the stewards by a daughter of Bruce, and a week later he died, leaving the government in the hands of the Earl of Erin, the head of the Hamilton's, who claimed it because of his father's marriage with James III's sister, which made him next of kin to the infant queen. The new regent at once imprisoned the leaders of the French party

Starting point is 07:45:15 and wrote to Henry a letter of appeal, asking indulgence for the baby kinswoman, who by a calamity which seemed to bring back the days of Flodden, was now the hope of her country. Henry replied by offering to marry his son to the infant, and strongly endeavoring to win over the prisoners of Solway Moss to his plan, which was that Mary should at once be sent to England for education, that Edinburgh, Sterling, and Dumbarton should receive English garrisons, and that Cardinal Betton, the great enemy of England, should be transferred to an English prison. The Scots on their part were willing to accept of the marriage, but only on the absurd condition that, if ever the two crowns were on one head, an independent regency of Scotland should for the time

Starting point is 07:46:05 belong of right to the Aden family. Henry's other conditions would they declared be resisted by every man, woman, and child in Scotland. After much uncertainty, a treaty was at last signed at Greenwich, July 1st, 1543, providing for an alliance between the countries during the life of the two sovereigns and one year more. The queen was now to be allowed to stay with her mother till the age of 10. In case the crowns were united, the liberties of Scotland were fully guaranteed. If the infant Mary ever became a childless widow, she was to resume possession of her kingdom in peace. The settlement seemed hopeful, yet the bond was torn up almost before it was drawn by the audacity of Cardinal Button, who carried off Mary from Lynn Lundel.

Starting point is 07:46:57 Lithgow to Sterling Castle, where she was in the power of his partisans, and on this even Edon himself, unable any longer to stem the torrent of popular longing for independence, joined the Romish Party, cancelled the Greenwich Treaty, withdrew a recently granted permission to read the Bible, and announced that heretics would be prosecuted according to church law. though the murder of Beton in 1546 at St. Andrews, to which Henry, as Mr. Burton has fully shown, was accessory before the fact, seemed likely to help toward the union with England, yet it had the opposite effect, for in the year after the Cardinal's death, many of the most vigorous spirits of the English party, including John Knox,

Starting point is 07:47:49 after holding St. Andrews for a time were captured by a French army and sent as prisoners to France, leaving no one who could supply their place. It was little comfort that an English force under Lords Lyle and Hartford captured and burned Leith and Edinburgh in the following year, besides wasting Fifeshire, which seldom suffered in such wars. The burning of 243 villages and 199,000, towns was not the way to produce kinder feelings in Scotland or make the people more content to accept real union. Ireland had also had its own disorders after the death of Lord Thomas Fitzgerald in 1537. Lord Leonard Gray, his captor, was ordered to put down resistance to English authority in the West. To this task, he bravely addressed himself, storming various castles on the Shannon,

Starting point is 07:48:47 and above all capturing Brenz Bridge over that river near Limerick, which was so strongly fortified with marble works, that artillery could make no impression on it, while the ramparts themselves could be approached only across two broken arches, which had to be spanned with scaling ladders. But the tide of victory was almost immediately checked by want of money, and it was too clear that the Irish government was farther than ever from the chance of paying its own way. Stung by this disappointment, Lord Leonard was thenceforward

Starting point is 07:49:22 at constant variance with his counsel, whom he treated most harshly and overbearingly, while on service he disgusted his best officers by requiring the impossible, and disgracing them if they refused to attempt it. The Dublin Parliament now ventured on throwing out a bill for the dissolution of the Irish monasteries, and enmity to England daily produced the same effects as in Scotland, making the people more and more ardent partisans of Rome. At this juncture, Cromwell's fall began to be expected, and Gray, who was intimate with the Duke of Norfolk, thought that he might further a reaction in Ireland, such as his leader was accomplishing at home. He therefore favored the bishops most opposed to the Reformation, and went so far as to entrust many important charges to the

Starting point is 07:50:15 ever-rebellious Fitzgerald family, with whom, as we have seen, he was connected by marriage, and to maintain a bishop made by the Pope, whose appointment he was expressly ordered to disallow. All this, too, was during the perilous times when the fear of the emperors invading Ireland was not yet at an end. He then made a progress through the rebellious districts and reported to Henry that his reception had been most excellent. But even he himself soon discovered that he had been deceived. His new friends were manifestly conspiring to promote the foreign invasion, and in October 1539, he had to attack and defeat the rebellious chiefs on the borders of Ulster. After this, he reconciled himself with Ormond and the loyalist nobles whom he had offended, and asked for a few weeks' leave

Starting point is 07:51:10 of absence from his government. This was allowed, but his locum tenens, Sir W. Brayerton, soon informed Henry of new insurrections, the direct effects of Gray's wrongheadedness. The king sent the deputy to the tower and ordered the chief members of the Irish Council to come over and give their evidence against him. It was sworn that Gray had abused the those who spoke ill of Cardinal Pole, that he had taken bribes from Irish chiefs, had connived at their attacks on the more loyal, and had released from prison untried, men who had been committed for treason. Above all, the incredible charge was hinted, though not expressly made against him, that he had left behind in the West some of the king's guns with the intention that they should be

