James Anthony Froude - "Short Studies on Great Subjects"

John Evelyn - "Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2)"

Lorin Low Dame - "Handbook of the Trees of New England"

Rev. E. Donald Carr - "A Night in the Snow"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

Henry VIII.

A >> A. F. Pollard >> Henry VIII.



..[Transcriber's note: Obvious printer's errors have been corrected.
The original spelling has been retained.]




HENRY VIII.




_BY THE SAME AUTHOR._

FROM THE ACCESSION OF EDWARD VI. TO THE
DEATH OF ELIZABETH (1547-1603). (Political History
of England, Vol. VI.). With 2 Maps.

THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR. 8vo.

THE WAR: ITS HISTORY AND MORALS. 8vo.

THE REIGN OF HENRY VII. FROM CONTEMPORARY SOURCES.
Selected and arranged with an Introduction.
Crown 8vo.

Vol. I. Narrative Extracts.
Vol. II. Constitutional, Social, and Economic History.
Vol. III. Diplomacy, Ecclesiastical Affairs and Ireland.

* * * * *

UNIVERSITY OF LONDON INTERMEDIATE SOURCE-BOOKS
OF HISTORY.

ILLUSTRATIONS OF CHAUCER'S ENGLAND. Edited
by MISS DOROTHY HUGHES. With a Preface by A.F. POLLARD,
M.A., Litt.D., Fellow of All Souls, and Professor of
English History in the University of London. Crown 8vo.

ENGLAND UNDER THE YORKISTS. 1460-1485. Illustrated
from Contemporary Sources by ISOBEL D. THORNLEY, M.A.,
Assistant in the Department of History, University
College, London. With a Preface by A.F. POLLARD, M.A.,
Litt.D. Crown 8vo.


LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO.,
LONDON, NEW YORK, BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS.




HENRY VIII.


BY

A.F. POLLARD, M.A.

Professor Of Constitutional History At University College,
London; Examiner In Modern History In The Universities Of Oxford
And London; Author Of "A Life Of Cranmer," "England Under
Protector Somerset," Etc., Etc.




_NEW IMPRESSION_

LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
FOURTH AVENUE & 30th STREET, NEW YORK
BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS
1919




_First published by Messrs. Goupil & Co.
in June, 1902, with numerous illustrations._
_New Edition, May, 1905._
_Reprinted, January, 1913, and October, 1919._




PREFACE. (p. v)


It is perhaps a matter rather for regret than for surprise that so few
attempts have been made to describe, as a whole, the life and
character of Henry VIII. No ruler has left a deeper impress on the
history of his country, or done work which has been the subject of
more keen and lasting contention. Courts of law are still debating the
intention of statutes, the tenor of which he dictated; and the moral,
political, and religious, are as much in dispute as the legal, results
of his reign. He is still the Great Erastian, the protagonist of laity
against clergy. His policy is inextricably interwoven with the high
and eternal dilemma of Church and State; and it is well-nigh
impossible for one who feels keenly on these questions to treat the
reign of Henry VIII. in a reasonably judicial spirit. No period
illustrates more vividly the contradiction between morals and
politics. In our desire to reprobate the immorality of Henry's
methods, we are led to deny their success; or, in our appreciation of
the greatness of the ends he achieved, we seek to excuse the means he
took to achieve them. As with his policy, so with his character. (p. vi)
There was nothing commonplace about him; his good and his bad
qualities alike were exceptional. It is easy, by suppressing the one
or the other, to paint him a hero or a villain. He lends himself
readily to polemic; but to depict his character in all its varied
aspects, extenuating nothing nor setting down aught in malice, is a
task of no little difficulty. It is two centuries and a half since
Lord Herbert produced his _Life and Reign of Henry VIII_.[1] The late
Mr. Brewer, in his prefaces to the first four volumes of the _Letters
and Papers of the Reign of Henry VIII._, published under the direction
of the Master of the Rolls, dealt adequately with the earlier portion
of Henry's career. But Mr. Brewer died when his work reached the year
1530; his successor, Dr. James Gairdner, was directed to confine his
prefaces to the later volumes within the narrowest possible limits;
and students of history were deprived of the prospect of a
satisfactory account of Henry's later years from a writer of
unrivalled learning.

[Footnote 1: The edition cited in the text is that
of 1672.]

