VIII. REIGN OF HENRY VIII. (continued)…

VIII. REIGN OF HENRY VIII. (continued)

The Maid of Kent and Her Accomplices--Act of Supremacy and Consequent Persecutions--The "Bloody Statute"--Deaths of Fisher and More--Suppression of the Smaller Monasteries--Trial and Death of Anne Boleyn--Henry Marries Jane Seymour--Divisions in the Church--The Pilgrimage of Grace--Birth of Prince Edward--Death of Queen Jane--Suppression of the Larger Monasteries--The Six Articles--Judicial Murders--Persecution of Cardinal Pole--Cromwell's Marriage Scheme--Its Failure and his Fall.

The discontent aroused in the country amongst those attached to the church of Rome, by the separation, and by the seizure of church property, with the fear of still greater spoliation, excited many murmurings. The king, aware that his proceedings were regarded with disapprobation by a vast body of people both at home and abroad, grew suspicious of every rumour, jealous, and vindictive. Amongst the singular conspiracies against the royal transactions, one of the earliest arose out of the visions of a young woman of Addington, in Surrey, of the name of Elizabeth Barton, who was of a nervous temperament, and whose mind was greatly excited by the sufferings of Queen Catherine. The rector of the parish, struck by many of the words which fell from her in her trances, regarded her as a religiously inspired person, and recommended her to quit the village, and enter the convent of St. Sepulchre at Canterbury. There her ecstacies and revelations, probably strengthened by the atmosphere of the place, became more frequent and strong. The nuns regarded her declarations as prophecies, and the fame of her soon spread round the country, where she acquired the name of the "Holy Maid of Kent." It was observed that her visions had all a tendency to exalt the power of the Pope and the clergy, and to denounce the vengeance of Heaven on all who disobeyed or attempted to injure them. At length Henry considered that the words of the maid, which were sedulously taken down and circulated through the press, were a powerful means of stirring up the popular feeling against him, and he therefore ordered the arrest of herself and the chief of her accomplices.

In November they were brought into the Star Chamber and carefully examined by Cranmer, the archbishop, Cromwell, and Hugh Latimer, who soon after was made Bishop of Worcester. This tribunal appears to have intimidated both the maid and her abettors into a confession of the imposture, and they were condemned to stand during the sermon on Sunday at St. Paul's Cross, and there acknowledge the fraud. After that they were remanded to prison, and it was thought that, having disarmed these people by this exposure, he would be satisfied with the punishment they had received. But Henry was now become every day more and more addicted to blood, and ready to shed it for any infringement of those almost Divine rights which the supremacy of the Church had conferred on him. On the 21st of February, 1534, therefore, a bill of attainder was brought into the House of Lords against the maid and her abettors, on the plea that their conspiracy tended to bring into peril the king's life and crown. The bill, notwithstanding that it was regarded with horror by the public as a strange and cruel stretch of authority, was passed by the slavish Parliament; and on the 21st of April, 1534, the seven accused were drawn to Tyburn and hanged. Besides the persons who suffered immediately with her, there were also accused of corresponding with her, Edward Thwaites, gentleman, Thomas Lawrence, registrar to the Archdeacon of Canterbury, the venerable Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, and Sir Thomas More.

Fisher, who was in his seventy-sixth year, confessed that he had seen and conversed with Elizabeth Barton; that he had heard her utter her prophecies concerning the king; and that he had not mentioned them to the sovereign, because her declarations did not refer to any violence against him, but merely to a visitation of Providence; and because, also, he knew that the king had received the communication of the prophecies from the maid herself, who had had for that purpose a private audience with Henry. He was, therefore, he said, guiltless of any conspiracy, and as he would answer it before the throne of Christ, knew not of any malice or evil that was intended by her or by any other earthly creature unto the king's highness.

The name of Sir Thomas More was erased from this bill, though he could not be more innocent than Fisher, but not more than a fortnight passed before the bloodthirsty tyrant had contrived a more deadly snare for them both. He had them summoned, and commanded to take the new oath of allegiance. They were both of them ready to swear to the king's full temporal authority, and to the succession of his children, but they could not conscientiously take the oath which declared Henry the supreme head of the English Church, and the marriage with Anne Boleyn lawful. Cranmer, who on this occasion showed more mildness and liberality than he had shown honest principles in his elevation, would fain have admitted these illustrious men to take the oath so far as it applied to temporal, and to dispense with it as regarded spiritual matters. But he pleaded in vain, and they were both committed to the Tower.

Henry, having got the Acts of Parliament for the Supremacy and the Succession, was not of a temper to let them become a dead letter. Whether it was owing to the carelessness of Parliament or the carefulness of the Crown, the oath of the Succession had not been verbally defined, and Henry now availed himself of this emission to alter and add to it so as to please himself. From the clergy he took care to obtain an oath including the full recognition of his supremacy in the Church, omitting the qualifying clause in the former one; and an assertion that the Bishop of Rome had no more authority within the realm than any other bishop. He spent the summer in administering this oath to the monks, friars, and nuns, also to all clergymen and clerical bodies whatever, and in obtaining decisions against the papal authority from the two convocations and the universities. The oath to the laity was administered to men and women alike. Remembering the mental reservation of Cranmer when he swore obedience to the Pope, he now demanded from every prelate an oath of renunciation of every protest previously or secretly made contrary to the oath of supremacy. He ordered that the very word Pope should be obliterated carefully out of all books used in public worship.

If Henry had been a zealous Reformer, a disciple of the new creed, we might have attributed his proceedings to an arbitrary and uncharitable earnestness for what he deemed the truth; but he was just as bigoted in the old faith as ever. His Bloody Statute, as it was called, the Statute of Six Articles, maintained that the actual presence was in the sacramental bread and wine; that priests were forbidden to marry; that vows of chastity were to be observed; and that mass and auricular confession were indispensable. Those who opposed any of these dogmas were to suffer death; no doctrine was to be believed contrary to the Six Articles; no persons were to sing or rhyme contrary to them; no book was to be possessed by any one against the Holy Sacrament; no annotations or preambles were to exist in Bibles or Testaments in English; and nothing was to be taught contrary to the king's command. In fact, the country had only got rid of an Italian Pope and got an English one in his stead--Pope Henry VIII.

The first-fruits of this awful concession to a vain and selfish man of the usurpation of God's own dominion in the soul, were an indiscriminating mass of Lollards, Lutherans, Anabaptists, and Roman Catholics committed to the flames. On the 22nd of July, during the prorogation of Parliament, Firth, a young man of singular learning, who had written a book against purgatory, transubstantiation, and consubstantiation, was burnt in Smithfield; and a poor tailor, Andrew Hewett, who simply affirmed that he thought Firth was right, was burnt with him. Several Anabaptists underwent the same fate.

As that year closed in blood, so the next opened. The priors of the then Charterhouses of London, Axholm, and Belleval, waited on Cromwell to explain their conscientious scruples; but Cromwell, who was become the harsh and unhesitating instrument of Henry's despotism, instead of listening to them, committed them to the Tower on a charge of high treason, for refusing the king "the dignity, style, and name of his Royal estate." When he brought them to trial the jury shrank from giving such a verdict against men of their acknowledged virtue and character. Cromwell hastened to the court in person, and threatened to hang them instead of the prisoners, if they did not without further delay pronounce them guilty. Five days later these three dignitaries were executed at Tyburn, with Richard Reynolds, a doctor of divinity and monk of Sion, and John Hailes, Vicar of Thistleworth. They were all treated with savage barbarity, being hanged, cut down alive, embowelled, and dismembered. On the 18th of June, nearly a fortnight afterwards, Exmew, Middlemore, and Newdigate, three Carthusian monks from the Charterhouse, were executed, with the same atrocities.

Whilst these horrors struck with consternation all at home, Henry proceeded to a deed which extended the feeling of abhorrence all over Europe. He shed the blood of Fisher and More. We have stated that Parliament had not enacted the precise oath for the refusal of which Fisher and More were arraigned. But this made no difference: the king willed it, and the submissive legislature passed a bill of attainder for misprision of treason against them both. On this they and their families were stripped of everything they had. The poor old bishop was left in a complete state of destitution, and had not even clothes to cover his nakedness. Sir Thomas More was dependent wholly for the support of his life on his married daughter, Margaret Roper. They were repeatedly called up after their attainder, and treacherously examined as to any act or word that they might have done or uttered contrary to the king's supremacy, as if to aggravate their crime and justify a more rigorous sentence. The Pope Clement was dead, and was succeeded by Paul III., who, hearing of the sad condition of the venerable Fisher, sent him a cardinal's hat, thinking it might make Henry less willing to proceed to extremities with him. But the effect on the tyrant was quite the contrary. On hearing of the Pope's intention, he exclaimed, "Ha! Paul may send him a hat, but I will take care that he have never a head to wear it on."

Accordingly, the aged prelate was brought out of the Tower on the 22nd of June, 1535, and beheaded. His head was stuck upon London Bridge, with his face turned towards the Kentish hills, amid which he had spent so many pleasant years. The body of the old bishop was stripped, and left naked on the spot till evening, when it was carried away by the guards, and buried in Allhallows churchyard at Barking. Such was the manner in which this supreme head of the Church treated his former tutor, and one of the most accomplished and pious men in Christendom.

More, the scholar, the wit, the genius, raised reluctantly to the chancellorship, had there so far deteriorated from the noble mood in which he had written his "Utopia" as to have become, contrary to all its doctrines and spirit, a persecutor. On the 14th of June he was visited in the Tower by Doctors Aldridge, Layton, Curwen, and Mr. Bedle, and there strictly interrogated in the presence of Pelstede, Whalley, and Rice, as to whether he had held any correspondence since he came into the Tower with Bishop Fisher, or others, and what had become of the letters he had received. He replied that George, the lieutenant's servant, had put them into the fire, against his wish, saying there was no better keeper than the fire. He was then asked whether he would not acknowledge the lawfulness of the king's marriage, and his headship of the Church. He declined to give an answer.

At length, on the 1st of July, he was brought out of the Tower, and was conducted on foot through the streets of London to Westminster. He was wrapped only in a coarse woollen garment, his hair had grown grey, his face was pale and emaciated, for he had been nearly a year a close prisoner. This was thought well calculated to teach a lesson of obedience to the people; when they saw how the king handled even ex-chancellors and cardinals. When he arrived, bowed with suffering, and supporting himself on a staff, in that hall where he had presided with so much dignity, all who saw him were struck with astonishment. In order to confound him, and prevent the dreaded effect of his eloquence, his enemies had caused the indictment against him to be drawn out an immense length, and the charges to be grossly exaggerated and enveloped in clouds of words. Sentence of death was pronounced upon him, and he rose to address the Court. In the rudest manner they attempted to silence him, and twice, by their clamour, they succeeded; but the firmness of the noble victim at length triumphed, and he told them that he could now openly avow what he had before concealed from every human being, that the oath of supremacy was contrary to English law. He declared that he had no enmity against his judges. There would, he observed, have always been a scene of contention, and he prayed that as Paul had consented to the death of Stephen, and yet was afterwards called to tread in the same path, and ascend to the same heaven, so might he and they yet meet there. "And so," he added, in conclusion, "may God preserve you all, and especially my lord the king, and send him good counsel."

As he turned from the bar, his son rushed through the hall, fell upon his knees, and implored his blessing; and, on approaching the Tower Wharf, his daughter, Margaret Roper, forced her way through the guard which surrounded him, and, clasping him round the neck, wept and sobbed aloud. The noble man, now clothed with all the calm dignity of the Christian philosopher, summoned fortitude enough to take a loving and a final farewell of her; but as he was moved on, the distracted daughter turned back, and, flying once more through the crowd, hung on his neck in the abandonment of grief. This was too much for his stoicism; he shed tears, whilst with deep emotion he repeated his blessing, and uttered words of Christian consolation. The people and the guards were so deeply affected, that they too burst into tears, and it was some time before the officers could summon resolution to part the father and his child.

On the 6th of July he was summoned to execution, and informed that the king, as an especial favour, had commuted his punishment from hanging, drawing, and quartering, to decapitation. On this Sir Thomas, who had now taken his leave of the world, and met death with the cheerful humour of a man who is well assured that he is on the threshold of a better, replied with his wonted promptitude of wit, "God preserve all my friends from such favour." As he was about to ascend the scaffold, some one expressed a fear lest it should break down, for it appeared weak. "Mr. Lieutenant," said More, smiling, "see me safe up, and for my coming down let me shift for myself." The executioner then approached, and asked his forgiveness. More embraced him, and said, "Friend, thou wilt render me the greatest service in the power of any mortal; but," putting an angel into his hand, "my neck is so short, that I fear thou wilt gain little credit in the way of thy profession." The same fear of the eloquence of the illustrious victim which had attempted to stop his mouth on the trial, now forbade him to address the multitude; he therefore contented himself with saying that he died a faithful subject to the king, and a true Catholic before God. He then prayed, and, laying his head upon the block, bade the executioner stay his hand a moment while he put back his beard. For "that," said he, "has never committed any treason." His head was severed at a single blow, and was, like Fisher's, fixed on London Bridge.

But it was not merely in lopping off the heads of honest statesmen and prelates that Henry VIII. now displayed the powers of supreme head over the Church. There was a more tempting prey which allured his avaricious soul, and promised to recruit his exhausted treasury. These were the monasteries, convents, and abbeys. These institutions had grown excessively corrupt through time. Without depending on the reports of Henry's commissioners, whose business it was to make out a case for him against them, there is abundant evidence in contemporary writings that the monks, nuns, and friars were grown extremely sensual and corrupt. Rage and cupidity alike urged Henry to imitate the Reformers of Germany, and seize the spoils of this wealthy body. Cromwell--whom he had appointed Vicar-General, a strange office for a layman--went the whole length with him in those views; nay, he was the man who first turned his eyes on this great attractive mass of wealth, and hallooed him to the spoil. He had told him that, if once he was established by Parliament as head of the Church, all that opulence was his. There can be no doubt that it was to carry out this seizure that Cromwell was put into that very office of Vicar-General, as the only man to do the business, and he went to work upon it with right good will.

The first thing was to appoint a commission, and to obtain such a report as should induce Parliament to pass an act of suppression of the religious houses, and the forfeiture of all their property to the Crown. The Archbishop of Paris, years before, had confidently affirmed, that whenever Wolsey should fall, the spoliation of the Church would quickly follow. To expedite this matter as much as possible, the whole kingdom was divided into districts, and to each district was appointed a couple of commissioners, who were armed with eighty-six questions to propound to the monastic orders. As acknowledgment of the supremacy of the king and approbation of his marriage were made requisites of compliance, there was little chance of escape for any monastery, be its morals what they might.

The visitors had secret instructions to seek, in the first place, the lesser houses, and to exhort the inmates voluntarily to surrender them to the king, and, where they did not succeed, to collect such a body of evidence as should warrant the suppression of those houses; but after zealously labouring at this object through the winter, they could only prevail on seven small houses to surrender. A report was then prepared, which considerably surprised the public by stating that the lesser houses were abandoned to the most shameful sloth and immorality, but that the large and more opulent ones, contrary to all human experience, were more orderly. The secret of this representation was, that the abbots and priors of the great houses were lords of Parliament, and were, therefore, present to expose any false statement.

On the 4th of March, 1536, a bill was passed hastily through both Houses, transferring to the king and his heirs all monastic establishments the clear value of which did not exceed £200 per annum. It was calculated that this bill--which, however, did not pass the Commons till Henry had sent for them, and told them that he would apply his favourite remedy for stiff necks--would dissolve no less than 380 communities, and add £32,000 to the annual income of the Crown, besides the presents received of £100,000 in money, plate, and jewels. The cause of these presents was a clause in the Act of Parliament, which left it to the discretion of the king to found any of these houses anew; a clause which was actively worked by Cromwell and his commissioners, and, by the hopes they inspired, drew large sums from the menaced brethren, part of which lodged in the pockets of the minister and his agents, and part reached the Crown. Cromwell amassed a large fortune from such sources.

The Parliament, which had now sat seven years, and which was one of the most slavish and base bodies that ever were brought together--having yielded every popular right and privilege which the imperious monarch demanded, and augmented the Royal prerogative to a pitch of actual absolutism; having altered the succession, changed the system of ecclesiastical government, abolished a great number of the ancient religious houses without thereby much benefiting the Crown--was now dismissed, having done that for this worthless king which should cost some of his successors their thrones or their heads, and a braver and more honourable generation the blood of its best men to undo again.

Anne Boleyn, on hearing of Catherine's death, which occurred in January, 1536, was so rejoiced that she could not help crying out, "Now I am indeed a queen!" And yet, in truth, never had she less cause for triumph. Already the lecherous eye of her worthless husband had fallen on one of her maids, as it had formerly fallen on one of Catherine's in her own person. This was Jane Seymour, a daughter of a knight of Wiltshire, who was not only of great beauty, but was distinguished for a gentle and sportive manner, equally removed from the Spanish gravity of Catherine and the French levity of Anne Boleyn. Before the death of Catherine, this fresh amour of Henry's was well known in the palace to all but the reigning queen; and, according to Wyatt, Anne only became aware of it by entering a room one day, and beholding Jane Seymour seated on Henry's knee, in a manner the most familiar, and as if accustomed to that indulgence. She saw at once that not only was Henry ready to bestow his regards on another, but that other was still more willing to step into her place than she had been to usurp that of Catherine. Anne was far advanced in pregnancy, and was in great hopes of riveting the king's affections to her by the birth of a prince; but the shock which she now received threw her into such agitation that she was prematurely delivered--of a boy, indeed, but dead. Henry, the moment that he heard of this unlucky accident, rushed into the queen's chamber, and upbraided her savagely "with the loss of his boy." Anne, stung by this cruelty, replied that he had to thank himself and "that wench Jane Seymour" for it. The fell tyrant retired, muttering his vengeance, and the die was now cast irrevocably for Anne Boleyn, if it were not before.

