The History of England - Vols. 1 to 6 (220 page)

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The act formerly passed, empowering the king to name thirty-two commissioners for framing a body of canon-law, was renewed; but the project was never carried into execution. Henry thought, that the present perplexity of that law encreased his authority, and kept the clergy in still greater dependance.

Farther progress was made in completing the union of Wales with England: The separate jurisdictions of several great lords or marchers, as they were called, which obstructed the course of justice in Wales, and encouraged robbery and pillaging, were abolished; and the authority of the king’s courts was extended every where. Some jurisdictions of a like nature in England were also abolished
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this session.

The commons, sensible that they had gained nothing by opposing the king’s will, when he formerly endeavoured to secure the profits of wardships and liveries, were now contented to frame a law,
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such as he dictated to them. It was enacted, that the possession of land shall be adjudged to be in those who have the use of it, not in those to whom it is transferred in trust.

After all these laws were passed, the king dissolved the

14th April.

parliament; a parliament memorable, not only for the great and important innovations which it introduced, but also for the long time it had sitten, and the frequent prorogations which it had undergone. Henry had found it so obsequious to his will, that he did not chuse, during those religious ferments, to hazard a new election; and he continued the same parliament above six years: A practice, at that time, unusual in England.

The convocation, which sat during this session, was engaged in a A convocation.

very important work, the deliberating on the new translation which was projected of the scriptures. The translation given by Tindal, though corrected by himself in a new edition, was still complained of by the clergy, as inaccurate and unfaithful; and it was now proposed to them, that they should themselves publish a translation, which would not be liable to those objections.

The friends of the reformation asserted, that nothing could be more absurd than to conceal, in an unknown tongue, the word of God itself, and thus to counteract the will of heaven, which, for the purpose of universal salvation, had published that salutary doctrine to all nations: That if this practice were not very absurd, the artifice at least was very gross, and proved a consciousness, that the glosses and traditions of the clergy stood in direct opposition to the original text, dictated by Supreme Intelligence: That it was now necessary for the people, so long abused by interested pretensions, to see with their own eyes, and to examine whether the claims of the ecclesiastics were founded on that charter, which was on all hands acknowledged to be derived from heaven: And that, as a spirit of research and curiosity was happily revived, and men were now obliged to make a choice among the contending doctrines of different sects, the proper materials for decision, and above all, the holy scriptures, should be set before them; and the revealed will of God, which the change of language had somewhat obscured, be again, by their means, revealed to mankind.

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The favourers of the ancient religion maintained, on the other hand, that the pretence of making the people see with their own eyes, was a mere cheat, and was itself a very gross artifice, by which the new preachers hoped to obtain the guidance of them, and to seduce them from those pastors, whom the laws, whom ancient establishments, whom heaven itself had appointed for their spiritual direction: That the people were, by their ignorance, their stupidity, their necessary avocations, totally unqualified to chuse their own principles; and it was a mockery to set materials before them, of which they could not possibly make any proper use: That even in the affairs of common life, and in their temporal concerns, which lay more within the compass of human reason, the laws had, in a great measure, deprived them of the right of private judgment, and had, happily for their own and the public interest, regulated their conduct and behaviour: That theological questions were placed far beyond the sphere of vulgar comprehensions; and ecclesiastics themselves, though assisted by all the advantages of education, erudition, and an assiduous study of the science, could not be fully assured of a just decision; except by the promise made them in scripture, that God would be ever present with his church, and that the gates of hell should not prevail against her: That the gross errors, adopted by the wisest heathens, proved how unfit men were to grope their own way, through this profound darkness; nor would the scriptures, if trusted to every man’s judgment, be able to remedy; on the contrary, they would much augment, those fatal illusions: That sacred writ itself was involved in so much obscurity, gave rise to so many difficulties, contained so many appearing contradictions, that it was the most dangerous weapon, that could be entrusted into the hands of the ignorant and giddy multitude: That the poetical style, in which a great part of it was composed, at the same time that it occasioned uncertainty in the sense, by its multiplied tropes and figures, was sufficient to kindle the zeal of fanaticism, and thereby throw civil society into the most furious cumbustion: That a thousand sects must arise, which would pretend, each of them, to derive its tenets from the scripture; and would be able, by specious arguments, or even without specious arguments, to seduce silly women and ignorant mechanics, into a belief of the most monstrous principles: And that if ever this disorder, dangerous to the magistrate himself, received a remedy, it must be from the tacit acquiescence of the people in some new authority; and it was evidently better, without farther contest or enquiry, to adhere peaceably to ancient, and therefore the more secure, establishments.

These latter arguments, being more agreeable to ecclesiastical governments, would probably have prevailed in the convocation, had it not been for the authority of Cranmer, Latimer, and some other bishops, who were supposed to speak the king’s sense of the matter. A vote was passed for publishing a new translation of the scriptures; and in three years’ time the work was finished, and printed at Paris. This was deemed a great point gained by the reformers, and a considerable advancement of their cause. Farther progress was soon expected, after such important successes.

But while the retainers to the new religion were exulting in their prosperity, they met with a mortification, which seemed to blast all their hopes: Their patroness, Anne Boleyn, possessed no longer the king’s favour; and soon after lost her life, by the rage of that furious monarch.

Henry had persevered in his love to this lady, during six years Disgrace of queen

that his prosecution of the divorce lasted; and the more obstacles Anne.