Henry's reign, from 1530 onwards, has been described by the late Mr.
Froude in one of the most brilliant and fascinating masterpieces of
historical literature, a work which still holds the field in popular,
if not in scholarly, estimation. But Mr. Froude does not begin until
Henry's reign was half over, until his character had been determined
by influences and events which lie outside the scope of Mr. (p. vii)
Froude's inquiry. Moreover, since Mr. Froude wrote, a flood of light
has been thrown on the period by the publication of the above-mentioned
_Letters and Papers_;[2] they already comprise a summary of between
thirty and forty thousand documents in twenty thousand closely printed
pages, and, when completed, will constitute the most magnificent body
of materials for the history of any reign, ancient or modern, English
or foreign. Simultaneously there have appeared a dozen volumes
containing the State papers preserved at Simancas,[3] Vienna and
Brussels and similar series comprising the correspondence relating to
Venice,[4] Scotland[5] and Ireland;[6] while the despatches of French
ambassadors have been published under the auspices of the Ministry for
Foreign Affairs at Paris.[7] Still further information has been (p. viii)
provided by the labours of the Historical Manuscripts Commission,[8]
the Camden,[9] the Royal Historical,[10] and other learned Societies.

[Footnote 2: This series, unlike the _Calendars of
State Papers_, includes documents not preserved at
the Record Office; it is often inaccurately cited
as _Calendar of State Papers_, but the word
"Calendar" does not appear in the title and it
includes much besides State papers; such a
description also tends to confuse it with the
eleven volumes of Henry VIII.'s State papers
published _in extenso_ in 1830-51. The series now
extends to Dec., 1544, and is cited in the text as
_L. and P._.]

[Footnote 3: Cited as _Spanish Calendar_; the
volume completing Henry's reign was published in
1904.]

[Footnote 4: Cited as _Ven. Cal._; this
correspondence diminishes in importance as the
reign proceeds, and also, after 1530, the documents
are epitomised afresh in _L. and P._.]

[Footnote 5: Three series, _viz._, that edited by
Thorp (2 vols., 1858), a second edited by Bain (2
vols., 1898) and the _Hamilton Papers_ (2 vols.,
1890-92).]

[Footnote 6: Vol. i. of the _Irish Calendar_, and
also of the _Carew MSS._; see also the _Calendar of
Fiants_ published by the Deputy-Keeper of Records
for Ireland.]

[Footnote 7: _Correspondance de MM. Castillon et
Marillac_, edited by Kaulek, and of _Odet de
Selve_, 1888.]

[Footnote 8: The most important of these is vol. i.
of Lord Salisbury's MSS.; other papers of Henry
VIII.'s reign are scattered up and down the
Appendices to a score and more of reports.]

[Footnote 9: _E.g._, Wriothesley's _Chronicle_,
_Chron. of Calais_, and _Greyfriars Chron_.]

[Footnote 10: _E.g._, Leadam, _Domesday of
Inclosures_, and _Transactions_, _passim_.]

These sources probably contain at least a million definite facts
relating to the reign of Henry VIII.; and it is obvious that the task
of selection has become heavy as well as invidious. Mr. Froude has
expressed his concurrence in the dictum that the facts of history are
like the letters of the alphabet; by selection and arrangement they
can be made to spell anything, and nothing can be arranged so easily
as facts. _Experto crede_. Yet selection is inevitable, and
arrangement essential. The historian has no option if he wishes to be
intelligible. He will naturally arrange his facts so that they spell
what he believes to be the truth; and he must of necessity suppress
those facts which he judges to be immaterial or inconsistent with the
scale on which he is writing. But if the superabundance of facts
compels both selection and suppression, it counsels no less a
restraint of judgment. A case in a court of law is not simplified by a
cloud of witnesses; and the new wealth of contemporary evidence (p. ix)
does not solve the problems of Henry's reign. It elucidates some
points hitherto obscure, but it raises a host of others never before
suggested. In ancient history we often accept statements written
hundreds of years after the event, simply because we know no better;
in modern history we frequently have half a dozen witnesses giving
inconsistent accounts of what they have seen with their own eyes.
Dogmatism is merely the result of ignorance; and no honest historian
will pretend to have mastered all the facts, accurately weighed all
the evidence, or pronounced a final judgment.

