Part 5

We shall gain further and not uninteresting knowledge of Henry's character if we look at certain side lights which history throws upon it. We turn therefore, in another note, to look for a few moments at the men, the movements, the drift, the institutions of his time, and observe how he bore himself towards them.

HENRY AND HIS COMPEERS.

NOTE VII.

In Henry's time, and in every time, the art of judging women has been a very imperfect one. It is an imperfect art still and, as long as it takes for granted that women are radically unlike men, so long it will remain imperfect. But Henry was a good judge of one sex at any rate, for he was helped by the most capable men then living, and in reality he tolerated no stupidity--except in his wives. In an era of theological change it was perhaps an unfortunate circumstance that he was better helped in his politics than in his theology. Wolsey, although a Cardinal and even a candidate for the Papal chair, was to all intents and purposes a practical statesman. Had he succeeded in becoming a Pope he would nevertheless have remained a mere politician. Wolsey, then, and Cromwell and More were all distinctly abler men than Cranmer or Latimer or Gardiner.

But Henry himself, looking at him in all that he was and in all that he did, was not unworthy of his helpers. There were then living in Europe some of the most enduring names in history. More, it is true, was made of finer clay than the king; Erasmus was not only the loftiest figure of his time--he is one of the loftiest of any time; but Henry was also a great personality and easily held his own in the front rank of European personalities. As a ruler no potentate of his time--royal, imperial or papal--could for a moment compare with him. Of all known Englishmen he was the fittest to be King of England. Had it been Henry's fortune to have had one or two or even three wives only, our school histories would have contained a chapter entitled "How 'Henry the Good' steered his country safely through its greatest storm." He played many parts with striking ability. He was probably as great a statesman as Wolsey or More or Cromwell. He would certainly have made a better archbishop than Cranmer; a better bishop than Latimer or Gardiner; he was a better soldier than Norfolk. What then might he have been had he been a statesman only, or a diplomatist or an ecclesiastic or a soldier only?

In all the parts he played, save the part of husband, his unimpassioned temperament stood him in good stead. A man's attitudes to his fellow-men and to the movements of his time are, on the whole, determined more by his intellect than by his feeling. The emotions indeed are very disturbing elements. They have, it is true, made or helped to make a few careers; but they have destroyed many more. Very curiously, Henry's compeers were, most of them, like himself--unimpassioned men. Latimer, who was perhaps an exception, preached sermons at Paul's Cross brimful of a passion which Henry admired but did not understand. Cranmer too was a man of undoubted feeling and strong affection. It is said there is sometimes a magnetic charm between the unlike in temperament; strong friendships certainly exist between them; and it is to Henry's credit that to the last he kept near to him a man so unlike himself. Cranmer was a kindly, sympathetic, helpful, good soul, but not a saint. He was not one of those to whom Gracian refers as becoming bad out of pure goodness. Cranmer was a capable and a strong man, but he was not supremely capable or supremely strong. He was free from the worst of human evils--'cocksureness.' The acute Spaniard just named says that "every blockhead is thoroughly persuaded that he is in the right;" Cranmer was less of a blockhead than most of his compeers. Left to his own instincts, he preferred to live and let others live. Cranmer had not the loftiness (nor the hardness and inflexibility) of a More; not the genius and grace and scholarship of an Erasmus; not the definite purpose and iron will of a Cromwell; not the fire of a Latimer; not the clear sight and grasp of a Gardiner; not the sagacity and varied gifts of a Henry; but for my part I would have chosen him before all his fellows (certainly his English fellows) to advise with and to confide in. Of all the tables and the roofs of that time I should have preferred to sit at his table and sleep under his roof. The great luminaries who guide in revolutions are rare, and the smaller lights of smaller circumstance are not rare; but--the question is not easy to answer--which could we best spare, if we were compelled to choose, the towering lighthouse of exceptional storm or the cheery lamp of daily life?

