King, resolved to make him a cardinal. So the King decided that Fisher
should have no head on which to wear a red Cardinal's hat. He was tried
with all unfairnence and injustice, and sentenced to death. He died like a
noble and virtuous old man, and left a worthy name behind him.
The King supposed that Sir Thomas More would be frightened by this
example. But, as he was not to be easily terrified, and, thoroughly
believed in the Pope, had made up his mind that the King was not rightful
Head of the Church, he positively refused to say that he was. For this cri-
me 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 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 kneeled down to recieve it.
But, when he got to the Tower Wharf on his way back to his prison, and
his favourite daughter, Margaret Roper, a very good woman, rushed through
the guards to kiss him and to weep upon his neck, he has over-come at last.
He soon recovered and never more showed any feeling but courage. When he
had laid his head upon the block, he asked jokingly the executioner to let
him put his beard out of the way because for that thing, at least, had
never committed any treason. Then his head was strucked off at a blow.
These two executions were worthy of King Henry VIII. Sir Thomas More
was one of the most virtuous men in his dominions, and the Bishop was one
of his eldest and truest friends.
***
When the news of these two murders got to Rome, the Pope was enra-ged
and prepared a Bull, ordering his subjects to take arms against the King of
England and dethrone him. The King took all possible precautions to keep
that document out of his dominions, and set to work in return to suppress a
great number of English monasteries and abbeys.
This destruction was begun by a body of commissioners, of whom Tho-mas
Cromwell was the head. It was carried on through to some few years to its
entire completion. There is no doubt that many of these religious es-
tablishments imposed upon the people in every possible way; that they had
images moved by wires, which they pretended were miraculously mo-ved by
Heaven; that they had bits of coal which they said had fried Saint
Lawrense, and bits of toe-nails which they said belonged to other famous
saints, etc.; and that all these bits of rubbish were called Relics, and
adored by the ignorant people. But, on the other hand, there is no doubt
either, that the King's men punished the good monks with the bad; did great
injustice; demolished many beautiful things and many valuable libra-ries;
destroyed numbers of paintings, stained glass windows, fine pave-ments, and
carvings; and that the whole court were ravenously greedy and rapacious for
the division of this great spoil among them. The King seems to have grown
almost mad in the ardour of this pursuit, for he declared Thomas a Becket a
traitor, though he had been dead for many years, and had his body dug up
out of his grave. The gold and jewels on his shrine filled two great
chests, and 8 men were needed to carry them away.
These things caused great discontent among the people. The monks who
were driven out of their homes and wandered about encouraged their
discontent, and there were, consequently, great risings in Licincolnshire
and Yorkshire. These were put down by terrific executions, from which the
monks themselves did not escape.
***
The unfortunate Queen Catherine was by
this time dead, and the King was by this ti-
me as tired of his second Queen as he had
been of his first. As he had fallen in love
with Anne when she was in the service of
Catherine, so he now fell in love with ano-
ther lady in the service of Anne.
The King resolved to have Anne Boleyn's
head to marry Lady Jane Seymour. So, he
brought a number of charges against Anne,
accusing her of dreadful crimes which she
had never committed, and implicating in
them her own brother and certain gentlemen in her service. As the lords and
councillors were afraid of the King, they brought in Anne Boleyn guilty,
and the other unfortunate persons accused with her, guilty too.
They were all sentenced to death. Anne Boleyn tried to soften her hus-band
by touching letters, but as he wanted her to be executed, she was soon
beheaded.
There is a story that the King sat in his palace listening very
anxiously for the sound of the cannon which was to announce this new
murder; and that, when he heard it, he rose up in great spirits and ordered
out his dogs to go a-hunting. He married Jane Seymour the very next day.
Jane Seymour lived just long enough to give birth to a son who was
christened Edward, and then to die of a fever.
***
Cranmer had done what he could to save some of the Church property for
purposes of religion and education. But the great families had been so
hungry to get hold of it, that very little could be rescued for such
objects. Even Miles Coverdale, who did the people the inestimable service
of translating the Bible into English (which the unreformed religion never
permitted to be done), was left in poverty while the great families
clutched the Church lands and money. The people had been told that when the
Crown came into possession of these funds, it would not be necessary to tax
them. But they were taxed afresh directly afterwards.