Starting point is 07:52:01 found and used by the invaders. In hope of mercy, Gray pleaded guilty to his actual indictment and was executed on the 28th of June 1540. St. Ledger, his successor in office, carried out the suppression of the monasteries, and by judicious distribution of the spoils, managed to procure for the home government a certain respite from Irish troubles. The king, within a few days of his release from Anne of Cleves, married Catherine Howard, another niece of the Duke of Norfolk, a fascinating girl of 19, for whose perfections he was strongly inclined to have a special service of Thanksgiving drawn up. The poor creature had, however young as she was, dishonored herself before marriage, and now felt obliged as queen

Starting point is 07:52:52 to give appointments about her person by way of hush money to the very men who ought to have kept farthest from her. All her terrible secrets soon came out, and to Cranmer was entrusted the commission of telling Henry how he had been deceived. The only chance of life which remained to Catherine was that she should make the common pre-contract excuse, but with a truthfulness which went far to redeem her errors, she refused to make any such statement and was a tainted in parliament for high treason and beheaded on the 12th of February 1542. with her suffered Lady Rocheford, who had before done much to ruin her sister-in-law, Anne Boleyn.

Starting point is 07:53:36 On the 27th of May in the preceding year, the noble old countess of Salisbury, almost the only remaining Plantagenet, was accused for continuing or being supposed to continue, a treasonable correspondence with her son Cardinal Pole. She loudly asserted her innocence on the scaffold, refusing, to kneel at the block and telling the executioner that he might get her head as he could, a proceeding which was considered strangely presumptuous and undutiful. Somewhat more to Henry's credit was the execution of Lord Dacre of the South, with three companions, for having caused the death of a gamekeeper,

Starting point is 07:54:18 while engaged by way of a frolic in shooting deer in a neighbor's park, without leave, asked. Thus sternly was the principal vindicated, that homicide is murder if done in the course of an action otherwise illegal yet true equity would have inflicted death only on the person who actually struck the fatal blow end of section twenty two section twenty three of the early tutors by charles edward moberly this liberovox recording is in the public domain read by pamela nagami chapter sixteen henry's last french war Clothes and Results of the Rain 1541, Part 1 Seldom has royal ambition exposed Europe to such deadly peril in suffering as when in the latter part of Francis I's reign

Starting point is 07:55:18 he joined with the Turks. Even at the moment when he gave up his sword at Pavia, he ordered a servant instantly to take his ring to the Sultan as an appeal for help. And in the times which followed his liberation from captivity, he constantly used the Turkish alliance for the purposes of his ambition, inducing Sultan Soleiman to attack Austria and Hungary, and to send his corsairs to all the seaboard of the empire,

Starting point is 07:55:48 while he himself with a child's pertinacity tried once more for Milan. Charles V on the contrary, though his difficulties both with France and from the Protestant states of Germany were immense, still carried on a determined war against the port. He had always intended to make his conquest of Tunis in 1535 the stepping stone to Algiers, which was a more important focus of piracy and nearer his Spanish dominions. To carry out this plan, he sent thither a magnificent fleet and army in October 1541, in spite of all warning that it was too late in the year for such an expedition. The result of was that a storm came on before the troops could land their material, and half the ships and men

Starting point is 07:56:38 were miserably lost. Francis overjoyed at his rival's defeat, forthwith arranged attacks upon him from Constantinople and Venice on the one side, and from Denmark, Sweden, and the German Protestant League on the other. The scheme was detestable on many grounds, for it gave a fresh spur to Soleiman, who had in the previous July overthrown the combined forces of Austria and Hungary and occupied the latter country. Besides which, Francis was fully purposed to atone for his alliance with Mohammedans and Protestants abroad by the most horrid of religious persecutions at home. His military plan was that in the summer of 1543, the Turkish fleets should ravage all Charles's Italian seaboard, while he himself should invade the Emperor's dominions by the open gates of

Starting point is 07:57:33 Gelderland and Cleaves. But by this time, Henry, vexed indeed at some French backslidings and money matters and at their support of his enemies in Scotland, but also acting at last upon reasons of sound European policy, had agreed with the Emperor that Francis must be compelled to break his present alliance with the Turks and to repay to Charles and the diet, the money spent by them on the earlier Turkish wars which he had occasion. The first fruits of this combination were the rejection already related of the Greenwich Treaty by the French Party in Scotland and the final breaking down of the scheme of Union. The war began at once, and Charles, with Gardner attending him as English commissioner stormed the city of Duren, massacred its inhabitants, and forced the Duke of

