Part 4

No incident or series of incidents illustrative of character in any of its phases, no matter how striking the incidents, or how strong the character or phase of character, have ever happened once only. If libertinism, for example, had ever shown itself in the selection and destruction of numerous wives, history would assuredly give information pertinent thereto: it gives none. Nothing happens once only. Even the French Revolution, so frequently regarded as a unique event, was only one of several examples of the inherent and peculiar cruelty of the French celt. The massacre of Bartholomew was more revolting in its numbers and in its character. The massacre of the commune, French military massacres and various massacres in French history deprive the "great" Revolution of its exceptional character. But to return. There were licentious kings and princes before Henry, granting he was licentious, and there have been notably licentious kings and princes since: their methods are well known and they were wholly unlike his.

From historic comparison we may feel sure that no such cruelty was found in the Gothic and Frankish and Norman blood of France.

Certain incidents concerning Henry's marriages are of great physiological interest: a fat, bustling, restless, fitful, wilful man approaching mid-life--a man brim full of activity but deficient in feeling, waited twenty years before the idea of divorce was seriously entertained; and several more years of Papal shiftiness were endured, not without petulance enough, but seemingly without storm or whirlwind. When Jane Seymour died, three years of single life followed. It is true the three years were not without marriage projects, but they were entirely state projects, and were in no way voluptuous overtures. The marriage with Anne of Cleves was a purely state marriage, and remained, so historians tell us, a merely nominal and ceremonial marriage during the time the King and the German princess occupied the same bed--a circumstance not at all indicative of "monstrous" passion. The very unfaithfulness of Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard is not without its significance, for the proceedings of our Divorce Court show that as a rule (a rule it is true not without exceptions) we do not find the wives of lustful men to be unfaithful. In the case of a Burns or a Byron or a King David it is not the wife who is led astray; it is the wives of the Henrys and the Arthurs, strikingly dissimilar as they were in so many respects, who are led into temptation.

No sane man is the embodiment of a single passion. Save in the wards of a lunatic asylum a simple monster of voluptuousness, or monster of anger, or monster of hate has no existence; and within those wards such monsters are undoubted examples of nerve ailment. It is true one (very rarely one only) passion may unduly predominate--one or more may be fostered and others may be dwarfed; but as a very general rule the deeper passions run together. One passion, if unequivocally present, denotes the existence of other passions, palpable or latent--denotes the existence, in fact, of the impassioned temperament. Henry VIII., startling as the statement may seem, had no single, deep, unequivocal passion--no deep love, no profound pity, no overwhelming grief, no implacable hate, no furious anger. The noisy petulance of a busy, censorious, irritable man and the fretfulness of an invalid are frequently misunderstood. On no single occasion did Henry exhibit overmastering anger. Historians note with evident surprise that he received the conclusion of the most insulting farce in history--the Campeggio farce--with composure. When the Bishop of Rochester thrust himself, unbidden, into the Campeggio Court in order to denounce the king and the divorce, Henry's only answer was a long and learned essay on the degrees of incestuous marriage which the Pope might or might not permit. When his own chaplains scolded him, in coarse terms, in his own chapel, he listened, not always without peevishness, but always without anger. Turning to other emotions, no hint is given of Henry's grief at the loss of son after son in his earlier married years. If a husband of even ordinary affection could ever have felt grief, it would surely show itself when a young wife and a young mother died in giving birth to a long-wished-for son and heir. Not a syllable is said of Henry's grief at Jane Seymour's death; and three weeks after he was intriguing for a Continental, state, and purely diplomatic marriage. It is true that he paraded a sort of fussy affection for the young prince Edward--carried him indeed through the state apartments in his own royal arms; but the less impassioned temperament is often more openly demonstrative than the impassioned, especially when the public ear listens and the public eye watches. Those who caress in public attach as a rule but little meaning to caresses. If Henry's affections were small we have seen that his self-importance was colossal; and the very defections--terrible to some natures--of Anne Boleyn and of Catherine Howard wounded his importance much more deeply than they wounded his affections.