It was a great misfortune for Anne that she had never been able to lay aside that levity of manner which she had acquired by spending her juvenile years at the French Court. After her elevation to the throne, she was too apt to forget, with those about her, the sober dignity which belonged to the queen, and to converse with the officers about her more in the familiar manner of the maid-of-honour which she had once been. This freedom and gaiety had been caught at by the Court gossips, and now scandals were whispered abroad, and, as soon as the way was open by the anger and fresh love affair of the king, carried to him. Such accusations were precisely what he wanted, as a means to rid himself of her. A plot was speedily concocted, in which she was to be charged with criminal conduct towards not only three officers of the Royal household--Brereton, Weston, and Norris--but also with Mark Smeaton, the king's musician, and, still more horrible, with her own brother, the Viscount Rochford. A court of inquiry was at once appointed, in which presided Cromwell, the Lord Chancellor, and the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, Anne's determined enemies. On the 28th of April they began with Brereton, and committed him to the Tower. On Sunday, the 31st, they examined Smeaton, and sent him also to the same prison. The following day, being the 1st of May, the court was suspended to celebrate the gaieties usual on that day; and these were used for the purpose of obtaining a public cause of accusation against Sir Henry Norris. There was to be held a tournament at Greenwich that day, in which the Viscount Rochford was to be opposed by Norris as the principal defendant.

In the midst of the tournament, Henry, who, no doubt, was watching for some opportunity to entrap his victims, suddenly found one. The queen, leaning over the balcony, witnessing the tournament, accidentally let fall her handkerchief. Norris took it up, and, it was said, presumptuously wiped his face with it, and then handed it to the queen on his spear. The thing is wholly improbable, the true version most likely being that the courtly Norris kissed the handkerchief on taking it up--an ordinary knightly usage--and that this was seized upon as a pretended charge against him. Henry, however, suddenly frowned, rose abruptly from his seat, and, black as a thunder-cloud, marched out of the gallery, followed by his six attendants. Every one was amazed; the queen appeared terror-stricken, and immediately retired. Sir Henry Norris, and not only Norris but Lord Rochford, who had had nothing whatever to do with the handkerchief (showing, therefore, that the matter was preconcerted), was arrested at the barriers on a charge of high treason. The queen herself was taken to her lodgings in the Tower.

Left alone in her prison, Anne's affliction seemed to actually disturb her intellect. She would sit for hours plunged in a stupor of melancholy, shedding torrents of tears, and then she would abruptly burst into wild laughter. To her attendants she would say that she should be a saint in heaven; that no rain would fall on the earth till she was delivered from prison; and that the most grievous calamities would oppress the nation in punishment for her death. At other times she became calm and devotional, and requested that a consecrated host might be placed in her closet.

But the unhappy queen was not suffered to enjoy much retirement. It was necessary for Henry to establish a charge against her sufficiently strong to turn the feeling of the nation against her, and from him; and for this purpose no means were neglected which tyranny and harshness of the intensest kind could suggest. Whilst the accused gentlemen were interrogated, threatened, cajoled, and even put to the torture in their cells, to force a confession of guilt from them, two women were set over Anne to watch her every word, look, and act, to draw from her in her unguarded conversation everything they could to implicate her, and, no doubt, to invent and colour where the facts did not sufficiently answer the purpose required. These were Lady Boleyn, the wife of Anne's uncle, Sir Edward Boleyn, a determined enemy of hers, and Mrs. Cosyns, the wife of Anne's master of the horse, a creature of the most unprincipled character.

Mrs. Cosyns asked her why Norris had told his almoner on the preceding Saturday "that he could swear the queen was a good woman?" "Marry," replied Anne, "I bade him do so, for I asked him why he did not go on with his marriage, and he made answer that he would tarry awhile. 'Then,' said I, 'you look for dead men's shoes. If aught but good should come to the king [who was then afflicted with a dangerous ulcer], you would look to have me.' He denied it, and I told him I could undo him if I would." Again, the queen expressed some apprehension of what Weston might say in his examination, for he had told her on Whit Monday last that Norris came into her chamber more for her sake than for Madge, one of her maids of honour. She had told him he did love her kinswoman, Mrs. Skelton, and that he loved not his wife; and he answered again that he loved one in his house better than them both. She asked him who, and he said, "Yourself," on which she defied him. Such was the stuff which Kingston gathered at the hands of these wretched spies, to be used against the queen, who was to be got rid of.

Anne exhorted Kingston to convey a letter from her to Cromwell, but he declined such a responsibility; she contrived, however, by some means, on the fourth day of her imprisonment, to forward a letter, which conveys a very different impression from the conversation reported by the female spies, through Cromwell to the king.

"Never," she wrote, "did I at any time so far forget myself in my exaltation or received queenship, but that I always looked for such alteration as I now find; for the ground of my preferment being on no surer foundation than your grace's fancy, the least alteration was fit and sufficient (I knew) to draw that fancy to some other object.

"Try me, good king, but let me have a lawful trial, and let not my sworn enemies sit as my accusers and as my judges; yea, let me receive an open trial, for my truth shall fear no open shame. Then shall you see either mine innocency cleared, your suspicions and conscience satisfied, the ignominy and slander of the world stopped, or my guilt openly declared."

This letter, a copy of which was found amongst the papers of Cromwell, when his turn came to pay the penalty of serving that remorseless tyrant, is the letter of an innocent woman, and forms a strange contrast to the dubious language put into her mouth by those who reported her speech on the scaffold.

On the 10th of May an indictment for high treason was found by the grand jury of Westminster against Anne and the five gentlemen accused; and on the same day the four commoners were put upon their trial in Westminster Hall, for the alleged offences against the honour and life of their sovereign lord. A true bill was also found against them by the grand juries of Kent and Middlesex, some of the offences being laid in those counties, at Greenwich, Hampton Court, &c. Smeaton, the musician, was the only one who could be brought to confess his guilt; and it is declared by Constantyne, who was in attendance on the trials, and wrote an account of the proceedings, that he "had been grievously racked" to bring him to that confession. According to Grafton's chronicle, he was beguiled into signing the deposition which criminated the queen as well as himself, by an offer of pardon like that so repeatedly made to Norris. The weak man fell into the snare; the rest of the accused stood firmly by their innocence, and neither threats nor promises could move them from it. Norris was a great favourite with the king, who still appeared anxious to save his life, and sent to him, offering him again full pardon if he would confess his guilt. But Norris nobly declared that he believed in his conscience that the queen was wholly innocent of the crimes charged upon her; but whether she were so or not, he could not accuse her of anything, and that he would rather die a thousand deaths than falsely accuse the innocent. On this being told to Henry, he exclaimed, "Let him hang then! hang him up then!" All the four were condemned to death.

On the 16th of May Queen Anne and her brother, Lord Rochford, were brought to trial in the great hall in the Tower, a temporary court being erected within it for the purpose. The Duke of Norfolk, a known and notorious enemy of the accused, was created Lord High Steward for the occasion, and presided--a sufficient proof, if any were needed, that no justice was intended. His son, the Earl of Surrey, sat as Deputy Earl-Marshal beneath him. Twenty-six peers, as "lords-triers," constituted the court, and amongst these appeared the Duke of Suffolk, a nobleman still more inveterate in his hatred of the queen than the chief judge himself. The Earl of Northumberland, Anne's old lover, was one of the lords-triers; but he was seized with such a disorder, no doubt resulting from his memory of the past, that he was obliged to quit the court before the arraignment of Lord Rochford, and did not live many months. Henry, by his tyranny, had forcibly rent asunder his engagement with Anne; had embittered his life; and tired of the treasure which would have made Northumberland happy, he now called upon that injured man to assist in destroying one whom he had already lost.

Lord Rochford defended himself with such courage and ability that even in that packed court there were many who, by their sense of justice, were led to brave the vengeance of the terrible king, and voted for his acquittal. The chief witness against him was his own wife, who had hated Anne Boleyn from the moment that she became the king's favourite; and now with a most monstrous violation of all nature and decency, strove to destroy her queen and her own husband together. Spite of the impression which the young viscount made on some of his judges, he was condemned, for Henry willed it, and that was enough.

When he was removed Anne, Queen of England, was summoned into court, and appeared attended by her ladies and Lady Kingston, and was conducted to the bar by the Constable and Lieutenant of the Tower. She stood alone, without counsel or adviser; yet in that trying moment she displayed a dignified composure worthy of her station and of the character of an innocent woman. Crispin, Lord of Milherve, who was present, says that "she presented herself at the bar with the true dignity of a queen, and curtsied to her judges, looking round upon them all without any signs of fear." When the indictment against her, charging her with adultery and incest, had been read, she held up her hand and pleaded not guilty.

Anne seems to have shown great ability and address on the occasion. She is said to have spoken with extraordinary force, wit, and eloquence, and so completely scattered all the vile tissue of lies that was brought against her, that the spectators imagined that there was nothing for it but to acquit her. "It was reported without doors," says Wyatt, "that she had cleared herself in a most wise and noble speech." But, alas! it was neither wisdom, wit, truth, innocence, eloquence, nor all the powers and virtues which could be assembled in one soul, which could draw an acquittal from that assembly of slaves bound by selfish terror to the yoke of the remorseless despot who now disgraced the throne. "Had the peers given their verdict, according to the expectation of the assembly," says Bishop Godwin, "she had been acquitted." But they knew they must give it according to the expectation of their implacable master, and she was condemned.

Henry lost no time in getting rid of the woman, to obtain whom he had moved heaven and earth for years--threatening the peace of kingdoms, and rending the ancient bonds of the Church. The very day on which she was condemned, he signed her death-warrant, and sent Cranmer to confess her. There is something rather hinted at than proved in this part of these strange proceedings. Anne, when she was conveyed from Greenwich to the Tower, told her enemies proudly that nothing could prevent her dying their queen; and now, when she had seen Cranmer, she was in high spirits, and said to her attendants that she believed she should be spared after all, and that she understood that she was to be sent to Antwerp. The meaning of this the event of next day sufficiently explained. In the morning, on a summons from Archbishop Cranmer, she was conveyed privately from the Tower to Lambeth, where she voluntarily submitted to a judgment that her marriage with the king had been invalid, and was, therefore, from the first null and void. Thus she consented to dethrone herself, to unwife herself, and to bastardise her only child. Why? Undoubtedly from the promise of life, and from fear of the horrid death by fire. As she had received the confident idea of escape with life from the visit of Cranmer, there can be no rational doubt that he had been employed by the king to tamper with her fears of death and the stake, and draw this concession from her. Does any one think this impossible or improbable in Cranmer--the great Reformer of the Church? Let him weigh his very next proceeding.

Cranmer had formerly examined the marriage of Henry and Anne carefully by the canon law, and had pronounced it good and valid. He now proceeded to contradict every one of his former arguments and decisions, and pronounced the same marriage null and void. A solemn mockery of everything true, serious, and Divine was now gone through. Henry appointed Dr. Sampson his proctor in the case; Anne had assigned her the Drs. Wotton and Barbour. The objections to the marriage were read over to them in the presence of the queen. The king's proctor could not dispute them; the queen's were, with pretended reluctance, obliged to admit them, and both united in demanding a judgment. Then the great Archbishop and Reformer, "having previously invoked the name of Christ, and having God alone before his eyes," pronounced definitively that the marriage formally contracted, solemnised, and consummated between Henry and Anne was from the first illegal, and, therefore, no marriage at all; and the poor woman, who had been induced to submit to this deed of shame and of infamous deception, was sent back, not to life, not to exile at Antwerp--but to the block!

Friday, the 19th of May, was the day fixed for her execution, and on that morning she rose at two o'clock and resumed her devotions with her almoner. She sent for Sir William Kingston to be witness to her last solemn protest of her innocence before taking the sacrament. A few minutes before twelve o'clock she was led forth by the Lieutenant of the Tower to the scaffold. "Never," said a foreign gentleman present, "had the queen looked so beautiful before." Her composure was equal to her beauty. She removed her hat and collar herself, and put a small linen cap upon her head, saying, "Alas! poor head, in a very brief space thou wilt roll in the dust on the scaffold; and as in life thou didst not merit to wear a crown, so in death thou deserved not better doom than this." She then took a very affectionate farewell of her ladies. Having given to Mary Wyatt, the sister of Sir Thomas Wyatt, who attended her through all her trouble, the little book of devotions which she held in her hand, and whispered to her some parting words, she laid her head on the block. One of the ladies then covered her eyes with a bandage, and as the poor queen was saying, "O Lord, have mercy on my soul," the executioner, who had been sent for from Calais, severed her head from her body at one stroke of the sword. Her body was thrust into a chest used for keeping arrows in, and buried in the same grave with that of her brother, Lord Rochford, no coffin being provided.

Henry now repealed the late act of settlement, and passed a new one through the compliant Parliament, entailing the crown on the issue by Jane Seymour, whom he married on the morning after Anne's execution. He obtained, moreover, a power to bequeath the succession by letters patent, or by his last will, in case of having no fresh issue of his own, on any person whom he thought proper. In life and in death he demanded absolute power over every principle of the Constitution, and this Parliament, which would have granted him anything, conceded it. It was well understood that he meant to cut off his daughters, and to confer the crown on his illegitimate son, the Duke of Richmond. But as if Providence would punish him in the very act, this son died before he could give his Royal assent to the bill.

But if Henry had found a very submissive body in the Parliament, there was much discontent amongst the people, who were encouraged in their murmurs by the monks who had been dispossessed of their monasteries or who feared the approach of their fall, and by the clergy, who were equally alarmed at the progress of the opinions of the Reformers in the nation. There were two great factions in the Church and the Government, the opposed members of which were denominated the men of the Old and the New learning. At the head of the Old or Romanist faction were Lee, Archbishop of York; Stokesley, Bishop of London; Tunstal, Bishop of Durham; Gardiner, of Winchester; Sherbourne, of Chichester; Nix, of Norwich; and Kite, of Carlisle. These received the countenance and support of the Duke of Norfolk and of Wriothesley, the premier secretary. The leaders of the Reforming faction were Cranmer, the Primate; Latimer, Bishop of Worcester; Shaxton, of Salisbury; Hilsey, of Rochester; Fox, of Hereford; and Barlow, of St. David's. These were especially patronised by Cromwell, whose power as Vicar-General was great, and who was now made Lord Cromwell by the king.

Each of these parties, supported by a large body in the nation, endeavoured to make their way by flattering the vanity or the love of power of the capricious king. The Papist party swayed him to their side by his love of the old doctrines and rites; the Reformers, by his pride in opposing the Pope, and the gratification of his love of power as the independent head of the Church. In this transition state of things, the doctrines of the English Church, as settled by Convocation, exhibited a singular medley, and were liable at any moment to be disturbed by the momentary bias of the king, whose word was the only law of both Church and State. The Reformers succeeded in having the standard of faith recognised as existing in the Scriptures and the three creeds--the Apostolic, Nicene, and Athanasian; but then the Romanists had secured the retention of auricular confession and penance. As to marriage, extreme unction, confirmation, or holy orders, it was found that there could be no agreement in the belief in them as sacraments, and, therefore, they remained unmentioned, every one following his own fancy. The Real Presence was admitted in the sacrament of the Supper. The Roman Catholics asserted the warrant of Scripture for the use of images; but the Protestants denied this, and warned the people against idolatry in praying to them. The use of holy water, the ceremonies practised on Ash Wednesday, Palm Sunday, Good Friday, and other Festivals, were still maintained, but Convocation, yielding to the Reformers, admitted that they had no power to remit sin.

The Church being in this divided state, each party pushed its own opinions and practice where it could, with the certain consequence that there was much feud and heart-burning, and the people were pulled hither and thither. In those places where the Reformers prevailed, they saw the images thrown down or removed, the ancient rites neglected or despised; and they felt themselves aggrieved, but more especially with the ordinances of Cromwell as Vicar-General, who retrenched many of their ancient holidays. He also incensed the clergy, by prohibiting the resort to places of pilgrimage, and the exhibition of relics. These greatly reduced the emoluments of the clergy, whom he on the other hand compelled to lay aside a considerable portion of their revenues for the repairs of the churches, and the assistance of the poor. This caused them to foment the discontents of the people, and the thousands of monks now wandering over the country, without home or subsistence, found ready listeners in the vast population which had been accustomed to draw their main support from the daily alms of the convents and monasteries. The people, seeing all these ancient sources of a lazy support suddenly cut off by Government, grew furious; and their disaffection was strengthened by observing that many of the nobility and gentry were equally malcontent, whose ancestry had founded monasteries, and who, therefore, looked upon them with feelings of family pride, and, moreover, regarded them as a certain provision for some of their younger children. There were many of all classes who thought with horror of the souls of their ancestors and friends, who, they believed, would now remain for ages in all the torments of purgatory, for want of masses to relieve them.

All these causes operating together produced formidable insurrections, both in the north and south. The first rising was in Lincolnshire. It was headed by Dr. Mackrel, the Prior of Barlings, who was disguised like a mechanic, and by another man in disguise, calling himself Captain Cobbler. The first attack was occasioned by the demand of a subsidy for the king, but the public mind was already in a state of high excitement, and this was only the spark that produced the explosion. Twenty thousand men quickly rose in arms, and forced several lords and gentlemen to be their leaders. Such as refused, they either threw into prison or killed on the spot. Amongst the latter was the Chancellor of Longland, an ecclesiastic by no means popular. The king sent a force against them under the Duke of Suffolk, attended by the Earls of Shrewsbury, Kent, Rutland, and Huntingdon.

