If the willingness to make concessions was the measure of the respective anxieties for an agreement between the two countries, Spain was more eager than England, for the Emperor was willing to yield the point on which he had broken the unity of Christendom and content himself with words, while Henry would yield nothing, except the French alliance, for which he had cared little from the time that France had refused to follow him into schism.
An alliance of the Emperor with an excommunicated sovereign in the face of a sentence which he had himself insisted on, and with a Bull of Deposition ready for launching, would be an insult to the Holy See more dangerous to it than the revolt of a single kingdom. The treaty might, however, have been completed on the terms which Wallop and the Imperial Ambassador had agreed on at Paris, and which the Imperial Council had not rejected. The Pope saw the peril, struck in, and made it impossible. In the trial and execution of the Carthusians Henry had shown to Europe that he was himself in earnest. The blood of martyrs was the seed of the Church, and Paul calculated rightly that he could not injure the King of England more effectually than by driving him to fresh severities and thus provoking an insurrection. No other explanation can be given for his having chosen this particular moment for an act which must and would produce the desired consequence. Bishop Fisher and Sir Thomas More had been allowed six weeks to consider whether they would acknowledge the Statute of Supremacy. More was respected by every one, except the Lutherans, whom he confessed that he hated; Fisher was regarded as a saint by the Catholic part of England; and the King, who was dependent after all on the support of his subjects and could not wish to shock or alienate them, would probably have pressed them no further, unless challenged by some fresh provocation. Fisher had waded deep into treason, but, if the King knew it, there was no evidence which could be produced. Before the six weeks were expired the Court and the world were astonished to hear that Paul had created the Bishop of Rochester a cardinal, and that the hat was already on the way. Casalis, who foresaw the consequences, had protested against the appointment, both to the Pope and the Consistory. Paul pretended to be frightened. He begged Casalis to excuse him to the King. He professed, what it was impossible to believe, that he had intended to pay England a compliment. A general Council was to meet. He wished England to be represented there by a Prelate whom he understood to be distinguished for learning and sanctity. The Roman Pontiffs have had a chequered reputation, but the weakest of them has never been suspected of a want of worldly acuteness. The condition of England was as well understood at Rome as it was understood by Chapuys, and, with Dr. Ortiz at his ear, Paul must have been acquainted with the disposition of every peer and prelate in the realm. Fisher’s name had been familiar through the seven years’ controversy as of the one English Bishop who had been constant in resistance to every step of Henry’s policy. Paul, who had just absolved Silken Thomas for the Archbishop of Dublin’s murder, had little to learn about the conspiracy, or about Fisher’s share in it. The excuse was an insolence more affronting than the act itself. It was impossible for the King to acknowledge himself defied and defeated. He said briefly that he would send Fisher’s head to Rome, for the hat to be fitted on it. Sir Thomas More, as Fisher’s dearest friend, connected with him in opposition to the Reformation and sharing his imprisonment for the same actions, was involved along with him in the fatal effects of the Pope’s cunning or the Pope’s idiotcy. The six weeks ran out. The Bishop and the ex-Chancellor were called again before the Council, refused to acknowledge the supremacy, and were committed for trial.