Starting point is 07:58:26 Cleves to beg for mercy. About 10,000 Englishmen joined their great ally at the siege of Landressee, which had been taken and fortified as a place of arms by the French earlier in the year. The politic Charles expressed the utmost admiration for his Confederates, declaring that he would live and die with them and they should be his guards. While the siege went on, the French fleet in the Mediterranean was actually cooperating with the Algerine pirate Barbarossa in an attack on Nice, the last possession which Francis had left to the Duke of Savoy. This alliance, however, was ultimately fatal to Francis's plans, for it excited such horror

Starting point is 07:59:10 in Germany that Charles was able at the Diet of Shpaya to proclaim warren knew in the name of the whole empire against the two enemies of Christendom, whose fleets, he said, were at that moment riding side by side in a Provensal harbor. The Diet voted 24,000 men and a universal pole tax. Henry, on his part, persisted in the war in order to weaken French influence on Scotland. He had now reinforced his army up to 30,000 men and had also 25,000 Germans under his command. With these, he agreed to march on Paris from the north, while the emperor reached it by the valley of the Marn. Fortunately for France, this scheme was not carried out. Henry, whose many wars had taught him little generalship, stopped to besiege Boulogne, which held out until September 14th,

Starting point is 08:00:06 and thus by its steadiness made Henry miss the rendezvous. Finding that he could not make head alone against the French, Charles fell back on Suasson, and breaking his engagement not to make a separate peace, signed the Treaty of Cretti by which Francis agreed to abandon the Turks, to help in the recovery of Hungary from them, and to join Charles in his suspended struggle with Protestantism. The Emperor wanted, in fact, one thing above all others, the defeat and dispersion of the small Caldic League, which had become much stronger and more dangerous by the accession of Denmark. Indeed, he was not wrong and supposing that events were now deciding the future of religion in Europe. Up to this time, there had been hope that the Protestants might rejoin

Starting point is 08:00:55 Rome, and in 1541, the most evangelical members of the papal church had held a conference at Radispun to bring this about. But it had failed, and its Italian members had either decided to become Protestants or contented themselves with adhering to Catholicism as it was. As this kind of conciliation had become impossible, Pope Paul III resolved to reform the Church of Rome on her own principles and with Jesuitism and the Inquisition for her mainstays. For this purpose, he gave notice that the first session of the long-expected Council would be held on March 15, 1545, at Trent in the Tyrol.

Starting point is 08:01:38 To this the process, the process of the first session. Protestants were not to be admitted, even if they still desired it. Indeed, one of the first resolutions of the Council was for the sterner war against them, which led to their defeat at Muleberg in 1547. Francis on his side was equally determined to put down heresy in his own dominions. Indeed, as soon as the peace of Krippi made Protestant allies needless, he seized the opportunity to murder 3,000 inoffensive Vodois. but he was quite equally anxious to revenge himself for the fright which England had given him by the invasion of France. Therefore, collecting in Normandy a fleet of 235 vessels of all sizes,

Starting point is 08:02:23 he directed part of them to convey a force to Scotland and the rest to make a descent at the nearest point of England, while his land army blockaded the castle of Boulogne. As in the case of the Armada long afterwards, an untoward act, accident marked the starting, for the king's cooks set fire by carelessness to the largest vessel of the fleet, on board which he was giving an entertainment. On the 18th of July 1545, the ships were off the Isle of White. Our fleet of only 60 ships, being not strong enough to defend the solent, ran for the shelter of the batteries, and a calm ensuing was in great danger from the enemy's galleys, which could fire at the ships without suffering in return,

Starting point is 08:03:11 as their oars enabled them to move about quickly and thus baffle the English aim. Presently, a breeze sprang up and we advanced again, but one large vessel, the Mary Rose, was either sunk, as French accounts will have it, by their fire, or, according to our own, lost as the Eurydice was in our own memory, by healing over too far, so that the sea came through her lower deck ports. Anbo, the French admiral, then proposed to run up and bombard portsmouth, but the pilots declared it impossible either to carry the fleet through the obstacles, or if this was done, to anchor in such a tideway. He then landed several bodies of men on the Isle of White, with the intention of holding and fortifying several points in it, but the act of 1487 had long ago

Starting point is 08:04:03 restored its population, and the militia, under Sir Edward Bellingham, were able to frustrate all attempts. Finding he could make no impression, Anbo then ran over to France, discharged most of his land forces, and returning to the English coast, made a descent at Seaford, which the Sussex militia dealt with, and seemed on the point of fighting with Lord's Lyle and Suriof shoreum. But the hot August weather spoiled his provisions and bred disease in his still-crowded vessels, his chance was over, and he was obliged to retreat to Avre. Though the French pressed with all vigor the siege of Boulogne, or rather of the old citadel on the heights whose picturesque ramparts still remain, yet Sir Edward Pointings held out for the whole winter of 1545, with typhus ravaging both armies,

Starting point is 08:04:57 and in the next June, Henry agreed to surrender the place in eight years for a ransom of five million francs. In the Treaty of Peace, Scotland was included, so that French influence still remained supreme there. Next came, as usual, the difficulty of finding the million and a half which the war had cost. A benevolence had been raised for it in 1545. It was then that Alderman Rock on refusing his quota, was ordered off for service as a private soldier on the Scottish border. This had produced about 60,000 pounds, and the remains of a subsidy were still available. The balance was now provided by a debasement of the currency, of all modes of taxation the one which creates most distress, by throwing all contracts into disorder, reducing the value of fixed wages and incomes, and making recovery impossible