If we limit our attention for a moment to the question of deep feeling, we cannot but see how unlike Henry was to the impassioned men of history. Passionate king David, for example, would not have waited seven years while a commission decided upon his proposed relationship to Bathsheba; and the cold Henry could not have flung his soul into a fiery psalm. The impassioned Burns could not have said a last farewell to the mother of his helpless babe without moistening the dust with his tears, while Henry could never have understood why many strong men cannot read the second verse of "John Anderson my Jo" with an unbroken voice.

THE LESS CHARACTERISTIC FEATURES OF HENRY'S CHARACTER.

NOTE V.

It is well now, after considering the question of Henry's parentage and organisation, to look again and a little more closely, at certain significant features in his character--his caprice, his captiousness, his love of applause, his self-will, self-confidence, and self-importance. These elements of character frequently run together in equal or unequal degrees, and they are extremely characteristic of the more markedly passionless temperament. But before doing this it is well to look, in a brief note, at some features of Henry's character which are found in the less impassioned and the more impassioned temperaments alike. Both temperaments, for example, may be cruel or kindly; both may tend to conservatism or to innovation; pious persons or worldly may be found in both. But the cruelty or kindliness, the conservatism or innovation, the piety or worldliness differ in the different temperaments--they differ in their motives, in their methods, in their aims.

The cruelty of the unimpassioned man is, for the most part, a reckless disregard for the happiness or well-being or (in mediaeval times especially) for the lives of those who stand in his way or thwart his plans or lessen his self-importance. Such cruelty is more wayward resentful and transitory than deliberative or implacable or persistent. The cruelty of the impassioned man is perhaps the darkest of human passions. It is the cruelty born of hate--cruelty contrived with deliberation and watched with glee. Happily it is a kind which lessens with the growth of civilisation. Often it attends on the strong convictions of strong natures obeying strong commands--commands which are always strongest when they are believed to have a supernatural origin; for belief in supernaturalism is the natural enemy of mercy; it demands obedience and forbids compassion. Cruelty was at its worst when supernatural beliefs were strongest; for happily natural reason has grown, and supernatural belief has dwindled. The unimpassioned and the impassioned temperaments may alike scale the highest or descend to the lowest levels of character, although probably the most hateful level of human degredation is reached by the more impassioned nature. It cannot be denied that, even for his time, Henry had a certain unmistakable dash of cruelty in his composition. A grandson of Edward IV., who closely resembled his grandfather, could not well be free from it. But the cruelty of Henry, like that of Edward, was cruelty of the passionless type. He swept aside--swept too often out of existence--those who defied his will or lessened his importance.

How much of Henry's cruelty was due to the resolve to put down opposition, how much was due to passing resentment and caprice, and how much, if any, to the delight of inflicting pain, not even Henry's compeers could easily have said. His cruelty in keeping the solitary Mary apart from her solitary mother was singularly persistent in so fickle a man; but even here weak fear and a weak policy were stronger than cruel feeling. It was Henry's way of meeting persistent obstinacy. It is needless to discuss the cruelty of the executions on religious grounds during Henry's reign; they were the order of the day and were sanctioned by the merciful and the unmerciful alike. But Henry's treatment of high personages was a much deeper stain--deeper than the stain of his matrimonial affairs. People and parliament earnestly prayed for a royal son and heir, but no serious or popular prayer was ever offered up for the heads of Fisher or More or Lady Salisbury. Henry's cruelty had always practical ends in view. Great officials who had failed, or who were done with, were officials in the way, and their heads might be left to the care of those who were at once their rivals and their enemies. The execution of Lady Salisbury will never fail to rouse indignation as long as history is history and men are men. Henry might have learned a noble lesson from his father. Henry VII. put his own intriguing mother-in-law into a religious house, and the proper destination of a female Yorkist intriguer--no matter how high or powerful--was a convent, not a scaffold. In the execution of Elizabeth Barton meanness was added to cruelty, for the wretched woman confessed her impostures and exposed the priests who contrived them for her. The cruelty which shocked Europe most, and has shocked it ever since, was the execution of Sir Thomas More. More's approval would have greatly consoled the King, but More's approval fell far short of the King's demands. The silence of great men does not give consent, and More was silent. More was, next to Erasmus, the loftiest intellect then living on this planet. Throughout Europe men were asking what More thought of "the King's matter." More's head was the only answer. But however indignant we may be, let us not be unjust; Henry, cruel as he was, was less cruel than any of his compeers--royal, imperial, or papal, or other. The cruelty of our Tudor ruler has always been put under a fierce light; the greater cruelty of distant rulers we are too prone to disregard. We are too prone also to forget that the one thing new under the sun in our time is greater kindliness--kindliness to life, to opinion, to pocket. If fate had put a crown on Luther's head, or Calvin's, or later, on Knox's, their methods would have been more stringent than Henry's. Henry and his Parliament, it is true, proposed an Act of Parliament "to abolish diversity of opinion in matters of religion." But Luther and Calvin and Knox, nay even More (Erasmus alone stood on a higher level), were each and all confident of their possession of the one truth and of their infallibility as interpreters thereof; each and all were ready, had the power been theirs, to abolish "diversity of religious opinion."

