*7t 



HENKY VIII. (OP ENGLAND). 



HENRY VIII. (OF ENGLAND). 



S7 



Whom pud biui a visit at Dorer in the and of May 1620 ; and w iih 

 UM laltor of whom h had a few daja after a seemingly most amicable 

 interview, celebrated under the name of the Field of the Cloth of 

 Gold,' in the neighbourhood of Calais. Wolsey's object at thii time 

 howeTrr waa to detach hia maater from the interests of the French 

 king; and a Tiait which Henry paid to the emperor at Gravelines, on 

 hia way home, ahuwed Francis how littlo he waa to count upon any 

 Luting effect of their recant cordialities. Before the close of the 

 following year Henry waa formally joined in league with the emperor 

 and the |pa ; and in March 1522, he declared war against France. 

 In the aummer of the aamo year the emperor flattered him by paying 

 him a visit at London; his vanity having also been a abort time 

 before gratified in another way by the title of 'Defender of the 

 Faith ' bestowed upon him by pope Leo X. (recently succeeded by 

 Adrian VI.) for a Latin treatise which he had published ' On the Seven 

 Sacrament*,' in confutation of Luther. Henry continued to attach 

 hinwelf to the interest of the emperor, even sending an army to 

 France, in August 1523, under the Duke of Suffolk, which succeeded 

 in taking several towns, though only to give them up again in a few 

 mouths, until the disappointment, for the second time, of Wolsey's 

 hope of being made pope through the influence of Charles, on the 

 death of Adrian in September of the last-mentioue 1 year, is supposed 

 to have determined that minister upon a change of politic* Before 

 the memorable defeat and capture of Francis at the battle of 1'avia, 

 24th of February 1525, the English king had made every preparation 

 to break with the emperor; having actually commenced negociations 

 for a peace with Francis's ally, James V., the young king of Scotland, 

 on condition of giving James in marriage his daughter the princess 

 Mary (afterwards queen), who had been already promised to the 

 emperor. In August he concluded a treaty of peace and alliance with 

 France ; and after the release of Francis, in March 1526, Henry was 

 declared protector of the league styled 'Most Clement and Most 

 Holy,' which was formed under the auspices of the pope for the 

 renewal of the war against Charles. 



Before this date two domestic occurrences took place that especially 

 deserve to be noted. The first of these was the execution, in 1513, 

 immediately before Henry proceeded on his expedition to France, of 

 Edmund de la Pole, duke of Suffolk, whose mother was Elizabeth 

 Plantagenet, sister of Edward IV.; he had lain a prisoner in the Tower 

 ever since a short time before tha death of the late king, who had 

 contrived to obtain possession of his person after he had fled to the 

 Continent, and, it is said, had in his last hours recommended that he 

 should not be suffered to live. Ho was now put to death without 

 any form of trial or other legal proceeding, his crime, there can be no 

 doubt, being merely his connection with the House of York. Wolsey 

 was perhaps us yet too new in office to be -fairly made answerable for 

 this act of bloodshed ; in the next case the unfortunate victim is 

 generally believed to have been sacrificed to hia resentment and thirst 

 of vengeance. In 1521 Edward Stafford, duke of Buckingham, POII of 

 the duke beheaded by Kichard III. [HENRY VII.], was apprehended 

 on some information furnished to Wolsey by a discarded servant, and 

 being brought to trial was found guilty and executed as a traitor. 

 The ncU with which he wag charged did not according to law amount 

 to treason, even if they had been proved ; but the duke is said by 

 certain indiscretions of speech and demeanour to have wounded the 

 pride of the all-powerful minister; and, besides, he was also of 

 dangerous pedigree, being not only maternally of the stock of John of 

 Gaunt, but likewise a Plantageuet by his descent from Anne, the 

 daughter of Edward III.'s youngest son Thomas, duke of Gloucester. 

 With this nobleman came to an end the great office of hereditary lord 

 high constable. 



What may be called the second part of Henry's reign begins in the 

 year 1527, from which dato our attention is called to a busy scene of 

 domestic transactions beside which the foreign politics of the kingdom 

 become of little interest or importance. It is no longer the ambition 

 and intrigue of the minister, but the wilfulnesa and furious passions 

 of the king himself, that move all things. In 1527 Henry cast his 

 eyrs upon Anne Boleyn, and appears to have very soon formed tliu 

 design of ridding himself of Catherine, and making the object of this 

 new attachment his queen. [BoLEnr, AN.NE.] Anne was understood 

 to be favourably disposed towards those new views on the subject of 

 religion and ecclesiastical affairs which hod been agitating all Europe 

 ever >inco Luther had begun his intrepid career by publicly opposing 

 indulgences at Wittenberg ten yean before. Queen Catherine, on the 

 other hand, was a good Catholic ; and, betides, the circumstances in 

 which she waa placed made it her interest to take her stand by the 

 Church, as on the other hand her adversaries were driven iti like 

 manner by their interests and the course of events into dissent and 

 opposition. This one consideration sufficiently explains all that 

 followed. The friends of the old religion generally considered Cathe- 

 rine'! cause as their own; the Keformers as naturally arrayed them- 

 nelves on the aide of her rival. Henry himself again, though he had 

 been till now resolutely opposed to the new opinion*, was carried over 

 by his passion towards the same side ; the consequence of which was 

 the loss of the royal favour by ttioso who had hitherto monopolised 

 it, and its transference in great part to other meu, to be employed by 

 them in the promotion of entirely opposite purposes and politics. 