Suffolk found the insurgents in such force that he thought it best to temporise, and demanded of them what they had to complain of. Thereupon the men of Lincolnshire drew up and presented to him a list of six articles of grievance. These consisted, first and foremost, of the suppression of the monasteries, by which they said great numbers of persons were put from their livings, and the poor of the realm were left unrelieved. Another complaint was of the fifteenth voted by Parliament, and of having to pay fourpence for a beast, and twelvepence for every twenty sheep. They affirmed that the king had taken into his councils personages of low birth and small reputation, who had got the forfeited lands into their hands, "most especial for their singular lucre and advantage." This was aimed by name, and with only too much justice, at Cromwell and Lord Rich, who had grown wealthy on the spoils of the abbeys. To these men they added the names of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishops of Rochester, Salisbury, St. David's, and Dublin, whom they accused of having perverted the faith of the realm; and they especially attributed the severe exactions on the people to the Bishop of Lincoln and the officers of Cromwell, of whom it was rumoured that they meant to take the plate, jewels, and ornaments of the parish churches, as they had taken those of the religious houses.

The king answered by flatly refusing their petition, bidding them meddle no more in the affairs of their undoubted prince, but deliver up their ringleaders, and leave governing to him and his counsellors and noblemen. This bluster appears to have frightened the simple clodhoppers of the Fens; for we have, a few days later, another letter from the same swelling hand, telling them that he has heard from the Earl of Shrewsbury that they have shown a fitting repentance and sorrow for their folly and their heinous crimes; and assuring them that in any other Christian country they, their wives and children, would have been exterminated with fire and sword. He orders them to pile their arms in the market-place of Lincoln, and get away to their proper habitations and business, or, if they remain a day longer in arms, he will execute on them, their wives and children, the most terrible judgments that the world had ever known.

On the 30th of October, this frightened rabble, which seems to have been led on and then deserted by the clergy and gentry, dispersed, having first delivered up to the king's general fifteen of their ringleaders, amongst whom were Dr. Mackrel, the Prior of Barlings, and Captain Cobbler, said to have been a man of the name of Melton. These prisoners were afterwards executed as traitors, with all the barbarities of the age.

Scarcely, however, was the disturbance in Lincolnshire suppressed, when a far more formidable one broke out in the north. The people there were much more accustomed to arms, and their vicinity to the Scots created alarm at Court, lest the latter should take advantage of the rising to make an inroad into the country. The insurrection quickly spread over Northumberland, Durham, Yorkshire, Westmoreland, and Lancashire. The Lord Darcy was conspicuous in it on the Borders, and there were calculated to be not less than 40,000 men in arms. Henry was this time seriously aroused, and sent Cromwell to the Jewel-house in the Tower to take as much plate as he thought could possibly be spared, and have it coined to pay troops, for he had no money in his coffers, notwithstanding all the monasteries which he had seized. Wriothesley, the Secretary of State, wrote from Windsor to Cromwell to expedite this business, superscribing his letter, "In haste--haste for thy life;" and telling him that the king appeared to fear much this matter, especially if he should want money, "for on the Lord Darcy his Grace had no great trust."

As soon as money could be coined, a good sum was sent to the Duke of Suffolk, who was posted at Newark, and who made free use of it in buying over some of the ringleaders, and in sowing dissensions among the insurgents. Meanwhile the Earl of Shrewsbury was made the king's Lord-Lieutenant north of the Trent, and the Duke of Norfolk was despatched into Yorkshire, to command there with 5,000 men. Robert Aske, a gentleman of ability, was at the head of the rebel forces, and he had given a religious character to the movement by styling it "The Pilgrimage of Grace." Priests marched in the van, in the habits of their various orders, carrying crosses and banners, on which were emblazoned the figure of Christ on the cross, the sacred chalice, and the five wounds of the Saviour. On their sleeves, too, were embroidered the five wounds, and the name of Christ on their centre. They had all sworn an oath that they had entered into the pilgrimage from no other motive than the love of God, the care of the king's person and issue, the desire of purifying the nobility, of driving base persons from the king, of restoring the Church, and suppressing heresy.

Wherever they came, they compelled the people to join their ranks, as they would answer it at the day of judgment, as they would bear the pulling down of their houses, and the loss of their goods and of their lives. They restored the monks and nuns to their houses as they went along. The cities of York, Hull, and Pontefract had opened their gates, and taken the prescribed oaths. The Archbishop of York, the Lords Darcy, Lumley, Latimer, and Neville, with a vast number of knights and gentlemen, gathered to their standard, either by free will or compulsion, and the army presented a formidable aspect. But there was already disunion in the host. The money of the Duke of Suffolk was doing its work, and Wriothesley soon wrote that the insurgents were falling to talking amongst themselves, and, if that went on, a pair of light heels would soon be worth five pairs of hands to them. The Earl of Cumberland repulsed them from his castle of Skipton; Sir Ralph Evers defended Scarborough against them; Courtenay, Marquis of Exeter, the Earls of Huntingdon, Derby, and Rutland, took the field against them; and they only managed to take Pomfret Castle, because the Lord Darcy and the Archbishop of York, lying there, were supposed to be secretly in league with them, and only made a show of force, which they might plead in case of failure.

The insurgents, quite aware that the Government, which was attempting to sow dissension among them by pretended negotiations, was but waiting to seize and crush the leaders, again took the field in the very midst of winter. On the 23rd of January, 1537, bills were stuck on the church doors by night, calling on the commoners to come forth and to be true to one another, for the gentlemen had deceived them, yet they should not want for captains. There was great distrust lest the gentlemen had been won over by the pardon and by money. The rebels, however, marched out under two leaders of the name of Musgrave and Tilby, and, 8,000 strong, they laid siege to Carlisle, where they were repulsed; and, being encountered in their retreat by Norfolk, they were defeated and put to flight. All their officers, except Musgrave, were taken and put to death, to the number of seventy. Sir Francis Bigot and one Hallam attempted to surprise Hull, but failed; and other risings in the north proving equally abortive, the king now bade Norfolk spread his banner, march through the northern counties with martial law, and, regardless of the pardon he had issued, punish the rebels without mercy.

As the monks had obviously been at the bottom of this commotion, Henry let loose his vengeance especially upon them. He ordered Norfolk to go to Sawley, Hexham, Newminster, Lanercost, St. Agatha, and all other places that had made resistance, and there seize certain priors and canons and send them up to him, and immediately to hang up "all monks and canons that be in any wise faulty, without further delay or ceremony." He ordered the Earl of Surrey and other officers in the north to charge the monks there with grievous offences, to try their minds, and see whether they would not submit themselves gladly to his will. Under these sanguinary orders the whole of England north of the Trent became a scene of horror and butchery, and ghastly heads and mangled bodies, or corpses swinging from the trees. Nor did this admirable reformer of religion neglect to look after the property of his victims. Their lands and goods were all to be forfeited and taken possession of; "for we are informed," he says, "that there were amongst them divers freeholders and rich men, whose lands and goods, well looked unto, will reward others that with their truth have deserved the same."

Besides Aske, Sir Thomas Constable, Sir John Bulmer, Sir Thomas Percy, Sir Stephen Hamilton, Nicholas Tempest, William Lumley, and others, though they had taken the benefit of the pardon, were found guilty, and most of them were executed. Lord Hussey was found guilty of being an accomplice in the Lincolnshire rising, and was executed at Lincoln. Lord Darcy, though he pleaded compulsion, and a long life spent in the service of the Crown, was executed on Tower Hill. Lady Bulmer, the wife of Sir John Bulmer, was burnt in Smithfield; and Robert Aske was hung in chains on one of the towers of York. Having thus satiated his vengeance, and struck a profound terror into all the disaffected, Henry once more published a general pardon, to which he adhered; and even complied with one of the demands which the insurgents had made, that of erecting by patent a court of justice at York, for deciding lawsuits in the northern counties.

On the 12th of October, 1537, Jane Seymour gave birth to the long-desired prince, so well known afterwards as King Edward VI. This event took place at the palace of Hampton Court, and the infant was immediately proclaimed Prince of Wales, Duke of Cornwall, and Earl of Chester. The joy on so greatly desired an occurrence may be imagined, though it was somewhat dashed by the death of the queen, which took place only twelve days afterwards. During the confinement there was some question whether the life of the mother or of the child should be sacrificed, and on the question being put to the king, which should be spared, he characteristically replied, "The child by all means, for other wives can be easily found." The queen's death, however, was occasioned by the absurd exposure which the pompous christening necessitated. Henry appeared to be grieved when her death really took place, and put on mourning, which he had never done for his wives before, and never did again. He wore it three months.

By the accession of Queen Jane a new family, greedy and insatiable of advancement, was brought forward, whom we shall soon find figuring on the scene. The queen's brothers, sisters, uncles, and cousins presently filled every great and lucrative office at Court; closely imitating the unpopular precedent of the relations of Elizabeth Woodville. Her eldest brother, Edward Seymour, was immediately made Lord Beauchamp and Earl of Hertford; and, in the joy of having an heir, Henry created Sir William Paulet Lord St. John and Sir John Russell Lord Russell. Sir William Fitzwilliam was made Earl of Southampton, and High-Admiral. Russell and Paulet were sworn of the Privy Council; and John Russell, now in high favour with the king, attended the wedding, flattered the bride, and became, in the next reign, Earl of Bedford. Queen Jane received all the rites of the Roman Catholic Church on her death-bed; thus clearly denoting that neither she nor her husband was of the Protestant faith.

Any grief which might have affected Henry for his wife's death did not prevent him from prosecuting his favourite design of seizing rich monasteries and destroying heretics. The great amount of property which Henry had obtained from the dissolution of monastic houses only stimulated him and his courtiers to invade the remainder. The insurrections laid the inmates of these houses open to a general charge that they had everywhere fomented, and in many places taken public part in, these attempts to resist Government. Prosecutions for high treason and menaces of martial law induced many of the more timid abbots and priors to resign their trusts into the hands of the king and his heirs for ever. Others--like the prior of Henton, in Somersetshire--resisted, declaring that it did not become them "to be light and hasty in giving up those things which were not theirs to give, being dedicated to Almighty God, for service to be done unto His honour continually, with many other good deeds of charity which be daily done in their houses to their Christian brethren."

To grapple the more effectually with these sturdy remonstrants, a new visitation was appointed of all the monasteries in England; and, as a pretence only was wanted for their suppression, it was not difficult to find one where so many great men were eager to share in the spoils. But, while the destruction of the monasteries found many advocates, there were not wanting some who recommended the retention of those convents for women which had maintained order and a good reputation. But the king would hear of nothing but that all should be swept away together; and the better to prepare the public mind for so complete a revolution in social life, every means was employed to represent these establishments as abodes of infamy, and to expose the relics preserved in their shrines to ridicule, as impostures which deluded the ignorant people.

The work of suppressing the monasteries and convents went on briskly, for, says Bishop Godwin, "the king continued much prone to reformation, especially if anything might be gotten by it." The Earl of Sussex and a body of Commissioners were despatched to the north, to inquire into the conduct of the religious houses there, and great stress was laid on the participation of the monks in the insurrection of the Pilgrimage of Grace. The abbeys of Furness and Whalley were particularly rich; and though little concern with the rebellion could be traced to the inmates, yet the Commissioners never rested till, by persuasion and intimidation, they had induced the abbots to surrender these houses into their hands. The success of the Earl of Sussex and his associates led to similar Commissions in the south, and for four years the process was going on without an Act of Parliament.

The system generally adopted was this:--First, tempting offers of pensions were held out to the superiors and the monks or nuns, and in proportion to the obstinacy in complying was the smallness of the pension. The pensions to superiors varied, according to the wealth and rank of their houses, from £266 to £6 per annum. The priors of cells received generally £13. A few, whose services merited the distinction, £20. The monks received from £2 to £6 per annum, with a small sum in hand for immediate need. Nuns got about £4. That was the first and persuasive process; but, if this failed, intimidation was resorted to. The superior and his monks, tenants, servants, and neighbours, were subjected to a rigorous and vexatious examination. The accounts of the house were called for, and were scrutinised minutely, and all moneys, plate, and jewels ordered to be produced. There was a severe inquiry into the morals of the members, and one was encouraged to accuse another. Obstinate and refractory members were thrown into prison, and many died there--amongst them, the monks of the Charterhouse, London.

In 1539 a bill was brought into Parliament, vesting in the Crown all the property, movable and immovable, of the monastic establishments which were already, or which should be hereafter, suppressed, abolished, or surrendered, and, by 1540, the whole of this branch of the ecclesiastical property was in the hands of the king, or of the courtiers and parasites who surrounded him, like vultures, gorging themselves with the fallen carcase. The total number of such establishments suppressed from first to last by Henry was 655 monasteries--of which 28 had abbots enjoying a seat in Parliament--90 colleges, 2,374 chantries and free chapels, and 110 hospitals. The whole of the revenue of this property, as paid to superiors of these houses, was £161,000. The whole income of the kingdom at that period was rated at £4,000,000, so that the monastic property was apparently one twenty-fifth of the national estate; but as the monastic lands were let on long leases, and at very low rents, in the hands of the new proprietors it would prove of vastly higher value.

Henry distributed the property among his greedy courtiers as fast as it came, and never was so magnificent a property so speedily dissipated. What did not go amongst the Seymours, the Essexes, the Howards, the Russells, and the like, went in the most lavish manner on the king's pleasures and follies. He is said to have given a woman who introduced a pudding to his liking the revenue of a whole convent. Pauperism, instead of being extinguished, was increased to a degree which astonished every one. Such crowds had been supported by the monks and nuns as the public had no adequate idea of, till they were thrown destitute and desperate into the streets and the highways, and at length became such a national burden and nuisance as in the reigns of Edward VI. and Elizabeth to cause the introduction of the poor-law system. The aristocracy, in fact, usurped the fund for the support of the poor, and threw them on the nation at large.

Education received an equal shock. The schools supported by the monasteries fell with them. The new race of noblemen who got the funds did nothing to continue them. Religion suffered also, for the wealth which might have founded efficient incomes for good preachers was gone into private hands, and such miserable stipends were paid to the working clergy, that none but poor and unlettered men would accept them.

It is only justice to Cranmer to say that he saw this waste of public property with concern, and would have had it appropriated to the purposes of education and religion, and the relief of the poor; but he was too timid to lay the matter before the Royal prodigal. Yet the murmurs of the people induced Henry to think of establishing a number of bishoprics, deaneries, and colleges, with a portion of the lands of the suppressed monasteries. He had an act passed through Parliament for the establishment of eighteen bishoprics, but it was found that the property intended for these was cleverly grasped by some of his courtiers, and only six out of the eighteen could be erected, namely, Westminster, Oxford, Peterborough, Bristol, Chester, and Gloucester; and some of these were so meagrely endowed that the new prelates had much ado for a considerable time to live. At the same time Henry converted fourteen abbeys and priories into cathedral and collegiate churches, attaching to each a deanery and a certain number of prebendaries. These were Canterbury, Rochester, Westminster, Winchester, Bristol, Gloucester, Worcester, Chester, Burton-upon-Trent, Carlisle, Durham, Thornton, Peterborough, and Ely. But he retained a good slice of the property belonging to them, and, at the same time, imposed on the chapters the obligations of paying a considerable sum to the repair of the highways, and another sum to the maintenance of the poor.

At the same time that Henry had been squandering the monastic property, and had falsified his promises of making the Crown independent of taxation, by coming to Parliament within twelve months for a subsidy of two-tenths and two-fifteenths, he had all along been riveting the doctrines of the Church of Rome faster on the nation, and persecuting those who questioned them. The Lower House of Convocation drew up a list of fifty-nine propositions, which it denounced as heresies, extracted from the publications of different Reformers, and presented it to the Upper House. On this, Henry, who believed himself a greater theologian than any in either house of Convocation, drew up, with the aid of some of the prelates, a book of "Articles" which was presented by Cromwell to Convocation, and there subscribed. This was then carried through Parliament, and became termed too justly the "Bloody Statute," for a more terrible engine of persecution never existed.

No sooner had the statute of the Six Articles passed, than Latimer and Shaxton, the Bishops of Worcester and Salisbury, resigned their sees; and Cranmer, who had been living openly with his wife and children, seeing the king's determination to enforce the celibacy of the clergy, sent off his family to Germany, and made himself outwardly conformable to the law. At the end of the year 1539, the king put to death, in Smithfield, three victims of his intolerance. The first two were a man and a woman who were Anabaptists. The third was John Lambert, formerly a priest, who had become a schoolmaster in London. He was a Reformer, and denied the doctrine which Henry was now enforcing under the penalty of death, that the Real Presence existed in the bread and wine.

During the whole of the years 1538 and 1539 Henry was, nevertheless, not only grown suspicious of his subjects, but greatly alarmed at the rumours of a combination between the Pope, the Emperor, and the King of France against him. It was rumoured that Cardinal Pole, his relative, who had rigorously opposed the divorce, was assisting in this scheme, and as Henry could not reach him, on account of Pole's flight to the Continent, he determined to take vengeance on his relatives and friends in England. A truce for ten years was concluded under the Papal mediation, between Charles and Francis, at Nice, in June, 1538. The two monarchs urged Paul to publish his bull of excommunication against Henry, which had been reserved so long, and Henry, whose spies soon conveyed to him these tidings, immediately ordered his fleet to be put in a state of activity, his harbours of defence strengthened, and the whole population to be called under arms, in expectation of a combined attack.