There are two kinds of religion, or at any rate two varieties of religious character--both are sincere--the religion of the active and passionless and that of the reflective and impassioned. One is a religion of inheritance, of training, of habit, of early and vivid perception; with certain surroundings it is inevitable; if shaken off it returns. George Eliot acutely remarks of one of her notably passionless characters, "His first opinions remained unchanged, as they always do with those in whom perception is stronger than thought and emotion." The other is a religion (two extremes are spoken of here, but every intermediate gradation exists) a religion of thought and emotion, of investigation and introspection. It is marked by deep love of an ideal or real good, and deep hate of what may also often be called an ideal or real evil. Henry's religion was of the first sort. It would be deeply interesting to know the sort of religion of the great names of Henry's time. We lack however the needful light on their organisation, parentage, and circumstance. But in all the provinces of life the men who have imprinted their names on history have been for the most part active, practical, and unimpassioned men. They, in their turn, have owed much to the impassioned, thinking, and often unpractical men whose names history has not troubled itself to preserve.

And now, in the light shed by organisation and inheritance, we may gain further information on the more characteristic features of Henry's character--his caprice, his captiousness, his uncertainty, and his peevishness, his resolve never to be hidden or unfelt or forgotten.

THE MORE CHARACTERISTIC FEATURES OF HENRY'S CHARACTER.

NOTE VI.

Henry was always doing something or undoing something. Whether he was addressing Parliament, admonishing and instructing subordinates, or exhorting heretics; whether he was restoring order in Northern England, or (with much wisdom) introducing order into Wales, or (with much folly) disorder into Scotland; whether he was writing letters to Irish chieftains or Scottish councillors, or Northern pilgrims; whether he was defending the Faith or destroying religious houses; whether he was putting together six articles to the delight of Catholics, or dropping them in a few weeks to the exultation of Protestants; whether burning those who denied the miracle of the Real Presence, or hanging those who denied his headship of the Church; whether he was changing a Minister, a Bishop, or a wife, his hands were always full. And in Henry's case at least--probably in most cases--Satan found much mischief for busy hands to do.

The man who is never at rest is usually a fitful man. Constant change, whether of ministers or of views or of plans, is in itself fitfulness. But fitfulness is something more than activity: it implies an uncertainty of thought or conduct which forbids calculation or prediction, and therefore forbids confidence; it is an inborn proclivity. Happily vigorous reasoning power often accompanies it and keeps it in check. In poorly endowed intellects, whether in men or women, fitfulness and its almost constant associate petulance harass many circles and many hearths.