Starting point is 08:05:56 by driving good money out of circulation. Yet Henry, by a succession of tamperings, reduced the quantity of silver in an ounce of coin, first to half an ounce, and later to six pennyweights nearly, the regular quantity being rather more than 18 penny weights. The evil, therefore, was a growing one, nor was it remedied till the first year of Elizabeth, when the coinage was at length restored by the means so graphically described by Mr. Froud. Peace was concluded with France on the 5th of June 1546. A trifling quarrel had all but plunged us meantime into a war with the Emperor. For an English captain, when ill-treated and robbed by the Inquisition in Spain, had retaliated on the first Spanish vessel which he met at sea. Henry refused to surrender the man, as he had been wronged first. Therefore,

Starting point is 08:06:51 Charles put an embargo on English vessels in his ports, and we in turn seized two Spanish treasure ships in the channel. Fortunately, wiser councils at last prevailed and no war followed. Before the end of the French conflict, Lord Surrey had been deeply vexed at finding himself superseded in the command by Lord Hartford, and the king's death, being shortly expected, he seems to have made known without the least caution his views on the situation. In case of God taking his majesty to himself, the proper guardian for the young Prince Edward would he declared be his father the Duke of Norfolk? Others bore witness that he had said, not indeed to them but to others, that when the king died, he, Surrey, would deal sharply with the low-born privy counsellors. Another charge was, considering the ideas of the time, a very serious

Starting point is 08:07:49 one indeed. The Duchess, Surrey's mother, was a daughter of the late Duke of Buckingham. Hence, as we have seen, Surrey could claim royal descent, and he had some time before applied to the Herald's College to be allowed to quarter the royal arms on the first instead of the second division of his shield, which only the family of the reigning king were entitled to do. It must be recollected that Henry had, in 1528, ordered a heraldic visit of the country which was to be repeated every 30 years, and such an assumption as Surrey's was an offense which had been severely dealt with in the case of Edward Hastings, who was imprisoned for 16 years for not submitting his coat to the judgment of a court military. Moreover, the precise

Starting point is 08:08:39 alteration made by Surrey had both precedent and explanation in the case of Edward III, who symbolized his claim to the throne of France by transferring the lilies from the second to the first quarter of his shield. No doubt, therefore, such a change was constructively treasonable. And the notion of degrees in treason, or of any punishment for it short of death, never seems to have found its way into the absolute logic of Henry's mind. Another charge against Lord Surrey was that he delighted to converse with foreigners and conform his behavior to theirs, and unkindly one surely, to bring against the poet who had done so much to infuse Italian grace into the rugged forms of English poetry. His own sister, the widow Duchess of Richmond, contributed to his ruin by confessing when questioned by the

Starting point is 08:09:34 council that Surrey had urged her to use her personal attractions to captivate her father-in-law. But Henry's state of health since Richmond's death in 1536 suggests that there must have been some misunderstanding here. On these charges, or some of them, Surrey was tried at the Guildhall, condemned and executed. The Duke, his father was attainted in Parliament and saved only by Henry's death a few hours before the time appointed for him to go the way of Moore and Cromwell. considering that the evidence in these cases was chiefly hearsay, we may hope that they tended to produce the act which immediately afterwards made it capital to bring anonymous charges of treason without afterwards coming forward to prove them. Of the second persecution under the six articles, the date is unknown. Five persons perished in it. The next was in 1543, when Fillmer

Starting point is 08:10:35 Testwood and Pearson were burned. under Windsor Castle for unseemly jesting on religion, and Merbeck, the church musician, to whom the manner of intoning our services is mainly due, narrowly escaped the same fate. It is said for making a concordance of the New Testament. Poor innocence, Henry had exclaimed on hearing how the men died, and in the same spirit he now interfered to protect the deposed Bishop Latimer, and a physician named Heik, who appealed to him. In 1546, the fourth and last persecution took place when Lassels, a gentleman of the bedchamber, a priest named Belimian, and Adams, a tailor, suffered for the still unpardonable

Starting point is 08:11:20 offense of denying transubstantiation. But their fame has been eclipsed by that of Anne Askew, a young and beautiful woman who was accused on the same point. With the consequences full in view, this heroine wrote, as an account of her belief, The bread is but a remembrance of his death or a sacrament of thanksgiving for it. It gives a thrill of anger even now to hear that the Lord Chancellor and Solicitor General tortured her again and again to find out who favored her. She was burned and the place watched all night to hinder her friends