But at this conference Cardinal Pole had been present, and Henry directly attributed the scheme of invasion to him. At once, therefore, he let loose his fury on his relatives and friends in England. Becket, the usher, and Wrothe, server of the Royal chamber, were despatched into Cornwall to collect some colour of accusation against Henry Courtenay, the Marquis of Exeter, and his adherents and dependents. The marquis and marchioness were soon arrested, as well as Sir Geoffrey Pole and Lord Montagu, brothers of the cardinal, and Sir Edward Neville, a brother of Lord Abergavenny. Two priests, Croft and Collins, and Holland, a mariner, were also arrested, and lodged in the Tower. On the last day of 1538 the marquis and Lord Montagu were tried before some of the peers, but not before their peers in Parliament, for Parliament was not sitting. The commoners were brought to trial before juries; and all on a charge of having conspired to place Reginald Pole, late Dean of Exeter, the king's enemy, on the throne. The king's ministers declared that the charge was well proved, but no such proofs were ever published, which, we may be sure, would have been had they existed.

The fact was, those noblemen were descended directly from the old Royal line of England: Courtenay was grandson to Edward IV., through his daughter Catherine, and the Poles were grandsons to George, Duke of Clarence, the brother of Edward. All had a better title to the throne than Henry, and this, combined with their connection with the cardinal, was the cause of the tyrant's enmity. If these prisoners had been inclined to treason, they had had the fairest opportunity of showing it during the northern insurrection, but they had taken no part in it whatever. But Henry had determined to wreak his vengeance, which could not reach the cardinal, on them; and the servile peers and courts condemned them. It was said that Sir Geoffrey Pole, to save his own life, consented to give evidence against the rest--secretly it must have been, for it was never produced. His life, therefore, was spared, but the rest were executed. Lord Montagu, the Marquis of Exeter, and Sir Edward Neville were beheaded on Tower Hill on the 9th of January, 1539, and Sir Nicholas Carew, master of the king's horse, was also beheaded on the 3rd of March, on a charge of being privy to the conspiracy. The two priests and the mariner were hanged and quartered at Tyburn. A commission was then sent down into Cornwall, which arraigned, condemned, and put to death two gentlemen of the names of Kendall and Quintrell, for having said, some years before, that Exeter was the heir apparent, and should be king, if Henry married Anne Boleyn, or it should cost a thousand lives.

But the sanguinary fury of Henry was not yet sated. The cardinal was sent by the Pope to the Spanish and French courts to concert the carrying out of the scheme of policy against England. Henry defeated this by means of his agents, and neither Charles nor Francis would move: but not the less did Henry determine further to punish the hostile cardinal. Judgment of treason was pronounced against him; the Continental sovereigns were called upon to deliver him up; and he was constantly surrounded by spies, and, as he believed, ruffians hired to assassinate him. Meanwhile it was said that a French vessel had been driven by stress of weather into South Shields, and in it had been taken three emissaries--an English priest of the name of Moore, and two Irishmen, a monk and a friar, who were said to be carrying treasonable letters to the Pope and to Pole. The Irish monks were sent up to London, and tortured in the Tower--a very unnecessary measure, if they really possessed the treasonable letters alleged. On the 28th of April Parliament was called upon to pass bills of attainder against Margaret, Countess of Salisbury, the mother of Cardinal Pole; Gertrude, the widow of the Marquis of Exeter; the son of Lord Montagu, a boy of tender years; Sir Adam Fortescue, and Sir Thomas Dingley. This was a device of Cromwell's, who demanded of the judges whether persons accused of treason might not be attainted and condemned by Parliament without any trial! The judges--who, like every one else under this monster of a king, had lost all sense of honour and justice in fears for their own safety--replied that it was a nice question, and one that no inferior tribunal could entertain, but that Parliament was supreme, and that an attainder by Parliament would be good in law! Such a bill was accordingly passed through the servile Parliament, condemning the whole to death without any form of trial whatever.

The two knights were beheaded on the 10th of July; the Marchioness of Exeter was kept in prison for six months, and then dismissed; the son of Lord Montagu, the grandson of the countess, was probably, too, allowed to escape, for no record of his death appears; but the venerable old lady herself, the near relative of the king, and the last direct descendant of the Plantagenets, after having been kept in prison for nearly two years, was brought out, and on the 27th of May, 1541, was condemned to the scaffold. There she still showed the determination of her character. Unlike many who had fallen there before her, so far from making any ambiguous speech, or giving any hypocritical professions of reverence for the king, she refused to do anything which appeared consenting to her own death. When told to lay her head on the block, she replied, "No, my head never committed treason; if you will have it, you must take it as you can." The executioner tried to seize her, but she moved swiftly round the scaffold, tossing her head from side to side. At last, covered with blood, for the guards struck her with their weapons, she was seized, and forcibly held down, and whilst exclaiming, "Blessed are they who suffer persecution for righteousness' sake," the axe descended, and her head fell.

But, the time of Cromwell himself was coming. The block was the pretty certain goal of Henry's ministers. The more he caressed and favoured them, the more certain was that result. Reflecting anxiously on the critical nature of his position, the deep and unprincipled minister came to the conclusion that the only mode of regaining his influence with the king was to promote a Protestant marriage. For a time at least Henry allowed himself to be governed by a new wife, and that time gained might prove everything to Cromwell. Circumstances seemed to favour him at this moment. The king was in constant alarm at the combination between France and Spain; and a new alliance with the Protestant princes of Germany, if accomplished, would equally serve the purposes of the king and of Cromwell. Now was the time for Cromwell, while Henry was chagrined by these difficulties. He informed him that Anne, daughter of John III., Duke of Cleves, Count of Mark, and Lord of Ravenstein, was greatly extolled for her beauty and good sense; that her sister Sybilla, the wife of Frederick, Duke of Saxony, the head of the Protestant confederation of Germany, called the Schmalkaldic League, was famed for her beauty, talents, and virtues, and universally regarded as one of the most distinguished ladies of the time. He pointed out to Henry the advantages of thus, by this alliance, acquiring the firm friendship of the princes of Germany, in counterpoise to the designs of France and Spain; and he assured him that he heard that the sisters of the Electress of Saxony, educated under the same wise mother, were equally attractive in person and in mind, and waited only a higher position to give them greater lustre, especially the Princess Anne.

The Duke of Cleves died on the 6th of February, 1539, and Henry despatched Hans Holbein to take the lady's portrait. Being delighted with the portrait--which agreed so well with the many praises written of the lady by his agents--he acceded to the match; and in the month of September the count palatine and ambassadors from Cleves arrived in London, where Cromwell received them with real delight, and the king bade them right welcome. The treaty was soon concluded; and Henry, impatient for the arrival of his wife, despatched the Lord Admiral Fitzwilliam, Earl of Southampton, to receive her at Calais, and conduct her to England.

On the 27th of December, 1539, Anne landed at Deal, having been escorted across the Channel by a fleet of fifty ships. She was a thorough Protestant, going into the midst of as thoroughly Papist a faction, and to consort with a monarch the most fickle and dogmatic in the world. She could speak no language but German, and of that Henry did not understand a word. It would have required a world of charms to have reconciled all this to Henry, even for a time, and of these poor Anne of Cleves was destitute. That she was not ugly, many contemporaries testify; but she was at least plain in person, and still plainer in manners. Both she and her maidens, of whom she brought a great train, are said to have been as homely and as awkward a bevy as ever came to England in the cause of royal matrimony.

The impatient though unwieldy lover, accompanied by eight gentlemen of his privy chamber, rode to Rochester to meet the bride. They were all clad alike, in coats "of marble colour;" for Henry, with a spice of his old romance, was going incognito, to get a peep at his queen without her being aware which was he. He told Cromwell that "he intended to visit her privily, to nourish love." On his arrival, he sent Sir Anthony Browne, his master of the horse, to inform Anne that he had brought her a new year's gift, if she would please to accept it. Sir Anthony, on being introduced to the lady who was to occupy the place of the two most celebrated beauties of the day, the Boleyn and the Seymour, was, he afterwards confessed, "never so much dismayed in his life," but of course said nothing. So now the enamoured king, whose eyes were dazzled with the recollection of what his queens had been, and what Holbein and his ambassadors had promised him should again be, entered the presence of Anne of Cleves, and was thunderstruck at the first sight of the reality. Lord John Russell, who was present, declared "that he had never seen his highness so marvellously astonished and abashed as on that occasion."

Instead of presenting himself the new year's gift which he had brought--a muff and tippet of rich sables--he sent them to her with a very cold message, and rode back to Greenwich in high dudgeon. There, the moment that he saw Cromwell, he burst out upon him for being the means of bringing him, not a wife, but "a great Flanders mare." Cromwell excused himself by not having seen her, and threw the blame on Fitzwilliam, the lord admiral, who, he said, when he found the princess at Calais so different from the pictures and reports, should have detained her there till he knew the king's pleasure; but the admiral replied brusquely that he had not had the choosing of her, but had simply executed his commission; and if he had in his dispatches spoken of her beauty, it was because she was reckoned beautiful, and it was not for him to judge of his queen.

No way out of the marriage being found, orders were given for the lady to proceed from Dartford, and at Greenwich she was received outwardly with all the pomp and rejoicings the most welcome beauty could have elicited. But still the mind of the mortified king revolted at the completion of the wedding, and once more he summoned his council, and declared himself unsatisfied about the contract, and required that Anne should make a solemn protestation that she was free from all pre-contracts. Probably Henry hoped that, seeing that she was far from pleasing him, she might be willing to give him up; but though her just pride as a woman must have been wounded by his treatment, and her fears excited by the recollection of the fates of Catherine and Anne Boleyn, the princess could be no free agent in the matter. The ambassadors would urge the impossibility of her going back, thus insulting all Protestant Germany, and her own pride would second their arguments on that side too. The ignominy of being sent back, rejected as unattractive and unwelcome, was not to be thought of. She made a most clear and positive declaration of her freedom from all pre-contracts. On hearing this, the surly monarch fell into such a humour that Cromwell got away from his presence as quickly as he could. Seeing no way out of it, the marriage was celebrated on the 6th of January, 1540, but nothing could reconcile Henry to his German queen. He loathed her person, he could not even talk with her without an interpreter; and he soon fell in love with Catherine Howard, niece to the Duke of Norfolk, a young lady who was much handsomer than Anne, but not well educated, and greatly wanting in principle. From the moment that Henry cast his eyes on this new favourite, the little remains of outward courtesy towards the queen vanished. He ceased to appear with her in public. He began to express scruples about having a Lutheran wife. He did not hesitate to propagate the most shameful calumnies against her, declaring that she had not been virtuous before her marriage.

Anne, in need of counsel, could find none in those who ought to have stood by her. Cranmer, the Reformer, and Cromwell, the advocate of Protestantism, and who had, in fact, brought about the marriage, kept aloof from her. She sent expressly to Cromwell, and repeatedly, but in vain; he refused to see her, for he knew that he stood on the edge of a precipice already; that he had deeply offended the choleric monarch by promoting this match; and that he was surrounded by spies and enemies, who were watching for occasion for his ruin. There is no doubt whatever that his ruin was already determined, but Cromwell was an unhesitating tool of the quality which Henry needed; for it was just at this time that Henry executed the relatives of Cardinal Pole, and probably it was an object of his to load that minister with as much of the odium of that measure as he could before he cast him down. Cromwell still, then, apparently retained the full favour of the king, notwithstanding this unfortunate marriage, but the conduct of his friends precipitated his fate.

Bishop Gardiner, a bigoted Papist, and one who saw the signs of the times as quickly as any man living, did not hear Henry's scruples about a Lutheran wife with unheeding ears. On the 14th of February, 1540, he preached a sermon at St. Paul's Cross, in which he unsparingly denounced as a damnable doctrine the Lutheran tenet of justification by faith without works. Dr. Barnes, a dependent of Cromwell's, but clearly a most imprudent one, on the 28th of February, just a fortnight afterwards, mounted the same pulpit, and made a violent attack on Gardiner and his creed. Barnes could never have intimated to Cromwell his intention to make this assault on a creed which was as much the king's as Gardiner's, or he would have shown him the fatality of it. But Barnes, like a rash and unreflecting zealot, not only attacked Gardiner's sermon, but got quite excited, and declared that he himself was a fighting-cock, and Gardiner was another fighting-cock, but that the garden-cock lacked good spurs. As was inevitable, Henry, who never let slip an opportunity to champion his own religious views, summoned Barnes forthwith before a commission of divines, compelled him to recant his opinion, and ordered him to preach another sermon, in the same place, on the first Sunday after Easter, and there to read his recantation, and beg pardon of Gardiner. Barnes obeyed. He read his recantation, publicly asked pardon of Gardiner, and then, getting warm in his sermon, reiterated in stronger terms than ever the very doctrine he had recanted.

The man must have made up his mind to punishment for his religious faith, for no such daring conduct was ever tolerated for a moment by Henry. He threw the offender into the Tower, together with Garret and Jerome, two preachers of the same belief, who followed his example.

The enemies of Cromwell rejoiced in this event, believing that his connection with Barnes would not fail to influence the king. So confidently did they entertain this notion, that they already talked of the transfer of his two chief offices, those of Vicar-General and Keeper of the Privy Seal, to Tunstal, Bishop of Durham, and Clarke, Bishop of Bath. But the king had not yet come to his own point of action. Cromwell's opponents were, therefore, astonished to see him open Parliament on the 12th of April, as usual, when he announced the king's sorrow and displeasure at the religious dissensions which appeared in the nation, his subjects branding each other with the opprobrious epithets of Papists and heretics, and abusing the indulgence which the king had granted them of reading the Scriptures in their native tongue. To remedy these evils his Majesty had appointed two committees of prelates and doctors--one to set forth a system of pure doctrine, and the other to decide what ceremonies and rites should be retained in the Church or abandoned; and, in the meantime, he called on both houses to assist him in enacting penalties against all who treated with irreverence, or rashly and presumptuously explained, the Holy Scriptures.

Never did Cromwell appear so fully to possess the favour of his sovereign. He had obtained a grant of thirty manors belonging to suppressed monasteries; the title of Earl of Essex was revived in his favour, and the office of Lord-Chamberlain was added to his other appointments. He was the performer of all the great acts of the State. He brought in two bills, vesting the property of the Knights Hospitallers in the king, and settling an adequate jointure on the queen. He obtained from the laity the enormous subsidy of four-tenths and fifteenths, besides ten per cent. of their income from lands, and five per cent. on their goods; and from the clergy two-tenths, and twenty per cent. of their incomes for two years. So little did there appear any prospect of the fall of Cromwell, that his own conduct augured that he never felt himself stronger in his monarch's esteem. He dealt about his blows on all who had offended himself or the king, however high. He committed to the Tower the Bishop of Chichester and Dr. Wilson, for relieving prisoners confined for refusing to take the oath of supremacy; and menaced with the royal displeasure his chief opponents, the Duke of Norfolk, and the Bishops of Durham, Winchester, and Bath.

Yet all this time Henry had determined, and was preparing for his fall. He appointed Wriothesley and Ralph Sadler Secretaries of State, and divided the business between them. The king had met Catherine Howard, it is said, at dinner at Gardiner's, who was Bishop of Winchester. As she was a strict Papist, and niece to Norfolk, it was believed that this had been concerted by the Catholic party; and they were not mistaken. She at once caught the fancy of Henry. Every opportunity was afforded the king of meeting her at Gardiner's; and no sooner did that worldly prelate perceive the impression she had made, than he informed Henry that Barnes, whom neither Gardiner nor Henry could forget, had been Cromwell's agent in bringing about the marriage of Anne of Cleves; that Cromwell and Barnes had done this, without regard to the feelings of the king, merely to bring in a queen pledged to German Protestantism; and that, instead of submitting to the king's religious views, they were bent on establishing in the country the detestable heresies of Luther.

Henry, whose jealousy was now excited, recollected that when he proposed to send Anne of Cleves back, Cromwell had strongly dissuaded him, and as Anne had now changed her insubordinate behaviour to him, he immediately suspected that it was at the suggestion of Cromwell. No sooner had this idea taken full possession, than down came the thunderbolt on the head of the great minister. The time was come, all was prepared, and, without a single note of warning--without the change of look or manner in the king--Cromwell was arrested at the council-board on a charge of high treason. In the morning he was in his place in the House of Lords, with every evidence of power about him; in the evening he was in the Tower.

In his career, from the shop of the fuller to the supreme power in the State, next to the king, Cromwell had totally forgotten the wise counsel of Wolsey. He had not avoided, but courted, ambition. He had leaned to the Reformed doctrines secretly, but he had taken care to enrich himself with the spoils of the suppressed monasteries, and many suspected that these spoils were the true incentives to his system of reformation. The wealth he had accumulated was, no doubt, a strong temptation to Henry, as it was in all such cases, and thus Cromwell's avarice brought its own punishment. In his treatment of the unfortunate Romanists whom he had to eject from their ancient houses and lands, his conduct had been harsh and unsparing; and by that party, now in power, he was consequently hated with an intense hatred; and this was a second means of self-punishment. But above all, in the days of his power, he had been perfectly reckless of the liberties and securities of the subject. He had broken down the bulwarks of the Constitution, and advised the king to make his own will the sole law, carrying for him through Parliament the monstrous doctrine embodied in the enactment that the royal proclamation superseded Parliamentary decrees, and that the Crown could put men to death without any form of trial. Under the monstrous despotism which he had thus erected, he now fell himself, and had no right whatever to complain. Yet he did complain most lamentably. The men who never feel for others, concentrate all their commiseration on themselves; and Cromwell, so ruthless and immovable to the pleadings of his own victims, now sent the most abject and imploring letters to Henry, crying, "Mercy, mercy!"

