Part 57

Thus Anne Askew, a young and beautiful woman, was nearly wrenched asunder on the rack, in the hope of making her implicate the Queen in her heresy. She was afterward burned because she insisted that the bread and wine used in the communion service seemed to her to be simply bread and wine, and not in any sense the actual body and blood of Christ, as the King's statute of the Six Articles (S357) solemnly declared.

On the other hand, the aged Countess of Salisbury suffered for treason; but with a spirit matching the King's, she refused to kneel at the block, and told the executioner he must get her gray head off as best he could.

359. Henry's Death.

But the time was at hand when Henry was to cease his hangings, beheadings, and marriages. Worn out with debauchery, he died at the age of fifty-six, a loathsome, unwieldy, and helpless mass of corruption. In his will he left a large sum of money to pay for perpetual prayers for the repose of his soul. Sir Walter Raleigh said of him, "If all the pictures and patterns of a merciless prince were lost in the world, they might all again be painted to the life out of the story of this king."

It may be well to remember this, and along with it this other saying of one of the ablest writers on English constitutional history, that "the world owes some of tis greatest debts to men from whose memory it recoils." The obligation it is under to Henry VIII is that through his influence--no matter what the motive--England was lifted up out of the old medieval ruts, and placed squarely and securely on the new highway of national progress.

W. Stubbs's "Constitutional History of England."

360. Summary.

In this reign we find that though England lost much of her former political freedom, yet she gained that order and peace which came from the iron hand of absolute power. Next, from the destruction of the monasteries, and the sale or gift of their lands to favorites of the King, three results ensued:

1. A new nobility was in great measure created, dependent on the Crown. 2. The House of Lords was made less powerful by the removal of the abbots who had had seats in it. 3. Pauperism and distress were temporarily increased. 4. Finally, England completely severed her connection with the Pope, and established for the first time an independent National Church, having the King as its head.

Edward VI--1547-1553

361. Bad Government; Seizure of Unenclosed Lands; High Rents; Latimer's Sermon.

Edward, son of Henry VIII by Jane Seymour (S355), died at sixteen. In the first part of his reign of six years the goverment was managed by his uncle, the Duke of Somerset, an extreme Protestant, whose intentions were good, but who lacked practical judgement. During the latter part of his life Edward fell under the control of the Duke of Northumberland, who was the head of a band of scheming and profligate men.

They, with other nobles, seized the unenclosed lands of the country and fenced them in for sheep pastures, thus driving into beggary many who had formerly got a good part of their living from these commons. At the same time farm rents rose in somee cases ten and even twenty fold, depriving thousands of the means of subsistence, and reducing to poverty many who had been in comfortable circumstances.

This was oweing to the greed for land on the part of the mercantile classes, who had now acquired wealth, and wished to become landed proprietors. See Froude's "England."

The bitter complaints of the sufferers found expression in Bishop Latimer's outspoken sermon, preached before King Edward, in which he said: "My father was a yeoman [small farmer], and had no lands of his own, only he had a farm of three or four pounds by year, and hereupon tilled so much as kept half a dozen men; he had walk [pasture] for a hundred sheep, and my mother milked thirty kine.

"He was able and did find the King a harness [suit of armor] with himself and his horse, until he came to the place where he should receive the King's wages. I can remember that I buckled his harness when he went into Blackheath Field. He kept me to school, or else I had not been able to have preached before the King's majesty now. He married my sisters with five pounds [dower] ... apiece. He kept hospitality for his poor neighbors, and some alms he gave to the poor.

"And all this he did off the said farm, where he that now hath it payeth sixteen pounds a year or more, and is not able to do anything for his prince, for himself, nor for his children, or give a cup of drink to the poor." But as Latimer patheticall said, "Let the preacher preach till his tongue be worn to the stumps, nothing is amended."

Latimer's first sermon before King Edward VI, 8th of March, 1549.

362. Edward establishes Protestantism, 1549.

Henry VIII had made the Church of England independent of the Pope (S349). His son took the next great step, and made it practically Protestant in doctrine. At his desire, Archbishop Cranmer compiled a book of Common Prayer in English. It was taken largely from the Roman Catholic Prayer Book, which was in Latin (1549). The first Act of Uniformity, 1549 (reenacted 1552), obliged all churches to use the new English Prayer Book, thereby, (for the time) establishing a modified form of Protestantism throughout England (S405).

On the Church of England, see Macaulay's "England," I, 40-42.

Edward's sister, the Princess Mary, was a most devout Catholic. She refused to adopt the new service, saying to Bishop Ridley, who urged her to accept it as God's word, "I cannot tell what you call God's word, for that is not God's word now which was God's word in my father's time." It was at this period (1552) that the Articles of Religion of the Church of England were first drawn up; but they did not take their final form until the reign of Elizabeth (S383).

363. King Edward and Mary Stuart.

Henry VIII had attempted to marry his son Edward to young Queen Mary Stuart, a daughter of the King of Scotland, but the match had been broken off. Edward's guardian now insisted that it should be carried out. He invaded Scotland with an army, and attempted to effect the marriage by force of arms, at the battle of Pinkie (1547).

The English gained a decided victory, but the youthful Queen, instead of giving her hand to young King Edward, left the country and married the son of the King of France. She will appear with melancholy prominence in the reign of Elizabeth. Had Mary Queen of Scots married Edward, we should perhaps have been spared that tragedy in which she was called to play both the leading and the losing part (SS394-397).

364. Renewed Confiscation of Church Property; Schools founded.

The confiscation of such Roman Catholic church property as had been spared was now renewed (S352). The result of this confiscation and of the abandonment of Catholicism as the established form of worship was in certain respects disastrous to the country. In the general break-up, many who had been held in restraint by the old form of faith now went to the other extreme, and rejected all religion.

Part of the money obtained from the sale of church property was devoted, mainly through Edward's influence, to the endowment of upwards of forty grammar schools, besides a number of hospitals, in different sections of the country. But for a long time the destruction of the monastic schools (SS45, 60), poor as many of them had become, was a serious blow to the education of the common people.