The present volume does not profess to do more than roughly sketch
Henry VIII.'s more prominent characteristics, outline the chief
features of his policy, and suggest some reasons for the measure of
success he attained. Episodes such as the divorce of Catherine of
Aragon, the dissolution of the monasteries, and the determination of
the relations between Church and State, would severally demand for
adequate treatment works of much greater bulk than the present. On the
divorce valuable light has recently been thrown by Dr. Stephan Ehses
in his _Roemische Dokumente_.[11] The dissolution of the monasteries
has been exhaustively treated from one point of view by Dr. Gasquet;[12]
but an adequate and impartial history of what is called the Reformation
still remains to be written. Here it is possible to deal with (p. x)
these questions only in the briefest outline, and in so far as they
were affected by Henry's personal action. For my facts I have relied
entirely on contemporary records, and my deductions from these facts
are my own. I have depended as little as possible even on contemporary
historians,[13] and scarcely at all on later writers.[14] I have,
however, made frequent use of Dr. Gairdner's articles in the _Dictionary
of National Biography_, particularly of that on Henry VIII., the best
summary extant of his career; and I owe not a little to Bishop
Stubbs's two lectures on Henry VIII., which contain some fruitful
suggestions as to his character.[15]
A.F. POLLARD.
PUTNEY, _11th January, 1905_.

[Footnote 11: Paderborn, 1893; _cf. Engl. Hist.
Rev._, xix., 632-45.]

[Footnote 12: _Henry VIII. and the English
Monasteries_, 2 vols., 1888.]

[Footnote 13: Of these the most important are
Polydore Vergil (Basel, 1534), Hall's _Chronicle_
(1548) and Fabyan's _Chronicle_ (edited by Ellis,
1811). Holinshed and Stow are not quite
contemporary, but they occasionally add to earlier
writers on apparently good authority.]

[Footnote 14: I have in this edition added
references to those which seem most important; for
a collected bibliography see Dr. Gairdner in
_Cambridge Modern History_, ii., 789-94. I have
also for the purpose of this edition added
references to the original sources--a task of some
labour when nearly every fact is taken from a
different document. The text has been revised, some
errors removed, and notes added on special points,
especially those on which fresh light has recently
been thrown.]

[Footnote 15: In _Lectures on Mediaeval and Modern
History_, 1887.]




CONTENTS. (p. xi)


CHAPTER I.
Page
The Early Tudors 1

CHAPTER II.

Prince Henry and His Environment 15

CHAPTER III.

The Apprenticeship of Henry VIII. 43

CHAPTER IV.

The Three Rivals 78

CHAPTER V.

King and Cardinal 108

CHAPTER VI.

From Calais to Rome 136

CHAPTER VII.

The Origin of the Divorce 173

CHAPTER VIII.

The Pope's Dilemma 195

CHAPTER IX. (p. xii)

The Cardinal's Fall 228

CHAPTER X.

The King and His Parliament 249

CHAPTER XI.

"Down with the Church" 278

CHAPTER XII.

"The Prevailing of the Gates of Hell" 302

CHAPTER XIII.

The Crisis 331

CHAPTER XIV.

Rex et Imperator 362

CHAPTER XV.

The Final Struggle 397

CHAPTER XVI.

Conclusion 427

Index 441




CHAPTER I. (p. 001)

THE EARLY TUDORS.