His experience might have assured him that, when once Henry seized his victim, he never relented; and there was no one except Cranmer who dared to raise a voice in his favour, and Cranmer's interference was so much in his own timid style, that it availed nothing. His papers were seized, his servants interrogated, and out of their statements, whatever they were--for they were never produced in any court--the accusations were framed against him. These consisted in the charges of his having, as minister, received bribes, and encroached on the royal authority by issuing commissions, discharging prisoners, pardoning convicts, and granting licences for the exportation of prohibited merchandise. As Vicar-General, he was charged with having not only held heretical opinions himself, but also with protecting heretical preachers, and promoting the circulation of heretical books. Lastly, there was added one of those absurd, gratuitous assertions, which Henry always threw in to make the charge amount to high treason, namely, that Cromwell had expressed his resolve to fight against the king himself, if necessary, in support of his religious opinions; and Mount was instructed to inform the German princes that Cromwell had threatened to strike a dagger into the heart of the man who should oppose the Reformation, which, he said, meant the king. He demanded a public trial, but was refused, being only allowed to face his accusers before the Commissioners. Government then proceeded against him by bill of attainder, and thus, on the principle that he had himself established, he was condemned without trial, even Cranmer voting in favour of the attainder. His fate was delayed for more than a month, during which time he continued to protest his innocence, with a violence which stood in strong contrast to his callousness to the protestations of others, wishing that God might confound him, that the vengeance of God might light upon him, that all the devils in hell might confront him, if he were guilty. He drew the most lamentable picture of his forlorn and miserable condition, and offered to make any disclosures demanded of him; but though nothing would have saved him, unluckily for him, Henry discovered among his papers his secret correspondence with the princes of Germany. He gave the royal assent to the bill of attainder, and in five days--namely, on the 28th of July--Cromwell was led to the scaffold, where he confessed that he had been in error, but had now returned to the truth, and died a good Catholic. He fell detested by every man of his own party, exulted over by the Papist section of the community, and unregretted by the people, who were just then smarting under the enormous subsidy he had imposed. As if to render his execution the more degrading, Lord Hungerford, a nobleman charged with revolting crimes, was beheaded with him.

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IX. REIGN OF HENRY VIII. (concluded)

Divorce of Anne of Cleves--Catherine Howard's Marriage and Death--Fresh Persecutions--Welsh Affairs--The Irish Insurrection and its Suppression--Scottish Affairs--Catholic Opposition to Henry--Outbreak of War--Battle of Solway Moss--French and English Parties in Scotland--Escape of Beaton--Triumph of the French Party--Treaty between England and Germany--Henry's Sixth Marriage--Campaign in France--Expedition against Scotland--Capture of Edinburgh--Fresh Attempt on England--Cardinal Beaton and Wishart--Death of the Cardinal--Struggle between the Two Parties in England--Death of Henry.

The death of Cromwell was quickly followed by the divorce of Anne of Cleves. The queen was ordered to retire to Richmond, on pretence that the plague was in London. Marillac, the French ambassador, writing to Francis I., said that the reason assigned was not the true one, for if there had been the slightest rumour of the plague, nothing would have induced Henry to remain; "for the king is the most timid person in the world in such cases." It was the preliminary step to the divorce, and as soon as she was gone, Henry put in motion all his established machinery for getting rid of wives. The Lord Chancellor, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Duke of Norfolk, and others of the king's ministers, procured a petition to be got up and presented to his Majesty, stating that the House had doubts of the validity of the king's marriage, and consequently were uneasy as to the succession, and prayed the king to submit the question to Convocation. Of course, Henry could refuse nothing to his faithful peers, and Convocation, accordingly, took the matter into consideration. The marriage was declared--like his two former ones with Catherine and Anne Boleyn--to be null and void; and the same judgment of high treason was pronounced on any one who should say or write to the contrary. The queen being a stranger to the English laws and customs, was not called upon to appear personally, or even by her advocates, before Convocation.

All this being settled, the Duke of Suffolk, the Earl of Southampton, and Wriothesley proceeded to Richmond, to announce the decision to the queen. On the sight of these ministers, and on hearing their communication, that the marriage was annulled by Parliament, the poor woman, supposing that she was going to be treated like Anne Boleyn, fainted, and fell on the floor. On her return to consciousness, the messengers hastened to assure her that there was no cause of alarm; that the king had the kindest and best intentions towards her; that, if she would consent to resign the title of queen, he proposed to give her the title of his sister; to grant her precedence of every lady except the future queen and his daughters, and to endow her with estates to the value of £3,000 per annum.

Anne received some of the spoils of the fallen Cromwell in different estates which were made over to her for life, including Denham Hall, in Essex. She resided principally at her palace of Richmond, and at Ham House; but we find her living at different times at Bletchingley, Hever Castle, Penshurst, and Dartford. Though she was queen only about six months, she continued to live in England for seventeen years--seeing two queens after her, and Edward VI. and Queen Mary on the throne--greatly honoured by all who knew her, and much beloved by both the princesses Mary and Elizabeth. Not in seventeen years, but in sixteen months, she saw the fall and tragedy of the queen who supplanted her; so that one of her maids of honour, Elizabeth Bassett, could not help exclaiming at the news, "What a man the king is! how many wives will he have?" For which very natural expression the poor girl was very near getting into trouble. As for Anne herself, she appeared quite a new woman when she had got clear of her terrible and coarse-minded tyrant, so that the French ambassador, Marillac, wrote to his master that "Madame of Cleves has a more joyous countenance than ever. She wears a great variety of dresses, and passes all her time in sports and recreations." No sooner was she divorced than Henry paid her a visit, and was so delighted by her pleasant and respectful reception of him, that he supped with her merrily, and not only went often again to see her, but invited her to Hampton, whither she went, not at all troubling herself that another was acting the queen.

Anne's marriage was annulled by Parliament on the 9th of July, and on the 8th of August Catherine Howard appeared at Court as the acknowledged queen. For twelve months all went on well, and the king repeatedly declared that he had never been happy in love or matrimony till now; that the queen was the most perfect of women, and the most affectionate of wives. To gratify his new queen, and to accomplish some objects of importance, Henry this summer made a progress into the north, and took Catherine with him. One object was to judge for himself of the state of the northern counties, where the late insurrections in favour of the old religion had broken out. He promised himself that his presence would intimidate the disaffected; that he should be able to punish those who remained troublesome, and make all quiet; but still more was he anxious for an interview with his nephew, James V. of Scotland. The principles of the Reformation had been making rapid progress in that country, and the fires of persecution had been lit up by the clergy. Patrick Hamilton, a young man of noble family, who had imbibed the new doctrines abroad, and Friar Forrest, a zealous preacher of the same, had suffered at the stake. But far more dangerous to the stability of the Catholic Church, was the fact that the Scottish nobility, poor and ambitious, had learnt a significant lesson from what had been going on in England. The seizure of the monastic estates there by the king, and their liberal distribution amongst the nobility, excited their cupidity, and they strongly urged James to follow the example of his royal uncle. In this counsel they found a staunch coadjutor in Henry, who never ceased exciting James to follow his example, and, to make sure of his doing so, invited him to an interview at York, to which he consented.

Notwithstanding great preparations had been made, the King of Scots excused his coming. The very first announcement of such a project had struck the clergy of Scotland with consternation. They hastened to point out to James the dangers of innovation--the certain mischief of aggrandising the nobility, already too powerful, with the spoils of the Church--the jeopardy of putting himself into the hands of Henry and the English, and the loss of the friendship of all foreign powers, if he was induced by Henry to attack the Church, which would render him almost wholly dependent on England. They added force to these arguments by presenting him with a gratuity of £50,000; promised him a continuance of their liberality, and pointed out to him a certain source of income of at least £100,000 per annum in the confiscations of heretics. These representations and gifts had the desired effect. James sent an excuse to Henry for not being able to meet him at York; and the disappointed king turned homeward in great disgust. The fascinations of the young queen, however, soon restored his good humour, and they arrived at Windsor, on the 26th of October, in high spirits.

Little did the uxorious monarch dream that he was at this moment standing on a mine that would blow all his imagined happiness into the air and send his idolised wife to the block. But at the very time that he and Catherine had been showing themselves as so beautifully conjugal a couple to the good people of the north, the mine had been preparing. It was the misfortune of all the queens of Henry VIII. that they had not only to deal with one of the most vindictive and capricious tyrants that ever existed, but that they were invariably, and necessarily, the objects of the hatred of a powerful and merciless party, which was ready to destroy its antagonist, and, as the first and telling stroke in that progress, to pull down the queen. Catherine Howard was now the hope of the Romanists. She was the niece of the Duke of Norfolk, the most resolute lay-Papist in the kingdom, and the political head of that party. The public evidences of the growing influence of Catherine with the king in the northern progress, had been marked by the Catholics with exultation, and by the Protestants with proportionate alarm. Both Rapin and Burnet assert that Cranmer felt convinced, from what he saw passing, that unless some means were found to lessen the influence of the queen, and thus dash the hopes of the Catholics, he must soon follow Cromwell to the block. A most ominous circumstance which reached him was, that the royal party took up their quarters for a night at the house of Sir John Gorstwick, who, but in the preceding spring, had denounced Cranmer in open Parliament, as "the root of all heresies," and that at Gorstwick's there had been held a select meeting of the Privy Council, at which Gardiner, the unhesitating leader of the Romanists, presided. It was the signal for the Protestants to bring means of counter-action into play, and such means, unfortunately for the queen, were already stored up and at hand.

It was discovered that the queen had been guilty of numerous improprieties before marriage, chiefly with a man called Derham, and it was now alleged that an intrigue had been going on between Catherine and her cousin, Thomas Culpepper, in the northern progress, at Lincoln and York, and that one night Culpepper was in the same room with the queen and Lady Rochford for three hours. But when it was attempted to establish this fact on the evidence of women in attendance, Catherine Tylney and Margaret Morton, this evidence dwindled to mere surmise. Tylney deposed that on two nights at Lincoln, the queen went to the room of Lady Rochford, and stayed late, but affirmed "on her peril that she never saw who came unto the queen and my Lady Rochford, nor heard what was said between them." Morton's evidence amounted only to this, that, at Pontefract, Lady Rochford conveyed letters between the queen and Culpepper, as was supposed; and one night when the king went to the queen's chamber, the door was bolted, and it was some time before he could be admitted. This circumstance must have been satisfactorily accounted for to Henry at the time, jealous person as he was, yet on such paltry grounds was it necessary to build the charge of criminal conduct in the queen.

On the 21st of January, 1542, a bill of attainder of Catherine Howard, late Queen of England, and of Jane, Lady Rochford, for high treason; of Agnes, Duchess of Norfolk, Lord William Howard, the Lady Bridgewater, and four men and five women, including Derham and Culpepper, already executed, was read in the Lords. On the 28th, the Lord Chancellor, impressed with a laudable sense of justice, proposed that a deputation of Lords and Commons should be allowed to wait on the queen to hear what she had to say for herself. He said it was but just that a queen, who was no mean or private person, but a public and illustrious one, should be tried by equal laws like themselves and thought it would be acceptable to the king himself if his consort could thus clear herself. But that did not suit Henry: he was resolved to be rid of his lately beloved model queen; and as there was no evidence whatever of any crime on her part against him, he did not mean that she should have any opportunity of being heard in her defence. The bill was, therefore, passed through Parliament, passing the Lords in three and the Commons in two days. On the 10th of February the queen was conveyed by water to the Tower, and the next day Henry gave his assent to the bill of attainder. The persons sent to receive the queen's confession were Suffolk, Cranmer, Southampton, Audley, and Thirlby. "How much she confessed to them," Burnet says, "is not very clear, neither by the journal nor the Act of Parliament, which only say she confessed." If she had confessed the crime alleged after marriage, that would have been made fully and officially known. Two days afterwards, February 12th, she was brought to the block.

Thus fell Catherine Howard in the bloom of her youth and beauty, being declared by an eye-witness to be the handsomest woman of her time, paying for youthful indiscretions the forfeit of her life to the king, though some think she had not sinned against him. So conscious was Henry of this, that he made it high treason, in the Act of Attainder, for any one to conceal any such previous misconduct in a woman whom the sovereign was about to marry. With Catherine fell the odious Lady Rochford, who had long deserved her fate, for her false and murderous evidence against her own husband and Anne Boleyn.

Having thus destroyed his fifth wife, Henry now turned his attention to the regulation of religious affairs and opinions. In 1539 he had attempted to set up a standard of orthodoxy by the publication of "The Institution of a Christian Man," or "The Bishops' Book," as it was called, because compiled by the bishops under his direction. After that he published his "Necessary Doctrine and Erudition for any Christian Man," which was called "The King's Book." In this it was observable that, instead of approaching nearer to the Protestant creed, he was going fast back into the strictest principles of Romanism. He had allowed the people to read the Bible, but he now declared that, though the reading of it was necessary to the teachers of religion, it was not so necessary for the learners; and he decreed, by Act of Parliament, that the Bible should not be read in public, or be seen in any private families but such as were of noble or gentle birth. It was not to be read privately by any but householders and women who were well-born. If any woman of the ordinary class, any artificer, apprentice, journeyman, servant, or labourer dared to read the Bible, he or she was to be imprisoned for one month.

Gardiner and the Papist party were more and more in the ascendant, and the timid Cranmer and the more liberal bishops were compelled not only to wink at these bigoted rules, but to order "The King's Book," containing all the dogmas which they held to be false and pernicious, to be published in every diocese, and to be the guide of every preacher. By this means it was hoped to quash the numerous new sects which were springing from the reading of the Bible, and the earnest discussions consequent upon it. Such a flood of new light had poured suddenly into the human mind, that it was completely dazzled by it. Opinion becoming in some degree free, ran into strange forms. There were Anabaptists, who held that every man ought to be guided by the direct inspiration of the Holy Ghost, and that, consequently, there was no need of king, judge, magistrate, or civil law, or war, or capital punishment. There were Antinomians, who contended that all things were free and allowable to the saints without sin. There were Fifth-Monarchy men; members of the Family of Love, or Davidians, from one David George, their leader; Arians, Unitarians, Predestinarians, Libertines, and other denominations, whom we shall find abundant in the time of the Commonwealth. What was strangest of all was to see King Henry, who would allow no man's opinion to be right but his own, and who burnt men for daring to differ from him, lecturing these contending sects on their animosities in his speech in Parliament, and bidding them "behold what love and charity there was amongst them, when one called another heretic and Anabaptist, and he called him again Papist, hypocrite, and pharisee;" and the royal peacemaker threatened to put an end to their quarrellings by punishing them all. During the four remaining years of his reign, he burnt or hanged twenty-four persons for religion--that is, six annually--fourteen of them being Protestants. During these years "The King's Book" was the only authorised standard of English orthodoxy.

It is now necessary to take a brief glance at the proceedings of Henry's government in Ireland and Wales, and towards Scotland. In the Principality of Wales the measures of the king were marked by a far wiser spirit than those which predominated in religion. Being descended from the natives of that country, it was natural that it should claim his particular attention. Wales at that time might be divided into two parts, one of which had been subjected by the English monarchs, and divided into shires, the other which had been conquered by different knights and barons, thence called the lords-marchers. The shires were under the royal will, but the hundred and forty-one small districts or lordships which had been granted to the petty conquerors, excluded the officers and writs of the king altogether. The lords, like so many counts palatine, exercised all sovereign rights within their own districts, had their own courts, appointed their own judges, and punished or pardoned offenders at pleasure. This opened up a source of the grossest confusion and impunity from justice; for criminals perpetrating offences in one district had only to move into another, and set the law at defiance. Henry, by enacting, in 1536, that the whole of Wales should thenceforth be incorporated with England, should obey the same laws and enjoy the same rights and privileges, did a great work. The Welsh shires, with one borough in each, were empowered to send members to Parliament, the judges were appointed solely by the Crown, and no lord was any longer allowed to pardon any treason, murder, or felony in his lordship, or to protect the perpetrators of such crimes. The same regulations were extended to the county palatine of Chester.

The proceedings of Henry in Ireland were equally energetic, if they were not always as just; and in the end they produced an equally improved condition of things there. Quiet and law came to prevail, though they prevailed with severity. On the accession of Henry to the throne, the portion of the island over which the English authority really extended was very limited indeed. It included merely the chief sea-ports, with the five counties of Louth, Westmeath, Dublin, Kildare, and Wexford. The rest of the country was almost independent of England, being in the hands of no less than ninety chieftains--thirty of English origin, and the rest native--who exercised a wild and lawless kind of sway, and made war on each other at will. Wolsey, in the height of his power, determined to reduce this Irish chaos to order. He saw that the main causes of the decay of the English authority lay in the perpetual feuds and jealousies of the families of Fitzgerald and Butler, at the head of which were the Earls of Kildare and of Ormond. The young Earl of Kildare, the chief of the Fitzgeralds, who succeeded his father in 1520, was replaced by the Earl of Surrey, afterwards the Duke of Norfolk, whom we have seen so disgracefully figuring in the affairs of Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, his nieces. During the two years that he held the Irish government, he did himself great credit by the vigour of his administration, repressing the turbulence of the chiefs, and winning the esteem of the people by his hospitality and munificence.

Unfortunately for Ireland, Surrey had acquired great renown by his conduct under his father at Flodden, and when Henry, in 1522, declared war against France, he was deemed the only man fitted to take command of the army. The government of Ireland, on his departure, was placed in the hands of Butler, Earl of Ormond. In the course of ten years it passed successively from Ormond again to Kildare, from Kildare to Sir William Skeffington, and back for the third time to Kildare.