Starting point is 08:11:56 from doing reverence to her ashes and arrest them if they tried. A little earlier than this, an act of Parliament had placed in Henry's hands the chantries of the kingdom, that is, the innumerable foundations for private masses and cathedrals and other churches, and with them, the colleges and hospitals requested him to take the property for his wars and the maintenance of his dignity. At the universities, Henry used the power thus given him to compel the surrender of several Cambridge halls and to found Trinity College out of their collective property. Its larger endowments, however, were due not to him but to Queen Mary. In the same spirit, Henry left to the citizens of London the ancient priory of St. Bartholomew

Starting point is 08:12:43 to be a hospital for the poor. Within a few days of the death of Catherine Howard, the king married Catherine Parr, the widow of the Lord Latimer, who had been engaged in the pilgrimage of grace and pardoned after it. This lady was a most kind stepmother to all his children and a first-rate nurse to himself. Her Cambridge correspondence called her Regina Doctissima, and their admiration is justified by her book of devotion called the lamentation of a sinner. She was inclined to Protestantism, her almoner being Miles Coverdale, is said to have interceded for Merbeck, and certainly contributed much to the conviction for perjury of Dr. London, who after distinguishing himself in the visitation of the monasteries,

Starting point is 08:13:34 had undertaken the congenial task of forging evidences in cases of heresy. This made Chancellor Rizley and Bishop Gardner her bitter enemies, and according to Lord Herbert of Cherbury, they succeeded in inducing the king to have articles of heresy drawn out against her. As having received forbidden books from her sister Lady Herbert, Henry, it appears, had been annoyed by her pressing him strongly to allow the general use of the translated Bible and therefore gave his consent to the articles. Rizley, however, accidentally dropped the paper containing them, and thus it came to Catherine's

Starting point is 08:14:12 knowledge. She at first gave herself up for lost, but presently succeeded in persuading her husband that if she had ever spoken to him on theology, it was in order to be herself instructed. It is supposed that the torture of Anaskew was intended to elicit evidence against the queen, but if so, it failed signally of its purpose. On Friday, the 28th of January, 1547, Norfolk was to die at nine in the morning. But when that time struck, Henry had been dead eight hours, and the Duke was safe. Late on the preceding evening, the king had been told that his end was near, on which he characterized. characteristically said that as his physicians had condemned him, their work was over, and he wanted

Starting point is 08:15:00 no more interference from them. He would send for no one but Kranmer, and put this off so long that when the archbishop arrived, he could only press his hand as a sign that he looked for mercy through Christ. He desired to be buried at Windsor in the same tomb with Queen Jane, and like his father ordered that Masses should be said there, perpetually while the world shall endure. Finally, with unwavering faith, he asked for the intercession of the Blessed Virgin and the Saints. During his absence at Boulogne in 1544, Queen Catherine had been his regent. But to her great disappointment, she found the power given by Henry's will to a Council of Regency headed by Cranmer. As Parliament had in 1536 allowed the king to dispose of the crown by will, he placed First Mary

Starting point is 08:15:54 and then Elizabeth in succession after Edward, on condition that they married only with the royal consent. Foreseeing in all probability the marriage which so very soon took place between Catherine and Sir Thomas Seymour, the lover from whom he had taken her, he allowed her only a moderate provision. End of Section 23 Section 24 of the early tutors by Charles Edward Moberly. This Librovox recording is in the public domain, read by Pamela Nagami. Chapter 16. Henry's last French war, close and results of the reign, 1541, Part 2. At his death, Henry left the church still under the six articles, though procedure according to them

Starting point is 08:16:53 had on purpose been made more difficult. Its position had also been defined by the necessary doctrine and erudition of a Christian man, generally called the King's Book, which was printed for the first time in 1544, having been accepted by the Parliament in the previous year. Many of its statements are, as we might expect, more Roman in tone than those of its predecessor the Bishop's book. But fortunately for the Church, there had grown up besides these formularies something of far better omen for the future. Erasmus had adopted in the years from 1516 to 1535 the bold course of publishing successive editions of the Greek Testament based upon in great part, though not entirely, the evidence of manuscripts. This was, in effect, a declaration that St. Jerome's Latin translation generally called the Vulgate,

Starting point is 08:17:52 had not really the final and conclusive authority ascribed to it by the Roman Church. His paraphrases also set the good example of explaining all passages with their full context instead of taking a verse here and there and drawing random inferences from it, in the manner of which we have seen an example, in the discussion on the exemption of the clergy from the civil courts. Moreover, the Bible had, as we have seen, been twice translated, and though Tyndall suffered martyrdom at Vilvorda, and the circulation of the English Bible was fenced about with many restrictions and sometimes nearly stopped, it had still been publicly declared to be the only touchstone of true learning.

