Popes died in pretty quick succession; but the foreign priests were
too much for the Cardinal, and kept him out of the post. So the
Cardinal and King together found out that the Emperor of Germany
was not a man to keep faith with; broke off a projected marriage
between the King's daughter MARY, Princess of Wales, and that
Page 153
Dickens, Charles - A Child's History of England
sovereign; and began to consider whether it might not be well to
marry the young lady, either to Francis himself, or to his eldest
son.
There now arose at Wittemberg, in Germany, the great leader of the
mighty change in England which is called The Reformation, and which
set the people free from their slavery to the priests. This was a
learned Doctor, named MARTIN LUTHER, who knew all about them, for
he had been a priest, and even a monk, himself. The preaching and
writing of Wickliffe had set a number of men thinking on this
subject; and Luther, finding one day to his great surprise, that
there really was a book called the New Testament which the priests
did not allow to be read, and which contained truths that they
suppressed, began to be very vigorous against the whole body, from
the Pope downward. It happened, while he was yet only beginning
his vast work of awakening the nation, that an impudent fellow
named TETZEL, a friar of very bad character, came into his
neighbourhood selling what were called Indulgences, by wholesale,
to raise money for beautifying the great Cathedral of St. Peter's,
at Rome. Whoever bought an Indulgence of the Pope was supposed to
buy himself off from the punishment of Heaven for his offences.
Luther told the people that these Indulgences were worthless bits
of paper, before God, and that Tetzel and his masters were a crew
of impostors in selling them.
The King and the Cardinal were mightily indignant at this
presumption; and the King (with the help of SIR THOMAS MORE, a wise
man, whom he afterwards repaid by striking off his head) even wrote
a book about it, with which the Pope was so well pleased that he
gave the King the title of Defender of the Faith. The King and the
Cardinal also issued flaming warnings to the people not to read
Luther's books, on pain of excommunication. But they did read them
for all that; and the rumour of what was in them spread far and
wide.
When this great change was thus going on, the King began to show
himself in his truest and worst colours. Anne Boleyn, the pretty
little girl who had gone abroad to France with his sister, was by
this time grown up to be very beautiful, and was one of the ladies
in attendance on Queen Catherine. Now, Queen Catherine was no
longer young or handsome, and it is likely that she was not
particularly good-tempered; having been always rather melancholy,
and having been made more so by the deaths of four of her children
when they were very young. So, the King fell in love with the fair
Anne Boleyn, and said to himself, 'How can I be best rid of my own
troublesome wife whom I am tired of, and marry Anne?'
You recollect that Queen Catherine had been the wife of Henry's
brother. What does the King do, after thinking it over, but calls
his favourite priests about him, and says, O! his mind is in such a
dreadful state, and he is so frightfully uneasy, because he is
afraid it was not lawful for him to marry the Queen! Not one of
those priests had the courage to hint that it was rather curious he
had never thought of that before, and that his mind seemed to have
been in a tolerably jolly condition during a great many years, in
which he certainly had not fretted himself thin; but, they all
said, Ah! that was very true, and it was a serious business; and
perhaps the best way to make it right, would be for his Majesty to
be divorced! The King replied, Yes, he thought that would be the
best way, certainly; so they all went to work.
If I were to relate to you the intrigues and plots that took place
in the endeavour to get this divorce, you would think the History
of England the most tiresome book in the world. So I shall say no
Dickens, Charles - A Child's History of England
more, than that after a vast deal of negotiation and evasion, the
Pope issued a commission to Cardinal Wolsey and CARDINAL CAMPEGGIO
(whom he sent over from Italy for the purpose), to try the whole
case in England. It is supposed - and I think with reason - that
Wolsey was the Queen's enemy, because she had reproved him for his
proud and gorgeous manner of life. But, he did not at first know
that the King wanted to marry Anne Boleyn; and when he did know it,
he even went down on his knees, in the endeavour to dissuade him.
The Cardinals opened their court in the Convent of the Black
Friars, near to where the bridge of that name in London now stands;
and the King and Queen, that they might be near it, took up their
lodgings at the adjoining palace of Bridewell, of which nothing now
remains but a bad prison. On the opening of the court, when the
King and Queen were called on to appear, that poor ill-used lady,
with a dignity and firmness and yet with a womanly affection worthy
to be always admired, went and kneeled at the King's feet, and said
that she had come, a stranger, to his dominions; that she had been
a good and true wife to him for twenty years; and that she could
acknowledge no power in those Cardinals to try whether she should
be considered his wife after all that time, or should be put away.