One of the most active writers on a Church's side against the King was
a member of his own family - a sort of distant cousin, Reginald Pole by
name - who attacked him in the most violent manner (though he recieved a
pension from him all the time), and fought for the Church for his pen, day
and night. He was beyong the King's reach, in Italy.
The Pope made Reginald Pole a cardinal; but, so much against his will,
that it is thought he had hopes of marrying the Princess Mary. His being
made a high priest, however, put an end to that. His mother, the Countess
of Salisbury - who was unfortunately for herself, within the tyrant's reach
-was the last of his relatives on whom his wrath fell. When she was told to
lay her grey head upon the block, she answered the executioner that her
head had never committed treason, and if he wanted her head, he should
seize that. So, she ran round and round the scaffold with the executioner
striking at her, and her grey hair bedabbled with blood. And even when they
held her down upon the block she moved her head about to the last, resolved
to be no party to her own barbarous murder. All this the people bore, as
they had borne everything else.
Indeed they bore much more; for the slow fires of Smithfield were
continually burning, and people were constantly being roasted to death -
still to show what a good Christian the King was. He defied the Pope and
his Bull, which was now issued, and had come into England; but he bur-ned
innumerable people whose only offence was that they differed from the
Pope's religios opinions.
All this the people bore, and more than all this yet. The national
spirit seems to have been banished from the kingdom from this time. The
people who were executed for treason, the wives and friends of the "bluff"
King, spoke of him on the scafford as a good and gentle man.
The Parliament were as bad as the rest, and gave the King whatever he
wanted. They gave him new powers of murdering, at his will and pleasure,
anyone whom he might choose to call a traitor. But the worst measure they
passed was an Act of Six Articles*********, commonly called at the time
"the whip with six strings", which punished offences against the Pope's
opinions, without mercy, and enforced the very worst parts of the monkish
religion.
Cranmer would have modified it, if he could; but he had not the power,
being overborne by the Romish party. As one of the articles declared that
priests should not marry, and as he was married himself, he sent his wife
and children into Germany, and began to tremble at his danger. This whip of
six strings was made under the King's own eye. It should never be for-
gotten of him how cruelly he supported the Popish doctrines when there was
nothing to be got by opposing them.
This monarch now thought of taking another wife. He proposed to the
French King to have some of the ladies of the French Court exhibited be-
fore him, that he might make his Royal choice. But the French King ans-
wered that he would rather not have his ladies to be shown like horses at a
fair. He proposed to the Dowager Duchess of Milan, who replied that she
might have thought of such a match if she had had two heads. At last
Cromwell represented that there was a Protestant Princess in Germany -
those who had the reformed religion were call Protestants, because their
leaders had protested against the abuses and impositions of the unreform-ed
Church - named Anne of Cleves, who was beautiful, and would answer the
purpose admirably.
The King sent over the famous painter, Hans Holbein, to take her a
portrait. Hans made her out to be so good-looking that the King was satis-
fied, and the marriage was arranged. But Hans had flattered the Princess.
When the King first saw her, he swore she was "a great Flanders mare", and
said he would never marry her. Being obliged to do it, he would not give
her the presents he had prepared, and would never notice her. He never
forgave Cromwell his part in the affair. His downfall dates from that time.
It was quickened by his enemies, in the interests of the unreformed
religion, putting in the King's way, at a state dinner, a niece of the Duke
of Norfolk, Catherine Howard. Falling in love with her on the spot, the
King soon divorced Anne of Cleves on pretence that she had been previously
betrothered to someone else, and married Catherine. It is probable that on
his wedding day he sent his faithful Cromwell to the scaffold, and had his
head struck off.
It soon came out that Catherine Howard was not a faithful wife, and
again the dreadful axe made the King a widower. Henry then applied him-self
to superintending the composition of a religious book called "A ne-cessary
doctrine for any Christian Man".