 The proceedings for the divorce were commenced by an application to 



the court of Rome, in August 1527. For two yean the affair lingered 

 on through a succession of legal proceedings, but without any <i 

 result. From the autumn of 1529 are to be dated both the fall of 

 WoUey and the rise of Cranmer. [CHANMEII, THOMAS.] The death 

 of the great cardinal took place on the 2l)th of November 1530. In 

 January following the first blow was struck at the Church by an 

 indictment being brought into the King's Bench against all the clergy 

 of the kingdom for supporting Wolsey in the exercise of his legatine 

 powers without the royal licence, as required by the old statutes of 

 proraort and premunirc; and it was in an act passed immediately 

 after by the Convocation of the province of Canterbury, for granting 

 to the king a sum of money to exempt them from the penalties of 

 their conviction on this indictment, that the first movement was mode 

 towards a revolt against the aee of Home, by the titles given to Henry 

 of " tho one protector of the English Church, its only and supreme 

 lord, and, as far as might be by tho law of Christ, its supreme head." 

 Shortly after, the convocation declared thj king's marriage with 

 Catherine to be contrary to the law of God. The same year Henry 

 went the length of openly countenancing Protestantism abroad by 

 remitting a subsidy to the confederacy of the Elector of Brandenburg 

 and other German princes, called the League of Smalcald. In August 

 1532 Cranmer was appointed to the archbishopric of Canterbury. In 

 the beginning of the year 1533 Henry was privately married to Anne 

 Boleyu ; and on the 23rd of May following Archbishop Cranmer pro- 

 nounced the former marriage with Catherine void. In the meantime 

 the parliament had passed an act forbidding all appeals to the see of 

 Rome. Pope Clement VII. met this by annulling the sentence of 

 Craumer in tho matter of the inarrbga ; on which the separation from 

 Home became complete. Acts were passed by the parliament the next 

 year declaring that tho clergy should in future be assembled in con- 

 vocation only by the king's writ, that no constitutions enacted by them 

 should be of force without the king's assent, and that no first fruits, 

 or Peter's pence, or money for dispensations, should be any luugur 

 paid to the pope. The clergy of the province of York themselves in 

 convocation declared that the pope had no more power in England 

 than any other bishop. A new and most efficient supporter of the 

 Reformation now also becomes conspicuous on the scene, Thomas 

 Cromwell (afterwards Lord Cromwell and Earl of Essex), who waa 

 this year made first secretary of state, and then master of the rolls. 

 [CBOMWBLL, THOMAS.] In the next session, the parliament, which 

 re-assembled in the end of this same year, passed acts declaring the 

 king's highness to be supreme head of the Church of England, and to 

 have authority to redress all errors, heresies, and abuses in the 

 Church ; and ordering first-fruits and tenths of all spiritual benefices 

 to be paid to the king. After this various persons were executed for 

 refusing to acknowledge the king's supremacy ; among others, two 

 illustrious victims, the learned Fisher, bishop of Hochester, anil the 

 admirable Sir Thomas More. [FisHLB, JOHM ; MORE, THOMAS.] In 

 1535 began the dissolution of the monasteries, under the zealous 

 superintendance of Cromwell, constituted for that purpose visitor- 

 general of these establishments. Latimer and other friends of Crau- 

 mer and tho Reformation were now also promoted to bishoprics ; so 

 that not only in matters of discipline and polity, but even of doctrine, 

 the Church might be said to have separated itself from Home. One 

 of the last acts of the parliament under which all these great inno- 

 vations had been made was to petition the king that a new translation 

 of the Scriptures might be made by authority and set up in churches. 

 It was dissolved on the 18th of July 1536, after having sat fur the 

 then unprecedented period of six years. 



Events now set in a new current The month of May of this year 

 witnessed the trial and execution of Queen Anne in less than six 

 months after the death of her predecessor, Catherine of Aragou and 

 the marriage of the brutal king, the very next morning, to Jane 

 Seymour, the new beauty, his passion for whom must be regarded as 

 the true motive that had impelled him to the deed of blood. Queen 

 Jane dying on the 14th of October 1537, a few days after giving birth 

 to a sou, was succeeded by Anne, sister of the Duke of Cloves, whom 

 Henry married in January 1510, and put away in six mouths after 

 the subservient parliament, and the not less subservient convocation 

 of the clergy, on his mere request, pronouncing the marriage to be 

 null, and the former body making it high treason " by word or deed to 

 accept, take, judge, or believe the said marriage to be good." 



Meanwhile the ecclesiastical changes continued to proceed at as 

 rapid a rate as ever. lu 1536 Cromwell was constituted a sort of 

 lord-lieutenant over tho Church, by the title of vicar-general, which 

 was held to invest him with all the king's authority over the 

 spirituality. The dissolution of the monasteries in this and the 

 following year, as carried forward under the direction of this ener- 

 getic minister, produced a succession of popular insurrections in 

 different parts of tho kingdom, which were not put down without 

 great destruction of life, both in the field and afterwards by tho 

 executioner. In 1533 all incumbents were ordered to set up in their 

 churches copies of the newly-published English translation of the 

 Bible, and to teach the people the Creed, the Lord's i'rayer, and tho 

 Ten Commandment*, in English; the famous image of our Lady at 

 Walsiugham, and other similar objects of the popular veneration, wuro 

 also under Cromwell's ordor removed from their shrines and burnt. 

 In 1539 the parliament, after enacting (by the 31 Henry VIII., c. 8) 