It is recorded that when the disgraced Wolsey took his departure from Court, the King sent after him a hurried messenger with a valuable ring and comforting words. The incident has excited much perplexity and comment among historians. What was its meaning? what its object? Probably the incident had no precise meaning; probably it was merely the involuntary deed of an irresistible constitutional tendency; possibly, too, there lurked in the motive which led to it some idea of future change and exigency. The active, practical, serviceable man sows many seeds and keeps on sowing them. Time and circumstance mainly decide which seeds shall grow and which shall not. Caprice is not unfrequently associated with high faculties. Sometimes it would seem to be due to the gift--not a common one--of seeing many sides of a question, and of seeing these so vividly that action is thereby enfeebled or frequently changed. Sometimes it is a conservative instinct which sees that a given step is too bold and must be retraced. It certainly is not selfishness: a long-pondered policy is often dashed to the ground in an instant, or a long-sought friendship is ended by a moment's insult. At root caprice is an inborn constitutional bias. Henry was the first powerful personage who declared that the Papal authority was Divine--declaring this, indeed, with so much fervour that the good Catholic More expostulated with him. But Henry was also the first high personage who threw Papal authority to the winds. It is on record that Henry would have taken Wolsey into favour again had Wolsey lived. Not Wolsey only but all Henry's Ministers would have been employed and dismissed time after time could they but have contrived to keep their heads on their shoulders. Henry might even have re-married his wives had they lived long enough. One circumstance only would have lessened their chances--attractive women were more numerous than experts in statecraft: for one Wolsey there were a thousand fair women.

Habitual fitfulness, it has already been noted, is not often found apart from habitual petulance, and both these qualities were conspicuous in Henry's character. There was something almost impish in the spirit which led him to don gorgeous attire--men had not then got out of barbaric finery, and women are still in its bondage--on the day of Anne Boleyn's bloodshed. Nay more, there was undoubtedly a dash of cruelty in it, as there was in the acerbity which led him to exclaim that the Pope might send a Cardinal's hat to Fisher, but he would take care that Fisher had no head to put it on. Now and then his whims were simply puerile; it was so when he signalised some triumph over a Continental potentate by a dolls' battle on the Thames. Two galleys, one carrying the Romish and the other the English decorations, met each other. After due conflict, the royalists boarded the papal galley and threw figures of the pope and sundry cardinals into the water--king and court loudly applauding. But again, let us not forget that those days were more deeply stained than ours with puerility and cruelty and spite. More, it is true, rose above the puerility of his time; Erasmus rose above both its cruelty and its puerility; Henry rose above neither.

No charge is brought against Henry with more unanimity and vehemence than that of selfishness. And the charge is not altogether a baseless one; but the selfishness which stained Henry's character is not the selfishness he is accused of. When Henry is said to have been a monster of selfishness it is implied that he was a monster of self-indulgence. He was not that--he was the opposite of that. He was in reality a monster of self-importance, and extreme personal importance is incompatible with gross personal indulgence. Self-indulgence is the failing of the impassioned, especially when the mental gifts are poor; while self-importance is the failing of the passionless, especially when the mental gifts are rich. Let there be given three factors, an unimpassioned temperament, a vigorous intellect, and circumstance favourable to public life--committee life, municipal, platform, Parliamentary, or pulpit life--and self-importance is rarely wanting. This price we must sometimes pay for often quite invaluable service.

When Henry spoke--it is not infrequently so when the passionless and highly gifted individual speaks--the one unpardonable sin on the part of the listener was not to be convinced. A sin of a little less magnitude was to make a proposal to Henry. It implied that he was unable to cope with the problems which beset him and beset his time. He could not approve of what he himself did not originate; at any rate he put the alien proposal aside for the time--in a little time he might approve of it and it might then seem to be his own. The temperament which censured a matter yesterday will often applaud it to-day and put it in action to-morrow. The unimpassioned are prone to imitation, but they first condemn what they afterwards imitate. When Cromwell made the grave proposal touching the headship of the Church, Henry hesitated--nay, was probably shocked--at first. Yet, for Henry's purposes at least, it was Cromwell (and not Cranmer with his University scheme) who had "caught the right sow by the ear."

Henry had a boundless belief in the importance of the King; but this did not hinder, nay it helped him to believe in the importance of the people also--it helped him indeed to seek the more diligently their welfare, seeing that the more prosperous a people is, the more important is its King. True he always put himself first and the people second. How few leaders of men or movements do otherwise. Possibly William III. would have stepped down from his throne if it had been shown that another in his place could better curb the ambition of France abroad, or better secure the mutual toleration of religious parties at home. Possibly, nay probably, George Washington would have retired could he have seen that the attainment of American independence was more assured in other hands. Lloyd Garrison would have gladly retired into private life if another more quickly than he could have given freedom to the slave. John Bright would have willingly held his tongue if thereby another tongue could have spoken more powerfully for the good of his fellow-men. Such men can be counted on the fingers and Henry is not one of them. Henry would have denied (as would all his compeers in temperament) that he put himself first. He would have said; "I desire the people's good first and above all things;" but he would have significantly added; "Their good is safest in my hands."