Kildare, relieved from the fear of Wolsey, who had now fallen, gave way to the exercise of such acts of extravagance, that his own friends attributed them to insanity. At the earnest recommendations, therefore, of his hereditary rivals, the Butlers, he was called to London in 1534, and sent to the Tower. Still, he had left his Irish government in the hands of his son, Lord Thomas Fitzgerald--a young man of only one-and-twenty, brave, generous, but with all the impetuosity of Irish blood. Hearing a false report that his father was beheaded in the Tower, young Fitzgerald flew to arms. He appeared at the head of 140 followers before the council, resigned the sword of State, and demanded war against Henry of England.

Cromer, the Archbishop of Armagh, earnestly entreated him not to plunge himself into a quarrel so hopeless as that with England; but in vain. The strains of an Irish minstrel, uttered in his native tongue, had more influence with him, for they called on him to revenge his father, to free Ireland; and the incensed youth flew to arms. For a time success attended him. He overran the rich district of Fingal; the natives flocked to his standard; the Irish minstrels, in wild songs, stirred the people to frenzy; and surprising Allen, the Archbishop of Dublin, on the very point of escaping to England, and supposed to be one of the accusers of the Earl of Kildare, they murdered him in presence of the young chief and his brothers. He then sent a deputation to Rome, offering, on condition that the Pope should give him the support of his sanction, to defend Ireland against an apostate prince, and to pay a handsome annual tribute to the Holy See. He sent ambassadors also to the Emperor, demanding assistance against the prince who had so grossly insulted him by divorcing his aunt, Queen Catherine. Five of his uncles joined him, but he was repulsed from the walls of Dublin. The strong castle of Maynooth was carried by assault by the new deputy, Sir William Skeffington; and in the month of October Lord Leonard Gray, the son of the Marquis of Dorset, arriving from England at the head of fresh forces, chased him into the fastnesses of Munster and Connaught. On hearing of this ill-advised rebellion, the poor Earl of Kildare, already stricken with palsy, sickened and died in the Tower.

Lord Gray did not trust simply to his arms in the difficult country into which the Fitzgeralds had retired; he employed money freely to bribe the natives, who led him through the defiles of the mountains, and the passable tracks of the morasses, into the retreats of the enemy. He found the county of Kildare almost entirely desolated. Six out of the eight baronies were burnt; and where this was not the case, the people had fled, leaving the corn in the fields. Meath also was ravaged; and the towns throughout the south of Ireland, besides the horrors of civil war, found fever and pestilence prevailing, Dublin itself being more frightfully decimated than the provincial towns. The English Government sent very little money to the troops, and left them to subsist by plunder; and they first seized all the cattle, corn, and provisions, and then laid waste the country by fire. By March, 1535, Lord Thomas Fitzgerald was reduced to such extremity that he wrote to Lord Gray, begging him to become intercessor between the king and himself. Lord Gray, there can be little doubt, promised Fitzgerald a full pardon, on which he surrendered. But Skeffington wrote to the king that, finding that O'Connor, his principal supporter, had come in and yielded, "the young traitor, Thomas Fitzgerald, had done the same, without condition of pardon of life, lands, and goods."

But this assertion is clearly contradicted by the council in Dublin, who wrote entreating the king to be merciful to the said Thomas, to whom they had given comfortable promises. O'Connor had been too wise to put himself into the power of Henry on the strength of any promises: he delivered only certain hostages as security for his good behaviour; but Lord Thomas was carried over to England by Lord Gray, where he was committed to the Tower. Gray was immediately sent back to Ireland, with the full command of the army there, and he was instructed above all things to secure the persons of the five uncles of Lord Fitzgerald. Accordingly, on the 14th of February, 1536, the council of Ireland sent to Cromwell, then minister, an exulting message, that Lord Gray, the chief justice, and others, had captured the five brethren, which they pronounced to be the "first deed that ever was done for the weal of the king's poor subjects of that land." They added, "We assure your mastership that the said lord justice, the treasurer of the king's wars, and such others as his grace put in trust in this behalf, have highly deserved his most gracious thanks for the politic and secret conveying of the matter." But the truth was, that this politic and secret management was one of the most disgraceful pieces of treachery which ever was transacted--the Fitzgeralds being seized at a banquet to which both parties had proceeded under the most solemn pledges of mutual faith. They were conveyed at once to London, and in February, 1537, the young earl and his five uncles were beheaded, after a long and cruel imprisonment in the Tower. Their unprincipled betrayer, however, did not long enjoy the fruits of his treachery. He was made Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland as a reward for his dishonourable service, but was soon removed on charges of misconduct, committed to one of the very cells which his victims had occupied, and was beheaded on Tower Hill, as a traitor, on the 28th of June, 1541, ending his life, according to Godwin, very quietly and godlily. Gray certainly deserved better treatment from Henry; for, though his conduct was infamous to the Fitzgeralds, it was most useful to the English king. The rival factions of Fitzgeralds and Butlers continuing to resist the English power, Gray contended against them till, by his brilliant victory at Bellahoe, he broke the power of O'Neill, the northern chieftain, and confirmed the power of England. Yet, being uncle, by his sister, to the last surviving male heir of the Fitzgeralds--Gerald, the youngest brother of the unfortunate Lord Thomas, a boy of only twelve years of age--he was accused of favouring his escape, and all his services were forgotten by his ungrateful sovereign. The young Gerald Fitzgerald escaped to the Continent by the aid of a sea captain of St. Malo, and ultimately to Italy, where he lived under the patronage and protection of his kinsman, Cardinal Pole, till he eventually recovered the honours and estates of his ancestors, in the reign of Queen Mary, at the suggestion of the cardinal.

After the recall of Lord Gray, O'Connor, O'Neill, M'Murdo, and the O'Tooles excited fresh insurrections, but they were speedily put down, and in 1541 Anthony St. Leger found both the Irish chiefs and the lords of the pale eagerly outstripping each other in professions of loyalty. In 1541 Henry raised Ireland from the rank of a lordship to that of a kingdom, and granted letters patent to the Irish chiefs, by the advice of Sir Thomas Cusake, though unwillingly. Thus, by securing them in possession of their lands, and raising them to new honours, he gained their devoted attachment. Henry gave them houses in Dublin, which they were to inhabit when summoned as peers of the Irish Parliament. Ulick Burke was made Earl of Clanricarde, Murroch O'Brien Earl of Thomond, and the great O'Neill became henceforth known by his new title of Earl of Tyrone. The Irish council was instructed to proceed with the suppression of the monasteries, though cautiously, not urging the monks too rigorously, lest they stirred up opposition, but desirably persuading them that "the lands of the Church were his proper inheritance." These matters were so well carried out, that the ascendency of England had never appeared so firmly established since the first invasion of the island by Henry II.

In Scotland the French and Catholic party was all powerful. James V. married a French wife, Mary of Guise, in 1538, and in 1539 David Beaton succeeded his uncle, James Beaton, in the primacy, when the Pope, to add additional honours to so devoted a servant, presented him with a cardinal's hat. It was at this crisis that the Pope, acting in concert with France and Spain, sent Cardinal Pole to co-operate with the Scots in annoying Henry, and James being applied to by the Pontiff Paul, declared himself willing to unite with Francis I. and the Emperor in the endeavour to convert or punish the heretical English king. As if to show Henry that there was no prospect of any co-operation of James with him, the fires of persecution were kindled by Beaton and his coadjutors against the Protestants in that kingdom, and this again drove the Reformers to make common cause with the Earl of Angus and other Scottish exiles in England. Henry, to encourage the Protestants, and to warn James if possible, sent to him his rising diplomatist, Sir Ralph Sadler, who represented to James that Henry was much nearer related to him than were any of the Continental sovereigns, and who endeavoured to prevent there the publication of the bill of excommunication.

But it became necessarily a pitched battle between the Papist party in Scotland and Henry. They beheld with natural alarm his destruction of the Papal Church in England, an example of the most terrible kind to all other national churches of the same creed; and Henry, on the other hand, knew that so long as that faith was in the ascendant in Scotland, there would be no assured quiet in his own kingdom. It was the one proximate and exposed quarter through which the Pope and his abettors on the Continent could perpetually assail him. From this moment, therefore, Henry spared no money, no negotiation, no pains to break down the Roman Catholic ascendency in Scotland.

In the spring of 1541 Cardinal Beaton, and Panter, the Royal secretary, were despatched to Rome with secret instructions. This alarmed Henry, and yet afforded him a hope of making an impression on his nephew whilst the cardinal was away. Once more, therefore, he invited James to meet him at York. Lord William Howard, who was his envoy on the occasion, induced James to promise to meet Henry there, and we have seen him on his way accompanied by his bride, Catherine Howard, to the place of rendezvous. But James came not; and Henry, enraged, vowed that he would compel James by force to do that which he would not concede to persuasion.

The Romanist party in Scotland were better pleased with a hostile than a pacific position, for they greatly dreaded that Henry might at length warp the king's mind towards his own views. The leaders on both sides were, in fact, never at peace. On the one side, the exiled Douglases were always on the watch to recover their estates by their swords, and the fugitives in Scotland, on account of the Pilgrimage of Grace, were equally ready to fight their way back to their homes and fortunes. In the August of 1542, accordingly, there were sharp forays, first from one side of the Border, and then from the other. Sir James Bowes, the warden of the east marches, accompanied by Sir George Douglas, the Earl of Angus, and other Scottish exiles, and 3,000 horsemen, rushed into Teviotdale, when they were met at Haddenrig by the Earl of Huntly and Lord Home, who defeated them, and took 600 prisoners.

Henry, having issued a proclamation declaring the Scots the aggressors, ordered a levy of 40,000 men, and appointed the Duke of Norfolk the commander of this army. He was attended by the Earls of Shrewsbury, Derby, Cumberland, Surrey, Hertford, Rutland, with many others of the nobility. This imposing force was joined by the Earl of Angus and the rest of the banished Douglases who had escaped the slaughter at Haddenrig. After some delay at York the royal army, issuing a fresh proclamation, in which Henry claimed the crown of Scotland, advanced to Berwick, where it crossed into Scotland, and, advancing along the northern bank of the Tweed as far as Kelso, burned two towns and twenty villages. Norfolk did not venture to advance farther into the country, as he heard that James had assembled a powerful force, whilst Huntly, Home, and Seton were hovering on his flanks. He therefore contented himself with ravaging the neighbourhood, and then crossed again at Kelso into England.

James, indignant at the invasion and the injuries inflicted on his subjects, marched from the Burghmuir at Edinburgh, where he was encamped at the head of 30,000 men, in pursuit of the English. But he soon found that different causes paralysed his intended chastisement. Many of the nobles were in favour of the Reformation, and held this martial movement as a direct attempt to maintain the Papal power and the influence of Beaton and his party. Others were in secret league with the banished Douglases, who were on the English side; and there were not wanting those who sincerely advised a merely defensive warfare, and pointed out the evils which had always followed the pursuit of the English into their own country. They urged the fact that Norfolk and his army, destitute of provisions and suffering from the inclemency of the weather, were already in full retreat homewards. But James would not listen to these arguments; he burned to take vengeance on the English, and after halting on Fala Muir, and reviewing his troops, he gave the order to march in pursuit of Norfolk; but, to his consternation, he found that nearly every nobleman refused to cross the Border. They pleaded the lateness of the season, the want of provisions for the army, and the rashness of following the English into the midst of their own country, where another Flodden Field might await them.

James was highly exasperated at this defection, and denounced the leaders as traitors and cowards, pointing out to them their unpatriotic conduct, when they saw all around them the towns and villages burnt, the farms ravaged, and the people expelled or exterminated along the line of Norfolk's march. It was in vain that he exhorted or reproved them; they stole away from his standard, and the indignant king found himself abandoned by the chief body of his army. For himself, however, he disdained to give up the enterprise. He despatched Lord Maxwell with a force of 10,000 men to burst into the western marches, ordering him to remain in England laying waste the country as long as Norfolk had remained in Scotland. James himself awaited the event at Caerlaverock Castle; but, discontented with the movements of Lord Maxwell, whom he suspected of being infected by the spirit of the other insubordinate nobles, he sent his favourite, Oliver Sinclair, to supersede Lord Maxwell in the command.

This was an imprudent step, calculated to excite fresh discontent, as it very effectually did. The proud nobles who surrounded Maxwell threw down their arms, swearing that they would not serve under any such royal minion; the troops broke out into open mutiny; and in the midst of this confusion, a body of 500 English horse riding up under the Lords Dacre and Musgrave, the Scots believed it to be the vanguard of Norfolk's army, and fled in precipitate confusion. The English, charging furiously at this unexpected advantage, surrounded great numbers of the fugitives, and took 1,000 of them prisoners. All these were sent to London, and given into the custody of different English noblemen. Many of the prisoners were believed to surrender willingly, as disaffected men who were ready to sell their country to England; and others are said to have been seized by border freebooters, and sold to the enemy. This was the battle of Solway Moss.

The king was so overwhelmed with grief and resentment at this disgraceful defeat, through the disloyalty of his nobility, that he returned to Edinburgh in deep dejection. From Edinburgh he proceeded to the palace of Falkland, where he shut himself up, brooding on his misfortunes; and such hold did this take upon him, that he began to sink rapidly in health. He was in the prime of his life, being only in his thirty-first year; of a constitution hitherto vigorous, having scarcely known any sickness; but his agonised mind producing fever of body, he seemed hastening rapidly to the grave. At this crisis his wife was confined. She had already borne him two sons, who had died in their infancy, and an heir might now have given a check to his melancholy; but it proved a daughter--the afterwards celebrated and unfortunate Queen of Scots. On hearing that it was a daughter, he turned himself in his bed, saying, "The crown came with a woman, and it will go with one. Many miseries await this poor kingdom. Henry will make it his own, either by force of arms or by marriage." On the seventh day after the birth of Mary, he expired, December 14th, 1542.

No sooner did Cardinal Beaton and his party learn that the king had expired than, guessing all that Henry and his party in Scotland would attempt, they took measures to secure the young queen and the sovereign power. Beaton produced a will as that of James, appointing him regent and guardian of the young queen, assisted by a council of the Earls of Argyll, Huntly, and Murray. The Earl of Arran, James Hamilton, on the other hand, declared this will to be a forgery, and being himself the next heir to the throne, after the infant queen, he assumed the right to make himself her guardian, and to order the kingdom for her. By means of the Protestant nobles, as well as the vassals of his own house, and the prevailing opinion that Beaton had forged the will, Arran succeeded in establishing himself as regent on the 22nd of December, 1542, and the Protestant influence was in the ascendant. It was now conceded that Angus and the Douglases should be recalled from their exile, and they quitted England in the following January, the Earl of Arran giving them a safe-conduct.

It was a deadly warfare between the Protestant and Papal parties. A list of 360 of the nobles and gentry was produced by Arran, which was said to have been found on the person of the king, all of whom were proscribed as heretics, and doomed to confiscation of their estates and other punishments. This list, which the Romanists in their turn denounced as forged, was vehemently charged on Beaton, who was said to have drawn it up when the heads of the army refused to march into England. The Earl of Arran himself stood at the head of the list. The cardinal, who saw the imminent danger of his cause and party, despatched trusty agents to France to solicit instant aid in money and troops, to defend the interests and guard the persons of the queen-dowager, Mary of Guise, and the royal infant. To hasten the movements of the house of Guise, he represented the certain dependence of Scotland on England if the king of England succeeded in accomplishing the marriage of the infant queen with his son.

To silence the cardinal, he was seized and incarcerated in the castle of Blackness, under the care of Lord Seton; and a negotiation was actively carried on through Sir Ralph Sadler for the marriage of the infant queen and the Prince of Wales. It was agreed that Mary should remain in Scotland till she was ten years of age; that she should then be sent to England to be educated; that six Scottish noblemen should be at once delivered to Henry as hostages for the fulfilment of the contract; and when the union of the two kingdoms should take place, Scotland should retain all its own laws and privileges.

But though Beaton was in prison, his spirit was abroad. The clergy had the highest faith in the talents and influence of the cardinal. They considered his liberation as necessary to avert the ruin of their party, and they put in motion all their machinery for rousing the people. They shut up the churches, and refused to administer the sacraments or bury the dead; and the priests and monks were thus set at liberty from all other duties to harangue and influence the passions of the people. Everywhere it was declared that Arran, the regent, had formed a league with Angus and the Douglases, who had been so long in England, to sell the country and the queen to England under the pretence of a marriage; that this was what the English monarchs had long been seeking; and that not only the Douglases, but Arran himself, were pensioned by Henry for the purpose. That this was but too true, the State Papers amply prove. Henry and his successors spared no money for this end; and the traitorous bargaining of a great number of the Scottish nobles with the English monarchs stands too well evidenced under their own hands.

At this juncture Cardinal Beaton managed to escape from his prison, from which he had never ceased to correspond with and inspirit his party. How he came to escape has been considered a mystery; but perhaps that mystery is not very deep when we reflect that Lord Seton, in whose custody he was, was a man, though related to the Hamiltons, yet of a most loyal temper, and a decided Romanist. Seton negotiated with Beaton to give up his castle of St. Andrews; and, as if this could not be accomplished without the cardinal's presence on the spot, Seton allowed him to accompany him, but with so small a force, that the moment the cardinal stood in his own castle he declared himself at liberty, and Seton had no power to say nay had he wished it. As no punishment or even censure befell Lord Seton on this account, it is most probable that Arran himself was cognisant of the scheme. What makes this more likely is that Hamilton, the abbot of Paisley, the natural brother of Arran, the Regent, had returned just before from France; and that he was at the bottom of the plot may not unreasonably be supposed, from the fact that he very soon exercised a powerful influence over the weaker mind of the Regent. Through the means of the abbot, Beaton even attempted to accommodate matters with Henry. He declared that he was sincerely desirous of the union of the young queen and the Prince of Wales, so that there should be peace between the countries, yet a peace preserving the independence of each. But this independence of Scotland was the very thing which Henry was determined to annihilate, and he pressed his desires for it with such violence that all hopes of an amicable arrangement vanished.