Starting point is 08:18:40 The Lord's Prayer and the Ten Commandments had been taught in English since 1539. In 1543 and 1544, English litanies were used by authority, and Cranmer also translated the Te deum and other hymns, in order that all such as were ignorant of any strange or foreign speech might have what to pray in their own familiar and acquainted tongue with fruit and understanding. Thus, everything was ready for the great work of Edward's first years, the drawing up of the book of common prayer in a form like that which we still have, though in some points, nearer to that now used by the Episcopal churches in Scotland and America. Roman Catholic writers have constantly assumed not only that these formularies are heretical,

Starting point is 08:19:33 but that the effect of Henry's ordinances has been to enslave the Church of England to the state. The former of these points can hardly be discussed in a work like the present. On the latter, it will be enough to remark once more that at the time it was absolutely necessary to check the use by the clergy of their independent powers. It deeply concerned the very being of religion in England that priests should neither kill their parishioners for Christ's sake, nor plot against their property, nor claim immunity from crime as a privilege of their order. Hardly anything indeed could be more violent and therefore more anti-Christian than their attempts to compel belief by penalties. It cannot be doubted that Henry's Parliament did rightly in depriving them of powers so much misused,

Starting point is 08:20:30 nor has anything since occurred to make us wish the changes undone. It has been well that the sturdy sense of Parliament should have to be persuaded before religious changes could be made, well too, at least in times when the people have have cared for religion, that bishops should be chosen, not according to the narrow standard of purely clerical electors, but by a minister of the Crown who, with every reason both of feeling and interest, to select wise and practical men for the office, can also resist currents of temporary church feeling, and in some degree see events as history will see them. Under no other institutions, perhaps with the church, by losing step-by-step all compulsory powers, have been so wholesomely trained

Starting point is 08:21:18 and so perpetually encouraged to rely on persuasion only, thus gaining a strength which she never could have dreamed of in her masterful days. And although agitation has sometimes been created in our own time by the sentences of certain civil courts in church questions, yet such judgments have been generally acquiesced in when the immediate stir has been over, and found not in any way to lower the church or to fetter her development. It would be hard to point to any one good thing desired by the church, which has been hindered by her relations to the state, or to any evil thing to which they have given a longer life.

Starting point is 08:22:01 If uncorrected abuses still exist, we may be sure that they remain so because members, of the church have not yet made up their minds that they are intolerable, and not because the law being what it is, such things must needs live on to vex us however much we may dislike them. The laws affecting religion occupy so large as space in this reign that those on civil matters are apt to escape notice, though many of them well deserved to be remembered. Such were those affecting beggars, who, if really impotent, were to have written leave to ask alms in a specified district, if whole and mighty and body, were to be whipped the first time they begged and sent home to

Starting point is 08:22:48 their own parish, whereby another law, the overseers were bound to employ them. If any such person offended a second time, the gristle of his ear was to be cut off besides a whipping, and for a third offense he was to die as an enemy of the Commonwealth. On the same principle of hatred to people with no visible livelihood, all gypsies were in 1530 sent out of the country. Another kind of poverty which the age could not tolerate was that of the poor and broken bankrupt. It was held that the crime in its name were both of foreign growth and the surrender of all the insolvent's property would never give him a discharge till the last farthing was paid.

Starting point is 08:23:38 An act of 1546 repealed the old laws of usury, allowing interest to be charged up to 10%. New felonies were created under Henry VIII as quickly and easily as when Burke made his celebrated protest against them. It became felony to cut dykes in Norfolk, or the Isle of Ely, to sell horses to Scotchmen, to poach fish between, six in the evening and six in the morning, to come masked into a royal park in order to kill deer, to steal young hawks or peacocks or to burn any frame of timber prepared for building a house.

Starting point is 08:24:18 New treasons were still more profusely invented, going far beyond the old definition of Edward III, which almost limited the crime to the three cases of levying war against the king, compassing his death or adhering to his enemies. For Henry's Parliament declared at different times that those were traitors who took, judged, or believed the marriages with Catherine of Aragon or Anne of Cleves to have been valid, who impugned the marriage with Anne Boleyn, who called the king a heretic, schismatic or usurper,

Starting point is 08:24:56 who married any of the king's family without his permission, who married the king himself without revealing past lapses, or who disobeyed any royal proclamation and then escaped from the kingdom. Lastly, in one peculiar case, such a law was ex post facto. A cook named Rouse had tried to poison his master the bishop of Rochester and caused the death of two persons. Such acts were therefore made treasonable by a general law, which mentioned him by name and sentenced him to be boiled to death.

Starting point is 08:25:30 if from the laws against crime we pass on to the manner in which the courts administered them, it is too plain that hardly any sound principles of justice were known or thought of. Else, how could it have been that hardly any prisoners of state were ever acquitted? Experience has taught us that evidence is generally worthless unless cross-examined, but rarely indeed had an accused person any such chance. chance then. Not to mention that the bad habit of prosecuting, not for the crime, but for just so much as would bring the accused under the letter of the law, must have destroyed the chances of showing discrepancy in the evidence, which would have been if the witnesses had been forced to state all they

Starting point is 08:26:20 knew. Of course, a government which so administers justice must be cynically indifferent to one of its prime duties, that of showing unmistakably to all men, even to the culprit himself, that if the law strikes him, it is because he has thoroughly deserved it. Not all Englishmen of the time had Cromwell's Italian unscrupulousness, learned, as he himself said from Machiavelli, as to the means by which his ends were to be accomplished. But it is not the less true that such outrages on justice, introduced into the national temper, a mixture of cruelty and hypocrisy which it took centuries to eradicate. The barrenness of the last reign in the field of literature still continued, as is natural in a time