With that, she got up and left the court, and would never
afterwards come back to it.
The King pretended to be very much overcome, and said, O! my lords
and gentlemen, what a good woman she was to be sure, and how
delighted he would be to live with her unto death, but for that
terrible uneasiness in his mind which was quite wearing him away!
So, the case went on, and there was nothing but talk for two
months. Then Cardinal Campeggio, who, on behalf of the Pope,
wanted nothing so much as delay, adjourned it for two more months;
and before that time was elapsed, the Pope himself adjourned it
indefinitely, by requiring the King and Queen to come to Rome and
have it tried there. But by good luck for the King, word was
brought to him by some of his people, that they had happened to
meet at supper, THOMAS CRANMER, a learned Doctor of Cambridge, who
had proposed to urge the Pope on, by referring the case to all the
learned doctors and bishops, here and there and everywhere, and
getting their opinions that the King's marriage was unlawful. The
King, who was now in a hurry to marry Anne Boleyn, thought this
such a good idea, that he sent for Cranmer, post haste, and said to
LORD ROCHFORT, Anne Boleyn's father, 'Take this learned Doctor down
to your country-house, and there let him have a good room for a
study, and no end of books out of which to prove that I may marry
your daughter.' Lord Rochfort, not at all reluctant, made the
&nbs
p; learned Doctor as comfortable as he could; and the learned Doctor
went to work to prove his case. All this time, the King and Anne
Boleyn were writing letters to one another almost daily, full of
impatience to have the case settled; and Anne Boleyn was showing
herself (as I think) very worthy of the fate which afterwards befel
her.
It was bad for Cardinal Wolsey that he had left Cranmer to render
this help. It was worse for him that he had tried to dissuade the
King from marrying Anne Boleyn. Such a servant as he, to such a
master as Henry, would probably have fallen in any case; but,
between the hatred of the party of the Queen that was, and the
hatred of the party of the Queen that was to be, he fell suddenly
and heavily. Going down one day to the Court of Chancery, where he
now presided, he was waited upon by the Dukes of Norfolk and
Suffolk, who told him that they brought an order to him to resign
that office, and to withdraw quietly to a house he had at Esher, in
Surrey. The Cardinal refusing, they rode off to the King; and next
day came back with a letter from him, on reading which, the
Page 155
Dickens, Charles - A Child's History of England
Cardinal submitted. An inventory was made out of all the riches in
his palace at York Place (now Whitehall), and he went sorrowfully
up the river, in his barge, to Putney. An abject man he was, in
spite of his pride; for being overtaken, riding out of that place
towards Esher, by one of the King's chamberlains who brought him a
kind message and a ring, he alighted from his mule, took off his
cap, and kneeled down in the dirt. His poor Fool, whom in his
prosperous days he had always kept in his palace to entertain him,
cut a far better figure than he; for, when the Cardinal said to the
chamberlain that he had nothing to send to his lord the King as a
present, but that jester who was a most excellent one, it took six
strong yeomen to remove the faithful fool from his master.
The once proud Cardinal was soon further disgraced, and wrote the
most abject letters to his vile sovereign; who humbled him one day
and encouraged him the next, according to his humour, until he was
at last ordered to go and reside in his diocese of York. He said
he was too poor; but I don't know how he made that out, for he took
a hundred and sixty servants with him, and seventy-two cart-loads
of furniture, food, and wine. He remained in that part of the
country for the best part of a year, and showed himself so improved
by his misfortunes, and was so mild and so conciliating, that he
won all hearts. And indeed, even in his proud days, he had done
some magnificent things for learning and education. At last, he
was arrested for high treason; and, coming slowly on his journey
towards London, got as far as Leicester. Arriving at Leicester
Abbey after dark, and very ill, he said - when the monks came out
at the gate with lighted torches to receive him - that he had come
to lay his bones among them. He had indeed; for he was taken to a
bed, from which he never rose again. His last words were, 'Had I
but served God as diligently as I have served the King, He would
not have given me over, in my grey hairs. Howbeit, this is my just
reward for my pains and diligence, not regarding my service to God,
but only my duty to my prince.' The news of his death was quickly
carried to the King, who was amusing himself with archery in the
garden of the magnificent Palace at Hampton Court, which that very
Wolsey had presented to him. The greatest emotion his royal mind
displayed at the loss of a servant so faithful and so ruined, was a
particular desire to lay hold of fifteen hundred pounds which the
Cardinal was reported to have hidden somewhere.