One figure of Henry's times which never fails to interest us is that of Sir Thomas More. More was clearly one of the unimpassioned class; but his commanding intellect, his quick response to high influences, his capability of forming noble friendships, and his lofty ideals seemed to dispense with the need of deep emotions. More and Henry, indeed, were much alike in many ways. Both were precocious in early life; both were quick, alert, practical; both were able; both, to the outside world at least, were genial, affable, attractive; both also, alas, were fitful, censorious, difficult to please; both were self-confident--one confident enough to kill, the other confident enough to be killed. Had they changed places in the greatest crisis of their lives Henry would have rejected More's headship of the Church and More would have sent Henry to the block.

In order to understand More's character correctly we must recognise the changing waves of circumstance through which he passed. There were in fact two Mores, the earlier and the later. The earlier More was an unembittered and independent thinker; the seeming spirit of independence however was, in a great degree, merely the spirit of contradiction. He was a friend of education and the new learning. He advocated reform in religion; but reform, be it noted, before the Reformation, reform gently and from within; reform when kings and scholars and popes themselves all asked for it. History, unhappily, tells of much reform on the lips which doggedly refused to translate itself into practice. The earlier More was all for reform in principle, but he invariably disapproved of it in detail. The later and in some degree embittered More was thrown by temperament, by the natural bias of increasing years and by the exigencies of combat, into the ecclesiastical and reactionary camp, and in that camp his conduct was stained by cruel inquisitorial methods.

The deteriorating effects of conflict (which happily grow less in each successive century) on individuals as well as on parties and peoples is seen in another notable though very different character of More's century. Savonarola, before his bitter fight with Florentine and Roman powers, was a large, clear-sighted, sane reformer; after the fight he became blind, fanatical, and insane. Why may we not combine all thankfulness for the early More and the early Savonarola, and all compassion for the later More and later Savonarola? Mary Stuart, Francis Bacon, Robert Burns, Napoleon Buonapart, and Lord Byron were notable personalities; they--some of them at least--did the world service which others did not and could not do. Yet how many of us are there who, if admitting to the full their greatness, do not belittle their follies? or, if freely admitting their follies, do not belittle their greatness?

Wolsey, holding aloof from religious strife, remained simply the scholar and the politician--a politician moreover before politics became in their turn also a matter of hostile camps. Being a politician only, he continued to be merciful while More drifted from politics and mercy into ecclesiasticism and cruelty. More's change was in itself evidence of a fitful and passionless temperament, of such evidence indeed there is no lack. His first public action was one of petulance and self-importance. He had been treated with continued and exceptional kindness by Cardinal Morton and Henry VII.; but when Morton, on behalf of his king, asked parliament for a subsidy, the newly-elected More, conscious of his powers, and thinking too, may we not say, much more of a people's applause than of a people's burdens, successfully urged its reduction to one half.

More was by nature censorious, and never heartily approved of anything. When Wolsey, on submitting a proposal to him with the usual result, told him--told him it would seem in the unvarnished language of the time--that he stood alone in his disapproval, and that he was a fool, More, with ready wit and affected humility, rejoined that he thanked God that he was the only fool on the King's Council. More, we may be quite sure, was not conscious of a spirit of contradiction; he probably felt that his first duty was to suggest to everybody some improvement in everything. This spirit of antagonism nevertheless played a leading part in his changeful life. In his early years he found orthodoxy rampant and defiant, consequently he inclined to heresy; at a later period heresy became rampant and defiant, and as inevitably he returned to the older faith and views. A modern scholar and piquant censor, and--I gather from his own writings, the only knowledge I have of him--an extreme specimen of the unimpassioned temperament, Mark Pattison, says that he never saw anything without suggesting how it might have been better; and that every time he entered a railway carriage he worked out a better time table than the one in use. If More had lived in his own Utopia he would have found fault with it, and drawn in imagination another and a better land. The later More was, as all unimpassioned and censorious temperaments are, a prophet of evil; and as much evil did happen--was sure to happen--his wisdom has come down to us somewhat greater in appearance than it was in reality.

