REVOLUTIONS IN ENGLISH HISTORY.*
Ix his preface to the present volume, Dr. 'Vaughan tells us that he is "endeavouring to write the kind of history of which be felt the want in his youth." As we have not the pleasure of knowing. Dr. Vaughan, except through the medium of his works, we cati only con jecture how many years have elapsed since the peried to which he is referring. We shall probably, however, be within the mark if we assume that some thirty years would be required to stretch across the interval. And if so, then we should think it must. be clear to Dr. Vaughan himself that although a work such as this might have been wanted at the beginning of that period, it is by no means equally wanted at the present day. In the generation which has passed away since George IV. was king, the field of history which Dr. Vaughan here traverses has been excavated by numerous and compe- • Bero/utiona in English History. By Dr. Vaughan. Vol. IL: " Revolutions in Religion." Parker and Bourn.
tent inquirers. Before the appearance of such men as Hallam, Macaulay, Frou.de, and, though last not least, Mr. Sanford, the work now before us would have been both original and profound. Now, however, it can claim little merit beyond that of being a careful and, unquestionably, an interesting summary of their conclusions, aided by a tolerably impartial effort to hold the balance between them. That such is an honourable and useful employment for the leisure hours which "Providence has given" Dr. Vaughan in the autumn of his life, we should be the last to deny; and we gladly testify to the sobriety of judgment and comparative gentleness of tone which the volume displays, and which are eminently becoming to every man who has reached the autumn of his days. But a great English classic, or even a valuable text book, the work can never be. For it wants the freshness necessary to the first, and the succinctness and simplicity which are no less indispensable to the second.
The title indeed of the present volume had led us to form other anticipations. "English 'Revolutions in Religion" is certainly a subject upon which an original book, and a very good book, might be written. But then it would have to be written from a philosophical point of view ; because, of course, the mere narrative of the great religious changes of the sixteenth century has been done over and over again. The social causes which underlay this great national convulsion have been glanced at by other writers, but have never been fairly worked out. It was not merely that the great develop- ment of trade and commerce which followed on the cessation of the Wars of the Roses widened the horizon of English thought, and pre- pared the minds of Englishmen for the reception of new opinions, It made them at once a more laborious and a less imaginative people : and while it left them less and less leisure for the observance of a complex ceremonial, it weakened the dominion of the faculty to which that ceremonial appealed. As life became more thoroughly practical, and the competition for subsistence increased, a graver and more masculine religion would inevitably supersede the graceful fancies and the exacting ritual of the ancient faith. In this way the name of Merry England gradually became inapplicable to our native land; and a very different quality grew, in the eyes of foreipers, to be the peculiar attribute of Englishmen. Somethinc, also is due to the dissolution of the feudal system in estimating the various causes of the English Reformation. The two hierarchies were so closely interwoven with each other, that the downfal of the one must necessarily, if unconsciously to themselves, have weakened people's confidence in the other. The disappearance from the 'English counties of so many names of note, associated for centuries with the ideas of order and prescriptive right, ,'must have loosened the hold of these ideas upon the popular mind. And the destruction of the great monasteries must, we fancy, have seemed to many men only like the completion of one great drama, of which their youth had witnessed the beginning. Dr. Vaughan, however, confines himself almost exclusively t,q the surface of affairs, and seems contented with reproducing the old story, in a new shape, and adjusted to modern ways of thinking. But this is not our only ground of complaint. A more important one is, that he scarcely seems to have realized to himself what it was that he meant to write. Most persons would suppose that "Revolutions in Religion" mould be a treatise, from one point of view or another, upon the English Reformation, combined, perhaps, with subsequent develop- ments. Ent we are quite certain that were it not for the title-page, no person would make out that religion, more than anything else, was the subject of the author's pen. The book is, to all intents and purposes, a series of essays upon England under the Tudors ; legisla- tion, war, society, literature, trade and commerce, all contributing their quota of materials to the fabric. There is really very little dif- ference, except in the greater brevity of detail, between this book and any given volume of Mr. Froude's history. There is a difference in style, of course, as there is a difference between Broome and Fenton's books of the Odyssey and Pope's. But lay matters and clerical, secular and religious, are comnungled in about equal proportion, and with exactly the same effect upon the reader's eye. This is a mistake which cannot help telling greatly to the author's disadvantage. For we have to read through so much irrelevant and perfectly familiar matter in order to get at such views as are more particularly the doctor's own, that we conceive a distaste for the work before we have got half through it, and are inclined, perhaps, to do less justice to the author's good points than they really deserve. His method, therefore, we must unqualifiedly. condemn. His style is better, and where untainted by a craving to be effective, it is clear, natural, and not without some degree of power. Here and there, we have noticed some little grammatical slips; but they are not worth recording, and the only faults of style which are so, are the evident imitations of Lord Macaulay's very stalest tricks. We mean the habit of leading up to the mention of some famous character through a series of descriptive sentences, each exciting the curiosity more strongly than the last, till at the end of the paragraph he, as it were, pulls the trigger, and salutes you with a sounding proper name. Dr. Vaughan's sketches of Tyndal, Latimer, and Thomas Cromwell, are done just in this style, and, we must frankly say, inspire us with very considerable aversion.