Arran, alienated from the English Government by the imperious demands of Henry, and alarmed at the progress of the Papist faction, took care to proclaim his resolute resolve to oppose the aims of Henry, even to the extremity of war, and he dismissed his Protestant chaplains, friar Williams and John Rough; and such was the spirit of the people that Glencairn and Cassillis, the most devoted partisans of England, declared that they would sooner die than agree to the surrender of the French alliance. Such, in fact, was the popular exasperation that Sadler dared not appear in the streets; and the peers in the interest of Henry were equally the objects of the public resentment.

To induce Henry to pause in his fatal career, Sir George Douglas hastened to London, and prevailed on him to abate the extravagance of his demands. The immediate delivery of the infant queen, the surrender of the fortresses and of the Government into the hands of Henry, were waived, and Douglas returned to Scotland, bearing proposals of marriage of a more reasonable kind. Henry, however, did not abandon his schemes in secret. In the Public Record office there is a memorandum in the hand of Wriothesley, saying that "the articles be so reasonable, that if the ambassadors of Scotland will not agree to them, then it shall be mete the king's majesty follow out his purpose by force." Sir George Douglas renewed the offer formerly made by Henry to Arran, of marrying the Princess Elizabeth and his eldest son, and Sir George and Glencairn were sent to London to assist the ambassadors in bringing the negotiation to a close.

But Arran was assailed as vehemently on the other side by the cardinal, and the queen-dowager, who was the real head of the party. They sent Lennox to endeavour to win him over to their side, so that all Scotland might unite against Henry. Lennox delivered a very flattering message from Francis I. to the Regent, offering him both men and money to resist any attempt of invasion by the English; but this failing, the queen-dowager and Beaton prosecuted the negotiation with France, and it was agreed that 2,000 men, under Montgomerie, Sieur de Lorges, should be sent to Scotland. The queen and cardinal called on their partisans to assemble their followers and garrison their castles, whilst Grimani, the Pope's legate, was entreated to hasten to Scotland with a formidable store of anathemas and excommunications. The clergy assembled in convention at St. Andrews, and so ardent were they in the cause which they believed to be that of the very existence of the Church, that they pledged themselves to raise the sum required for the war against England, and, if necessary, not only to melt down the church plate, and to sacrifice their private fortunes, but to fight in person.

Whilst public opinion was in this state of fermentation, Henry VIII., irritated at the conduct of the cardinal and a large body of the nobles, committed one of those rash and foolish acts, into which the wild fury of his temper often precipitated him. After the proclamation of peace, a fleet of Scottish merchant vessels, driven by a storm, took refuge in an English port, where, under the recent treaty, they deemed themselves safe. But Henry had just proclaimed war on France and, making that a pretence, he accused them of carrying provisions to his enemies, and detained them. At this outrage the people of Edinburgh surrounded the house of Sadler the English ambassador, and threatened to burn him in it if the ships were not restored. Arran, the governor, came in for his share of the odium as the staunch ally of Henry; and the common friends of Arran and Henry, the traitorous faction of Angus, Cassillis, Glencairn, and the other barons under secret bond to England, proposed to call out their forces for immediate war. These base sons of a brave country asserted that the time was come for Henry to send a great army into Scotland, with which they would co-operate, "for the conquest of the realm."

Everything boded the immediate outbreak of a bloody war, when a surprising revolution took place. On the 3rd of September, Arran declared to Sir Ralph Sadler that he was devotedly attached to the interests of Henry, and within a week afterwards he met the cardinal at Callender House, the seat of Lord Livingston, and entered into a complete reconciliation with him. A short time before Beaton had refused to hold any intercourse with him for fear of his life, and now he was seen riding amicably with him towards Stirling. This singular exhibition was followed by Arran's renunciation of Protestantism; his return, with full absolution, into communion with the Roman Church; his surrender of the treaties with England, and the delivery of his son as a pledge of his sincerity. So marvellous a conversion must have had powerful causes, and they are only to be explained by the weakness of Arran's character, and the artful and alarming representations of his more able brother, the abbot of Paisley. This zealous partisan of both France and the cardinal is said to have persuaded him that by renouncing the Papal supremacy, and allying himself with the arch-enemy of Rome, Henry of England, he was running imminent danger of the total loss of his titles, estates, and claim to the Regency, which could only be maintained by the Pope declaring valid the divorce of his father from his former wife. All Scotland was now united in its enmity to England.

The year 1544 found Henry bent on war both with Scotland and France. Francis had deeply offended him by disapproving of his divorce and murder of Anne Boleyn, and by his refusal to follow his advice in repudiating his allegiance to the Pope. Francis had declared that he was Henry's friend, but only as far as the altar. Charles V., aggravated as had been the conduct of Henry towards him, by his divorce of his aunt Catherine, and the stigma of illegitimacy which he had cast on her daughter the Princess Mary, was yet by no means displeased to observe the growing differences between Henry and his rival Francis. He, therefore, like a genuine politician, dropped his resentment on account of Catherine, and professed to believe that it was time to bury these remembrances in oblivion. The only obstacle to peace between them was the declared illegitimacy and exclusion from the succession of Mary. Henry lost no time in getting over this point. He had no need to confess himself wrong; he had a staunch Parliament who would do anything he required. Parliament, therefore, passed an Act restoring both Mary and Elizabeth to their political rights. Nothing was said of their illegitimacy, but they were restored to their place in the succession. Thus the Parliament had gone backward and forward at Henry's bidding to such an extent that now it was treason to assert the legitimacy of the princesses, and it was treason to deny it; for if they were illegitimate they could not claim the throne. It was treason to be silent, according to the former Act on this head, and it was now treason to refuse to take an oath on it when required. To such infamy did honourable members of Parliament stoop under this extraordinary despot.

This sorry compromise having been accepted by the necessities rather than the will of the Emperor, Henry and he now made a treaty on these terms: 1st, That they should jointly require the French king to renounce his alliance with the Turks, and to make reparation to the Christians for all the losses which they had sustained in consequence of that alliance; 2nd, That Francis should be compelled to pay up to the King of England the arrears of his pension, and give security for a more punctual payment in future; 3rd, That if Francis did not comply with these terms within forty days, the Emperor should seize the duchy of Burgundy, Henry all the territories of France which had belonged to his ancestors, and that both monarchs should be ready to enforce their claims at the head of a competent army.

As Francis refused to listen to these terms, and would not even permit the messengers of the newly allied sovereigns to cross his frontiers, the Emperor, who was now desirous of recovering the towns which he had lost in Flanders, obtained from Henry a reinforcement of 6,000 men under Sir John Wallop, who laid siege to Landrecies; whilst Charles himself, with a still greater force, overran the duchy of Cleves, and compelled the duke, the devoted partisan of France, to acknowledge the Imperial allegiance. Charles then marched to the siege of Landrecies, and Francis approached at the head of a large army. A great battle now appeared inevitable; but Francis, manoeuvring as for a fight, contrived to throw provisions into the town and withdrew. Imperialists and English pursued the retiring army; and the English, by too much impetuosity, suffered considerable loss. Henry promised himself more decided advantage in the next campaign, which he intended to conduct in person. This he had not been able to make illustrious by his presence; for he had been busily engaged with his approaching marriage to a sixth wife.

The lady who had this time been elevated to this perilous eminence was the Lady Catherine Latimer, the widow of Lord Latimer, already mentioned for his concern in the Pilgrimage of Grace. She was born Catherine Parr, a daughter of Sir Thomas Parr. She was fourth cousin to Henry himself, and had been twice married previous to his wedding her. She was the widow of Lord Borough, of Gainsborough, at fifteen, and was about thirty when Henry married her, only a few months after the death of her second husband, Lord Latimer.

Catherine Parr, as she still continues to be called, was educated under the care of her mother at Kendal Castle, and received a very learned education for a woman of those times. She read and wrote Latin fluently, had some knowledge of Greek, and was mistress of several modern languages. She is said to have been handsome, but of very small and delicate features. At all times she appears to have been of remarkable thoughtfulness and prudence, extremely amiable, and became thoroughly devoted to Protestantism; and she may, indeed, justly be styled the first Protestant Queen of England, for Anne of Cleves, though educated in the Protestant faith, became a decided Papist in this country. It was not till after the death of Lord Latimer that her Protestant tendencies, however, were known; yet then, she seems to have made no secret of them, for her house became the resort of Coverdale, Latimer, Parkhurst, and other eminent Reformers, and sermons were frequently preached in her chamber of state, which it is surprising did not attract the attention of the king. The marriage took place on the 12th of July, 1543, in the queen's closet at Hampton Court.

The spring of 1544 opened with active preparations for Henry's campaign in France. During the winter, Gonzaga, the viceroy of Sicily, was despatched to London by Charles, to arrange the plan of operations. An admirable one was devised, had Henry been the man to assist in carrying it out. The emperor was to enter France by Champagne, and Henry by Picardy, and, instead of staying to besiege the towns on the route, they were to dash on to Paris where, their forces uniting, they might consider themselves masters of the French capital, or in a position to dictate terms to Francis. In May the Imperialists were in the field, and Henry landed at Calais in June, and by the middle of July he was within the bounds of France, at the head of 20,000 English and 15,000 Imperialists.

But neither of the invaders kept to the original plan. Charles stopped by the way to reduce Luxembourg, Ligne, and St. Didier. Had Henry, however, pushed on with his imposing army to Paris, Francis would have been at the mercy of the allies. But Henry, ambitious to rival the military successes of Charles, and take towns too, instead of making the capital his object, turned aside to besiege Boulogne and Montreuil. The Imperial ambassador, sensible of the fatality of this proceeding, urged Henry with all his eloquence during eleven days to push on: and Charles, to take from him any further excuse for delay, hastened forward along the right bank of the Marne, avoiding all the fortified towns. But when once Henry had undertaken an object, opposition only increased his resolution, and he lost all consciousness of everything but the one idea of asserting his mastery. In vain, therefore, did Charles send messengers imploring him to advance; for more than two months he continued besieging Boulogne, and the golden opportunity was lost.

Francis seized on the delay to make terms with Charles. He sent to him a Spanish monk of the name of Guzman, and a near relative of Charles's confessor, proposing terms of accommodation. Charles readily listened to them, and sent to Henry to learn his demands. These demands were something enormous, and whilst Francis demurred, Charles continued his march, and arrived at Château-Thierry, almost in the vicinity of Paris. The circumstances of both Francis and Charles now mutually inclined them to open separate negotiations. Francis saw a foreign army menacing his capital, but Charles, on the other hand, saw the French army constantly increasing between him and his strange ally, whom nothing could induce to move from the walls of Boulogne. Under these circumstances Charles consented to offer Francis the terms which he had demanded before the war, and which he had refused; but now came the news that the English had taken Boulogne, and the French king at once accepted them. The Treaty of Crépy, as this was called, bound the two sovereigns to unite for the defence of Christendom against the Turks, and to unite their families by the marriage of the second son of Francis with a daughter of Charles. Henry, on his part, having placed a strong garrison in Boulogne, raised the siege of Montreuil, and returned to England, like a great conqueror, as he always did, from his distant campaigns.

By the end of April a scheme to assassinate Cardinal Beaton, of which Henry was cognisant, having failed, he was prepared to pour on Scotland the vial of his murderous wrath. A fleet of a hundred sail, under the command of Lord Lisle, the High Admiral of England, appeared suddenly in the Forth. The Scots seem to have by no means been dreaming of such a visitant, and it threw the capital into the greatest consternation. In four days, such was the absence of preparation, such the public paralysis, that Hertford was permitted to land his troops and his artillery without the sight of a single soldier. He had advanced from Granton to Leith when Arran and the cardinal threw themselves in his way with a miserable handful of followers, who were instantly dispersed and Leith was given up to plunder.

The citizens of Edinburgh, finding themselves deserted by the governor, flew to arms, under the command of Otterburn of Redhall, the provost of the city. Otterburn proceeded to the English camp and, obtaining an interview with Lord Hertford, complained of this unlooked-for invasion, and offered to accommodate all differences. But Hertford returned a haughty answer that he was not come to negotiate, for which he had no power, but to lay waste town and country with fire and sword unless the young queen were delivered to him. The people of Edinburgh, on hearing this insolent message, vowed to perish to a man rather than condescend to such baseness. They set about to defend their walls and sustain the attack of the enemy; but they found that Otterburn, who had tampered secretly with the English before this, had stolen unobserved away. They appointed a new provost, and manned their walls so stoutly that they compelled Hertford to fetch up his battering ordnance from Leith. Seeing very soon that it was impossible to defend their gates from this heavy ordnance, they silently collected as much of their property as they could carry, and abandoned the town. Hertford took possession of it; and then sought to reduce the castle. But finding this useless, he set fire to the city; and, reinforced by 4,000 horse, under Lord Eure, he employed himself in devastating the surrounding country with a savage ferocity, which no doubt had been commanded by the bitter malice of the English king.

On the 15th of May, Arran, having assembled a considerable force, and liberated Angus and his brother, Sir George Douglas, in the hope of winning them over by such clemency, marched rapidly towards Edinburgh. The English, however, did not wait for his arrival. Lord Lisle embarked a portion of the troops at Leith again, and Lord Hertford led away the remainder by land. Both by land and water the English commanders continued their buccaneering outrages, doing all the mischief and inflicting all the misery they could. Lord Lisle seized the two largest Scottish vessels in the harbour of Leith, and burnt the rest; he then sailed along the coast, plundering and destroying all the villages and country within reach. Lord Hertford, on his part, laid Port Seaton, Haddington, Renton, and Dunbar in ashes, and returned into England, leaving behind him a trail of desolation. Such was the insane and ridiculous manner in which Henry VIII. wooed the little Queen of Scotland for his son. A border war ensued, and Scotland was mercilessly ravaged.

Francis I. could not rest satisfied so long as Boulogne was in the hands of the English, and he resolved in 1545, to make a grand effort to recover not only that town but Calais, which had been for centuries in the possession of England. Large galleys were built at Rouen, and as many vessels were collected as possible from Marseilles and other ports in the Mediterranean for this enterprise. He hired soldiers from the Venetian and other Italian States, and he determined to send a body of troops to Scotland to assist in making a diversion in that country. But he was not contented with endeavouring to regain his own towns; his coasts had often been harassed by the English vessels, and he now ventured to carry the war to Henry's own shores. Henry, aware of his intentions, raised fortifications on the banks of the Thames, and along the shores of Kent, Sussex, and Hampshire. The French fleet, consisting of 130 ships, set sail on the 16th of July, and fell down the Channel. Francis flattered himself that he could seize the Isle of Wight, and perhaps maintain garrisons there, if he should not be able to get possession of Portsmouth. Henry had himself proceeded to Portsmouth, where he had sixty ships lying, under the command of Lord Lisle. The French fleet sailed into the Solent, and anchored at St. Helen's. The sea being very calm, the French admiral put out his flat-bottomed boats and galleys that drew little water, and sailed into the very mouth of Portsmouth Harbour, daring the English admiral to come out. But Henry commanded Lord Lisle to lie still. The French admiral, firing into the port, sank the Mary Rose with her commander, Sir George Carew, and 700 men. On the turn of the tide Lord Lisle bore down on the enemy, and sank a galley with its men, and the French vessels then bore away to the main fleet.

As the French could not provoke the English to come out of harbour, though they burned the villages and farmhouses along the coast, they held a council of war, and resolved to attempt the conquest of the Isle of Wight. The invasion of the island was essayed in three places, but the inhabitants repulsed with great spirit the soldiers as they landed; and, after committing some ravages, the French thought it best to retire. They then sailed along the coast of Sussex, making occasional descents, and finally anchored before Boulogne, to prevent the entrance of supplies for the army there. Another object was to hinder reinforcements of ships from the Thames reaching Portsmouth, but in both these endeavours the superior vigilance of the English prevailed; provisions were conveyed into Boulogne, and a reinforcement of thirty ships arrived at Portsmouth. At length Lord Lisle received orders from Henry to put to sea and attack the enemy; he expressed himself highly delighted, but nothing came of it, for the two fleets manoeuvred for some time in the face of each other, exchanged a few shots, and then retired to their respective ports. And thus ended the boastful enterprise of Francis. Henry, as we have seen, had only succeeded in capturing Boulogne, and was accordingly glad to make peace with Francis in 1546, on terms fairly advantageous to England.

As Scotland was included in the peace with France, the French party appeared to be entirely triumphant. But Beaton's end was near, and it was hastened on by his religious persecutions. Notwithstanding the endeavours of Cardinal Beaton, and the apostacy of Arran, the Reformation had now made great progress in Scotland, and it was while the struggle was going on between the party of Angus and the party of the cardinal, backed by the money and the arms of England, that there came upon the scene the remarkable preacher, George Wishart. Wishart is supposed to have been the son of James Wishart of Pitarro, justice-clerk to James V., and he was patronised by John Erskine, Provost of Montrose. In Montrose he became master of a school, and was expelled for teaching Greek to his boys, avowedly as the original tongue of the New Testament. He fled to England, and in Bristol was condemned as a heretic for preaching against the offering of prayers to the Virgin. He then recanted to avoid death, but remained some years in England, returning to all and more than the opinions he had renounced in sight of the fagot. He boldly preached the insufficiency of outward ceremonies when the heart itself was not touched. He admitted only the sacraments recorded in the Scriptures; derided auricular confession; condemned the invocation of saints and the doctrine of purgatory, though he approved of fasting, and maintained that the Lord's Supper was a Divine and comfortable institution. The doctrines, conduct, and corruptions of his opponents he denounced with unsparing severity.