The cruelty of the Tudor epoch has already been spoken of. Catholics and protestants, kings, popes, cardinals, ministers, Luthers, Calvins, Knoxes were all stained by it. Henry and More, we know, were no exceptions. But More's cruelty differed from Henry's in one important respect--there was nothing appertaining to self in it, except self-confidence. Henry's cruelty was in the interest of himself--his person, his family, and his throne; More's cruelty, although less limited perhaps, and more dangerous, was nevertheless in the interest of religion.

HENRY AND HIS PEOPLE AND PARLIAMENT.

NOTE VIII.

It is in his attitude to his people and his parliament that we see Henry at his best. His sagacity did not show itself in any deliberate or deeply reasoned policy, certainly not, we may allow with Dr. Stubbs, in any great act of "constructive genius;" it showed itself in seeing clearly the difficulties of the hour and the day, and in the hourly and daily success with which they were met. Henry and his father presided over the introduction of a new order of things, which new order, however, was a step only, not a cataclysm. They themselves scarcely knew the significance of the step or how worthily they presided over it. The world, indeed, knows little--history says little--of great and sudden acts of constructive genius. These gradually emerge from the growth of peoples; they do not spring from the brains of individuals royal or otherwise. If the vision of a ruler is clear and his aims good, he, more than others, may help on organic and beneficent growth. Full-blown schemes and policies, even if marked by genius, are rarely helpful and not infrequently they end in hindrance or even in explosion. The Stuarts had a large "scheme" touching church and king. It was a scheme of "all in all or not at all;" for them and their dynasty it ended in "not at all." French history is brimful of "great acts of constructive genius" and has none of the products of development. For Celtic history is indeed a sad succession of fits, and not a process of quiet growth. How a succession of fits will end, and how growth will end, it is not difficult to foretel.

The government of peoples is for the most part and in the long run that which they deserve, that which they are best fitted for, and not at all that which, it may be, they wish for and cry out for. A people ready--fairly and throughout all strata ready--for that which they demand will not long demand in vain. Our fathers, under the Tudor Henrys and the Tudor Elizabeth, had the rule which was best fitted for them, which they asked for, which they deserved--a significant morsel, by the bye, of racial circumstance. It by no means follows, let it be noted, that what people and king together approved of was the ideal or the wisest. It is with policies as with all things else, the fittest, not the best, continue to hold the field.

Henry and Elizabeth had not only clearness of sight, but flexibility of mind also, and would doubtless have ruled over Puritan England with success; it lay in them to rule well over our modern England also. Charles I., by organisation and proclivity, would have fared badly at the hands of a Tudor parliament, and, again as a result of organisation and proclivity, Henry VIII. and the Long Parliament would have been excellent friends. Hand to mouth government, if it is also capable, is probably the best government for a revolutionary time. Conflicting parties are often kept quiet by mere suspense--by mingled hopes and fears. It has been well said of Henry of Navarre that he kept France, the home of political whirlwinds, tranquil for a time because the Protestants believed him to be a Protestant and the Catholics believed he was about to become a Catholic.

The majority of historians and all the compilers of history tell us that Henry's parliaments were abject and servile. The statement is politically misleading and is also improbable on the grounds of organisation and race. It is one of many illustrations of the vice of purely literary judgments on men and movements; a vice which takes no account of physiology, of race, of organisation and proclivity. For we may be well assured that the grandsons of brave men and the grandfathers of brave men are never themselves cowards. One and the same people--especially a slow, steadfast, and growing people--does not put its neck under the foot of one king to-day and cut off the head of another king to-morrow. It is not difficult to see how the misconception arose: in a time of great trial the king and the people were agreed both in politics and in religion. The people held the king's views; they admired his sagacity; they trusted in his honour. If a brother is attached to his brother and does not quarrel with him, is he therefore poor-spirited? If by rare chance a servant sees, possibly on good grounds, a hero in his master, is he therefore a poltroon? If a parliament and a king see eye to eye, is it just to label the parliament throughout history as an abject parliament?