The present volume is a thick octavo of 668 pag•es, and compre- hends the whole period of our history during the dominion of the Tudors. The character which it presents to XIS of Henry VIII. is neither so favourable as Mr. Fronde's, nor anything like so odious as that of other historians. If he was a tyrant by nature, thinks Dr. Vaughan, he was also a tyrant for the public good. His civil tyranny was the only obstacle strong enough to stave off the restoration of a spiritual tyranny that was far worse. If he was sensual, he had also good reashs of state for his sensuality. Who is to decide the exact proportion of motives ? Neither alone, perhaps, will entirely explain his conduct. We think it may be fairly said that he would not have divorced Catherine had he not really felt the force of the conscien- tious scruple. But it is also to be believed that he would never have quarrelled with the Pope had he not desired Anne Boleyn. And this, in effect, is pretty much what Dr. Vaughan does say. What he most severely condemns in the character of Henry is his want of feeling and delicacy. And here we perfectly agree with him :
"He now avowed his intention to raise Anne Boleyn to the place of queen. Orders were given to prepare apartments for her residence at Greenwich. Ca- therine and Anne were thus placed under the same roof, and had their respective following as in the sight of each other. The coarse cruelty of this proceeding needs no comment. The king in proposing such an arrangement, and Anne in accepting it, were alike at fault."
And so again of poor Anne Boleyn in her turn. "Even if Henry," says Dr. Vaughan, "believed her guilty, his course towards her was such as might well cause humane men to blush for, their manhood." The Doctor entirely believes in her innocence :
"The indictment," says he, "indeed, not only attributes great crimes to Anne Boleyn, but mentions circumstances and dates. She is said to have been always the tempter, and the arts of seduction ascribed to her are set forth as being the same in all the cases. But, in fact, this document, in place of proving her guilty, furnishes decisive evidence, in our judgment, that she must have fallen by a foul conspiracy. To suppose that Anne Boleyn indulged in the licentious freedoms with the persons of her alleged lovers, to seduce them to her pleasure, which are described in this indictment, and that she did all this in the presence of third parties, must be to suppose her bereft of reason. In the case of the four gentle- men, if there were not third parties to be witnesses, there could have been no witnesses. The evidence, in fact, is of the sort which destroys itself by being outrageously overdone. Persons who could credit it for a moment, must have been prepared to credit anything."
He thinks that the worst of which Anne was guilty was "want of dignity of demeanour proper to a queen, and of that prudent self- respect which should be found in every married woman." Mr. Froude, it will be remembered, seeks to found an argument for her guilt upon the unanimity of her judges, consisting of twenty-seven members of the House of Peers, men he thinks not likely to have been influenced by cowardice or subserviency. Dr. Vaughan seems to attach very little importance to this opinion ; believing that the formidable power and unbending will of the king had completely cowed his subjects and "paralyzed all opposition." Mr. Froude asks, furthermore, what force the king had at his command to compel obedience to his will. To this it may be replied at once, that Henry was the arbiter of two contending factions, and possessed, in their embittered hostility, a source of strength more potent than any standing army. If it be asked, Why, therefore, was it necessary for Edward VI. to have his "gendarmerie," and Mary I. her guards ? we reply, It was simply because they were not arbiters, but ranged themselves unmistakably at the head of one of the two parties, thereby forfeiting that commanding position which the policy of Henry and of Elizabeth was directed to maintain. We do not, however, wish on this occasion to reopen the controversy between Mr. Froude and his predecessors. We shall content ourselves with indicating the line which Dr. Vaughan has taken itp • and we may add, in conclusion, that Dr. Vaughan, in speaking of Henry's "coarse ness," is only following in the wake of Mr. Froude himself, who ad- mits the existence of the particular element in the king's character, though he leaves us rather at a loss to exactly understand what he means by it.
Upon the other cause cebre of the Tudor period, Dr. Vaughan's opimon may be easily anticipated. He condemns the Queen of Scots root and branch. But in justice to that charming woman we must observe that the docker entirely breaks down in one of the two questions he has raised ; in fact, he fairly runs away from it. The two points to be decided, he says, are these : first, whether Mary was privy to Babington's conspiracy; secondly, whether, even if she were, Elizabeth had any right to put her to death as a traitor. The first point our doctor settles very much to his own satisfaction, in favour of Mary's guilt; and we are not goinc, to disturb his convictions. But the discussion of the second one he backs out of, and, we think, with very good policy, as it might task a much stronger contro- versialist than our worthy author to establish that point. On the settlement of the English Church—the third point of interest in his subject—the doctor has more than one notable obser- vation, and, in fact, shows to more advantage than in any other part of his work. He brings out more clearly than we think has yet been done the extent of the Puritan disaffection which existed under Elizabeth, and shows that the rebellious spirit of the seventeenth century was by no means the creation of the Stuarts. He also brings home to us, more pointedly than other authors have done, how that in the rivalry of scurrilous abuse which has distinguished party war- fare for three centuries, the Puritans were the aggressors. He also maintains—though here we think with less reason—that they had the majority on their side. His authorities for this statement are—firstly, Mr. Hallam, and, secondly, the Jesuit Parsons. But Mr. Hallam only says that in the earlier days of Queen Elizabeth the majority of learned ecclesiastics belonged to the more Protestant party. And this, we think, is not to be wondered at, for there is always a natural tendency in all very superior minds towards creative activity, which is only checked by experience; and in the early days of Elizabeth men bad not yet come to see in what quarter the security and stability of the Church of England really lay. Moreover, the opinions of a learned few among the dignitaries and prelates of the Church is at no time any reliable proof of the opinions still held by the masses. In the second place, the opinion of the Jesuit Parsons is, it is to be observed, exactly in accordance with the game invariably played by
Romanists in England; namely, a depreciation of the ." Church Party," on the very intelligible ground that they are more dangerous opponents than any others, as offering the people, in a purer and more Scriptural shape, what alone they, the Papists, have to offer in a corrupt and commentitious one. Neither of these two witnesses, therefore, avail the good doctor much, while on the other hand are to be set the force of immemorial traditions behind the period in question, and of continuous reverence and respect for a good three centuries after it.
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