their hearts admired nothing of heaven save the riches of its pavement; to see the goodly fruits of all their labours likely to perish through sectarian divisions, which might very probably have been healed by timely precaution, and the adoption (at some cost to be sure) of measures which they were the first to recommend; these were trials by that slow fire of temptation which it requires a stout heart and a high principle to sustain, and though there might be many (as Milton ungenerously and ungratefully puts it) who would give their bodies to be burned, if the occasion demanded it, yet there would be few, who, so tried, would find themselves so unweary in well-doing. They, however, have their reward; and it was a noble prize for which they struggled. They are themselves gone to heaven in their chariot of fire, and to their country they have bequeathed as a mantle, a free use of the Bible, a reasonable faith, a pure ritual, principles of toleration, liberty of conscience, and that virtue which goeth out of all these things, whereby a nation is made to put forth its otherwise dormant strength in the prosecution of commerce, of manufactures, of agriculture, of science, and of whatever else belongs to inextinguishable enterprise. CHAPTER IX. CROMWELL.—GARDINER.-BONNER. THE ACT OF THE two great measures of the supremacy, and the suppression of the abbeys had been carried, but with haste and no small violence; and now came the recoil. It pertained to the king's prerogative that the pope should be deposed, and to his exchequer that the monasteries should be despoiled: so far, therefore, Henry was a cordial reformer. Churchwork is said in general to go up on crutches, and to come down post; and the present case furnishes no exception to the proverb: for now the king wellnigh deserted the cause in which he had been so actively engaged; and having undone so much of the old religion, was disposed to do nothing for the new; but, betaking himself to catholic advisers, surrendered himself for the most part into their hands during the remainder of his reign. For though we shall have occasion to notice some acts of grace towards the reformed faith, they are few and feeble, suggested by a passing wish to preserve something of consistency, by momentary caprice, or by the force of conflicting parties, which, causing him to fall into a place where two seas met, constrained him at least to be still. The abbeys had scarcely been disposed of, when Cromwell, the political agent of the reformation, and the individual who had succeeded to the greatest share of Wolsey's influence over the king, fell into disgrace. After the untimely death of Jane Seymour, he had ventured (a measure requiring as much personal courage as the suppression of the monasteries) to negotiate a match for his capricious master; a match which, it was thought, would bind Henry still more closely with the Protestant cause, by connecting him with the Lutheran princes of Germany. But Cromwell's good genius had here forsaken him; Anne of Cleves was not found to answer to the agreeable portrait which Holbein had painted of her; on the contrary, she was ill-favoured; moreover she spoke Dutch, a language of which the king was ignorant; and had never learned music, of which he was passionately fond. Henry became disgusted, and Cromwell's position became precarious. Other ostensible causes were of course put forward to justify the ruin of this minister; treason and heresy were the stalkinghorses, but the marriage was the snare weight that pulled him down was there." That Henry gave him an earldom after this period, is true enough; it might be to throw dust in the eyes of the suspicious; it certainly proved but a garland to deck the victim for the altar. And now Gardiner, bishop of Winchester, "that fox" who had been long upon the watch to supplant him, saw that his opportunity was come, "The CROMWELL FALLS INTO DISGRACE. 167 and profited by it. Gardiner and Cromwell had known each other from early years, having been brought up together, and of nearly the same standing in the household of cardinal Wolsey; but there was not room upon the stage for both of them at a time; and Cromwell having soon on his part declared for the Reformation, had the king with him; and whilst this was the case, the churchman lay by. Cromwell seems to have owed him no good-will, and to have taken no pains to disguise his sentiments. Having the king's ear, he sent Bonner to supersede him as ambassador in France; and from the letters of that monster (as time-serving then as he was afterwards bloody-minded), and which are all meant to play up to the known tastes or prejudices of his patron, it is plain enough that Gardiner was disliked and distrusted by Cromwell, whom he in his turn was as studious to affront by the insults which he heaped upon this his mean-spirited vassal, and the savage ill-humour with which he resigned to him his office. He returned, however, to England; and as a man changes his latitude, but not his temper, who crosses the seas, Gardiner still continued to be a thorn in Cromwell's side; and on a comparison of dates, it will be seen that he had scarcely set foot in England before a change began to manifest itself in the counsels of the king, and Cromwell's influence, even long before he was attainted, to decline. What, indeed, could induce the latter to be instrumental to his recal from France (as Fox implies he was), and thereby to put his enemy in a situation where he could do him more mischief, it is vain at this time of day to enquire; but it seems probable that Gardiner was thought to be playing a game of his own in his master's service; and to be accommodating the foreign relations of his country to a policy that suited himself, or at least the cause which he had at heart. But in truth it must have been a very difficult matter for a minister of those times to have found the right place for the bishop of Winchester, whose talents were such, that it was alike unsafe to use or to refuse them. The character of this double-edged tool the king had learned to appreciate when it was too late; and on making a fresh will shortly before his death, showed no disposition to meddle with it more, by excluding Gardiner from the number of his executors (for in a former will, which was now cancelled, his name was found amongst them), and on being reminded of the omission by sir Anthony Browne, he replied, that he had acted advisedly, seeing that "if he were in his testament he would cumber them all."2 Gardiner, however, once dominant, maintained the ascendency of the Romish party and principles to the last of Henry's reign. He had, indeed, powerful coadjutors. The Howards were devoted to the same cause; and the natural influence of that distinguished house was then accidentally increased by the alliance which the king was about to form with one of its members. Then, again, he strengthened himself by the king's fears. If he found him making any demonstrations of a nearer approach to the Reformers, he could threaten him with the displeasure of the emperor, and picture 1 Fox's Acts and Mon. ii. 380. 2 Fox, ii. 647. |