The French and English Commissioners had met and parted at Calais. Nothing had been concluded there, as Cromwell said with pleasure to Chapuys, prejudicial to the Emperor; but as to submitting the King’s conduct to a Council, Cromwell reiterated that it was not to be thought of. Were there no other reason, the hatred borne to him by all the English prestraylle for having pulled down the tyranny of the Church and tried to reform them, would be cause sufficient. The Council would be composed of clergy. More than this, and under the provocation of the fresh insult, Cromwell said that neither the King nor his subjects would recognise any Council convoked by the Pope. A Council convoked by the Emperor they would acknowledge, but a Papal Council never. They intended to make the Church of England a true and singular mirror to all Christendom.331
Paul can hardly have deliberately contemplated the results of what he had done. He probably calculated, either that Henry would not dare to go to extremities with a person of so holy a reputation as Bishop Fisher, or that the threat of it would force Fisher’s and the Queen’s friends into the field in time to save him. They had boasted that the whole country was with them, and the Pope had taken them at their word. Yet his own mind misgave him. The Nuncio at Paris was directed to beg Francis to intercede. Francis said he would do his best, but feared the “hat” would prove the Bishop’s death. Henry, Francis said, was not always easy to deal with. He almost treated him as a subject. He was the strangest man in the world. He feared he could do no good with him.332 There was not the least likelihood that the King would allow the interposition either of Francis or of any one. The crime created by the Act of Supremacy was the denial by word or act of the King’s sovereignty, ecclesiastical or civil, and the object was to check and punish seditious speaking or preaching. As the Act was first drafted, to speak at all against the supremacy brought an offender under the penalties. The House of Commons was unwilling to make mere language into high treason, and a strong attempt was made to introduce the word “maliciously.” Men might deny that the King was Head of the Church in ignorance or inadvertence; and an innocent opinion was not a proper subject for severity. But persons who had exposed themselves to suspicion might be questioned, and their answers interpreted by collateral evidence, to prove disloyal intention. Chapuys’s letters leave no doubt of Fisher’s real disloyalty. But his desire to bring in an Imperial army was shared by half the Peers, and, if proof of it could be produced, their guilty consciences might drive them into open rebellion. It was ascertained that Fisher and More had communicated with each other in the Tower on the answers which they were to give. But other points had risen for which Fisher was not prepared. Among the papers found in his study were letters in an unknown hand addressed to Queen Catherine, which apparently the Bishop was to have forwarded to her, but had been prevented by his arrest. They formed part of a correspondence between the Queen and some Foreign Prince, carried on through a reverend father spoken of as E. R. … alluding to things which “no mortal man was to know besides those whom it behoved,” and to another letter which E. R. had received of the Bishop himself. Fisher was asked who wrote these letters: “Who was E. R.? Who was the Prince?” What those things were which no mortal was to know? If trifles, why the secrecy, and from whom were they to be concealed? What were the letters which had been received from the Bishop himself to be sent oversea? The letters found contained also a request to know whether Catherine wished the writer to proceed to other Princes in Germany and solicit them; and again a promise that the writer would maintain her cause among good men there, and would let her know what he could succeed in bringing to pass with the Princes.
The Bishop was asked whether, saving his faith and allegiance, he ought to have assisted a man who was engaged in such enterprises, and why he concealed a matter which he knew to be intended against the King; how the letter came into his hands, who sent it, who brought it. If the Bishop refused to answer or equivocated, he was to understand that the King knew the truth, for he had proof in his hands. The writer was crafty and subtle and had promised to spend his labour with the Princes that they should take in hand to defend the Lady Catherine’s cause.
The King held the key to the whole mystery. The mine had been undermined. The intended rebellion was no secret to Henry or to Cromwell. Catherine, a divorced wife, and a Spanish princess, owed no allegiance in England. But Fisher was an English subject, and conscience is no excuse for treason, until the treason succeeds.
Fisher answered warily, but certainly untruly, that he could not recollect the name either of the Prince who wrote the letter which had been discovered or of the messenger who brought it. It was probably some German prince, but, as God might help him, he could not say which, unless it was Ferdinand, King of Hungary. E. R. was not himself, nor did he ever consent that the writer should attempt anything with the German Princes against the King.
He had been careful. He had desired Chapuys from the beginning that his name should not be mentioned, except in cipher. He had perhaps abstained from directly advising an application to Ferdinand, who could not act without the Emperor’s sanction. His messages to Charles through his Ambassador even Fisher could scarcely have had the hardiness to deny; but these messages, if known, were not alleged. The Anglo-Imperial alliance was on the anvil, and the question was not put to him.333
Of Fisher’s malice, however, as the law construed it, there was no doubt. He persisted in his refusal to acknowledge the supremacy of the Crown. Five days after his examination he was tried at Westminster Hall, and in the week following he was executed on Tower Hill. He died bravely in a cause which he believed to be right. To the last he might have saved himself by submission, but he never wavered. He knew that he could do better service to the Queen and the Catholic Church by his death than by his life. Cromwell told Chapuys that “the Bishop of Rome was the cause of his punishment, for having made a Cardinal of the King’s worst enemy.” He was “greatly pitied of the people.” The pity would have been less had his real conduct been revealed.