Henry's epoch, moreover, was not one of marked political excitement, and therefore the hasty observer jumps to the conclusion that it was not one of political independence. In each individual, in each community, in each people there is a sum-total of nerve force. In a given amount of brain substance--one brain or many--in a given amount of brain nutriment of brain vitality, there is a given quantity of nerve power. This totality of power will show itself it may be in one way strongly or in several ways less strongly; it cannot be increased, it cannot be lessened. On purely physiological grounds it may be affirmed that Bacon could not have thought and written all his own work and at the same time have also thought and written the life-work of Shakspere. Shakspere could not have added Bacon's investigations to his own 'intuitions.' In our own time Carlyle could not have written "The French Revolution" and "The Descent of Man;" he could not have gone through the two trainings, gained the two knowledges, and lived the two lives which led to the two works. So it is with universities: when scholarship is robust, theology limps; and during the Tractarian excitement, so a great scholar affirms, learning in Oxford sank to a lower level. So with peoples: in a literary age religious feeling is less earnest; in a time of political excitement both religion and literature suffer. Henry's era was one of abounding theological activity: Luthers, Calvins, and (later) Knoxes came to the front, and the front could not, never can, hold many dominant and also differing spirits. In Elizabeth's time Marlowes and Shaksperes and Spensers were master spirits, and master spirits are never numerous. No doubt as civilisation goes on great men and great movements learn to move, never equally perhaps but more easily, side by side: more leaders come to the front--but is the front as brilliant? Choice spirits are more numerous--but are the spirits quite as choice? Another and a less partial generation must decide.

"But," say the few observers and the crowd of compilers, "only a servile parliament would have given the king permission to issue proclamations having the authority of law." But the people, it cannot be too emphatically repeated, were neither creatures crawling in the mire nor red-tapists terrified at every innovation; they trusted the king, and he did not violate their trust. The proclamations, so it was stipulated, were not to tamper with existing laws; they were to meet exigencies in an epoch of exigencies, and they met them with a wisdom and a promptness which parliament could not come near. It is physiological proclivities--not red tape, not parchment clauses, not Magna Chartas--which keep a people free. It is rather red tape, and not the occasional snapping of red tape which enfeebles liberty. If the non-conformists, who by the bye detested Romanism more than they loved religion, had not rejected the declaration of indulgence of Charles II.--a declaration which gave to Romanists leave of worship as well as to non-conformists--does any sane person believe that English freedom would have been less than it now is? In our time a body of men who hate England more than they love Ireland have, of set purpose, tumbled parliament into the dust: now, if a capable and firm authority were entrusted for twelve months with exceptional yet absolute control over parliamentary procedure, does any sane person suppose that the English passion for free parliaments would be lulled to sleep? Rule has often to be cruel in order to be kind. Alas, the multitude is made up not of Cromwells, is indeed afraid of Cromwells. In total ignorance of racial proclivities, it foolishly believes that a Cromwellian speaker for twelve months would mean a Cromwellian speaker for ever.

NOTE ON HENRY AND THE REFORMATION.

NOTE IX.

It is a singular misreading of history to say that Henry did much directly or indirectly to help on the Reformation of the Church in this country, although the part he played was not a small one. Neither was the Reformation itself, grave and critical as it was, so sudden and volcanic an upheaval as is generally believed.

