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HENRY VIII. OF ENGLAND 



supplied Henry with still stronger reasons for 

 joining France ; and meanwhile domestic reasons 

 were urging him in the same direction. 



The leading events at home during these sixteen 

 years may be briefly told. In 1521 the Duke of 

 Buckingham, a descendant in the female line from 

 the youngest son of Edward III., and, therefore, a 

 possible claimant for the throne, was executed on 

 a charge of treason. There was little foundation 

 for the charge ; but the death of this great noble- 

 man showed England that Henry, in spite of all 

 his love of pleasure, was no ruler to be trifled with, 

 while it gave continental princes a strong impres- 

 sion of his unlimited power over his subjects. The 

 same year Henry published his famous book on the 

 Sacraments in reply to Luther, and received from 

 Pope Leo X. the title borne by all Henry's suc- 

 cessors Fidei Defensor, 'Defender of the Faith.' 

 To enable him to play that part in continental 

 affairs which he desired, Henry had frequent need 

 of supplies beyond any of his predecessors. To 

 raise these supplies Wolsey showed his devotion 

 to the king by taking upon himself all the odium 

 of frequent and excessive taxation. In 1523 he 

 demanded of the House of Commons a subsidy of 

 800,000, to be raised by a tax of twenty per cent, 

 on all goods and lands. After a vigorous protest 

 by the house Wolsey carried his point ; but the 

 resistance he had met was a serious warning that 

 there were limits beyond which even he could not 

 safely proceed. To the country at large he made 

 himself still further odious by the suppression of 

 all monasteries with less than seven inmates. As 

 he devoted the revenues of these monasteries to 

 educational purposes, this action was in the best 

 interests of the country ; but the monks were still 

 popular, and the people were not yet prepared for 

 this high-handed dealing with a time-honoured 

 institution. In 1525 Henry's expensive foreign 

 policy again brought him into straits for money, 

 and again Wolsey had to face popular feeling by 

 the proposal of an illegal tax. The tax he now 

 proposed is known as the Amicable Loan. On all 

 sides it met with the strongest opposition, and 

 Wolsey was forced to abandon his proposal, but 

 ' people cursed the cardinal and his adherents as 

 subversive of the laws and liberty of England.' 



The turning-point in Henry's reign, as it is a 

 great turning-point in the history of England, is 

 the moment when the thought first occurred to 

 him that at all costs his marriage with Catharine 

 of Aragon must be dissolved. In taking a step 

 which he knew to be fraught with the most far- 

 reaching consequences to the nation Henry was 

 determined by so many motives that it is hopeless 

 to decide which at any one period carried it over 

 the rest. Catharine was plain in personal appear- 

 ance, cold by her natural temper, and six years 

 older than her husband ; all her children, except 

 her daughter Mary, had died in infancy, and 

 Henry professed (and we may believe honestly 

 enough) to see in this the judgment of heaven on 

 an unnatural alliance ; any doubt of the legitimacy 

 of Mary might lead to a renewal of the civil wars 

 of the preceding century ; the interest of England 

 seemed now to point to France rather than Spain 

 as her most advantageous ally, and Catharine did 

 not conceal her disapproval of Henry's breach with 

 her cousin the Emperor Charles ; and, lastly, 

 Henry had set his affections on another, Anne 

 Boleyn, a niece of the Duke of Norfolk, who 

 soon perceived the ascendency she had gained, and 

 knew how to use it for her own purpose. With 

 such various motives behind him, Henry, with all 

 the passionate self-will of his nature, bent himself 

 to accomplish his end. Pope Clement VII., who 

 after the sack of Rome had every reason to dread 

 and detest the influence of the emperor, was at 



first disposed to humour Henry's desire for a 

 divorce, and in 1528 sent Cardinal Campeggio to 

 England to try the validity of the king's marriage 

 with Catharine. The visit of Campeggio, whose 

 powers had been carefully guarded, settled nothing; 

 and the pope under pressure from the emperor re- 

 voked the case to the Roman curia. This impotent 

 conclusion was the ruin of Wolsey, who now found 

 himself without a friend at home or abroad. The 

 king blamed him for the failure of Campeggio's 

 ^mission ; Anne Boleyn, who was now all-powerful, 

 looked on him as the only obstacle in the way of 

 her ambition ; and Catharine regarded him as the 

 evil counsellor, who in his policy of opposition to 

 the emperor was the main cause of all her mis- 

 fortunes. In 1529, on an indictment for bread) of 

 prcemimire, he was stripped of all his goods and 

 honours, and dismissed from the court in disgrace. 

 The next year he was summoned to London on a 

 charge of high-treason, but broken in health and 

 spirit died on the way, professing to the last his 

 devotion to the king. ' No statesman of such 

 eminence,' it has been said, 'ever died less 

 lamented.' The people, who could not appreciate 

 what he had done for England abroad in making 

 her a power to be reckoned with in all the councils 

 of Europe, saw in him only the haughty and vain- 

 glorious upstart, whose entire mode of life gave 

 the lie to his office and profession. 



The period from the rail of Wolsey to the fall of 

 his successor, Thomas Cromwell, in 1540, is perhaps 

 the most extraordinary, as it is, perhaps, one of 

 the most important in all English history. During 

 these years were broken link by link all the ties 

 that bound England to the Papacy, and the 

 country disparted from that system of the nations 

 which men had come to regiird as no less divinely 

 ordered than the system of the heavens itself. 



This severance of England from Rome was 

 carried through by the parliament of 1529-36, 

 summoned after an interval of seven years, and 

 largely composed of the creatures of the king. 

 Despite the coldness of the pope, Henry was as 

 determined as ever on his divorce, and equally 

 determined that he would not plead his cause at 

 Rome, which would have been a direct admission 

 of the papal supremacy. By way of relieving the 

 scruples of the pope to reverse the judgment of his 

 predecessors in favour of Henry's marriage, the 

 case was submitted to the various universities of 

 Europe. Their verdict was not unanimous, but 

 'the majority declared that Henry's scruples were 

 justified. The pope, however, with the fear of the 

 emperor ever before him, would not be moved from 

 his position ; and, meanwhile, the English parlia- 

 ment, inspired bv the king, proceeded with its 

 work. By humbling the clergy Henry doubtless 

 thought he would be most likely to bring the pope 

 to terms. Accordingly, one blow after another 

 was struck at their privileges till they were taught 

 that their real master was not the pope of Rome, 

 but the king of England. In 1531 the whole body 

 of the clergy, on the same grounds as Wolsey, were 

 declared guilty of treason under the law of prce- 

 munire, and purchased the pardon of the crown 

 only by the payment of 118,840. The same year 

 he extorted from them his recognition as ' protector 

 and supreme head of the church and clergy of 

 England,' and the year following abolished the 

 system of annates by which the pope received the 

 first year's income of all newly-appointed bishops 

 and archbishops. The tendency of all these acts 

 could not be mistaken, and Sir Thomas More, who 

 had succeeded Wolsey in the chancellorship, and 

 who saw the inevitable end of Henry's policy, 



S rayed to be relieved of the Great Seal. In further 

 efiance of Rome, Henry (1533) was privately 

 married to Anne Boleyn, in the teeth, also, as it 