A nobler victim followed. In the lists of those who were prepared to take arms against the King there is no mention of the name of Sir Thomas More; but he had been Fisher’s intimate friend and companion, and he could hardly have been ignorant of a conspiracy with which Fisher had been so closely concerned; while malice might be inferred without injustice from an acquaintance with dangerous purposes which he had not revealed. He paid the penalty of the society to which he had attached himself. He, even more than the Bishop of Rochester, was the chief of the party most opposed to the Reformation. He had distinguished himself as Chancellor by his zeal against the Lutherans, and, if that party had won the day, they would have gone to work as they did afterwards when Mary became Queen. No one knew better than More the need in which the Church stood of the surgeon’s hand; no one saw clearer the fox’s face under the monk’s cowl: but, like other moderate reformers, he detested impatient enthusiasts who spoilt their cause by extravagance. He felt towards the Protestantism which was spreading in England as Burke felt towards the Convention and the Jacobin Club, and while More lived and defied the statute the vast middle party in the nation which was yet undecided found encouragement in opposition from his example. His execution has been uniformly condemned by historians as an act of wanton tyranny. It was not wanton, and it was not an act of tyranny. It was an inevitable and painful incident of an infinitely blessed revolution.
The received accounts of his trial are confirmed with slight additions by a paper of news from England which was sent to the Imperial Court.
More was charged with having deprived the King of the title of “Supreme Head of the Church,” which had been granted to him by the last Parliament. He replied that, when questioned by the King’s Secretary what he thought of the statute, he had answered that, being a dead man to the world, he cared nothing for such things, and he could not be condemned for silence. The King’s Attorney said that all good subjects were bound to answer without dissimulation or reserve, and silence was the same as speech. Silence, More objected, was generally taken to mean consent. Whatever his thoughts might be, he had never uttered them.
He was charged with having exchanged letters with the Bishop of Rochester in the Tower on the replies which they were to give on their examination. Each had said that the statute was a sword with two edges, one of which slew the body, the other the soul. As they had used the same words it was clear that they were confederated.
More replied that he had answered as his conscience dictated, and had advised the Bishop to do the same. He did not believe that he had ever said or done anything maliciously against the statute.
The jury consulted only for a quarter of an hour and returned a verdict of “guilty.” Sentence passed as a matter of course, and then More spoke out. As he was condemned, he said he would now declare his opinion. He had studied the question for seven years, and was satisfied that no temporal lord could be head of the spiritualty. For each bishop on the side of the Royal Supremacy he could produce a hundred saints. For their Parliament he had the Councils of a thousand years. For one kingdom he had all the other Christian Powers. The Bishops had broken their vows; the Parliament had no authority to make laws against the unity of Christendom, and had capitally sinned in making them. His crime had been his opposition to the second marriage of the King. He had faith, however, that, as St. Paul persecuted St. Stephen, yet both were now in Paradise, so he and his judges, although at variance in this world, would meet in charity hereafter.334
The end came quickly. The trial was on the 1st of July; on the 6th the head fell of one of the most interesting men that England ever produced. Had the supremacy been a question of opinion, had there been no conspiracy to restore by arms the Papal tyranny, no clergy and nobles entreating the landing of an army like that which wasted Flanders at the command of the Duke of Alva, no Irish nobles murdering Archbishops and receiving Papal absolution for it, to have sent Sir Thomas More to the scaffold for believing the Pope to be master of England would have been a barbarous murder, deserving the execration which has been poured upon it. An age which has no such perils to alarm its slumbers forgets the enemies which threatened to waste the country with fire and sword, and admires only the virtues which remain fresh for all time; we, too, if exposed to similar possibilities might be no more merciful than our forefathers.