Starting point is 08:27:12 when religious controversy fills all men's minds. Indeed, popular poetry was far better represented in Scotland, which the Reformation had barely yet reached. By the really beautiful poems of Dunbar and Gawain Douglas, the translator of Virgil, than by anything which England had to show at the same time. In Dunbar's Timor Mortis conturbate may, we see here and there that Shakespeare has been beforehand with us in admiring him, as in the graceful stanza, I see that makers, poets, among the lave, plays here their pageants, sin goes to grave. Spared is not their faculty. Timmer Morton, as conturb it may. He fully deserves to be called as he is by Professor Morley, the best English poet since the days of Chaucer. His charming, without gladness avails no treasure, is even alone sufficient to prove this.

Starting point is 08:28:12 Gawain Douglas, who is Bishop of Dunkeld under Margaret of Scotland, manages skillfully enough in his king heart, a stanza something like Ariostos, and his allegorical treatment seems to have given many hints to Spencer. Sir David Lindsay's verse, as Walter Scott said, still has charms, his poem of Jacques Upaland ends with a fervent prayer that James V may be strong enough to ding those money kings adun, who are making Scotland so miserable. And when James freed himself from his guardians, Sir David was not backward in poetically teaching him the real meaning of liberty. In England, the palm of satiric verse, it can hardly be called poetry, was born by Skelton, who left off mocking at the great cardinal, only when obliged in 1528, to take sanctuary at Westminster

Starting point is 08:29:09 and thus avoid his vengeance. His Colin Clout is on the need of reformation in church and state. In speak, Perret, and why come ye not to court? He makes his bitterest attacks on Woolsey, and in Philip Sparrow he describes with much humor a tender-hearted nun's grief for her lost pet. With Sir Thomas Wyatt and the Earl of Surrey began the refined imitation of Italian poetic forms, in their hands, verse seemed to become suddenly modern. They introduced the sonnet in English, and Wyatt at least shows in his renouncing of love that he has gained from Petrarcha a real sense of its capability. He also in his poem on the courtier's life employs Dante's terse rima.

Starting point is 08:30:00 Surrey, too, was an inventor in poetry. To him is due the first English blank verse, as used in a translation from the Aeneid. His sonnets, though far less melodious than Milton's, yet have the descriptions of personal character of which the latter poet makes such noble use. This may be seen in Surrey's sonnets on the fair Geraldine's. and on his faithful follower Richard Clear. The drama was at this time very much in the rough, though it is almost surprising to see how much Shakespeare condescends to borrow from the humors of Udall's Ralph Roisterdoister,

Starting point is 08:30:39 which was probably written in this reign. Haywood was also celebrated at the time for interludes, one of the best being the four peas, a dialogue between Pardner, Palmer, Potter, and peddler. The honor of English prose was still sustained chiefly by Sir Thomas Moore's history of Edward V and by the Utopia. Theologians, however, did much to establish purity of style, especially when they wished to be simple in order to instruct the common people. Kranmer's institution of a Christian man is really excellent from its direct and winning expression,

Starting point is 08:31:19 and though Hugh Latimer did not much conform to a Christian man, and though Hugh Latimer did not much conform to any art canons, yet few Englishmen have ever equaled him in the power of downright preaching, especially on semi-political subjects. Above all, of course, the Bible had been beautiful in Tyndall's translation, and was gradually advancing to that perfection which has won the hearts of revisers in the present day. Scientific study could hardly be said to exist as yet. Men were far more curious to know the Latin and Greek names of natural objects as Erasmus recommended, than to investigate their properties. Hardly any scientific works appear to have been sold by an Oxford bookseller whose trade diary from 1520 onwards has been preserved. It has been already noted that

Starting point is 08:32:11 Linneker, the most truly scientific man of the reign, did not describe the most remarkable diseases of his own time. Indeed, he aimed perhaps wisely at restoring medicine through the works of the ancients, rather than by direct observation, and devoted himself almost entirely to translations from Galen. The science of the day had not yet broken its connection with the occult sciences. Even the earnest and severe, Paul III, Pope as he was, never held a consistory or entered upon anything important without consulting the stars. Henry the 8th, as we have seen, questioned soothsayers about the sex of his future children with the same faith, which afterwards made Charles I send 500 pounds to an astrologer

Starting point is 08:33:01 when he was planning his escape from Hampton Court. He also invited to England the celebrated Cornelius Agrippa, whose reputation for magical knowledge was high. Alchemy was in great vogue at Paris, where hundreds of adepts were following each his own system. In England it was less popular, inasmuch as the celebrated D, afterwards so favored by Elizabeth, had to leave Cambridge on beginning to study it. The belief in witchcraft was shown in England by the statute of 1541 already referred to, but only after popes have been fulminating against it for 50 years, and prosecutions had long done. been innumerable in France, Germany, and Italy. It is remarkable that the statute made it penal,

Starting point is 08:33:52 not in itself, but only if it aimed at destroying life. It is always difficult, clearly, to discern the everyday character and feeling of people in times long past, yet we are not quite without hints what Englishmen were like in the 16th century. The kindliness and sobriety displayed here in times of pestilence have been noticed above. Akin to the same temper was the general submission to established authority. Even when, without the support of any standing army or organized police, it was carrying the most violent changes. Even in the worst times, a hundred yeomen of the guard were enough to secure Henry's person.