He married yet once more. Yes, strange to say, he found in England
another woman who would become his wife, and she was Catherine Parr, widow
of Lord Latimer. She leaned towards the reformed religion, and it is some
comfort to know, that she argued a variety of doctrinal points with him on
all possible occasions. After one of these conversations the King in a very
black mood actully instructed Gardier, one of his Bishops who favoured the
Popish opinions, to draw a bill of accusation against her to the scaffold.
But one of the Queen's friends knew about it, and gave her timely notice.
She fell ill with terror, but managed the King so well when he came to
entrap her into further statements - by saying that she had only spoken on
such points to divert his mind and to get some points of infor-mation from
his extraordinary wisdom - that he gave her a kiss and called her a
sweatheart. And, when the Chancellor came next day to take her to the
Tower, the King honoured him with the epithets of a beast, a knave, and a
fool. So near was Catherine Parr to the block, and so narrow was her
escape!
***
A few more horrors, and this reign was over. There was a lady, Anne
Askew, in Lincolnshire, who inclined to the Protestant opinions, and whose
husband being a fierce Catholic, turned her out of his house. She came to
London, and was considered as offending against the six articles, and was
taken to the Tower, and put upon the rack - probably because it was hoped
that she might, in her agony, criminate some obnoxious per-sons. She was
tortured in a most cruel manner without uttering a cry, but afterwards they
had to carry her to the fire in a chair. She was burned with three others,
a gentleman, a clergyman, and a tailor; and so the world went on.
Either the King became afraid of the power of Duke of Norfolk, and his
son the Earl of Surrey, or they gave him some offence, but he resolved to
pull them down, to follow all the rest who were gone. The son was tried
first - of course for nothing - and defended himself bravely; but all the
same he was found guilty, and was executed. Then his father's turn came.
But the King himself was left for death by a Greater King, and the Earth
was to be rid of him at last. When he was found to be dying, Cranmer was
sent for, and came with all speed, but found him speechless. In that hour
he perished. He was in the fifty-sixth year of his age, and the thirty-
eighth of his reign.
Henry the Eighth, a bloody tyrant, has been favoured by some Protest-
ant writers, because the Reformation was achieved in his time. But the
mighty merit of his lies with other men and not with him.
What else can I say about Henry VIII?
He was more a beast than a man.
He executed hundreds of people.
Though he was wise enough to rule a country.
His reign was bloody and he did not do a lot for his country.
His six marriages caused the country to finish
all treaties with the Roman Church.
And the King's bloody deeds ashamed the mighty England.
For Charles Dickens he was the most
untolerable man, a shame for humanity.
Notes.
1. Hans Holbein (1497-1543)* - the German painter. Known as Hans Holbein
Jr.
2. the Battle of Spurs** was held on the 16th of August, 1513 a.d. During
it the French cavalry fled because of the advancing armies of Henry VIII
and Maximilian I.
3. Thomas Wolsey (1473-1530)***, Chancellor of England since 1515 till
1529. Since 1514 - the Archbishop of York, since 1515 - the Cardinal. In
1529 he was arrested for treason.
4. Wittemberg**** - the Saxon city where in 1517 Luther read his 95
thesises against the Catholic Church.
5. the Reformation***** - the movement against the Ca-tholic Church in
Western and Central Europe. It's crea-tor was Luther.
6. Martin Luther (1483-1546)****** - the leader of the Re-formation. He
also translated the Bible into German.
7. John Wickliffe (1330-1384)******* - the English refor-mator. He said
that the Pope was not necessary and wan-ted the Church to abandon its
lands.
8. Thomas More (1487 - 1535)******** - the great lawer and political
leader, was against the Reformation. Being a writer, he created "Utopia".
Anne Boleyn, the second wife of the King, knowing that More had helped
the King to dismiss Catherine of Aragon, caused Henry to execute this
clever and honest Chancellor of England.
9. Act of Six Articles*********. Was written in 1539. It abolished the
monasteries and showed that England was interested in religion and that
damage inflicted to the Church was a crime. So, many Protestants were
executed.
List of the Used Literature.
1. J. J. Bell. The History of England.
2. L. V. Sidorchenko. Absolute Monarchy.
3. I. I. Burova. Just for Pleasure. Intermediate Level.
4. D. Capewell. The History of English Monarchy.