The opinions concerning the divorce, of the learned doctors and
bishops and others, being at last collected, and being generally in
the King's favour, were forwarded to the Pope, with an entreaty
that he would now grant it. The unfortunate Pope, who was a timid
man, was half distracted between his fear of his authority being
set aside in England if he did not do as he was asked, and his
dread of offending the Emperor of Germany, who was Queen
Catherine's nephew. In this state of mind he still evaded and did
nothing. Then, THOMAS CROMWELL, who had been one of Wolsey's
faithful attendants, and had remained so even in his decline,
advised the King to take the matter into his own hands, and make
himself the head of the whole Church. This, the King by various
artful means, began to do; but he recompensed the clergy by
allowing them to burn as many people as they pleased, for holding
Luther's opinions. You must understand that Sir Thomas More, the
wise man who had helped the King with his book, had been made
Chancellor in Wolsey's place. But, as he was truly attached to the
Church as it was even in its abuses, he, in this state of things,
resigned.
Being now quite resolved to get rid of Queen Catherine, and to
marry Anne Boleyn without more ado, the King made Cranmer
Archbishop of Canterbury, and directed Queen Catherine to leave the
Page 156
Dickens, Charles - A Child's History of England
Court. She obeyed; but replied that wherever she went, she was
Queen of England still, and would remain so, to the last. The King
then married Anne Boleyn privately; and the new Archbishop of
Canterbury, within half a year, declared his marriage with Queen
Catherine void, and crowned Anne Boleyn Queen.
She might have known that no good could ever come from such wrong,
and that the corpulent brute who had been so faithless and so cruel
to his first wife, could be more faithless and more cruel to his
second. She might have known that, even when he was in love with
her, he had been a mean and selfish coward, running away, like a
frightened cur, from her society and her house, when a dangerous
sickness broke out in it, and when she might easily have taken it
and died, as several of the household did. But, Anne Boleyn
arrived at all this knowledge too late, and bought it at a dear
price. Her bad marriage with a worse man came to its natural end.
Its natural end was not, as we shall too soon see, a natural death
for her.
CHAPTER XXVIII - ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE EIGHTH
PART THE SECOND
THE Pope was thrown into a very angry state of mind when he heard
of the King's marriage, and fumed exceedingly. Many of the English
monks and friars, seeing that their order was in danger, did the
same; some even declaimed against the King in church before his
face, and were not to be stopped until he himself roared out
'Silence!' The King, not much the worse for this, took it pretty
quietly; and was very glad when his Queen gave birth to a daughter,
who was christened ELIZABETH, and declared Princess of Wales as her
sister Mary had already been.
One of the most atrocious features of this reign was that Henry the
Eighth was always trimming between
the reformed religion and the
unreformed one; so that the more he quarrelled with the Pope, the
more of his own subjects he roasted alive for not holding the
Pope's opinions. Thus, an unfortunate student named John Frith,
and a poor simple tailor named Andrew Hewet who loved him very
much, and said that whatever John Frith believed HE believed, were
burnt in Smithfield - to show what a capital Christian the King
was.
But, these were speedily followed by two much greater victims, Sir
Thomas More, and John Fisher, the Bishop of Rochester. The latter,
who was a good and amiable old man, had committed no greater
offence than believing in Elizabeth Barton, called the Maid of Kent
- another of those ridiculous women who pretended to be inspired,
and to make all sorts of heavenly revelations, though they indeed
uttered nothing but evil nonsense. For this offence - as it was
pretended, but really for denying the King to be the supreme Head
of the Church - he got into trouble, and was put in prison; but,
even then, he might have been suffered to die naturally (short work
having been made of executing the Kentish Maid and her principal
followers), but that the Pope, to spite the King, resolved to make
him a cardinal. Upon that the King made a ferocious joke to the
effect that the Pope might send Fisher a red hat - which is the way
they make a cardinal - but he should have no head on which to wear
it; and he was tried with all unfairness and injustice, and
Page 157
Dickens, Charles - A Child's History of England
sentenced to death. He died like a noble and virtuous old man, and
left a worthy name behind him. The King supposed, I dare say, that
Sir Thomas More would be frightened by this example; but, as he was
not to be easily terrified, and, thoroughly believing in the Pope,
had made up his mind that the King was not the rightful Head of the
Church, he positively refused to say that he was. For this crime
he too was tried and sentenced, after having been in prison a whole
year. When he was doomed to death, and came away from his trial
with the edge of the executioner's axe turned towards him - as was
always done in those times when a state prisoner came to that
hopeless pass - he bore it quite serenely, and gave his blessing to
his son, who pressed through the crowd in Westminster Hall and