These traits had made him a welcome agent of opposition to the cardinal with the lords of the English party; and Beaton, at once hostile to his religious views and to him personally, as the ally of those who were seeking his life by the most abominable means, soon turned his resentment upon him. Twice he is said to have escaped from the emissaries of the cardinal lying in wait to seize him. How far he was aware of the plots and mercenary villainy of those about him is uncertain; but living in the very midst of the traitor lords, and often under the very roof of the busy agent of Beaton's proposed murder, Brunston, he was so far cognisant of the preparations for the invasion of Scotland and the destruction of the cardinal's party, that he frequently announced in his sermons the approach of the horrors which at length arrived, and thus acquired the reputation of a prophet. Under the protection of the Angus party, he preached in the towns of Montrose, Dundee, Perth, and Ayr, and produced such a spirit of hostility to the old religion, that at Dundee the houses of the Black and Grey Friars were destroyed, and similar attempts were made in Edinburgh.

While the friends of Wishart were seeking the life of Beaton, Beaton, aware of this, was seeking the life of Wishart, and Wishart in his addresses to the people repeatedly declared that he should perish a martyr to the cause of truth. At length Cassillis and the gentlemen of Kyle and Cunningham sent for him to meet them at Edinburgh, where they proposed that he should have an opportunity for public disputation with the bishop. Wishart proceeded to the capital where, Cassillis and the confederates not having arrived, he soon began to preach to the people, under the protection of the barons of Lothian. At Leith, Sir George Douglas bore public testimony to the truth of his doctrine, and declared his resolution to protect the preacher. There, too, he converted John Knox, who was destined to establish the Reformation in Scotland.

In the midst of these proceedings arrived the cardinal and the governor in Edinburgh, and Beaton lost no time in endeavouring to secure the person of the popular apostle. Brunston removed Wishart to West Lothian to be out of the way till the arrival of Cassillis, who was the chief conspirator against the cardinal; but Wishart was not a man to lie concealed. He preached in the very face of danger, though a two-handed sword was constantly borne before him on these occasions; and at length, after a remarkable sermon at Haddington, where he prognosticated deep miseries about to fall upon the country, he took leave affectionately of his audience, and set out for the house of Ormiston, accompanied by Brunston, Sandilands of Calder, and Ormiston. That night the house of Ormiston was surrounded by a party of horse under the command of the Earl of Bothwell. Wishart, Sandilands, and Cockburn were seized. Cockburn and Sandilands were conducted to the castle of Edinburgh, Wishart to Hailes, the house of Bothwell, who for some time refused to give him up to the cardinal, but at length did so under promise of a great reward. Brunston had managed to escape.

Beaton was anxious to have Wishart tried and condemned on a civil charge; but to this Arran would not consent, and the cardinal was therefore obliged to forego his vengeance, or arraign him as a heretic. He was sentenced to be burnt, and this sentence was carried out at St. Andrews, on the 28th of March, 1546. In this execution the cardinal's malice far outran his usually sound policy. Nothing could be more mischievous to his own cause than the murder of Wishart. Till then, the people, whatever their religious opinions, regarded the political views of Beaton as patriotic, and they supported him as the great bulwark against the power and designs of England. But now they regarded him as a horrible persecutor, and they shrank from him and his power fell. The meekness and patience with which Wishart, whom they now honoured with the name of martyr, bore his horrible fate, made a lasting impression on the public mind.

While the people thus unequivocally condemned this barbarous deed, and only the more eagerly inquired into the principles of the sufferer, the immediate confederates against the cardinal found in this event a grand warrant for carrying out their own murderous intentions. Cassillis, Glencairn, and the rest of the nobles had delayed the desperate deed, because they could not extract from Henry a distinct statement of the pay they were to receive for it. But now Norman Leslie, the Earl of Rothes, and John Leslie, his uncle, began to vow publicly that they would have the blood of Beaton as an atonement for that of the martyred Wishart. They opened anew an active correspondence with England, and associated themselves with a number of others who were exasperated at the cardinal's deed.

On the other hand, the partisans of Beaton lauded him to the skies as the saviour of the Church in Scotland, and strong in the alliance of France and the late ill-success of the English party, the cardinal appeared to enjoy a season of triumph; but it was a triumph quickly quenched in blood. Elated with his temporary success, the cardinal made a progress into Angus, and celebrated the marriage of one of his natural daughters, Margaret Béthune, to David Lindsay, Master of Crawford, at Finhaven Castle, bestowing upon her a dowry worthy of a princess. The cardinal was disturbed in his festivities by the news that Henry VIII. was pushing on his preparations for a new invasion, and he hastened to St. Andrews to put his castle into a perfect state of defence. On his arrival he summoned the barons of the neighbouring coast to consult on the best means of fortifying it against any attack of the enemy. But while thus busily engaged in warding off the assault of a foreign enemy, a domestic foe was eagerly at work close at hand for his destruction. The Laird of Brunston was stimulating Henry to give the necessary assurance to those who were ready at a word to plunge the sword into the body of the cardinal. A quarrel arising between Beaton and the Leslies brought the matter to a crisis. Norman Leslie, the Master of Rothes, had given up to Beaton the estate of Easter Wemyss and, at a meeting in St. Andrews, had found the cardinal indisposed to make the promised equivalent for it. High words arose, and Leslie hastened to his uncle John; and both of them deeming that there was no longer any safety after the words Norman Leslie in his rage had let fall, they immediately summoned their confederates, and resolved to put the cardinal to death without delay.

On the evening of the 28th of May, Norman Leslie, attended by five followers, entered the city of St. Andrews, and rode, without exciting any suspicion, in his usual manner to his inn. Kirkaldy of Grange was awaiting him there, and after nightfall, John Leslie, whose enmity to Beaton was most notorious, stole quietly in and joined them. At daybreak the next morning, Norman Leslie and three of his attendants entered the gates of the castle court, the porter having lowered the drawbridge to admit the workmen who were employed on the cardinal's fresh fortifications. Norman inquired if the cardinal were yet up, as if he had business with him; and while he held the porter in conversation, Kirkaldy of Grange, James Melville, and their followers entered unobserved; but presently the porter, catching sight of John Leslie crossing the bridge, instantly suspected treason, and attempted to raise the drawbridge; but Leslie was too nimble for him; he leaped across the gap, and the conspirators, closing round the porter, despatched him with their daggers, seized the keys, and threw the body into the fosse, without any noise or alarm. They then proceeded to dismiss the workmen as quietly from the castle, and Kirkaldy, who was well acquainted with the castle, stationed himself at the only postern through which an escape could be made. The conspirators then went to the apartments of the different gentlemen composing the household of the cardinal, awoke them, and, under menace of instant death if they made any noise, conducted them silently out of the castle and dismissed them. Thus were 150 workmen and fifty household servants removed without any commotion by this little band of sixteen determined men, and, the portcullis being dropped, they remained masters of the castle.

The cardinal, who had slept through the greater part of this time, at length awoke at the unusual bustle, threw open his chamber window and demanded the cause of it. The reply was that Norman Leslie had taken the castle, on which the cardinal rushed to the postern to escape; but finding it in possession of Kirkaldy, he returned as rapidly to his chamber and, assisted by a page, pushed the heaviest furniture against the door to defend the entrance till an alarm could be given. But the conspirators did not allow him time for that. They called for fire to burn down the door, and Beaton, finding resistance useless, threw open the door, when John Leslie and Carmichael rushed upon him, as he cried for mercy, and stabbed him in several places. Melville, however, with a mockery of justice, bade them desist, saying that though the deed was done in secret, it was an act of national justice not that of mercenary assassins, and must be executed with all due decorum. Then, turning the point of the sword towards the wretched cardinal, he said, with formal gravity, "Repent thee, thou wicked cardinal, of all thy sins and iniquities, especially of the murder of Wishart, that instrument of God for the conversion of these lands. It is his death which now cries for vengeance on thee. We are sent by God to inflict the deserved punishment. For here, before the Almighty, I protest that it is neither hatred of thy person, nor love of thy riches, nor fear of thy power, which moves me to seek thy death; but only because thou hast been, and still remainest, an obstinate enemy to Christ Jesus and His holy Gospel." With that he plunged his sword repeatedly into the prelate's body, and laid him dead at his feet.

The death of Cardinal Beaton was at the same time the death-blow to the Church in Scotland. Though he was a man of corrupt moral life and of a persecuting disposition, he was one of the most able men of his time, and resisted the designs of Henry for the subjugation of his native country, with a vigour and perseverance which made Henry feel that whilst he lived Scotland was independent. The death of Beaton, so ardently desired, and so highly paid for by Henry, did not, however, bring him nearer to the reduction of the country, or the accomplishment of his son's marriage with the queen. On the contrary, so intense was the hatred of him and of England, which his tyrannic and detestable conduct had created in every rank and class of the Scottish people, that these objects were now farther off than ever. Henry's own embarrassments were, in consequence of his Scottish and French wars, become so intolerable, that he was compelled, as we have already seen (p. 198), to make peace with France in the month of June, by a treaty called the Treaty of Boulogne, and to agree to deliver up Boulogne, on condition that Francis paid up the arrears of his pension, and to submit a claim of 500,000 crowns upon him to arbitration. Francis took care to have Scotland included in the peace, and Henry bound himself not to interfere with it except on receiving some fresh provocation.

Henry was now drawing to a close of that life which might have been so splendid, and which he had made so horrible. To the last moment he was employed in base endeavours to elude the peace which he had submitted to with Scotland; in the struggles between the two great religious factions, and in still further shocking executions for treason and heresy. Henry himself was become in mind and person a most loathsome object. A life of vile pleasures, and furious and unrestrained passions, succeeded, as other appetites decayed, by a brutal habit of gormandising, had swollen him to an enormous size, and made his body one huge mass of corruption. The ulcer in his leg had become revoltingly offensive; his weight and helplessness were such that he could not pass through any ordinary door, nor be removed from one part of the house to another, except by the aid of machinery and by the help of numerous attendants. The constant irritation of his festering legs made his terrible temper still more terrible.

Of those about him, his queen, Catherine Parr, had the most miraculous escape. With wonderful patience, she had borne his whims, his rages, and his offensive person. She had shown an affectionate regard for his children, and had assisted with great wisdom in the progress of their education, living all the time as with a sword suspended over her head by a hair. She was devotedly attached to the Reformed principles, and loved to converse with sincere Protestants. She had made Miles Coverdale her almoner, and rendered him every assistance in his translation of the Bible. She employed the learned Nicholas Udal, Master of Eton, to edit the translations of Erasmus's "Paraphrases on the Four Gospels," which, according to Strype, she published at her own cost. Stimulated by her example, many ladies of rank pursued the study of the learned languages and of Scriptural knowledge.

Of this school, and one of Catherine's own pupils, was Lady Jane Grey; and another lovely and noble victim, Anne Askew, whose turn it was to fall under the destroying hand of Henry VIII. at this moment, was highly esteemed and encouraged by her. She was tortured and then burnt (July 6, 1546) for denying the Real Presence, and it is said that the Chancellor Wriothesley assisted in the application of the rack in the hope of wringing a confession from her.

An attempt to involve the Queen in similar charges was a complete failure, and Henry never forgave Gardiner for this attempt to deprive him of his true wife and unrivalled nurse. Catherine is said to have treated these her deadly enemies with great magnanimity; but she seems to have become quite aware that Gardiner's was the daring hand that was lifted to ruin her with the king, and it was probably this clear understanding between the king and queen which destroyed Gardiner's influence with Henry for ever. Henry struck Gardiner's name out of the list of his council, and on perceiving him one day on the terrace at Windsor amongst the other courtiers, he turned fiercely on Wriothesley, and said, "Did I not command you that he should come no more amongst you?" "My Lord of Winchester," replied the chancellor, "has come to wait upon your highness with the offer of a benevolence from his clergy." That was a deeply politic stroke of Gardiner's; he knew that if anything could redeem the lost favour of Henry, it was a sacrifice to his avarice next to his vanity. Henry took the money, but turned away from the bishop without a word or a look, and immediately struck his name from amongst his executors, as well as that of Thirlby, Bishop of Westminster, who, he said, was schooled by Gardiner. A deadly feud had grown up between the house of Seymour and the house of Howard. The house of Howard was old, and proud, not only of its ancient lineage, but of its grand deeds. The glory of Flodden lay like a great splendour on their name. Two queens had been selected from this house during the present reign, and the Princess Elizabeth was a partaker of its blood. The Seymours, on the other hand, were of no great lineage; but the two heads of it, Sir Thomas Seymour and Edward, who had been created Earl of Hertford, and whom we have seen executing the king's sanguinary pleasure more than once in Scotland, were the uncles to the heir-apparent, Prince Edward. They had been lifted into greatness entirely through the marriage of their sister with Henry and the birth of the prince; they had no natural connection, therefore, amongst the old nobility, and were regarded by them with jealousy as fortunate upstarts. But there was a circumstance which gave them power besides the alliance with the Crown and the heir to it, and this was the Protestant faith which they held, and which, therefore, bound the Protestant party in England to their cause, and in hope, through their nephew, the future king. The Howards, on the other hand, held by the ancient faith, and were among its most positive assertors. Thus the feud between these rival houses was not only the feud of the old and new aristocracy, but that of the old and new faith; and the rival factions looked up to them as their natural lords and leaders.

The question, therefore, which of these families should become the guardians and ministers of the new king was every day acquiring a more intense interest. The Howards, from their old standing, and their great employments under the Crown, naturally regarded themselves as entitled to that distinction, and in this view they were, of course, supported by the whole Papist party most anxiously. But the Seymours, as the uncles of the prince, were equally bent on securing the preference. They had little connection, as we have stated, amongst the aristocracy, but had the whole Protestant party in their interest. They therefore regarded the Howards with the deepest jealousy and alarm, and they lost no time or opportunity in securing their ruin during the present king's life. There were many things which they could so bring before Henry's mind as to excite his most deadly fear. The Howards were the determined supporters of the Roman faith. What chance, therefore, was there under them of the preservation of the supremacy? What chance was there that they would leave the young king to his own unbiassed choice in matters of religion and of Church government? But still more, the Howards had not escaped his secret dislike through the conduct of Catherine Howard, the queen. A little thing could stimulate this dislike into something fearful. Again, the Duke of Norfolk was rich, and never were the riches of a subject overlooked or unlonged for by Henry Tudor. All these motives were brought successfully into play. Bishop Gardiner was the man most to be feared in the Howard interest, as it regarded the Church, and this had, unquestionably, much to do with his disgrace and banishment from Court.

A few days after that event, namely, on the 12th of December, the Duke of Norfolk and his son the Earl of Surrey, were, unknown to each other, arrested on a charge of high treason, and sent to the Tower, the one by water and the other by land. Surrey had never forgiven the Earl of Hertford for having superseded him in command of the army at Boulogne; he had in his irritation spoken with biting contempt of the parvenu Seymour, and declared that after the king's death he would take his revenge. But Henry was soon persuaded that the designs of Surrey went further. His fears, in his morbid and sinking state, were easily excited, and he was made to believe that there was a conspiracy of the Howards to seize the reins of government during his illness, and make themselves masters of the person of the prince. Surrey, with all the rash and lofty spirit of the poet, denied every charge of disloyalty or treason with the utmost vehemence, and offered to fight his accuser in his shirt.

The Duke of Norfolk wrote to the king from the Tower, expressing his astonishment at the sudden arrest, and saying, "Sir, God doth know that in all my life I never thought one untrue thought against you, or your succession; nor can no more judge nor cast in my mind what should be laid to my charge, than the child that was born this night." The only thing which he thought his enemies might bring against him was for "being quick against such as had been accused for sacramentaries," that is, Protestants. He prayed earnestly to have a fair hearing before the king or his council, face to face with his accusers. His gifted son, one of the finest poets of the age, and whose fame still makes part of England's glory, was brought to trial first, for he was young and full of talent, and, therefore, more dreaded than his father. On the 13th of December he was arraigned for treason in Guildhall, before the Lord Chancellor, the Lord Mayor, and other Commissioners, and a jury of commoners, and beheaded on the 19th of January. The Seymours pursued Norfolk with relentless ferocity. The king was rapidly sinking, there was no time to lose; a bill of attainder was passed through the Peers on the 26th of January, 1547; on the 27th the Royal assent was given in due form, and an order was despatched to the Tower to execute the Duke at an early hour next morning. Before that morning the soul of the tyrant was called to its dread account, and the life of the old nobleman was saved as by a miracle.

Henry VIII. was fifty-five years and seven months old at his death, and had reigned thirty-seven years, nine months, and six days. His will was dated December 30th, 1546. He was authorised by Act of Parliament to settle the succession by his will, and he now named his son Prince Edward, as his lawful successor, then, in default of heirs, the Princess Mary and her heirs; these failing, the Princess Elizabeth, and her heirs. After Elizabeth, was named the Lady Frances, the eldest daughter of his sister, the Queen of France, and her heirs; and such failing, the Lady Eleanor, the youngest daughter of the late Queen of France. On the failure of all these, then the succession was to be to his heirs-at-law; but no particular mention was made in the succession of his sister Margaret, Queen of Scotland, and of her issue.

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