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he met with to the gratification of his passion, the more determined zeal did he exert in pursuing his purpose. But the affection, which had subsisted, and still encreased, under difficulties, had not long attained secure possession of its object, when it languished from satiety; and the king’s heart was apparently estranged from his consort. Anne’s enemies soon perceived the fatal change; and they were forward to widen the breach, when they found that they incurred no danger by interposing in those delicate concerns. She had been delivered of a dead son; and Henry’s extreme fondness for male issue being thus, for the present, disappointed, his temper, equally violent and superstitious, was disposed to make the innocent mother answerable for the misfortune.
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But the chief means which Anne’s enemies employed to inflame the king against her, was his jealousy.

Anne, though she appears to have been entirely innocent, and even virtuous, in her conduct, had a certain gaiety, if not levity, of character, which threw her off her guard, and made her less circumspect than her situation required. Her education in France rendered her the more prone to those freedoms; and it was with difficulty she conformed herself to that strict ceremonial, practised in the court of England. More vain than haughty, she was pleased to see the influence of her beauty on all around her, and she indulged herself in an easy familiarity with persons, who were formerly her equals, and who might then have pretended to her friendship and good graces.

Henry’s dignity was offended with these popular manners; and though the lover had been entirely blind, the husband possessed but too quick discernment and penetration.

Ill instruments interposed, and put a malignant interpretation on the harmless liberties of the queen: The viscountess of Rocheford, in particular, who was married to the queen’s brother, but who lived on bad terms with her sister-in-law, insinuated the most cruel suspicions into the king’s mind; and as she was a woman of a profligate character, she paid no regard either to truth or humanity in those calumnies which she suggested. She pretended, that her own husband was engaged in a criminal correspondence with his sister; and not content with this imputation, she poisoned every action of the queen’s, and represented each instance of favour, which she conferred on any one, as a token of affection. Henry Norris, groom of the stole, Weston and Brereton, gentlemen of the king’s chamber, together with Mark Smeton, groom of the chamber, were observed to possess much of the queen’s friendship; and they served her with a zeal and attachment, which, though chiefly derived from gratitude, might not improbably be seasoned with some mixture of tenderness for so amiable a princess. The king’s jealousy laid hold of the slightest circumstance; and finding no particular object on which it could fasten, it vented itself equally on every one that came within the verge of its fury.

Had Henry’s jealousy been derived from love, though it might on a sudden have proceeded to the most violent extremities, it would have been subject to many remorses and contrarieties; and might at last have served only to augment that affection, on which it was founded. But it was more a stern jealousy, fostered entirely by pride: His love was transferred to another object. Jane, daughter of Sir John Seymour, and maid of honour to the queen, a young lady of singular beauty and merit, had obtained an entire ascendant over him; and he was determined to sacrifice every thing to the gratification of this new appetite. Unlike to most monarchs, who judge lightly of the crime of gallantry, and who deem the young damsels of their court PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011)

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rather honoured than disgraced by their passion, he seldom thought of any other attachment than that of marriage; and in order to attain this end, he underwent more difficulties, and committed greater crimes, than those which he sought to avoid, by forming that legal connexion. And having thus entertained the design of raising his new mistress to his bed and throne, he more willingly hearkened to every suggestion, which threw any imputation of guilt on the unfortunate Anne Boleyn.

The king’s jealousy first appeared openly in a tilting at 1st May.

Greenwich, where the queen happened to drop her handkerchief; an incident probably casual, but interpreted by him as an instance of gallantry to some

of her paramours.n
He immediately retired from the place; sent orders to confine her to her chamber; arrested Norris, Brereton, Weston, and Smeton, together with her brother, Rocheford; and threw them into prison. The queen, astonished at these instances of his fury, thought that he meant only to try her; but finding him in earnest, she reflected on his obstinate unrelenting spirit, and she prepared herself for that melancholy doom, which was awaiting her. Next day, she was sent to the Tower; and on her way thither, she was informed of her supposed offences, of which she had hitherto been ignorant: She made earnest protestations of her innocence; and when she entered the prison, she fell on her knees, and prayed God so to help her, as she was not guilty of the crime imputed to her. Her surprise and confusion threw her into hysterical disorders; and in that situation, she thought that the best proof of her innocence was to make an entire confession, and she revealed some indiscretions and levities, which her simplicity had equally betrayed her to commit and to avow. She owned, that she had once rallied Norris on his delaying his marriage, and had told him, that he probably expected her, when she should be a widow: She had reproved Weston, she said, for his affection to a kinswoman of hers, and his indifference towards his wife: But he told her, that she had mistaken the object of his affection, for

it was herself: Upon which, she defied him.o
She affirmed, that Smeton had never been in her chamber but twice, when he played on the harpsichord: But she acknowledged, that he had once had the boldness to tell her, that a look sufficed him.

The king, instead of being satisfied with the candour and sincerity of her confession, regarded these indiscretions only as preludes to greater and more criminal intimacies.

Of all those multitudes, whom the beneficence of the queen’s temper had obliged, during her prosperous fortune, no one durst interpose between her and the king’s fury; and the person, whose advancement every breath had favoured, and every countenance had smiled upon, was now left neglected and abandoned. Even her uncle, the duke of Norfolk, preferring the connexions of party to the ties of blood, was become her most dangerous enemy; and all the retainers to the catholic religion hoped, that her death would terminate the king’s quarrel with Rome, and leave him again to his natural and early bent, which had inclined him to maintain the most intimate union with the apostolic see. Cranmer alone; of all the queen’s adherents, still retained his friendship for her; and, as far as the king’s impetuosity permitted him, he endeavoured to moderate the violent prejudices, entertained against her.