In the whole range of English history there is no monarch whose
character has been more variously depicted by contemporaries or more
strenuously debated by posterity than the "majestic lord who broke the
bonds of Rome". To one historian an inhuman embodiment of cruelty and
vice, to another a superhuman incarnation of courage, wisdom and
strength of will, Henry VIII. has, by an almost universal consent,
been placed above or below the grade of humanity. So unique was his
personality, so singular his achievements, that he appears in the
light of a special dispensation sent like another Attila to be the
scourge of mankind, or like a second Hercules to cleanse, or at least
to demolish, Augean stables. The dictates of his will seemed as
inexorable as the decrees of fate, and the history of his reign is
strewn with records of the ruin of those who failed to placate his
wrath. Of the six queens he married, two he divorced, and two he
beheaded. Four English cardinals[16] lived in his reign; one perished
by the executioner's axe, one escaped it by absence, and a third (p. 002)
by a timely but natural death. Of a similar number of dukes[17] half
were condemned by attainder; and the same method of speedy despatch
accounted for six or seven earls and viscounts and for scores of
lesser degree. He began his reign by executing the ministers of his
father,[18] he continued it by sending his own to the scaffold. The
Tower of London was both palace and prison, and statesmen passed
swiftly from one to the other; in silent obscurity alone lay
salvation. Religion and politics, rank and profession made little
difference; priest and layman, cardinal-archbishop and "hammer of the
monks," men whom Henry had raised from the mire, and peers, over whose
heads they were placed, were joined in a common fate. Wolsey and More,
Cromwell and Norfolk, trod the same dizzy path to the same fatal end;
and the English people looked on powerless or unmoved. They sent their
burgesses and knights of the shire to Westminster without let or
hindrance, and Parliament met with a regularity that grew with the
rigour of Henry's rule; but it seemed to assemble only to register the
royal edicts and clothe with a legal cloak the naked violence of
Henry's acts. It remembered its privileges only to lay them at Henry's
feet, it cancelled his debts, endowed his proclamations with the force
of laws, and authorised him to repeal acts of attainder and dispose of
his crown at will. Secure of its support Henry turned and rent the
spiritual unity of Western Christendom, and settled at a blow that
perennial struggle between Church and State, in which kings and (p. 003)
emperors had bitten the dust. With every epithet of contumely and
scorn he trampled under foot the jurisdiction of him who was believed
to hold the keys of heaven and hell. Borrowing in practice the old
maxim of Roman law, _cujus regio, ejus religio_,[19] he placed himself
in the seat of authority in religion and presumed to define the faith
of which Leo had styled him defender. Others have made themselves
despots by their mastery of many legions, through the agency of a
secret police, or by means of an organised bureaucracy. Yet Henry's
standing army consisted of a few gentlemen pensioners and yeomen of
the guard; he had neither secret police nor organised bureaucracy.
Even then Englishmen boasted that they were not slaves like the
French,[20] and foreigners pointed a finger of scorn at their turbulence.
Had they not permanently or temporarily deprived of power nearly half
their kings who had reigned since William the Conqueror? Yet Henry
VIII. not only left them their arms, but repeatedly urged them to keep
those arms ready for use.[21] He eschewed that air of mystery with
which tyrants have usually sought to impose on the mind of the people.
All his life he moved familiarly and almost unguarded in the midst of
his subjects, and he died in his bed, full of years, with the spell of
his power unbroken and the terror of his name unimpaired.

[Footnote 16: Bainbridge, Wolsey, Fisher, Pole.
Bainbridge was a cardinal after Julius II's own
heart, and he received the red hat for military
services rendered to that warlike Pope (_Ven.
Cal._, ii., 104).]

[Footnote 17: There were two Dukes of Norfolk, the
second of whom was attainted, as was the Duke of
Buckingham; the fourth Duke was Henry's
brother-in-law, Suffolk.]

[Footnote 18: Empson and Dudley.]

[Footnote 19: "Sua cuique civitati religio est,
nostra nobis." Cicero, _Pro Flacco_, 28; _cf._ E.
Bourre, _Des Inequalites de condition resultant de
la religion en droit Romain_, Paris, 1895.]

[Footnote 20: _Cf._ Bishop Scory to Edward VI. in
Strype, _Eccl. Mem._, II., ii., 482; Fortescue, ed.
Plummer, pp. 137-142.]

[Footnote 21: _E.g._, _L. and P._, i., 679.]

What manner of man was this, and wherein lay the secret of his (p. 004)
strength? Is recourse necessary to a theory of supernatural agency, or
is there another and adequate solution? Was Henry's individual will of
such miraculous force that he could ride roughshod in insolent pride
over public opinion at home and abroad? Or did his personal ends,
dictated perhaps by selfish motives and ignoble passions, so far
coincide with the interests and prejudices of the politically
effective portion of his people, that they were willing to condone a
violence and tyranny, the brunt of which fell after all on the few?
Such is the riddle which propounds itself to every student of Tudor
history. It cannot be answered by paeans in honour of Henry's intensity
of will and force of character, nor by invectives against his vices
and lamentations over the woes of his victims. The miraculous
interpretation of history is as obsolete as the catastrophic theory of
geology, and the explanation of Henry's career must be sought not so
much in the study of his character as in the study of his environment,
of the conditions which made things possible to him that were not
possible before or since and are not likely to be so again.

