STATE PAPERS OF HENRY VIIL'S REIGN.*
Mn. BREWER'S Introduction embraces the six eventful years of Henry's reign from 1524 to 1530. It covers some of the most significant acts in the career of Wolsey, and describes his disgrace and death with great minuteness ; it relates the supposed scruples of the King with regard to his first marriage, his efforts to obtain a divorce, and the conduct of Anne Boleyn and her family. Foreign politics, it is needless to say, are not omitted, but the main interest of the work is centred on the King in his relations with the great Cardinal, with Katharine, and with Anne Boleyn. Some significant comments on the true origin of the Reformation bring this ably written volume to a conclusion.
Mr. Brewer does not confine himself to a bare statement of facts. He has strong opinions, which he expresses frequently in strong language, and in doing this he upsets or tries to upset many of the opinions held by most readers with regard to this period of English history. Of course, all well-informed men know that the chroniclers of the time are not to be fully relied on, when theological prejudices interfere with their respect for truth. Thorough honesty of statement and manly justice to antagonists are not common virtues in any age, but they were unknown virtues then. Sir Thomas More, one of the best men of the age, was also one of the least tolerant. In his Utopia, indeed, he announces the principle of religious tolera- tion, but in actual life he was an energetic persecutor. Men who could not burn or injure the bodies of those whom they hated told lies about them without scruple, and much that has passed for history in the sixteenth century will not stand the investi- gation of a critical eye.
Prejudice, however, is not extinct even in these days, and some readers may think that Mr. Brewer's high eulogy of Wolsey as a statesman and diplomatist, and his somewhat depre- ciating remarks on the Reformation in England, are not wholly free from this defect. He has not a good word to say for Anne Boleyn, and perhaps there is not one to be said. She was vain, unscrupulous, cold-hearted, and immodest. There appears no doubt as to the character of the King's con- nection with her before the marriage, and we look in vain for any noble quality that may partially redeem a frivolous and contempti- ble nature. Mr. Brewer calls Anne a young coquette, who had nothing but her lively airs and thoughtless gaiety to recommend her, and her conduct in the long period during which she was aspiring to fill the place of Katharine shows that she was an artful coquette, who understood but too well the game for which she was playing. Anne had been brought up in a bad school. Her father was a man of no principle, and without regard for the honour of his daughter, or if he did care for • Letters and Papers. Foreign and Dowell& of ?le Reign of Hotry VIII. Preserved in the Public Record Office, the Bridsh Museum, and elsewhere in England. Arranged and Catalogued by J. S. Brewer, MA. VoL 1V. Introduotion and Appendix. 1875.
it, it was mainly from a consideration of the great price it would fetch ; her brother secured a name of infamy even in that profligate age, and the scenes to which Anne was accustomed at Court must have early familiarised her with vice. Writing of Sir Thomas More and of the difficulties with which he had to struggle, owing to the favour of the King, Mr. Brewer observes that the pursuits of the Court and the persons who composed its inner circle were not likely to command his sympathy and approbation.
"There was hardly one of them whose character was not seriously tainted with that vice against which the unsullied purity of Mote's mind revolted ; not one who looked upon the transgression of the marriage-vow as deserving reprobation or censure, or at least as worse than a jest. Suffolk had been betrothed to one lady ; then married another ; then abandoned her, on the plea of his previous contract, for the lady whom he had in the first instance rejected. Norfolk lived with his duchess on the most scandalous terms. Sir William Compton had been cited in the ecclesiastical court for living in open adultery with a married woman. The fate of Norris and George Boleyn is too well known to require comment. Sir Francis Bryan, the chief companion in the King's amusements, and the minister of his pleasures, was pointed out by common fame as more dissolute than all the rest."
Some dates are wanted that would be of service, in our judgment, with regard to Henry's scruples. When his conscience first began to prick him we do not certainly know, but it is evident that his doubts as to the validity of his marriage gathered strength with the passion he felt for Anne Boleyn. That he WAS not so scrupulous as he appeared to be is plain from much that transpired during the divorce negotiations. He was resolved to obtain his will, in any way, at any cost. Katharine had lost her charms after a long married life. Anne was young and attractive, and the lack of male offspring formed an excuse for his perplexities with regard to the lawfulness of the union. Henry wanted to have his doubts strengthened ; arguments on the opposite side were disregarded, and it is possible that in time he came to look upon the divorce as an inevitable and righteous act. But his conduct throughout was not that of a conscientious man, but of a man bent upon his own pleasure. He treated Katharine cruelly, spoke of her coarsely, and as Mr. Brewer re- minds us, when the legality, or illegality, of his marriage had yet to be determined, "openly paraded Anne Boleyn as his wife, and lodged her sumptuously, and even ostentatiously, in one wing of his palace, while Katharine remained neglected in the other." Mr. Froude allows that no lady of true delicacy would have accepted such a position, adding that feeling for Queen Katharine ought to have forbidden it, if she was careless of respect for her- self. The "Gospel light" that "first dawned from Boleyn's eyes" is a pretty poetical fancy of Gray's, without any foundation in history, and it is only the recollection of her terrible end which allows pity for Anne Boleyn to mingle with our contempt.