Starting point is 08:34:36 Probably the real reason for this obedience was the same dread of renewing civil war, which afterwards made England endure without rebelling, the many misdoings of Charles II. Of the social temper of our countrymen in those days, there are curiously opposite accounts. A French traveler complains of their hatred for all foreigners, especially his countrymen, of the bad names which they call them

Starting point is 08:35:04 and of the way in which they break their word. A German, on the other hand, cannot say enough of English polite. to the aged, and to those whom they consider learned, of their incredible courtesy and friendliness of speech, of the beauty of the ladies who he says never heretic Ketsern their faces with paint, and strangest of all, of the wondrous comfort, civility, and respect which travelers received in English inns. Of course, the relations of English commerce to Germany and France, as described above may throw much light on these contradictions and statement. Pleasant it would be to look into the

Starting point is 08:35:45 interior of more families and see whether there were many in England, where the love of father and daughter was so profound as that between Sir Thomas Moore and Margaret Roper, and into more meetings of heretics to search for affection like that between the Labyrinth and Garrett in 1528. I besought Garrett, says the Labyrinth, that he, for the Tendarmour, that he, for the Tendor, mercies of God would not refuse me, saying that I trusted verily that he which had begun this in me, would not forsake me, but give me grace to continue therein unto the end. When he heard me say so, he kissed me, the tears trickling from his eyes and said to me, The Lord God Almighty grant you so to do, and from henceforth forever take me for your father,

Starting point is 08:36:35 and I will take you for my son in Christ. We need not inquire whether the new beliefs or indeed the old ones made men brave. Those who were first to conceive novelties, or who had first to defend old things, might be bewildered by their position. But soon there grew up in both, a courage which literally seemed to think nothing of the fire. A slight forcing of language would have saved Lambert's life. Forrest certainly need not have expressed any opinion. about Cardinal Fisher's death. Yet both these men determinedly spoke out in spite of the

Starting point is 08:37:13 terrors which lay before them, and would not have varied their mode of statement by a herod's breath to save their life. Some of the reforming party have been blamed for a flippancy and abusiveness before their judges, which made it more difficult to show them any indulgence. Nor can the charge be altogether denied. But then it is beyond most men to die like Latimer, with no harsh word to his persecutors, or like more, with a wish that he and they might find mercy together in a better world. Even if some came short of this, their tongue violence may be condoned, since they were quite as willing to die for their cause as to rail at its enemies. Here then this brief summary of two reigns must end. It will be for abler hands with the help

Starting point is 08:38:03 of the fresh material which every year now accumulates to trace the gradual expulsion from our political system of the bad elements of Tudor despotism. To this, Henry VIII, in spite of all appearances, contributed both negatively and positively. Negatively, because his striking personality dignified in a manner the violences which he committed and the extravagances which he forced his parliament to enact, so that subsequent kings of less imposing character were likely to fail in attempting the like. Could his modes of government have been established, they would have been hardly less than a Turkish despotism, but they lived only in the unregulated and despotic spirit which they were intended to gratify, drooped and flagged when he was gone, and by no means uprooted from the minds of Englishmen

Starting point is 08:38:59 the remembrance of their ancient liberties. And he also, most unwittingly, but still really, gave our freedom more than one kind of positive help. For his rough and violent hand broke down superstitions, which, though we now regard them tenderly, we should have been sure to denounce if we had lived at the time. He raised up out of the spoils of the monasteries, the great and strong middle class which was at length to curb his success. above all his way of referring constantly to parliament because he found it servile and bringing such a variety of affairs under its cognizance had at least the effect of keeping its powers well in mind against the time when some fortunate election might send up to westminster a body of members with principles worth having and a strong determination to make them good against all opposition he trained parliament to register his

Starting point is 08:39:59 edicts, but the very fact that they had to do so proved their inherent right to dispute them if they would. Therefore, when, as Burke says, new times brought with them new modes of tyranny, it was a light thing for Parliament to use against Elizabeth's monopolies, or James's claim that the seacoast was his own, or Charles's demand for ship money, the power which had been technically acknowledged in so many various forms, and as a applying to a fair so important. In these two ways, then, the institutions of Henry the 8th have favored English freedom. End of Section 24. Read by Pamela Nagami in Encino, California, May 2022. End of the early tutors, Henry the 7th and Henry the 8th by Charles Edward Mowberley.

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