Luther himself did not put forward a single new idea. No man is thinker and fighter at once; at any rate, no man thinks and fights at the same moment. Luther struck his blows for already accomplished thought. Curious ideas of unknown dates--for history reveals mergings only, not beginnings, not endings, and the student of men and movements might well exclaim "nothing begins and nothing ends,"--ideas of unknown dates and unknown birth-places had slowly come into existence. In Teutonic Europe at least, the older ideas were becoming trivial and inadequate. It was the northern Europe, which from the earliest times had been dogged in its courage both bodily and mental; the Europe strong in that reverence for truth which rests on courage, which is inseparable from courage, which never exists apart from courage; the Europe strong in its respect for women; strong in its fearlessness of death, of darkness, of storm, of the sea-lion, the land monster, the unearthly ghost, and which was strong therefore in its fearlessness of hell-fire and priestly threats. Celtic Europe, especially Celtic Ireland, slept then and sleeps now the unbroken slumber of credulity. Credulity and fear are allied. Celtic Ireland was palsied then, and is palsied still, by the fear of what we may now call Father Furniss's hell. It is surely not difficult to recall and therefore not difficult to foretell the history of so widely differing races. Everywhere throughout Teutonic Europe, in castle and monastery, in mansion and cottage, the old-new ideas were talked over, drunk over, quarrelled over, shaken hands over, slept over. Everywhere the poets--the peoples' voices then, for the printed sheet, the coffee house, the club, were yet far off,--the poets, Lindsay, Barbour and others in Scotland; Langland, Skelton and others in England had, long before, pelted preachers and preaching with their bitterest gibes. Those poets little knew how narrowly they escaped with their lives; they escaped because they shouted their fierce diatribes just before not just after the strife of battle. They had flashed out the signals of undying warfare, but before the signals could be interpreted the signallers had died in their beds. Thought, inquiry, discussion, printing, poetry, the new learning, the older Lollardry had moved on with quiet steps. A less quiet step was at hand, but this also, if less quiet, was as natural and as inevitable as the stealthiest of preceding steps. Europe had gradually become covered with a network of universities, and students of every nationality were constantly passing from one to another. One common language, Latin, bound university to university and thinking men to thinking men. He who spoke to one spoke to all. The time was a sort of hot-house, and the growth of man was "forced." Reaction attends on action, but in the main, studious men made the universities--not universities the studious men; in like-manner good men have made religions, not religions so much good men. Ideas and opinions quickly became common property; sooner or later they filtered down from the Latin phrase to home-spun talk; filtered down also from the university to the town, village, and busy highway.

The Papacy itself had made Papal rule impossible to vigorous peoples. With curiously narrow ambition Popes have always preferred even limited temporal importance to unlimited spiritual sway. Two Popes, nay at one time three, had struggled not for the supremacy of religion but for merely personal pre-eminence. Popes had fought Popes, councils had fought councils, and each had called in the friendly infidel to fight the catholic enemy. The catholic sack of catholic Rome had been accompanied by greater lust and more copious bloodshed than the sack of Rome in olden time by northern Infidels. The teachings, claims, and crimes native to Rome, nay, even the imported refinements of the arts and letters and elegancies of Paganism did what legions of full-blown Luthers could not have done.

The Reformation, with its complex causes, its complex methods, its complex products, is, more than other great movements, brimful of matter for observation, thought, and inference.

The French Revolution was but one of a series of fierce uprisings of a race which rises and slaughters whenever it has a chance. French history teems with slaughters both in time of peace and time of war. Mediaeval French Kings dared not arm their peasants with bows and arrows, for otherwise not a nobleman or a gentleman would have been left alive. At the close of the eighteenth century in France the oppression was heavy, the opportunity was large, and the uprising was ferocious. No other people have ever shown such a spectacle, and it is therefore idle to compare other great national movements with it. French history stands alone: no oppressor can oppress like the French oppressor; no retaliator can retaliate like the French retaliator. It is a question much less of politics than of organisation and race. But to return.

Mr. Carlyle, in his own rousing way and on a subject which deeply interests him--Luther and the Reformation--mingles fine literary vigour with an indifference to physiological teaching which is by no means habitual with him. The heaven-born hero tells us what has become false and unreal, and shows us--it is his special business--how we may go back to truth and reality. The humbler student believes that we are constantly journeying towards truth and reality--these lie not behind but in front of us. The school of prophets tells us that the hero alights in front of us and stands apart. The student declares that we all move together; that we partly make our heroes, and partly they make us; that we have grades of heroes; that they are not at all supernatural--we touch them, see them, know them, send them to the front, keep them and dismiss them at our will, or what seems our will. Carlyle affirms that modern civilisation took its rise from the great scene at Worms. The truths of organisation, of body, of brain, of race, of parentage would rather say that civilisation itself was not born of but in reality gave rise to Luther and the scene at Worms. The Reformation did not give private judgment; private judgment gave the Reformation.