It is a moot point in history whether Henry was led by his high officials or was followed by them. Did he, for example, direct Wolsey or did Wolsey (as is the common view) in reality lead his King while appearing to follow him. To me the balance of evidence, as well as the natural proclivities of Henry's character, favour the view that he thought and willed and acted for himself. Do we not indeed know too well the fate of those whose thought and will ran counter to his? No man's opinion and conduct are independent of his surroundings and his time; for every man, especially every monarch, must see much through other eyes and hear much through other ears. But if other eyes and other ears are numerous enough they will also be conflicting enough, and will strengthen rather than diminish the self-confidence and self-importance of the self-confident and self-important ruler.

Self-importance, as a rule, is built on a foundation of solid self-confidence, and Henry's confidence in himself was broad enough and deep enough to sustain any conceivable edifice. The Romish church was then, and had been for a thousand years, the strongest influence in Europe. It touched every event in men's bodily lives and decided also the fate of their immortal souls. Henry nevertheless had no misgiving as to his fitness to be the spiritual head of the Church in this country, or the spiritual head of the great globe itself, if the great globe had had one Church only.

When I come to speak of the Reformation I shall have to remark that, had the great European religious movement reached our island in any other reign than Henry's, religion would not have been exactly what it now is. Of all our rulers Henry was the only one who was at the same time willing enough, educated enough (he had been trained to be an Archbishop), able enough, and pious enough to be at any rate the first head of a great Church.

Henry was so sagacious that he never forgot the superiority of sagacity over force. He delighted in reasoning, teaching, exhorting; and he believed that while any ruler could command, few could argue and very few could convince. It is true, alas, that when individuals or bodies were not convinced if he spoke, he became unreasonably petulant. When Scotland did not accept a long string of unwise proposals he laid Leith in ashes. When Ireland did not yield to his wishes, he knocked a castle to atoms with cannon, and thereby so astonished Ireland, be it noted, that it remained peaceful and prosperous during the remainder of his reign.

Perhaps the happiest moments in Henry's life were those when he presided over courts of theological inquiry. To confute heresy was his chief delight; and his vanity was indulged to its utmost when the heretical Lambert was tried. Clothed in white silk, seated on a throne, surrounded by peers and bishops and learned doctors, he directed the momentous matters of this world and the next; he elucidated, expounded, and laid down the laws of both heaven and earth. It was a high day; one thing only marred its splendour--he, the first living defender of orthodoxy, had spoken and heterodoxy remained unconvinced. Heterodoxy must clearly be left to its just punishment, for bishops, peers, and learned doctors were astonished at the display of so much eloquence, learning, and piety.

The physiological student of human nature who is much interested in the question of martyrdom finds, indeed, that the martyr-burner and the martyr (of whatever temperament) have much in common. Both believe themselves to possess assured and indisputable truth; both are infallible; both self-confident; both are prepared, in the interests of truth, to throw their neighbours into the fire if circumstance is favourable; both are willing to be themselves thrown into the fire if circumstance is adverse. One day they burn, the next day they are burnt.

The feature in Henry's character which as we have seen amounted to mania was his love of popularity; it was a mania which saved him from many evils. Even unbridled self-will does little harm if it be an unbridled self-will to stand well with a progressive people. It has been a matter of surprise to those who contend that Henry, seeing that he possessed--it is said usurped--a lion's power, did not use it with lion-like licence. His ingrained love of applause is the physiological explanation. Let it be noted, too, that not everyone who thirsts for popularity succeeds in obtaining it, for success demands several factors: behind popular applause there must be action, behind action must be self-confidence, behind self-confidence must be large capability. Henry had all these. In such a chain love of applause is the link least likely to be missing. For, indeed, what is the use of being active, capable, confident and important in a closet? The crow sings as sweetly as the nightingale if no one is listening, and importance is no better than insignificance if there is no one "there to see."