The execution of Fisher and More was the King’s answer to Papal thunders and domestic conspirators, and the effect was electric. Darcy again appealed to Chapuys, praying that the final sentence should be instantly issued. He did not wish to wait any longer for Imperial aid. The Pope having spoken, the country would now rise of itself. The clergy would furnish all the money needed for a beginning, and a way might be found to seize the gold in the treasury. Time pressed. They must get to work at once. If they loitered longer the modern preachers and prelates would corrupt the people, and all would be lost.335 Cifuentes wrote from Rome to the Emperor that the Bishop of Paris was on his way there with proposals from Francis for an arrangement with England which would be fatal to the Queen, the Church, and the morals of Christendom. He begged to be allowed to press the Pope to hold in readiness a brief deposing Henry; a brief which, if once issued, could not be recalled.336
CHAPTER XIX
Campaign of the Emperor in Africa – Uncertainties at Rome – Policy of Francis – English preparations for war – Fresh appeals to the Emperor – Delay in the issue of the censures – The Princess Mary – Letter of Catherine to the Pope – Disaffection of the English Catholics – Libels against Henry, Cromwell, and Chapuys – Lord Thomas Fitzgerald – Dangerous position of Henry – Death of the Duke of Milan – Effect on European policy – Intended Bull of Paul III. – Indecision of Charles – Prospect of war with France – Advice of Charles to Catherine – Distrust of the Emperor at the Papal Court – Warlike resolution of the Pope restrained by the Cardinals.
Cifuentes had been misinformed when he feared that Francis was again about to interpose in Henry’s behalf at Rome. The conference at Calais had broken up without definite results. The policy of France was to draw Henry off from his treaty with the Emperor; Henry preferred to play the two great Catholic Powers one against the other, and commit himself to neither; and Francis, knowing the indignation which Fisher’s execution would produce at Rome, was turning his thoughts on other means of accomplishing his purpose. The Emperor’s African campaign was splendidly successful – too successful to be satisfactory at the Vatican. The Pope, as the head of Christendom, was bound to express pleasure at the defeat of the Infidels, but he feared that Charles, victorious by land and sea, might give him trouble in his own dominions.337 A settled purpose, however, remained to punish the English King, and Henry had need to be careful. The French faction in the Council wished him to proceed at once to extremities with the Princess, which would effectually end the hopes of an Imperial alliance. Anne Boleyn was continually telling the King that the Queen and Princess were his greatest danger. “They deserved death more than those who had been lately executed, since they were the cause of all the mischief.”338 Chapuys found himself no longer able to communicate with Mary, from the increased precaution in guarding her. It was alleged that there was a fear of her being carried off by the French.
The Imperial party at Rome, not knowing what to do or to advise, drew a curious memorandum for Charles’s consideration. The Emperor, they said, had been informed when the divorce case was being tried at Rome, that England was a fief of the Church of Rome, and as the King had defied the Apostolic See, he deserved to be deprived of his crown. The Emperor had not approved of a step so severe. But the King had now beheaded the Bishop of Rochester, whom the Pope had made a cardinal. On the news of the execution the Pope and Cardinals had moved that he should be deprived at once and without more delay for this and for his other crimes. Against taking such action was the danger to the Queen of which they were greatly afraid, and also the sense that if, after sentence, the crown of England devolved on the Holy See, injury might be done to the prospects of the Princess. It might be contrived that the Pope in depriving the King might assign the crown to his daughter, or the Pope in consistory might declare secretly that they were acting in favour of the Princess and without prejudice to her claim. To this, however, there was the objection that the King might hear of it through some of the Cardinals. Something at any rate had to be done. All courses were dangerous. The Emperor was requested to decide.339
A new ingredient was now to be thrown into the political cauldron. So far from wishing to reconcile England with the Papacy, the Pope informed Cifuentes that Francis was now ready and willing to help the Apostolic See in the execution of the sentence against the King of England. Francis thought that the Emperor ought to begin, since the affair was his personal concern; but when the first step was taken Francis himself would be at the Pope’s disposition. The meaning of this, in the opinion of Cifuentes, was merely to entangle the Emperor in a war with England, and so to leave him. The Pope himself thought so too. Francis had been heard to say that when the Emperor had opened the campaign he would come next and do what was most for his own interest. The Pope, however, said, as Clement had said before him, that, if Charles and Francis would only act together against England, the “execution” could be managed satisfactorily. Cifuentes replied that he had no commission to enter into that question. He reported what had passed to his master, and said that he would be in no haste to urge the Pope to further measures.340