The dignified and consistent conduct of Katharine forms a striking contrast to that of Anne. She suffered as a woman, but she acted like a queen, and in no portion of his history has Mr. Froude, we think, exhibited a greater want of judgment than in his remarks about this most unhappy lady. Why she did not yield to Henry's demand, and retire either to a cloister or to Spain, is, he says, a difficult question to answer ; but he allows that we have "little reason to be surprised if policy and prudence were alike forgotten by Katharine in the bitterness of the draught which was forced upon her, and if her own personal wrongs out- weighted the interests of the world." Katharine, after a long married life, might well be justified in doubting whether Henry's demand was a lawful one, and in questioning also whether the interests of the world had half as much to do with Henry's desire for the divorce as his own wayward passions. Neither was it possible to believe in her husband's conscientions scruples, as he would have been willing, with the Pope's permission, to marry Anne without any divorce from Katharine. And was Katharine to have no scruples also, after having borne Henry a child, and believed for twenty years in the validity of her marriage ? As a mother, too, she would naturally guard her daughter's interests as well as her own. Mary was now the rightful heir to the throne, but if Katharine yielded to the King's demand, Mary must give place to the male heir that was hoped for by a second marriage ; and supposing that Anne had no man-child, Mary's claim to the succession would have to be secured by Act of Parliament.
"No amount of ingenious pleading," writes Mr. Brewer, "could get rid of the fact that Henry had lived with his queen for twenty years, and had never expressed any scruple until she was past the la meridian of her life, and Anne Boleyn had appeared upon the scene. She was the mother of his only daughter and successor ; and even had there been any irregularity in their union at the first, it was supposed to be removed by lapse of time. At all events, any irregularity deserved less to be regarded than the
wrong inflicted by the husband on an innocent wife, and by the father on his child, by the present proceedings." To this may be -added, that Katharine believed the brief given to Ferdinand by Julius IL was in itself sufficient to remove all the objections to the marriage on which Henry relied. Mr. Brewer observes that
t- more than half the world was persuaded even then that the King's cause was the cause of justice and of Scripture, which scarcely agrees with the unwilling testimony of Hall that "whosoever spoke against the marriage was of the common people abhorred and reproved." From first to last, Henry's conduct in the matter was cruel and nnkingly. His deterioration of character in middle-age is as remarkable as the splendid promise of his youth, when, as the writer observes, he "completely realisedto Englishmen their ideal of a King."
We cannot close this slight and necessarily imperfect notice of a highly interesting volume without saying a word or two about Mr. Brewer's comments on the Reformation in England. His tone throughout is, we think, unfavour- able, not to say unjust, to the Reformers, and by hints or allusions he seems, although perhaps unintentionally, to disparage -the Reformation, instead of being content with passing a severe judgment on some unworthy leaders of that great movement. To write of the "rigid severity of the old faith," in contrast with the license of Protestantism, which, for opposite reasons, "had acceptance with the godly, and was equally acceptable to the scoffer and the licentious," strikes us as a partial statement demanding large qualification. In describing the feeling which led men to found schools and colleges, in an age when munificence was still regarded as a virtue, the writer adds :—" Perhaps in the old Church a sense of a common Christendom, a communion in which the living and the dead alike formed one society, did something to maintain senti- ments of this kind, which grew weaker when men ceased to care for any but their own individual faith and salvation, and a live dog was more highly valued than a dead lion." Passing from -this sneer, which is unworthy of the historian, we come upon a statement that will be new to some readers. Mr. Brewer maintains that the Church of England derives its strength from the middle-classes, and that among the upper and the lower elements of society the Church of the Reformation has never excited much enthusiasm. 'This may be true, we think it is certainly tree with regard to the lower classes; but the other half of the statement, whether true or not, is a complete contradiction to the assertion of polemical Dissenters that the Church of Eng- land is the Church of the aristocracy. Mr. Brewer yields a noble tribute to the Book of Common Prayer, observing that "as a book of social prayer it is the most wonderful achievement of any age,—the greatest, next the Bible, of any human production." He adds that it was treated with contempt by the Reformers, that it is not a genuine product of the Reformation, and that "nothing can show this more clearly than the total absence of any aimilar book of devotion in kingdoms and societies where the work of the Reformation was less fettered than it was in England."
This, it seems to us, is not a sound argument Our Prayer- Book had, no doubt, strong opponents in England, and was con- temptuously rejected in Scotland ; but it exactly suited a people who, in religion as well as in politics, have been always opposed to the falsehood of extremes,—of a people who, while clinging to what is old, have been ready to accept every kind of reform that does not irrevocably separate them from the past. In this respect our Prayer. Book strikes us as the legitimate fruit of the Refor- mation, and as affording a remarkable illustration of the English character. No doubt the Book of Common Prayer encountered great opposition from some of the Reformers, just as it has been opposed ever since by Dissenters from the National Church, but this is no proof that it was not a "genuine product of the Reformation." It may be worth while remarking in conclusion that the system of orthography adopted in this volume is one that we are not accus- tomed to see in books published in England. Is it merely the choice of the author, or does the Master of the Rolls give his sanction to a form of spelling which is common in America, but looks strange and uncouth to English eyes?
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