* * * * *

It is a singular circumstance that the king who raised the personal
power of English monarchy to a height to which it had never before
attained, should have come of humble race and belonged to an upstart
dynasty. For three centuries and a half before the battle of Bosworth
one family had occupied the English throne. Even the usurpers, Henry
of Bolingbroke and Richard of York, were directly descended in unbroken
male line from Henry II., and from 1154 to 1485 all the sovereigns of
England were Plantagenets. But who were the Tudors? They were a (p. 005)
Welsh family of modest means and doubtful antecedents.[22] They
claimed, it is true, descent from Cadwallader, and their pedigree was
as long and quite as veracious as most Welsh genealogies; but Henry
VII.'s great-grandfather was steward or butler to the Bishop of
Bangor. His son, Owen Tudor, came as a young man to seek his fortune
at the Court of Henry V., and obtained a clerkship of the wardrobe to
Henry's Queen, Catherine of France. So skilfully did he use or abuse
this position of trust, that he won the heart of his mistress; and
within a few years of Henry's death his widowed Queen and her clerk of
the wardrobe were secretly, and possibly without legal sanction,
living together as man and wife. The discovery of their relations
resulted in Catherine's retirement to Bermondsey Abbey, and Owen's to
Newgate prison. The Queen died in the following year, but Owen
survived many romantic adventures. Twice he escaped from prison, twice
he was recaptured. Once he took sanctuary in the precincts of
Westminster Abbey, and various attempts to entrap him were made by
enticing him to revels in a neighbouring tavern. Finally, on the
outbreak of the Wars of the Roses, he espoused the Lancastrian cause,
and was beheaded by order of Edward IV. after the battle of Mortimer's
Cross. Two sons, Edmund and Jasper, were born of this singular match
between Queen and clerk of her wardrobe. Both enjoyed the favour of
their royal half-brother, Henry VI. Edmund, the elder, was first
knighted and then created Earl of Richmond. In the Parliament of 1453,
he was formally declared legitimate; he was enriched by the grant of
broad estates and enrolled among the members of Henry's council. (p. 006)
But the climax of his fortunes was reached when, in 1455, he married
the Lady Margaret Beaufort. Owen Tudor had taken the first step which
led to his family's greatness; Edmund took the second. The blood-royal
of France flowed in his veins, the blood-royal of England was to flow
in his children's; and the union between Edmund Tudor and Margaret
Beaufort gave Henry VII. such claim as he had by descent to the
English throne.

[Footnote 22: _Archaeologia Cambrensis_, 1st ser.,
iv., 267; 3rd ser., xv., 278, 379.]

The Beauforts were descended from Edward III., but a bar sinister
marred their royal pedigree. John of Gaunt had three sons by Catherine
Swynford before she became his wife. That marriage would, by canon
law, have made legitimate the children, but the barons had, on a
famous occasion, refused to assimilate in this respect the laws of
England to the canons of the Church; and it required a special Act of
Parliament to confer on the Beauforts the status of legitimacy. When
Henry IV. confirmed this Act, he introduced a clause specifically
barring their contingent claim to the English throne. This limitation
could not legally abate the force of a statute; but it sufficed to
cast a doubt upon the Beaufort title, and has been considered a
sufficient explanation of Henry VII.'s reluctance to base his claim
upon hereditary right. However that may be, the Beauforts played no
little part in the English history of the fifteenth century; their
influence was potent for peace or war in the councils of their royal
half-brother, Henry IV., and of the later sovereigns of the House of
Lancaster. One was Cardinal-Bishop of Winchester, another was Duke of
Exeter, and a third was Earl of Somerset. Two of the sons of the Earl
became Dukes of Somerset; the younger fell at St. Albans, the (p. 007)
earliest victim of the Wars of the Roses, which proved so fatal to
his House; and the male line of the Beauforts failed in the third
generation. The sole heir to their claims was the daughter of the
first Duke of Somerset, Margaret, now widow of Edmund Tudor; for,
after a year of wedded life, Edmund had died in November, 1456. Two
months later his widow gave birth to a boy, the future Henry VII.;
and, incredible as the fact may seem, the youthful mother was not
quite fourteen years old. When fifteen more years had passed, the
murder of Henry VI. and his son left Margaret Beaufort and Henry Tudor
in undisputed possession of the Lancastrian title. A barren honour it
seemed. Edward IV. was firmly seated on the English throne. His right
to it, by every test, was immeasurably superior to the Tudor claim,
and Henry showed no inclination and possessed not the means to dispute
it. The usurpation by Richard III., and the crimes which polluted his
reign, put a different aspect on the situation, and set men seeking
for an alternative to the blood-stained tyrant. The battle of Bosworth
followed, and the last of the Plantagenets gave way to the first of
the Tudors.

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