Henry had expected nothing better from France. He had dared the Pope to do his worst. He stood alone, with no protection save in the jealousy of the rival Powers, and had nothing to trust to save his own ability to defend his country and his crown. His chief anxiety was for the security of the sea. A successful stoppage of trade would, as Cromwell admitted, lead to confusion and insurrection. Ship after ship was built and launched in the Thames. The busy note of preparation rang over the realm. The clergy, Lord Darcy had said, were to furnish money for the rising. The King was taking precautions to shorten their resources, and turn their revenues to the protection of the realm. Cromwell’s visitors were out over England examining into the condition of the religious houses, exposing their abuses and sequestrating their estates. These dishonoured institutions had been found to be “very stews of unnatural crime” through the length and breadth of England. Their means of mischief were taken away from such worthless and treacherous communities. Crown officials were left in charge, and their final fate was reserved for Parliament.
Henry, meanwhile, confident in his subjects, and taking lightly the dangers which threatened him, went on progress along the Welsh borders, hunting, visiting, showing himself everywhere, and received with apparent enthusiasm. The behaviour of the people perplexed Chapuys. “I am told,” he wrote, “that in the districts where he has been, a good part of the peasantry, after hearing the Court preachers, are abused into the belief that he was inspired by God to separate himself from his brother’s wife. They are but idiots. They will return soon enough to the truth when there are any signs of change.” They would not return, nor were they the fools he thought them. The clergy, Chapuys himself confessed it, had made themselves detested by the English commons for their loose lives and the tyranny of the ecclesiastical courts. The monasteries, too many of them, were nests of infamy and fraud, and the King whom the Catholic world called Antichrist appeared as a deliverer from an odious despotism.
At Rome there was still uncertainty. The Imperial memorandum explains the cause of the hesitation. The Emperor was engaged in Africa, and could decide nothing till his return. The great Powers were divided on the partition of the bear’s skin, while the bear was still unstricken. Why, asked the impatient English Catholics, did not the Pope strike and make an end of him when even Francis, who had so long stayed his hand, was now urging him to proceed? Francis was probably as insincere as Cifuentes believed him to be. But the mere hope of help from such a quarter gave fresh life to the wearied Catherine and her agents.
“The Pope,” wrote Dr. Ortiz to the Emperor, “has committed the deprivation of the King of England and the adjudication of the realm to the Apostolic See as a fief of the Church to Cardinals Campeggio, Simoneta, and Cesis. The delay in granting the executorials in the principal cause is wonderful. Although the deposition of the King was spoken of so hotly in the Consistory, and they wrote about it to all the Princes, they will only proceed with delay and with a monition to the King to be intimated in neighbouring countries. This is needless. His heresy, schism, and other crimes are notorious. He may be deprived without the delay of a monition. If it is pressed, it is to be feared it will be on the side of France. It is a wonderful revenge which the King of France has taken on the King of England, to favour him until he has fallen into schism and heresy, and then to forsake him in it, to delude him as far as the gallows, and to leave him to hang. The blood of the saints whom that King has martyred calls to God for justice.”341
Catherine, sick with hope deferred and tired of the Emperor’s hesitation, was catching at the new straw which was floating by her. Ortiz must have kept her informed of the French overtures at the Vatican. She prayed the Regent Mary to use her influence with the French Queen. Now was the time for Francis to show himself a true friend of his brother of England, and assist in delivering him from a state of sin.342
Strange rumours were current in France and in England to explain the delay of the censures. The Pope had confessed himself alarmed at the completeness of Charles’s success at Tunis. It was thought that the Emperor, fresh from his victories, might act on the advice of men like Lope de Soria, take his Holiness himself in hand and abolish the Temporal Power; that the Pope knew it, and therefore feared to make matters worse by provoking England further.343
Pope and Princes might watch each other in distrust at a safe distance; but to the English conspirators the long pause was life or death. Delays are usually fatal with intended rebellion. The only safety is in immediate action. Enthusiasm cools, and secrets are betrayed. Fisher’s fate was a fresh spur to them to move, but it also proved that the Government knew too much and did not mean to flinch.
Chapuys tried Granvelle again. “Every man of position here,” he said, “is in despair at the Pope’s inaction. If something is not done promptly there will be no hope for the ladies, or for religion either, which is going daily to destruction. Things are come to such a pass that at some places men even preach against the Sacrament. The Emperor is bound to interfere. What he has done in Africa he can do in England with far more ease and with incomparably more political advantage.”344
Granvelle could but answer that Henry was a monster, and that God would undoubtedly punish him; but that for himself he was so busy that he could scarcely breathe, and that the Emperor continued to hope for some peaceful arrangement.
Cifuentes meanwhile kept his hand on Paul. His task was difficult, for his orders were to prevent the issue of the executorials for fear France should act upon them, while Catholic Christendom would be shaken to its base if it became known that it was the Emperor who was preventing the Holy See from avenging itself. Even with the Pope Cifuentes could not be candid, and Ortiz, working on Paul’s jealousy and unable to comprehend the obstacle, had persuaded his Holiness to draw up “the brief of execution” and furnish a copy to himself.345
“In the matter of the executory letters,” Cifuentes wrote to Charles, “I have strictly followed your Majesty’s instructions. They have been kept back for a year and a half without the least appearance that the delay proceeded from us, but, on the contrary, as if we were disappointed that they were not drawn when asked for. Besides his Holiness’s wish to wait for the result of the offers of France, another circumstance has served your Majesty’s purpose. There were certain clauses to which I could not consent, in the draft shown to me, as detrimental to the right of the Queen and Princess and to your Majesty’s preëminence.
“Now that all hope has vanished of the return of the King of England to obedience, Dr. Ortiz, not knowing that you wished the execution to be delayed, has taken out the executory letters and almost despatched them while I was absent at Perugia. The letters are ready, nothing being wanted but the Pope’s seal. I have detained them for a few days, pretending that I must examine the wording. They will remain in my possession till you inform me of your pleasure.”346
The issue of the Pope’s censures either in the form of a letter of execution or of a Bull of Deposition was to be the signal of the English rising, with or without the Emperor. Darcy and his friends were ready and resolved to begin. But without the Pope’s direct sanction the movement would lose its inspiration. The Irish rebellion had collapsed for the want of it. Lord Thomas Fitzgerald had surrendered and was a prisoner in the Tower.
It was not the part of a child, however great her imagined wrongs, deliberately to promote an insurrection against her father. Henry II.’s sons had done it, but times were changed. The Princess Mary was determined to justify such of Henry’s Council as had recommended the harshest measures against her. She wrote a letter to Chapuys which, if intercepted, might have made it difficult for the King to save her.
“The condition of things,” she said, “is worse than wretched. The realm will fall to ruin unless his Majesty, for the service of God, the welfare of Christendom, the honour of the King my father, and compassion for the afflicted souls in this country, will take pity on us and apply the remedy. This I hope and feel assured that he will do if he is rightly informed of what is taking place. In the midst of his occupations in Africa he will have been unable to realise our condition. The whole truth cannot be conveyed in letters. I would, therefore, have you despatch one of your own people to inform him of everything, and to supplicate him on the part of the Queen my mother, and myself for the honour of God and for other respects to attend to and provide for us. In so acting he will accomplish a service most agreeable to Almighty God. Nor will he win less fame and glory to himself than he has achieved in the conquest of Tunis or in all his African expedition.”347