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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/3144-0.txt b/3144-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..33dcd92 --- /dev/null +++ b/3144-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1906 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Froude's History of England, by Charles +Kingsley + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most +other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions +whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of +the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at +www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have +to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. + + + + +Title: Froude's History of England + + +Author: Charles Kingsley + + + +Release Date: December 26, 2014 [eBook #3144] +[This file was first posted on January 2, 2001] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FROUDE'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND*** + + +Transcribed from “Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays” 1890 +Macmillan and Co. edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org + + + + + + FROUDE’S HISTORY OF ENGLAND {219} + + +THERE appeared a few years since a ‘Comic History of England,’ duly +caricaturing and falsifying all our great national events, and +representing the English people, for many centuries back, as a mob of +fools and knaves, led by the nose in each generation by a few arch-fools +and arch-knaves. Some thoughtful persons regarded the book with utter +contempt and indignation; it seemed to them a crime to have written it; a +proof of ‘banausia,’ as Aristotle would have called it, only to be +outdone by the writing a ‘Comic Bible.’ After a while, however, their +indignation began to subside; their second thoughts, as usual, were more +charitable than their first; they were not surprised to hear that the +author was an honest, just, and able magistrate; they saw that the +publication of such a book involved no moral turpitude; that it was +merely meant as a jest on a subject on which jesting was permissible, and +as a money speculation in a field of which men had a right to make money; +while all which seemed offensive in it was merely the outcome, and as it +were apotheosis, of that method of writing English history which has been +popular for nearly a hundred years. ‘Which of our modern historians,’ +they asked themselves, ‘has had any real feeling of the importance, the +sacredness, of his subject?—any real trust in, or respect for, the +characters with whom he dealt? Has not the belief of each and all of +them been the same—that on the whole, the many always have been fools and +knaves; foolish and knavish enough, at least, to become the puppets of a +few fools and knaves who held the reins of power? Have they not held +that, on the whole, the problems of human nature and human history have +been sufficiently solved by Gibbon and Voltaire, Gil Blas and Figaro; +that our forefathers were silly barbarians; that this glorious nineteenth +century is the one region of light, and that all before was outer +darkness, peopled by ‘foreign devils,’ Englishmen, no doubt, according to +the flesh, but in spirit, in knowledge, in creed, in customs, so utterly +different from ourselves that we shall merely show our sentimentalism by +doing aught but laughing at them? + +On what other principle have our English histories as yet been +constructed, even down to the children’s books, which taught us in +childhood that the history of this country was nothing but a string of +foolish wars, carried on by wicked kings, for reasons hitherto +unexplained, save on that great historic law of Goldsmith’s by which Sir +Archibald Alison would still explain the French Revolution— + + ‘The dog, to serve his private ends, + Went mad, and bit the man?’ + +It will be answered by some, and perhaps rather angrily, that these +strictures are too sweeping; that there is arising, in a certain quarter, +a school of history books for young people of a far more reverent tone, +which tries to do full honour to the Church and her work in the world. +Those books of this school which we have seen, we must reply, seem just +as much wanting in real reverence for the past as the school of Gibbon +and Voltaire. It is not the past which they reverence, but a few +characters or facts eclectically picked out of the past, and, for the +most part, made to look beautiful by ignoring all the features which will +not suit their preconceived pseudo-ideal. There is in these books a +scarcely concealed dissatisfaction with the whole course of the British +mind since the Reformation, and (though they are not inclined to confess +the fact) with its whole course before the Reformation, because that +course was one of steady struggle against the Papacy and its +anti-national pretensions. They are the outcome of an utterly un-English +tone of thought; and the so-called ‘ages of faith’ are pleasant and +useful to them, principally because they are distant and unknown enough +to enable them to conceal from their readers that in the ages on which +they look back as ideally perfect a Bernard and a Francis of Assisi were +crying all day long—‘O that my head were a fountain of tears, that I +might weep for the sins of my people!’ Dante was cursing popes and +prelates in the name of the God of Righteousness; Boccaccio and Chaucer +were lifting the veil from priestly abominations of which we now are +ashamed even to read; and Wolsey, seeing the rottenness of the whole +system, spent his mighty talents, and at last poured out his soul unto +death, in one long useless effort to make the crooked straight, and +number that which had been weighed in the balances of God, and found for +ever wanting. To ignore wilfully facts like these, which were patent all +along to the British nation, facts on which the British laity acted, till +they finally conquered at the Reformation, and on which they are acting +still, and will, probably, act for ever, is not to have any real +reverence for the opinions or virtues of our forefathers; and we are not +astonished to find repeated, in such books, the old stock calumnies +against our lay and Protestant worthies, taken at second-hand from the +pages of Lingard. In copying from Lingard, however, this party has done +no more than those writers have who would repudiate any party—almost any +Christian—purpose. Lingard is known to have been a learned man, and to +have examined many manuscripts which few else had taken the trouble to +look at; so his word is to be taken, no one thinking it worth while to +ask whether he has either honestly read or honestly quoted the documents. +It suited the sentimental and lazy liberality of the last generation to +make a show of fairness by letting the Popish historian tell his side of +the story, and to sneer at the illiberal old notion that gentlemen of his +class were given to be rather careless about historic truth when they had +a purpose to serve thereby; and Lingard is now actually recommended as a +standard authority for the young by educated Protestants, who seem +utterly unable to see that, whether the man be honest or not, his whole +view of the course of British events since Becket first quarrelled with +his king must be antipodal to their own; and that his account of all +which has passed for three hundred years since the fall of Wolsey is most +likely to be (and, indeed, may be proved to be) one huge libel on the +whole nation, and the destiny which God has marked out for it. + +There is, indeed, no intrinsic cause why the ecclesiastical, or +pseudo-Catholic, view of history should, in any wise, conduce to a just +appreciation of our forefathers. For not only did our forefathers rebel +against that conception again and again, till they finally trampled it +under their feet, and so appear, _primâ facie_, as offenders to be judged +at its bar; but the conception itself is one which takes the very same +view of nature as that cynic conception of which we spoke above. Man, +with the Romish divines, is, _ipso facto_, the same being as the man of +Voltaire, Le Sage, or Beaumarchais; he is an insane and degraded being, +who is to be kept in order, and, as far as may be, cured and set to work +by an ecclesiastical system; and the only threads of light in the dark +web of his history are clerical and theurgic, not lay and human. +Voltaire is the very _experimentum crucis_ of this ugly fact. European +history looks to him what it would have looked to his Jesuit preceptors, +had the sacerdotal element in it been wanting; what heathen history +actually did look to them. He eliminates the sacerdotal element, and +nothing remains but the chaos of apes and wolves which the Jesuits had +taught him to believe was the original substratum of society. The +humanity of his history—even of his ‘Pucelle d’Orléans’,—is simply the +humanity of Sanchez and the rest of those _vingtquatre Pères_ who hang +gibbeted for ever in the pages of Pascal. He is superior to his +teachers, certainly, in this, that he has hope for humanity on earth; +dreams of a new and nobler life for society, by means of a true and +scientific knowledge of the laws of the moral and material universe; in a +word, he has, in the midst of all his filth and his atheism, a faith in a +righteous and truth-revealing God, which the priests who brought him up +had not. Let the truth be spoken, even though in favour of such a +destroying Azrael as Voltaire. And what if his primary conception of +humanity be utterly base? Is that of our modern historians so much +higher? Do Christian men seem to them, on the whole, in all ages, to +have had the spirit of God with them, leading them into truth, however +imperfectly and confusedly they may have learnt his lessons? Have they +ever heard with their ears, or listened when their fathers have declared +unto them, the noble works which God did in their days, and in the old +time before them? Do they believe that the path of Christendom has been, +on the whole, the path of life and the right way, and that the living God +is leading her therein? Are they proud of the old British worthies? Are +they jealous and tender of the reputation of their ancestors? Do they +believe that there were any worthies at all in England before the +steam-engine and political economy were discovered? Do their conceptions +of past society and the past generations retain anything of that great +thought which is common to all the Aryan races—that is, to all races who +have left aught behind them better than mere mounds of earth—to Hindoo +and Persian, Greek and Roman, Teuton and Scandinavian, that men are the +sons of the heroes, who were the sons of God? Or do they believe that +for civilised people of the nineteenth century it is as well to say as +little as possible about ancestors who possessed our vices without our +amenities, our ignorance without our science; who were bred, no matter +how, like flies by summer heat, out of that everlasting midden which men +call the world, to buzz and sting their foolish day, and leave behind +them a fresh race which knows them not, and could win no honour by owning +them, and which owes them no more than if it had been produced, as +midden-flies were said to be of old, by some spontaneous generation? + +It is not probable that this writer will be likely to undervalue +political economy, or the steam-engine, or any other solid and practical +good which God has unveiled to this generation. All that he does demand +(for he has a right to demand it) is that rational men should believe +that our forefathers were at least as good as we are; that whatsoever +their measure of light was, they acted up to what they knew as faithfully +as we do; and that, on the whole, it was not their fault if they did not +know more. Even now the real discoveries of the age are made, as of old, +by a very few men; and, when made, have to struggle, as of old, against +all manner of superstitions, lazinesses, scepticisms. Is the history of +the Minié rifle one so very complimentary to our age’s quickness of +perception that we can afford to throw many stones at the prejudices of +our ancestors? The truth is that, as of old, ‘many men talk of Robin +Hood who never shot in his bow’; and many talk of Bacon who never +discovered a law by induction since they were born. As far as our +experience goes, those who are loudest in their jubilations over the +wonderful progress of the age are those who have never helped that +progress forward one inch, but find it a great deal easier and more +profitable to use the results which humbler men have painfully worked out +as second-hand capital for hustings-speeches and railway books, and +flatter a mechanics’ institute of self-satisfied youths by telling them +that the least instructed of them is wiser than Erigena or Roger Bacon. +Let them be. They have their reward. And so also has the patient and +humble man of science, who, the more he knows, confesses the more how +little he knows, and looks back with affectionate reverence on the great +men of old time—on Archimedes and Ptolemy, Aristotle and Pliny, and many +another honourable man who, walking in great darkness, sought a ray of +light, and did not seek in vain,—as integral parts of that golden chain +of which he is but one link more; as scientific forefathers, without +whose aid his science could not have had a being. + +Meanwhile, this general tone of irreverence for our forefathers is no +hopeful sign. It is unwise to ‘inquire why the former times were better +than these’; to hang lazily and weakly over some eclectic dream of a past +golden age; for to do so is to deny that God is working in this age, as +well as in past ages; that His light is as near us now as it was to the +worthies of old time. + +But it is more than unwise to boast and rejoice that the former times +were worse than these; and to teach young people to say in their hearts, +‘What clever fellows we are, compared with our stupid old fogies of +fathers!’ More than unwise; for possibly it may be false in fact. To +look at the political and moral state of Europe at this moment, +Christendom can hardly afford to look down on any preceding century, and +seems to be in want of something which neither science nor constitutional +government seems able to supply. Whether our forefathers also lacked +that something we will not inquire just now; but if they did, their want +of scientific and political knowledge was evidently not the cause of the +defect; or why is not Spain now infinitely better, instead of being +infinitely worse off, than she was three hundred years ago? + +At home, too—But on the question whether we are so very much better off +than our forefathers Mr. Froude, not we, must speak: for he has +deliberately, in his new history, set himself to the solution of this +question, and we will not anticipate what he has to say; what we would +rather insist on now are the moral effects produced on our young people +by books which teach them to look with contempt on all generations but +their own, and with suspicion on all public characters save a few +contemporaries of their own especial party. + +There is an ancient Hebrew book, which contains a singular story +concerning a grandson who was cursed because his father laughed at the +frailty of the grandfather. Whether the reader shall regard that story +(as we do) as a literal fact recorded by inspired wisdom, as an instance +of one of the great root-laws of family life, and therefore of that +national life which (as the Hebrew book so cunningly shows) is the +organic development of the family life; or whether he shall treat it (as +we do not) as a mere apologue or myth, he must confess that it is equally +grand in its simplicity and singular in its unexpected result. The words +of the story, taken literally and simply, no more justify the notion that +Canaan’s slavery was any magical consequence of the old patriarch’s anger +than they do the well-known theory that it was the cause of the Negro’s +blackness. Ham shows a low, foul, irreverent, unnatural temper towards +his father. The old man’s shame is not a cause of shame to his son, but +only of laughter. Noah prophesies (in the fullest and deepest meaning of +that word) that a curse will come upon that son’s son; that he will be a +slave of slaves; and reason and experience show that he spoke truth. Let +the young but see that their fathers have no reverence for the generation +before them, then will they in turn have no reverence for their fathers. +Let them be taught that the sins of their ancestors involve their own +honour so little that they need not take any trouble to clear the blot +off the scutcheon, but may safely sit down and laugh over it, saying, +‘Very likely it is true. If so, it is very amusing; and if not—what +matter?’—Then those young people are being bred up in a habit of mind +which contains in itself all the capabilities of degradation and slavery, +in self-conceit, hasty assertion, disbelief in nobleness, and all the +other ‘credulities of scepticism’: parted from that past from which they +take their common origin, they are parted also from each other, and +become selfish, self-seeking, divided, and therefore weak: disbelieving +in the nobleness of those who have gone before them, they learn more and +more to disbelieve in the nobleness of those around them; and, by denying +God’s works of old, come, by a just and dreadful Nemesis, to be unable to +see his works in the men of their own day; to suspect and impugn valour, +righteousness, disinterestedness in their contemporaries; to attribute +low motives; to pride themselves on looking at men and things as ‘men who +know the world,’ so the young puppies style it; to be less and less +chivalrous to women, less and less respectful to old men, less and less +ashamed of boasting about their sensual appetites; in a word, to show all +those symptoms which, when fully developed, leave a generation without +fixed principles, without strong faith, without self-restraint, without +moral cohesion, the sensual and divided prey of any race, however +inferior in scientific knowledge, which has a clear and fixed notion of +its work and destiny. That many of these signs are themselves more and +more ominously showing in our young men, from the fine gentleman who +rides in Rotten Row to the boy-mechanic who listens enraptured to Mr. +Holyoake’s exposures of the absurdity of all human things save Mr. +Holyoake’s self, is a fact which presses itself most on those who have +watched this age most carefully, and who (rightly or wrongly) attribute +much of this miserable temper to the way in which history has been +written among us for the last hundred years. + +Whether or not Mr. Froude would agree with these notions, he is more or +less responsible for them; for they have been suggested by his ‘History +of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth.’ It was +impossible to read the book without feeling the contrast between its tone +and that of every other account of the times which one had ever seen. +Mr. Froude seems to have set to work upon the principle, too much ignored +in judging of the past, that the historian’s success must depend on his +dramatic faculty; and not merely on that constructive element of the +faculty in which Mr. Macaulay shows such astonishing power, but on that +higher and deeper critical element which ought to precede the +constructive process, and without which the constructive element will +merely enable a writer, as was once bitterly but truly said, ‘to produce +the greatest possible misrepresentation with the least possible +distortion of fact.’ That deeper dramatic faculty, the critical, is not +logical merely, but moral, and depends on the moral health, the wideness +and heartiness of his moral sympathies, by which he can put himself—as +Mr. Froude has attempted to do, and as we think successfully—into the +place of each and every character, and not merely feel for them, but feel +with them. He does not merely describe their actions from the outside, +attributing them arbitrarily to motives which are pretty sure to be the +lowest possible, because it is easier to conceive a low motive than a +lofty one, and to call a man a villain than to unravel patiently the +tangled web of good and evil of which his thoughts are composed. He has +attempted to conceive of his characters as he would if they had been his +own contemporaries and equals, acting, speaking in his company; and he +has therefore thought himself bound to act toward them by those rules of +charity and courtesy, common alike to Christian morals, English law, and +decent society; namely, to hold every man innocent till he is proved +guilty; where a doubt exists, to give the prisoner at the bar the benefit +of it; not to excite the minds of the public against him by those +insinuative or vituperative epithets, which are but adders and scorpions; +and, on the whole, to believe that a man’s death and burial is not the +least reason for ceasing to behave to him like a gentleman and a +Christian. We are not inclined to play with solemn things, or to copy +Lucian and Quevedo in writing dialogues of the dead; but what dialogues +might some bold pen dash off between the old sons of Anak, at whose +coming Hades has long ago been moved, and to receive whom all the kings +of the nation have risen up, and the little scribblers who have fancied +themselves able to fathom and describe characters to whom they were but +pigmies! Conceive a half-hour’s interview between Queen Elizabeth and +some popular lady-scribbler, who has been deluding herself into the fancy +that gossiping inventories of millinery are history . . . ‘You pretend to +judge me, whose labours, whose cares, whose fiery trials were, beside +yours, as the heaving volcano beside a boy’s firework? You condemn my +weaknesses? Know that they were stronger than your strength! You impute +motives for my sins? Know that till you are as great as I have been, for +evil and for good, you will be as little able to comprehend my sins as my +righteousness! Poor marsh-croaker, who wishest not merely to swell up to +the bulk of the ox, but to embrace it in thy little paws, know thine own +size, and leave me to be judged by Him who made me!’ . . . How the poor +soul would shrink back into nothing before that lion eye which saw and +guided the destinies of the world, and all the flunkey-nature (if such a +vice exist beyond the grave) come out in utter abjectness, as if the ass +in the fable, on making his kick at the dead lion, had discovered to his +horror that the lion was alive and well—Spirit of Quevedo! finish for us +the picture which we cannot finish for ourselves. + +In a very different spirit from such has Mr. Froude approached these +times. Great and good deeds were done in them; and it has therefore +seemed probable to him that there were great and good men there to do +them. Thoroughly awake to the fact that the Reformation was the new +birth of the British nation, it has seemed to him a puzzling theory which +attributes its success to the lust of a tyrant and the cupidity of his +courtiers. It has evidently seemed to him paradoxical that a king who +was reputed to have been a satyr, instead of keeping as many concubines +as seemed good to him, should have chosen to gratify his passions by +entering six times into the strict bonds of matrimony, religiously +observing those bonds. It has seemed to him even more paradoxical that +one reputed to have been the most sanguinary tyrant who ever disgraced +the English throne should have been not only endured, but loved and +regretted by a fierce and free-spoken people; and he, we suppose, could +comprehend as little as we can the reasoning of such a passage as the +following, especially when it proceeds from the pen of so wise and +venerable a writer as Mr. Hallam. + +‘A government administered with so frequent violations, not only of the +chartered privileges of Englishmen, but of those still more sacred rights +which natural law has established, must have been regarded, one would +imagine, with just abhorrence and earnest longings for a change. Yet +contemporary authorities by no means answer this expectation. Some +mention Henry after his death in language of eulogy;’ (not only +Elizabeth, be it remembered, but Cromwell also, always spoke of him with +deepest respect; and their language always found an echo in the English +heart;) ‘and if we except those whom attachment to the ancient religion +had inspired with hatred to his memory, few seem to have been aware that +his name would descend to posterity among those of the many tyrants and +oppressors of innocence whom the wrath of Heaven has raised up, and the +servility of man endured.’ + +The names of even those few we should be glad to have; for it seems to us +that, with the exception of a few ultra-Protestants, who could not +forgive that persecution of the Reformers which he certainly permitted, +if not encouraged, during one period of his reign, no one adopted the +modern view of his character till more than a hundred years after his +death, when belief in all nobleness and faith had died out among an +ignoble and faithless generation, and the scandalous gossip of such a +light rogue as Osborne was taken into the place of honest and respectful +history. + +To clear up such seeming paradoxes as these by carefully examining the +facts of the sixteenth century has been Mr. Froude’s work; and we have +the results of his labour in two volumes, embracing only a period of +eleven years; but giving promise that the mysteries of the succeeding +time will be well cleared up for us in future volumes, and that we shall +find our forefathers to have been, if no better, at least no worse men +than ourselves. He has brought to the task known talents and learning, a +mastery over English prose almost unequalled in this generation, a spirit +of most patient and good-tempered research, and that intimate knowledge +of human motives and passions which his former books have shown, and +which we have a right to expect from any scholar who has really profited +by Aristotle’s unrivalled Ethics. He has fairly examined every +contemporary document within his reach, and, as he informs us in the +preface, he has been enabled, through the kindness of Sir Francis +Palgrave, to consult a great number of MSS. relating to the Reformation, +hitherto all but unknown to the public, and referred to in his work as +MSS. in the Rolls’ House, where the originals are easily accessible. +These, he states, he intends to publish, with additions from his own +reading, as soon as he has brought his history down to the end of Henry +the Eighth’s reign. + +But Mr. Froude’s chief text-book seems to have been State Papers and Acts +of Parliament. He has begun his work in the only temper in which a man +can write accurately and well; in a temper of trust toward the generation +whom he describes. The only temper; for if a man has no affection for +the characters of whom he reads, he will never understand them; if he has +no respect for his subject, he will never take the trouble to exhaust it. +To such an author the Statutes at large, as the deliberate expression of +the nation’s will and conscience, will appear the most important of all +sources of information; the first to be consulted, the last to be +contradicted; the Canon which is not to be checked and corrected by +private letters and flying pamphlets, but which is to check and correct +them. This seems Mr. Froude’s theory; and we are at no pains to confess +that if he be wrong we see no hope of arriving at truth. If these public +documents are not to be admitted in evidence before all others, we see no +hope for the faithful and earnest historian; he must give himself up to +swim as he may on the frothy stream of private letters, anecdotes, and +pamphlets, the puppet of the ignorance, credulity, peevishness, spite, of +any and every gossip and scribbler. + +Beginning his history with the fall of Wolsey, Mr. Froude enters, of +course, at his first step into the vexed question of Henry’s divorce: an +introductory chapter, on the general state of England, we shall notice +hereafter. + +A very short inspection of the method in which he handles the divorce +question gives us at once confidence in his temper and judgment, and hope +that we may at last come to some clearer understanding of it than the old +law gives us, which we have already quoted, concerning the dog who went +mad to serve his private ends. In a few masterly pages he sketches for +us the rotting and dying Church, which had recovered her power after the +Wars of the Roses over an exhausted nation; but in form only, not in +life. Wolsey, with whom he has fair and understanding sympathy, he +sketches as the transition minister, ‘loving England well, but loving +Rome better,’ who intends a reform of the Church, but who, as the Pope’s +commissioner for that very purpose, is liable to a _præmunire_, and +therefore dare not appeal to Parliament to carry out his designs, even if +he could have counted on the Parliament’s assistance in any measures +designed to invigorate the Church. At last arises in the divorce +question the accident which brings to an issue on its most vital point +the question of Papal power in England, and which finally draws down ruin +upon Wolsey himself. + +This appears to have begun in the winter of 1526–27. It was proposed to +marry the Princess Mary to a son of the French king. The Bishop of +Tarbés, who conducted the negotiations, advised himself, apparently by +special instigation of the evil spirit, to raise a question as to her +legitimacy. + +No more ingenious plan for convulsing England could have been devised. +The marriage from which Mary sprang only stood on a reluctant and +doubtful dispensation of the Pope’s. Henry had entered into it at the +entreaty of his ministers, contrary to a solemn promise given to his +father, and in spite of the remonstrances of the Archbishop of +Canterbury. No blessing seemed to have rested on it. All his children +had died young, save this one sickly girl: a sure note of divine +displeasure in the eyes of that coarse-minded Church which has always +declared the chief, if not the only, purpose of marriage to be the +procreation of children. + +But more: to question Mary’s legitimacy was to throw open the question of +succession to half a dozen ambitious competitors. It was, too probably, +to involve England at Henry’s death in another civil war of the Roses, +and in all the internecine horrors which were still rankling in the +memories of men; and probably, also, to bring down a French or Scotch +invasion. There was then too good reason, as Mr. Froude shows at length, +for Wolsey’s assertion to John Cassalis—‘If his Holiness, which God +forbid, shall show himself unwilling to listen to the King’s demands, to +me assuredly it will be but grief to live longer, for the innumerable +evils which I foresee will follow . . . Nothing before us but universal +and inevitable ruin.’ Too good reason there was for the confession of +the Pope himself to Gardner, ‘What danger it was to the realm to have +this thing hang in suspense . . . That without an heir-male, etc., the +realm was like to come to dissolution.’ Too good reason for the bold +assertion of the Cardinal-Governor of Bologna, that ‘he knew the guise of +England as few men did, and that if the King should die without +heirs-male, he was sure that it would cost two hundred thousand men’s +lives; and that to avoid this mischief by a second marriage, he thought, +would deserve heaven.’ Too good reason for the assertion of Hall, that +‘all indifferent and discreet persons judged it necessary for the Pope to +grant Henry a divorce, and, by enabling him to marry again, give him the +hope of an undisputed heir-male.’ The Pope had full power to do this; in +fact, such cases had been for centuries integral parts of his +jurisdiction as head of Christendom. But he was at once too timid and +too time-serving to exercise his acknowledged authority; and thus, just +at the very moment when his spiritual power was being tried in the +balance, he chose himself to expose his political power to the same test. +Both were equally found wanting. He had, it appeared, as little heart to +do justice among kings and princes as he had to seek and to save the +souls of men; and the Reformation followed as a matter of course. + +Through the tangled brakes of this divorce question Mr. Froude leads us +with ease and grace, throwing light, and even beauty, into dark nooks +where before all was mist, not merely by his intimate acquaintance with +the facts, but still more by his deep knowledge of human character, and +of woman’s even more than of man’s. For the first time the actors in +this long tragedy appear to us as no mere bodiless and soulless names, +but as beings of like passions with ourselves, comprehensible, coherent, +organic, even in their inconsistencies. Catherine of Arragon is still +the Catherine of Shakspeare; but Mr. Froude has given us the key to many +parts of her story which Shakspeare left unexplained, and delicately +enough has made us understand how Henry’s affections, if he ever had any +for her—faithfully as he had kept (with one exception) to that loveless +_mariage de convenance_—may have been gradually replaced by indifference +and even dislike, long before the divorce was forced on him as a question +not only of duty to the nation, but of duty to Heaven. And that he did +see it in this latter light, Mr. Froude brings proof from his own words, +from which we can escape only by believing that the confessedly honest +‘Bluff King Hal’ had suddenly become a consummate liar and a canting +hypocrite. + +Delicately, too, as if speaking of a lady whom he had met in modern +society (as a gentleman is bound to do), does Mr. Froude touch on the +sins of that hapless woman, who played for Henry’s crown, and paid for it +with her life. With all mercy and courtesy he gives us proof (for he +thinks it his duty to do so) of the French mis-education, the petty +cunning, the tendency to sensuality, the wilful indelicacy of her +position in Henry’s household as the rival of his queen, which made her +last catastrophe at least possible. Of the justice of her sentence he +has no doubt, any more than of her pre-engagement to some one, as proved +by a letter existing among Cromwell’s papers. Poor thing! If she did +that which was laid to her charge, and more, she did nothing, after all, +but what she had been in the habit of seeing the queens and princesses of +the French court do notoriously, and laugh over shamelessly; while, as +Mr. Froude well says, ‘If we are to hold her entirely free from guilt, we +place not only the King, but the Privy Council, the Judges, the Lords and +Commons, and the two Houses of Convocation, in a position fatal to their +honour and degrading to ordinary humanity’ (Mr. Froude should have added +Anne Boleyn’s own uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, and her father, who were on +the commission appointed to try her lovers, and her cousin, Anthony St. +Leger, a man of the very highest character and ability, who was on the +jury which found a true bill against her). ‘We can not,’ continues Mr. +Froude, ‘acquiesce without inquiry in so painful a conclusion. The +English nation also, as well as she, deserves justice at our hands; and +it cannot be thought uncharitable if we look with some scrutiny at the +career of a person who, but for the catastrophe with which it closed, +would not have so readily obtained forgiveness for having admitted the +addresses of the King, or for having received the homage of the court as +its future sovereign, while the King’s wife, her mistress, as yet resided +under the same roof.’ Mr. Froude’s conclusion is, after examining the +facts, the same with the whole nation of England in Henry’s reign: but no +one can accuse him of want of sympathy with the unhappy woman, who reads +the eloquent and affecting account of her trial and death, which ends his +second volume. Our only fear is, that by having thus told the truth he +has, instead of justifying our ancestors, only added one more to the list +of people who are to be ‘given up’ with a cynical shrug and smile. We +have heard already, and among young ladies too, who can be as cynical as +other people in these times, such speeches as, ‘Well, I suppose he has +proved Anne Boleyn to be a bad creature; but that does not make that +horrid Henry any more right in cutting off her head.’ Thus two people +will be despised where only one was before, and the fact still ignored, +that it is just as senseless to say that Henry cut off Anne Boleyn’s head +as that Queen Victoria hanged Palmer. Death, and death of a far more +horrible kind than that which Anne Boleyn suffered, was the established +penalty of the offences of which she was convicted: and which had in her +case this fearful aggravation, that they were offences not against Henry +merely, but against the whole English nation. She had been married in +order that there might be an undisputed heir to the throne, and a fearful +war avoided. To throw into dispute, by any conduct of hers, the +legitimacy of her own offspring, argued a levity or a hard-heartedness +which of itself deserved the severest punishment. + +We will pass from this disagreeable topic to Mr. Froude’s lifelike sketch +of Pope Clement, and the endless tracasseries into which his mingled +weakness and cunning led him, and which, like most crooked dealings, +ended by defeating their own object. Pages 125 _et sqq._ of Vol. I. +contain sketches of him, his thoughts and ways, as amusing as they are +historically important; but we have no space to quote from them. It will +be well for those to whom the Reformation is still a matter of +astonishment to read those pages, and consider what manner of man he was, +in spite of all pretended divine authority, under whose rule the Romish +system received its irrecoverable wound. + +But of all these figures, not excepting Henry’s own, Wolsey stands out as +the most grand and tragical; and Mr. Froude has done good service to +history, if only in making us understand at last the wondrous ‘butcher’s +son.’ Shakspeare seems to have felt (though he could explain the reason +neither to his auditors nor, perhaps, to himself) that Wolsey was, on the +whole, an heroical man. Mr. Froude shows at once his strength and his +weakness; his deep sense of the rottenness of the Church; his purpose to +purge her from those abominations which were as well known, it seems, to +him as they were afterwards to the whole people of England; his vast +schemes for education; his still vaster schemes for breaking the alliance +with Spain, and uniting France and England as fellow-servants of the +Pope, and twin-pillars of the sacred fabric of the Church, which helped +so much toward his interest in Catherine’s divorce, as a ‘means’ (these +are his own words) ‘to bind my most excellent sovereign and this glorious +realm to the holy Roman See in faith and obedience for ever’; his hopes +of deposing the Emperor, putting down the German heresies, and driving +back the Turks beyond the pale of Christendom; his pathetic confession to +the Bishop of Bayonne that ‘if he could only see the divorce arranged, +the King re-married, the succession settled, and the laws and the Church +reformed, he would retire from the world, and would serve God the +remainder of his days.’ + +Peace be with him! He was surely a noble soul; misled, it may be—as who +is not when his turn comes?—by the pride of conscious power; and ‘though +he loved England well, yet loving Rome better’: but still it is a comfort +to see, either in past or in present, one more brother whom we need not +despise, even though he may have wasted his energies on a dream. + +And on a dream he did waste them, in spite of all his cunning. As Mr. +Froude, in a noble passage, says:— + + ‘Extravagant as his hopes seem, the prospect of realising them was, + humanly speaking, neither chimerical nor even improbable. He had but + made the common mistake of men of the world, who are the + representatives of an old order of things, when that order is doomed + and dying. He could not read the signs of the times; and confounding + the barrenness of death with the barrenness of winter, which might be + followed by a new spring and summer, he believed that the old + life-tree of Catholicism, which in fact was but cumbering the ground, + might bloom again in its old beauty. The thing which he called + heresy was the fire of Almighty God, which no politic congregation of + princes, no state machinery, though it were never so active, could + trample out; and as, in the early years of Christianity, the meanest + slave who was thrown to the wild beasts for his presence at the + forbidden mysteries of the Gospel saw deeper, in the divine power of + his faith, into the future even of this earthly world, than the + sagest of his imperial persecutors,—so a truer political prophet than + Wolsey would have been found in the most ignorant of those poor men + for whom his police were searching in the purlieus of London, who + were risking death and torture in disseminating the pernicious + volumes of the English Testament.’ + +It will be seen from this magnificent passage that Mr. Froude is +distinctly a Protestant. He is one, to judge from his book; and all the +better one, because he can sympathise with whatsoever nobleness, even +with whatsoever mere conservatism, existed in the Catholic party. And +therefore, because he has sympathies which are not merely party ones, but +human ones, he has given the world, in these two volumes, a history of +the early Reformation altogether unequalled. This human sympathy, while +it has enabled him to embalm in most affecting prose the sad story of the +noble though mistaken Carthusians, and to make even the Nun of Kent +interesting, because truly womanly, in her very folly and deceit, has +enabled him likewise to show us the hearts of the early martyrs as they +never have been shown before. His sketch of the Christian Brothers, and +his little true romance of Anthony Dalaber, the Oxford student, are gems +of writing; while his conception of Latimer, on whom he looks as the hero +of the movement, and all but an English Luther, is as worthy of Latimer +as it is of himself. It is written as history should be, +discriminatingly, patiently, and yet lovingly and genially; rejoicing not +in evil, but in the truth; and rejoicing still more in goodness, where +goodness can honestly be found. + +To the ecclesiastical and political elements in the English Reformation +Mr. Froude devotes a large portion of his book. We shall not enter into +the questions which he discusses therein. That aspect of the movement is +a foreign and a delicate subject, from discussing which a Scotch +periodical may be excused. {246} North Britain had a somewhat different +problem to solve from her southern sister, and solved it in an altogether +different way: but this we must say, that the facts and, still more, the +State Papers (especially the petition of the Commons, as contrasted with +the utterly benighted answer of the Bishops) which Mr. Froude gives are +such as to raise our opinion of the method on which the English part of +the Reformation was conducted, and make us believe that in this, as in +other matters, both Henry and his Parliament, though still doctrinal +Romanists, were sound-headed practical Englishmen. + +This result is of the same kind as most of those at which Mr. Froude +arrives. They form altogether a general justification of our ancestors +in Henry the Eighth’s time, if not of Henry the Eighth himself, which +frees Mr. Froude from that charge of irreverence to the past generations +against which we protested in the beginning of the article. We hope +honestly that he may be as successful in his next volumes as he has been +in these, in vindicating the worthies of the sixteenth century. Whether +he shall fail or not, and whether or not he has altogether succeeded, in +the volumes before us, his book marks a new epoch, and, we trust, a +healthier and loftier one, in English history. We trust that they +inaugurate a time in which the deeds of our forefathers shall be looked +on as sacred heirlooms; their sins as our shame, their victories as +bequests to us; when men shall have sufficient confidence in those to +whom they owe their existence to scrutinise faithfully and patiently +every fact concerning them, with a proud trust that, search as they may, +they will not find much of which to be ashamed. + +Lastly, Mr. Froude takes a view of Henry’s character, not, indeed, new +(for it is the original one), but obsolete for now two hundred years. +Let it be well understood that he makes no attempt (he has been accused +thereof) to whitewash Henry: all that he does is to remove as far as he +can the modern layers of ‘black-wash,’ and to let the man himself, fair +or foul, be seen. For the result he is not responsible: it depends on +facts; and unless Mr. Froude has knowingly concealed facts to an amount +of which even a Lingard might be ashamed, the result is that Henry the +Eighth was actually very much the man which he appeared to be to the +English nation in his own generation, and for two or three generations +after his death—a result which need not astonish us, if we will only give +our ancestors credit for having at least as much common sense as +ourselves, and believe (why should we not?) that, on the whole, they +understood their own business better than we are likely to do. + +‘The bloated tyrant,’ it is confessed, contrived somehow or other to be +popular enough. Mr. Froude tells us the reasons. He was not born a +bloated tyrant, any more than Queen Elizabeth (though the fact is not +generally known) was born a wizened old woman. He was from youth, till +he was long past his grand climacteric, a very handsome, powerful, and +active man, temperate in his habits, good-humoured, frank and honest in +his speech (as even his enemies are forced to confess). He seems to have +been (as his portraits prove sufficiently), for good and for evil, a +thorough John Bull; a thorough Englishman: but one of the very highest +type. + + ‘Had he died (says Mr. Froude) previous to the first agitation of the + divorce, his loss would have been deplored as one of the heaviest + misfortunes which had ever befallen this country, and he would have + left a name which would have taken its place in history by the side + of the Black Prince or the Conqueror of Agincourt. Left at the most + trying age, with his character unformed, with the means of gratifying + every inclination, and married by his ministers, when a boy, to an + unattractive woman far his senior, he had lived for thirty-six years + almost without blame, and bore through England the reputation of an + upright and virtuous king. Nature had been prodigal to him of her + rarest gifts . . . Of his intellectual ability we are not left to + judge from the suspicious panegyrics of his contemporaries. His + State Papers and letters may be placed by the side of those of Wolsey + or of Cromwell, and they lose nothing by the comparison. Though they + are broadly different, the perception is equally clear, the + expression equally powerful; and they breathe throughout an + irresistible vigour of purpose. In addition to this, he had a fine + musical taste, carefully cultivated; he spoke and wrote in four + languages; and his knowledge of a multitude of subjects, with which + his versatile ability made him conversant, would have formed the + reputation of any ordinary man. He was among the best physicians of + his age. He was his own engineer, inventing improvements in + artillery and new constructions in shipbuilding; and this not with + the condescending incapacity of a royal amateur, but with thorough + workmanlike understanding. His reading was vast, especially in + theology. He was ‘attentive,’ as it is called, ‘to his religious + duties,’ being present at the services in chapel two or three times a + day with unfailing regularity, and showing, to outward appearance, a + real sense of religious obligation in the energy and purity of his + life. In private he was good-humoured and good-natured. His letters + to his secretaries, though never undignified, are simple, easy, and + unrestrained, and the letters written by them to him are similarly + plain and business-like, as if the writers knew that the person whom + they were addressing disliked compliments, and chose to be treated as + a man. He seems to have been always kind, always considerate; + inquiring into their private concerns with genuine interest, and + winning, as a consequence, their sincere and unaffected attachment. + As a ruler he had been eminently popular. All his wars had been + successful. He had the splendid tastes in which the English people + most delighted; . . . he had more than once been tried with + insurrection, which he had soothed down without bloodshed, and + extinguished in forgiveness . . . And it is certain that if he had + died before the divorce was mooted, Henry VIII., like the Roman + emperor said by Tacitus to have been _censensu omnium dignus imperii + nisi imperasset_, would have been considered by posterity as formed + by Providence for the conduct of the Reformation, and his loss would + have been deplored as a perpetual calamity.’ + +Mr. Froude has, of course, not written these words without having facts +whereby to prove them. One he gives in an important note containing an +extract from a letter of the Venetian Ambassador in 1515. At least, if +his conclusions be correct, we must think twice ere we deny his assertion +that ‘the man best able of all living Englishmen to govern England had +been set to do it by the conditions of his birth.’ + +‘We are bound,’ as Mr. Froude says, ‘to allow him the benefit of his past +career, and be careful to remember it in interpreting his later actions.’ +‘The true defect in his moral constitution, that “intense and imperious +will” common to all princes of the Plantagenet blood, had not yet been +tested.’ That he did, in his later years, act in many ways neither +wisely nor well, no one denies; that his conduct did not alienate the +hearts of his subjects is what needs explanation; and Mr. Froude’s +opinions on this matter, novel as they are, and utterly opposed to that +of the standard modern historians, require careful examination. Now I am +not inclined to debate Henry the Eighth’s character, or any other +subject, as between Mr. Froude and an author of the obscurantist or +pseudo-conservative school. Mr. Froude is Liberal; and so am I. I wish +to look at the question as between Mr. Froude and other Liberals; and +therefore, of course, first, as between Mr. Froude and Mr. Hallam. + +Mr. Hallam’s name is so venerable and his work so Important, that to set +ourselves up as judges in this or in any matter between him and Mr. +Froude would be mere impertinence: but speaking merely as learners, we +have surely a right to inquire why Mr. Hallam has entered on the whole +question of Henry’s relations to his Parliament with a _præjudicium_ +against them; for which Mr. Froude finds no ground whatsoever in fact. +Why are all acts both of Henry and his Parliament to be taken _in malam +partem_? They were not Whigs, certainly: neither were Socrates and +Plato, nor even St. Paul and St. John. They may have been honest men as +men go, or they may not: but why is there to be a feeling against them +rather than for them? Why is Henry always called a tyrant, and his +Parliament servile? The epithets have become so common and unquestioned +that our interrogation may seem startling. Still we make it. Why was +Henry a tyrant? That may be true, but must be proved by facts. Where +are they? Is the mere fact of a monarch’s asking for money a crime in +him and his ministers? The question would rather seem to be, Were the +moneys for which Henry asked needed or no; and, when granted, were they +rightly or wrongly applied? And on these subjects we want much more +information than we obtain from any epithets. The author of a +constitutional history should rise above epithets: or, if he uses them, +should corroborate them by facts. Why should not historians be as fair +and as cautious in accusing Henry and Wolsey as they would be in accusing +Queen Victoria and Lord Palmerston? What right, allow us to ask, has a +grave constitutional historian to say that ‘We cannot, indeed, doubt that +the unshackled and despotic condition of his friend, Francis I., afforded +a mortifying contrast to Henry? What document exists in which Henry is +represented as regretting that he is the king of a free people?—for such +Mr. Hallam confesses, just above, England was held to be, and was +actually in comparison with France. If the document does not exist, Mr. +Hallam has surely stepped out of the field of the historian into that of +the novelist, _à la_ Scott or Dumas. The Parliament sometimes grants +Henry’s demands: sometimes it refuses them, and he has to help himself by +other means. Why are both cases to be interpreted _in malam partem_? +Why is the Parliament’s granting to be always a proof of its +servility?—its refusing always a proof of Henry’s tyranny and rapacity? +Both views are mere _præjudicia_, reasonable perhaps, and possible: but +why is not a _præjudicium_ of the opposite kind as rational and as +possible? Why has not a historian a right to start, as Mr. Froude does, +by taking for granted that both parties may have been on the whole right; +that the Parliament granted certain sums because Henry was right in +asking for them; refused others because Henry was wrong; even that, in +some cases, Henry may have been right in asking, the Parliament wrong in +refusing; and that in such a case, under the pressure of critical times, +Henry was forced to get as he could the money which he saw that the +national cause required? Let it be as folks will. Let Henry be +sometimes right, and the Parliament sometimes likewise; or the Parliament +always right, or Henry always right; or anything else, save this strange +diseased theory that both must have been always wrong, and that, evidence +to that effect failing, motives must be insinuated, or openly asserted, +from the writer’s mere imagination. This may be a dream: but it is as +easy to imagine as the other, and more pleasant also. It will probably +be answered (though not by Mr. Hallam himself) by a sneer: ‘You do not +seem to know much of the world, sir.’ But so would Figaro and Gil Blas +have said, and on exactly the same grounds. + +Let us examine a stock instance of Henry’s ‘rapacity’ and his +Parliament’s servility, namely, the exactions in 1524 and 1525, and the +subsequent ‘release of the King’s debts.’ What are the facts of the +case? France and Scotland had attacked England in 1514. The Scotch were +beaten at Flodden. The French lost Tournay and Thérouenne, and, when +peace was made, agreed to pay the expenses of the war. Times changed, +and the expenses were not paid. + +A similar war arose in 1524, and cost England immense sums. A large army +was maintained on the Scotch Border, another army invaded France; and +Wolsey, not venturing to call a Parliament,—because he was, as Pope’s +legate, liable to a _præmunire_,—raised money by contributions and +benevolences, which were levied, it seems on the whole, uniformly and +equally (save that they weighed more heavily on the rich than on the +poor, if that be a fault), and differed from taxes only in not having +received the consent of Parliament. Doubtless, this was not the best way +of raising money: but what if, under the circumstances, it were the only +one? What if, too, on the whole, the money so raised was really given +willingly by the nation? The sequel alone could decide that. + +The first contribution for which Wolsey asked was paid. The second was +resisted, and was not paid; proving thereby that the nation need not pay +unless it chose. The court gave way; and the war became defensive only +till 1525. + +Then the tide turned. The danger, then, was not from Francis, but from +the Emperor. Francis was taken prisoner at Pavia; and shortly after Rome +was sacked by Bourbon. + +The effect of all this in England is told at large in Mr. Froude’s second +chapter. Henry became bond for Francis’s ransom, to be paid to the +Emperor. He spent 500,000 crowns more in paying the French army; and in +the terms of peace made with France, a sum-total was agreed on for the +whole debt, old and new, to be paid as soon as possible; and an annual +pension of 500,000 crowns besides. The French exchequer, however, still +remained bankrupt, and again the money was not paid. + +Parliament, when it met in 1529, reviewed the circumstances of the +expenditure, and finding it all such as the nation on the whole approved, +legalised the taxation by benevolences retrospectively: and this is the +whole mare’s nest of the first payment of Henry’s debts; if, at least, +any faith is to be put in the preamble of the Act for the release of the +King’s Debts, 21 Hen. VIII. c. 24. ‘The King’s loving subjects, the +Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament +assembled, calling to remembrance the inestimable costs, charges, and +expenses which the King’s Highness hath necessarily been compelled to +support and sustain since his assumption to his crown, estate, and +dignity royal, as well for the extinction of a right dangerous and +damnable schism, sprung in the Church, as for the modifying the +insatiable and inordinate ambition of them who, while aspiring to the +monarchy of Christendom, did put universal troubles and divisions in the +same, intending, if they might, not only to have subdued this realm, but +also all the rest, unto their power and subjection—for resistance whereof +the King’s Highness was compelled to marvellous charges—both for the +supportation of sundry armies by sea and land, and also for divers and +manifold contribution on hand, to save and keep his own subjects at home +in rest and repose—which hath been so politically handled that, when the +most part of all Christian lands have been infested with cruel wars, the +great Head and Prince of the world (the Pope) brought into captivity, +cities and towns taken, spoiled, burnt, and sacked—the King’s said +subjects in all this time, by the high providence and politic means of +his Grace, have been nevertheless preserved, defended, and maintained +from all these inconvenients, etc. + +‘Considering, furthermore, that his Highness, in and about the premises, +hath been fain to employ not only all such sums of money as hath risen or +grown by contributions made unto his Grace by his loving subjects—but +also, over and above the same, sundry other notable and excellent sums of +his own treasure and yearly revenues, among which manifold great sums so +employed, his Highness also, as is notoriously known, and as doth +evidently appear by the ACCOUNTS OF THE SAME, hath to that use, and none +other, converted all such money as by any of his subjects hath been +advanced to his Grace by way of prest or loan, either particularly, or by +any taxation made of the same—being things so well collocate and +bestowed, seeing the said high and great fruits and effects thereof +insured to the surety and commodity and tranquillity of this realm—of our +mind and consent, do freely, absolutely, give and grant to the King’s +Highness all and every sum or sums of money,’ etc. + +The second release of the King’s debts, in 1544, is very similar. The +King’s debts and necessities were really, when we come to examine them, +those of the nation: in 1538–40 England was put into a thorough state of +defence from end to end. Fortresses were built along the Scottish +Border, and all along the coast opposite France and Flanders. The people +were drilled and armed, the fleet equipped; and the nation, for the time, +became one great army. And nothing but this, as may be proved by an +overwhelming mass of evidence, saved the country from invasion. Here +were enormous necessary expenses which must be met. + +In 1543 a million crowns were to have been paid by Francis the First as +part of his old debt. It was not paid: but, on the contrary, Henry had +to go to war for it. The nation again relinquished their claim, and +allowed Henry to raise another benevolence in 1545, concerning which Mr. +Hallam tells us a great deal, but not one word of the political +circumstances which led to it or to the release, keeping his sympathies +and his paper for the sorrows of refractory Alderman Reed, who, refusing +(alone of all the citizens) to contribute to the support of troops on the +Scotch Border or elsewhere, was sent down, by a sort of rough justice, to +serve on the Scotch Border himself, and judge of the ‘perils of the +nation’ with his own eyes; and being—one is pleased to hear—taken +prisoner by the Scots, had to pay a great deal more as ransom than he +would have paid as benevolence. + +But to return. What proof is there, in all this, of that servility which +most historians, and Mr. Hallam among the rest, are wont to attribute to +Henry’s Parliaments? What feeling appears on the face of this document, +which we have given and quoted, but one honourable to the nation? +Through the falsehood of a foreign nation the King is unable to perform +his engagements to the people. Is not the just and generous course in +such a case to release him from those engagements? Does this preamble, +does a single fact of the case, justify historians in talking of these +‘king’s debts’ in just the same tone as that in which they would have +spoken if the King had squandered the money on private pleasures? +Perhaps most people who write small histories believe that this really +was the case. They certainly would gather no other impression from the +pages of Mr. Hallam. No doubt the act must have been burdensome on some +people. Many, we are told, had bequeathed their promissory notes to +their children, used their reversionary interest in the loan in many +ways; and these, of course, felt the change very heavily. No doubt: but +why have we not a right to suppose that the Parliament were aware of that +fact; but chose it as the less of the two evils? The King had spent the +money; he was unable to recover it from Francis; could only refund it by +raising some fresh tax or benevolence: and why may not the Parliament +have considered the release of old taxes likely to offend fewer people +than the imposition of new ones? It is certainly an ugly thing to break +public faith; but to prove that public faith was broken, we must prove +that Henry compelled the Parliament to release him; if the act was of +their own free will, no public faith was broken, for they were the +representatives of the nation, and through them the nation forgave its +own debt. And what evidence have we that they did not represent the +nation, and that, on the whole, we must suppose, as we should in the case +of any other men, that they best knew their own business? May we not +apply to this case, and to others, _mutatis mutandis_, the argument which +Mr. Froude uses so boldly and well in the case of Anne Boleyn’s +trial—‘The English nation also, as well as . . . deserves justice at our +hands?’ + +Certainly it does: but it is a disagreeable token of the method on which +we have been accustomed to write the history of our own forefathers, that +Mr. Froude should find it necessary to state formally so very simple a +truth. + +What proof, we ask again, is there that this old Parliament was +‘servile’? Had that been so, Wolsey would not have been afraid to summon +it. The specific reason for not summoning a Parliament for six years +after that of 1524 was that they were not servile; that when (here we are +quoting Mr. Hallam, and not Mr. Froude) Wolsey entered the House of +Commons with a great train, seemingly for the purpose of intimidation, +they ‘made no other answer to his harangues than that it was their usage +to debate only among themselves.’ The debates on this occasion lasted +fifteen or sixteen days, during which, says an eye-witness, ‘there has +been the greatest and sorest hold in the Lower House,’ ‘the matter +debated and beaten’; ‘such hold that the House was like to have been +dissevered’; in a word, hard fighting—and why not honest +fighting?—between the court party and the Opposition, ‘which ended,’ says +Mr. Hallam, ‘in the court party obtaining, with the utmost difficulty, a +grant much inferior to the Cardinal’s original requisition.’ What token +of servility is here? + +And is it reasonable to suppose that after Wolsey was conquered, and a +comparatively popular ministry had succeeded, and that memorable +Parliament of 1529 (which Mr. Froude, not unjustly, thinks more memorable +than the Long Parliament itself) began its great work with a high hand, +backed not merely by the King, but by the public opinion of the majority +of England, their decisions are likely to have been more servile than +before? If they resisted the King when they disagreed with him, are they +to be accused of servility because they worked with him when they agreed +with him? Is an Opposition always in the right; a ministerial party +always in the wrong? Is it an offence against the people to agree with +the monarch, even when he agrees with the people himself? Simple as +these questions are, one must really stop to ask them. + +No doubt pains were often taken to secure elections favourable to the +Government. Are none taken now? Are not more taken now? Will any +historian show us the documents which prove the existence, in the +sixteenth century, of Reform Club, Carlton Club, whippers-in and +nominees, governmental and opposition, and all the rest of the beautiful +machinery which protects our Reformed Parliament from the evil influences +of bribery and corruption? Pah!—We have somewhat too much glass in our +modern House to afford to throw stones at our forefathers’ old St. +Stephen’s. At the worst, what was done then but that without which it is +said to be impossible to carry on a Government now? Take an instance +from the Parliament of 1539, one in which there is no doubt Government +influence was used in order to prevent as much as possible the return of +members favourable to the clergy—for the good reason that the clergy were +no doubt, on their own side, intimidating voters by all those terrors of +the unseen world which had so long been to them a source of boundless +profit and power. + +Cromwell writes to the King to say that he has secured a seat for a +certain Sir Richard Morrison; but for what purpose? As one who no doubt +‘should be ready to answer and take up such as should crack or face with +literature of learning, if any such should be.’ There was, then, free +discussion; they expected clever and learned speakers in the Opposition, +and on subjects of the deepest import, not merely political, but +spiritual; and the Government needed men to answer such. What more +natural than that so close on the ‘Pilgrimage of Grace,’ and in the midst +of so great dangers at home and abroad, the Government should have done +their best to secure a well-disposed House (one would like to know when +they would not)? But surely the very effort (confessedly exceptional) +and the acknowledged difficulty prove that Parliament were no mere +‘registrars of edicts.’ + +But the strongest argument against the tyranny of the Tudors, and +especially of Henry VIII. in his ‘benevolences,’ is derived from the +state of the people themselves. If these benevolences had been really +unpopular, they would not have been paid. In one case we have seen, a +benevolence was not paid for that very reason. For the method of the +Tudor sovereigns, like that of their predecessors, was the very opposite +to that of tyrants in every age and country. The first act of a tyrant +has always been to disarm the people, and to surround himself with a +standing army. The Tudor method was, as Mr. Froude shows us by many +interesting facts, to keep the people armed and drilled, even to compel +them to learn the use of weapons. Throughout England spread one vast +military organisation, which made every adult a soldier, and enabled him +to find, at a day’s notice, his commanding officer, whether landlord, +sheriff, or lieutenant of the county; so that, as a foreign ambassador of +the time remarks with astonishment (we quote from memory), ‘England is +the strongest nation on earth, for though the King has not a single +mercenary soldier, he can raise in three days an army of two hundred +thousand men.’ + +And of what temper those men were it is well known enough. Mr. Froude +calls them—and we beg leave to endorse, without exception, Mr. Froude’s +opinion—‘A sturdy high-hearted race, sound in body and fierce in spirit, +and furnished with thews and sinews which, under the stimulus of those +“great shins of beef,” their common diet, were the wonder of the age.’ +‘What comyn folke in all this world,’ says a State Paper in 1515, ‘may +compare with the comyns of England in riches, freedom, liberty, welfare, +and all prosperity? What comyn folk is so mighty, so strong in the +felde, as the comyns of England?’ In authentic stories of actions under +Henry VIII.—and, we will add, under Elizabeth likewise—where the accuracy +of the account is undeniable, no disparity of force made Englishmen +shrink from enemies whenever they could meet them. Again and again a few +thousands of them carried dismay into the heart of France. Four hundred +adventurers, vagabond apprentices of London, who formed a volunteer corps +in the Calais garrison, were for years, Hall says, the terror of +Normandy. In the very frolic of conscious power they fought and +plundered without pay, without reward, save what they could win for +themselves; and when they fell at last, they fell only when surrounded by +six times their number, and were cut to pieces in careless desperation. +Invariably, by friend and foe alike, the English are described as the +fiercest people in all Europe—English wild beasts Benvenuto Cellini calls +them; and this great physical power they owed to the profuse abundance in +which they lived, to the soldier’s training in which every one of them +was bred from childhood. + +Mr. Froude’s novel assertion about profuse abundance must be weighed by +those who have read his invaluable introductory chapter. But we must ask +at once how it was possible to levy on such an armed populace a tax which +they were determined not to pay, and felt that they were not bound to +pay, either in law or justice? Conceive Lord Palmerston’s sending down +to demand a ‘benevolence’ from the army at Aldershot, beginning with the +general in command and descending to the privates . . . What would be the +consequences? Ugly enough: but gentle in comparison with those of any +attempt to exact a really unpopular tax from a nation of well-armed +Englishmen, unless they, on the whole, thought the tax fit to be paid. +They would grumble, of course, whether they intended to pay or not,—for +were they not Englishmen, our own flesh and blood?—and grumble all the +more in person, because they had no Press to grumble for them: but what +is there then in the M.P.’s letter to Lord Surrey, quoted by Mr. Hallam, +p. 25, or in the more pointed letter of Warham’s, two pages on, which we +do not see lying on our breakfast tables in half the newspapers every +week? Poor, pedantic, obstructive old Warham, himself very angry at so +much being asked of his brother clergymen, and at their being sworn as to +the value of their goods (so like are old times to new ones); and being, +on the whole, of opinion that the world (the Church included) is going to +the devil, says that as he has been ‘showed in a secret manner of his +friends, the people sore grudgeth and murmureth, and speaketh cursedly +among themselves, as far as they dare, saying they shall never have rest +of payments as long as some liveth, and that they had better die than +thus be continually handed, reckoning themselves, their wives and +children, as despoulit, and not greatly caring what they do, or what +becomes of them.’ + +Very dreadful—if true: which last point depends very much upon who Warham +was. Now, on reading Mr. Froude’s or any other good history, we shall +find that Warham was one of the leaders of that despondent party which +will always have its antitype in England. Have we, too, not heard within +the last seven years similar prophecies of desolation, mourning, and +woe—of the Church tottering on the verge of ruin, the peasantry starving +under the horrors of free trade, noble families reduced to the verge of +beggary by double income-tax? Even such a prophet seems Warham to have +been—of all people in that day, one of the last whom one would have asked +for an opinion. + +Poor old Warham, however, was not so far wrong in this particular case; +for the ‘despoulit’ slaves of Suffolk, not content with grumbling, rose +up with sword and bow, and vowed that they would not pay. Whereon the +bloated tyrant sent his prætorians, and enforced payment by scourge and +thumbscrew? Not in the least. They would not pay; and therefore, being +free men, nobody could make them pay; and although in the neighbouring +county of Norfolk, from twenty pounds (_i.e._ £200 of our money) +upward—for the tax was not levied on men of less substance—there were not +twenty but what had consented; and though there was ‘great likelihood +that this grant should be much more than the loan was’ (the ‘salt tears’ +shed by the gentlemen of Norfolk proceeding, says expressly the Duke of +Norfolk, ‘only from doubt how to find money to content the King’s +Highness’); yet the King and Wolsey gave way frankly and at once, and the +contribution was remitted, although the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, +writing to Wolsey, treat the insurrection lightly, and seem to object to +the remission as needless. + +From all which facts—they are Mr. Hallam’s, not Mr. Froude’s—we can +deduce not tyranny, but lenity, good sense, and the frank withdrawal from +a wrong position as soon as the unwillingness of the people proved it to +be a wrong one. + +This instance is well brought forward (though only in a line or two, by +Mr. Froude) as one among many proofs that the working classes in Henry +the Eighth’s time ‘enjoyed an abundance far beyond that which in general +falls to the lot of that order in long-settled countries, incomparably +beyond what the same class were enjoying at that very time in Germany or +France. The laws secured them; and that the laws were put in force, we +have the direct evidence of successive acts of the Legislature, +justifying the general policy by its success: and we have also the +indirect evidence of the contented loyalty of the great body of the +people, at a time when, if they had been discontented, they held in their +own hands the means of asserting what the law acknowledged to be their +right. ‘The Government,’ as we have just shown at length, ‘had no power +to compel injustice . . . If the peasantry had been suffering under any +real grievances we should have heard of them when the religious +rebellions furnished so fair an opportunity to press them forward. +Complaint was loud enough, when complaint was just, under the Somerset +Protectorate.’ + +Such broad facts as these—for facts they are—ought to make us pause ere +we boast of the greater liberty enjoyed by Englishmen of the present day, +as compared with the tyranny of Tudor times. Thank God, there is no lack +of that blessing now: but was there any real lack of it then? Certainly +the outward notes of a tyranny exist now in far greater completeness than +then. A standing army, a Government police, ministries who bear no love +to a militia, and would consider the compulsory arming and drilling of +the people as a dangerous insanity, do not look at first sight as much +like ‘free institutions’ as a Government which, though again and again in +danger not merely of rebellion, but of internecine wars of succession, so +trusted the people as to force weapons into their hands from boyhood. +Let us not be mistaken: we are no hankerers after retrogression: the +present system works very well; let it be; all that we say is that the +imputation of despotic institutions lies, _primâ facie_, rather against +the reign of Queen Victoria than against that of King Henry the Eighth. +Of course it is not so in fact. Many modern methods, which are despotic +in appearance, are not so in practice. Let us believe that the same was +the case in the sixteenth century. Our governors now understand their +own business best, and make a very fair compromise between discipline and +freedom. Let us believe that the men of the sixteenth century did so +likewise. All we ask is that our forefathers should be judged as we wish +to be judged ourselves, ‘not according to outward appearance, but with +righteous judgment.’ + +Mr. Froude finds the cause of this general contentment and loyalty of the +masses in the extreme care which the Government took of their well-being. +The introductory chapter, in which he proves to his own satisfaction the +correctness of his opinion, is well worth the study of our political +economists. The facts which he brings seem certainly overwhelming; of +course, they can only be met by counter-facts; and our knowledge does not +enable us either to corroborate or refute his statements. The chief +argument used against them seems to us, at least, to show that for some +cause or other the working classes were prosperous enough. It is said +the Acts of Parliament regulating wages do not fix the minimum of wages, +but the maximum. They are not intended to defend the employed against +the employer, but the employer against the employed, in a defective state +of the labour market, when the workmen, by the fewness of their numbers, +were enabled to make extravagant demands. Let this be the case—we do not +say that it is so—what is it but a token of prosperity among the working +classes? A labour market so thin that workmen can demand their own price +for their labour, till Parliament is compelled to bring them to reason, +is surely a time of prosperity to the employed—a time of full work and +high wages; of full stomachs, inclined from very prosperity to ‘wax fat +and kick.’ If, however, any learned statistician should be able to +advance, on the opposite side of the question, enough to weaken some of +Mr. Froude’s conclusions, he must still, if he be a just man, do honour +to the noble morality of this most striking chapter, couched as it is in +as perfect English as we have ever had the delight of reading. We shall +leave, then, the battle of facts to be fought out by statisticians, +always asking Mr. Froude’s readers to bear in mind that, though other +facts may be true, yet his facts are no less true likewise; and we shall +quote at length, both as a specimen of his manner and of his matter, the +last three pages of this introductory chapter, in which, after speaking +of the severity of the laws against vagrancy, and showing how they were +excused by the organisation which found employment for every able-bodied +man, he goes on to say:— + + ‘It was therefore the expressed conviction of the English nation that + it was better for a man not to live at all than to live a profitless + and worthless life. The vagabond was a sore spot upon the + commonwealth, to be healed by wholesale discipline if the gangrene + was not incurable; to be cut away with the knife if the milder + treatment of the cart-whip failed to be of profit. + + ‘A measure so extreme in its severity was partly dictated by policy. + The state of the country was critical; and the danger from + questionable persons traversing it, unexamined and uncontrolled, was + greater than at ordinary times. But in point of justice as well as + of prudence it harmonised with the iron temper of the age, and it + answered well for the government of a fierce and powerful people, in + whose hearts lay an intense hatred of rascality, and among whom no + one could have lapsed into evil courses except by deliberate + preference for them. The moral sinew of the English must have been + strong indeed when it admitted of such stringent bracing; but, on the + whole, they were ruled as they preferred to be ruled; and if wisdom + can be tested by success, the manner in which they passed the great + crisis of the Reformation is the best justification of their princes. + The era was great throughout Europe. The Italians of the age of + Michael Angelo, the Spaniards who were the contemporaries of Cortez, + the Germans who shook off the Pope at the call of Luther, and the + splendid chivalry of Francis I. of France, were no common men. But + they were all brought face to face with the same trials, and none met + them as the English met them. The English alone never lost their + self-possession, and if they owed something to fortune in their + escape from anarchy, they owed more to the strong hand and steady + purpose of their rulers. + + ‘To conclude this chapter, then. + + ‘In the brief review of the system under which England was governed, + we have seen a state of things in which the principles of political + economy were, consciously or unconsciously, contradicted; where an + attempt, more or less successful, was made to bring the production + and distribution of wealth under the moral rule of right or wrong; + and where those laws of supply and demand, which we are now taught to + regard as immutable ordinances of nature, were absorbed or superseded + by a higher code. It is necessary for me to repeat that I am not + holding up the sixteenth century as a model which the nineteenth + might safely follow. The population has become too large, and + employment too complicated and fluctuating, to admit of such control; + while, in default of control, the relapse upon self-interest as the + one motive principle is certain to ensue, and, when it ensues, is + absolute in its operations. But as, even with us, these so-called + ordinances of nature in time of war consent to be suspended, and duty + to his country becomes with every good citizen a higher motive of + action than the advantages which he may gain in an enemy’s market; so + it is not uncheering to look back upon a time when the nation was in + a normal condition of militancy against social injustice—when the + Government was enabled, by happy circumstances, to pursue into detail + a single and serious aim at the well-being—well-being in its widest + sense—of all members of the commonwealth. There were difficulties + and drawbacks at that time as well as this. Of Liberty, in the + modern sense of the word—of the supposed right of every man “to do + what he will with his own,” or with himself—there was no idea. To + the question, if ever it was asked, “May I not do what I will with my + own?” there was the brief answer, “No man may do what is wrong, + either with what is his own or with what is another’s.” Producers, + too, who were not permitted to drive down their workmen’s wages by + competition, could not sell their goods as cheaply as they might have + done, and the consumer paid for the law in an advance of price; but + the burden, though it fell heavily on the rich, lightly touched the + poor and the rich consented cheerfully to a tax which ensured the + loyalty of the people. The working man of modern times has bought + the extension of his liberty at the price of his material comfort. + The higher classes have gained in wealth what they have lost in + power. It is not for the historian to balance advantages. His duty + is with the facts.’ + +Our forefathers, then, were not free, if we attach to that word the +meaning which our Transatlantic brothers seem inclined to give to it. +They had not learnt to deify self-will, and to claim for each member of +the human race a right to the indulgence of every eccentricity. They +called themselves free, and boasted of their freedom; but their +conception of liberty was that of all old nations, a freedom which not +only allowed of discipline, but which grew out of it. No people had less +wish to exalt the kingly power into that specious tyranny, a paternal +Government; the king was with them, and always had been, both formally +and really, subject to their choice; bound by many oaths to many duties; +the minister, not the master of the people. But their whole conception +of political life was, nevertheless, shaped by their conception of family +life. Strict obedience, stern discipline, compulsory education in +practical duties, was the law of the latter; without such training they +thought their sons could never become in any true sense men. And when +they grew up, their civic life was to be conducted on the same +principles, for the very purpose of enabling them to live as members of a +free nation. If the self-will of the individual was curbed, now and +then, needlessly—as it is the nature of all human methods to caricature +themselves at times—the purpose was, not to weaken the man, but to +strengthen him by strengthening the body to which he belonged. The +nation was to be free, self-helping, self-containing, unconquerable; to +that great purpose the will, the fancy—even, if need be, the mortal life +of the individual, must give way. Men must be trained at all costs in +self-restraint, because only so could they become heroes in the day of +danger; in self-sacrifice for the common good, because only so would they +remain united, while foreign nations and evil home influences were trying +to tear them asunder. In a word, their conception of life was as a +warfare; their organisation that of a regiment. It is a question whether +the conception of corporate life embodied in a regiment or army be not, +after all, the best working one for this world. At least the problem of +a perfect society, howsoever beautiful on paper, will always issue in a +compromise, more or less perfect—let us hope more and more perfect as the +centuries roll on—between the strictness of military discipline and the +Irishman’s _laissez-faire_ ideal, wherein ‘every man should do that which +was right in the sight of his own eyes, and wrong too, if he liked.’ At +least, such had England been for centuries; under such a system had she +thriven; a fact which, duly considered, should silence somewhat those +gentlemen who, not being of a military turn themselves, inform Europe so +patriotically and so prudently that ‘England is not a military nation.’ + +From this dogma we beg leave to differ utterly. Britain is at this +moment, in our eyes, the only military nation in Europe. All other +nations seem to us to have military governments, but not to be military +themselves. As proof of the assertion, we appeal merely to the existence +of our militia. While other nations are employing conscription, we have +raised in twelve months a noble army, every soul of which has volunteered +as a free man; and yet, forsooth, we are not a military nation! We are +not ashamed to tell how, but the other day, standing in the rear of those +militia regiments, no matter where, a flush of pride came over us at the +sight of those lads, but a few months since helpless and awkward country +boors, now full of sturdy intelligence, cheerful obedience, and the +manhood which can afford to be respectful to others, because it respects +itself, and knows that it is respected in turn. True, they had not the +lightness, the order, the practical ease, the cunning self-helpfulness of +the splendid German legionaries who stood beside them, the breast of +every other private decorated with clasps and medals for service in the +wars of seven years since. As an invading body, perhaps, one would have +preferred the Germans; but only because experience had taught them +already what it would teach in twelve months to the Berkshire or +Cambridge ‘clod.’ There, to us, was the true test of England’s military +qualities; her young men had come by tens of thousands, of their own free +will, to be made soldiers of by her country gentlemen, and treated by +them the while as men to be educated, not as things to be compelled; not +driven like sheep to the slaughter, to be disciplined by men with whom +they had no bond but the mere official one of military obedience; and +‘What,’ we ask ourselves, ‘does England lack to make her a second Rome?’ +Her people have physical strength, animal courage, that self-dependence +of freemen which enabled at Inkerman the privates to fight on literally +without officers, every man for his own hand. She has inventive genius, +enormous wealth; and if, as is said, her soldiers lack at present the +self-helpfulness of the Zouave, it is ridiculous to suppose that that +quality could long be wanting in the men of a nation which is at this +moment the foremost in the work of emigration and colonisation. If +organising power and military system be, as is said, lacking in high +quarters, surely there must be organising power enough somewhere in the +greatest industrial nation upon earth, ready to come forward when there +is a real demand for it; and whatever be the defects of our system, we +are surely not as far behind Prussia or France as Rome was behind the +Carthaginians and the Greeks whom she crushed. A few years sufficed for +them to learn all they needed from their enemies; fewer still would +suffice us to learn from our friends. Our working classes are not, like +those of America, in a state of physical comfort too great to make it +worth while for them to leave their home occupations; and whether that be +a good or an evil, it at least ensures us, as our militia proves, an +almost inexhaustible supply of volunteers. What a new and awful scene +for the world’s drama, did such a nation as this once set before itself, +steadily and ruthlessly, as Rome did of old, the idea of conquest. Even +now, waging war as she has done, as it were, ἐν παρεργᾷ, thinking war too +unimportant a part of her work to employ on it her highest intellects, +her flag has advanced in the last fifty years over more vast and richer +tracts than that of any European nation upon earth. What keeps her from +the dream which lured to their destruction Babylon, Macedonia, Rome? + +This: that, thank God, she has a conscience still; that, feeling +intensely the sacredness of her own national life, she has learned to +look on that of other people’s as sacred also; and since, in the +fifteenth century, she finally repented of that wild and unrighteous +dream of conquering France, she has discovered more and more that true +military greatness lies in the power of defence, and not of attack; not +in waging war, but being able to wage it; and has gone on her true +mission of replenishing the earth more peacefully, on the whole, and more +humanely, than did ever nation before her; conquering only when it was +necessary to put down the lawlessness of the savage few for the +well-being of the civilised many. This has been her idea; she may have +confused it and herself in Caffre or in Chinese wars; for who can always +be true to the light within him? But this has been her idea; and +therefore she stands and grows and thrives, a virgin land for now eight +hundred years. + +But a fancy has come over us during the last blessed forty years of +unexampled peace, from which our ancestors of the sixteenth century were +kept by stern and yet most wholesome lessons; the fancy that peace, and +not war, is the normal condition of the world. The fancy is so fair that +we blame none who cherish it; after all they do good by cherishing it; +they point us to an ideal which we should otherwise forget, as Babylon, +Rome, France in the seventeenth century, forgot utterly. Only they are +in haste (and pardonable haste too) to realise that ideal, forgetting +that to do so would be really to stop short of it, and to rest contented +in some form of human society far lower than that which God has actually +prepared for those who love Him. Better to believe that all our +conceptions of the height to which the human race might attain are poor +and paltry compared with that toward which God is guiding it, and for +which he is disciplining it by awful lessons: and to fight on, if need +be, ruthless, and yet full of pity—and many a noble soul has learnt +within the last two years how easy it is to reconcile in practice that +seeming paradox of words—smiting down stoutly evil wheresoever we shall +find it, and saying, ‘What ought to be, we know not; God alone can know: +but that this ought not to be, we do know, and here, in God’s name, it +shall not stay.’ + +We repeat it: war, in some shape or other, is the normal condition of the +world. It is a fearful fact: but we shall not abolish it by ignoring it, +and ignoring by the same method the teaching of our Bibles. Not in mere +metaphor does the gospel of Love describe the life of the individual good +man as a perpetual warfare. Not in mere metaphor does the apostle of +Love see in his visions of the world’s future no Arcadian shepherd +paradises, not even a perfect civilisation, but an eternal war in heaven, +wrath and woe, plague and earthquake; and amid the everlasting storm, the +voices of the saints beneath the altar crying, ‘Lord, how long?’ Shall +we pretend to have more tender hearts than the old man of Ephesus, whose +dying sermon, so old legends say, was nought but—‘Little children, love +one another’; and who yet could denounce the liar and the hater and the +covetous man, and proclaim the vengeance of God against all evildoers, +with all the fierceness of an Isaiah? It was enough for him—let it be +enough for us—that he should see, above the thunder-cloud, and the rain +of blood, and the scorpion swarm, and the great angel calling all the +fowl of heaven to the supper of the great God, that they might eat the +flesh of kings and valiant men, a city of God eternal in the heavens, and +yet eternally descending among men; a perfect order, justice, love, and +peace, becoming actual more and more in every age, through all the +fearful training needful for a fallen race. + +Let that be enough for us: but do not let us fancy that what is true of +the two extremes must not needs be true of the mean also; that while the +life of the individual and of the universe is one of perpetual +self-defence, the life of the nation can be aught else: or that any +appliances of scientific comforts, any intellectual cultivation, even any +of the most direct and common-sense arguments of self-interest, can avail +to quiet in man those outbursts of wrath, ambition, cupidity, wounded +pride, which have periodically convulsed, and will convulse to the end, +the human race. The philosopher in his study may prove their absurdity, +their suicidal folly, till, deluded by the strange lull of a forty years’ +peace, he may look on wars as in the same category with flagellantisms, +witch-manias, and other ‘popular delusions,’ as insanities of the past, +impossible henceforth; and may prophesy, as really wise political +economists were doing in 1847, that mankind had grown too sensible to go +to war any more. And behold, the peace proves only to be the lull before +the thunderstorm; and one electric shock sets free forces unsuspected, +transcendental, supernatural in the deepest sense; forces which we can no +more stop, by shrieks at their absurdity, from incarnating themselves in +actual blood, and misery, and horror, than we can control the madman in +his paroxysm by telling him that he is a madman. And so the fair vision +of the student is buried once more in rack and hail and driving storm; +and, like Daniel of old when rejoicing over the coming restoration of his +people, he sees beyond the victory some darker struggle still, and lets +his notes of triumph die away into a wail,—‘And the end thereof shall be +with a flood; and to the end of the war desolations are determined.’ + +It is as impossible as it would be unwise to conceal from ourselves the +fact that all the Continental nations look upon our present peace as but +transitory, momentary; and on the Crimean war as but the prologue to a +fearful drama—all the more fearful because none knows its purpose, its +plot, which character will be assumed by any given actor, and, least of +all, the _dénouement_ of the whole. All that they feel and know is that +everything which has happened since 1848 has exasperated, not calmed, the +electric tension of the European atmosphere; that a rottenness, rapidly +growing intolerable alike ‘to God and the enemies of God,’ has eaten into +the vitals of Continental life; that their rulers know neither where they +are nor whither they are going, and only pray that things may last out +their time: all notes which one would interpret as proving the Continent +to be already ripe for subjection to some one devouring race of +conquerors, were there not a ray of hope in an expectation, even more +painful to our human pity, which is held by some of the wisest among the +Germans; namely, that the coming war will fast resolve into no struggle +between bankrupt monarchs and their respective armies, but a war between +nations themselves, an internecine war of opinions and of creeds. There +are wise Germans now who prophesy, with sacred tears, a second ‘Thirty +Years’ War,’ with all its frantic horrors, for their hapless country, +which has found two centuries too short a time wherein to recover from +the exhaustion of that first fearful scourge. Let us trust, if that war +shall beget its new Tillys and Wallensteins, it shall also beget its new +Gustavus Adolphus, and many another child of Light: but let us not hope +that we can stand by in idle comfort, and that when the overflowing +scourge passes by it shall not reach to us. Shame to us, were that our +destiny! Shame to us, were we to refuse our share in the struggles of +the human race, and to stand by in idle comfort while the Lord’s battles +are being fought. Honour to us, if in that day we have chosen for our +leaders, as our forefathers of the sixteenth century did, men who see the +work which God would have them do, and have hearts and heads to do it. +Honour to us, if we spend this transient lull, as our forefathers of the +sixteenth century did, in setting our house in order, in redressing every +grievance, reforming every abuse, knitting the hearts of the British +nation together by practical care and help between class and class, man +and man, governor and governed, that we may bequeath to our children, as +Henry the Eighth’s men did to theirs, a British national life, so united +and whole-hearted, so clear in purpose and sturdy in execution, so +trained to know the right side at the first glance and take it, that they +shall look back with love and honour upon us, their fathers, determined +to carry out, even to the death, the method which we have bequeathed to +them. Then, if God will that the powers of evil, physical and spiritual, +should combine against this land, as they did in the days of good Queen +Bess, we shall not have lived in vain; for those who, as in Queen Bess’s +days, thought to yoke for their own use a labouring ox, will find, as +then, that they have roused a lion from his den. + + + + +FOOTNOTES + + +{219} North British Review, No. LI., November 1856.—‘A History of +England, from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth.’ By J. A. +Froude, M.A., late Fellow of Exeter college, Oxford. London: J. W. +Parker and Son, West Strand. 2 vols. 1856. + +{246} This article appeared in the _North British Review_. + + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FROUDE'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND*** + + +******* This file should be named 3144-0.txt or 3144-0.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/3/1/4/3144 + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will +be renamed. + +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part +of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm +concept and trademark. 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You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of +the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at +www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have +to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. + + + + +Title: Froude's History of England + + +Author: Charles Kingsley + + + +Release Date: December 26, 2014 [eBook #3144] +[This file was first posted on January 2, 2001] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FROUDE'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND*** +</pre> +<p>Transcribed from “Plays and Puritans and Other +Historical Essays” 1890 Macmillan and Co. edition by David +Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org</p> +<h1>FROUDE’S HISTORY OF ENGLAND <a +name="citation219"></a><a href="#footnote219" +class="citation">[219]</a></h1> +<p><span class="smcap">There</span> appeared a few years since a +‘Comic History of England,’ duly caricaturing and +falsifying all our great national events, and representing the +English people, for many centuries back, as a mob of fools and +knaves, led by the nose in each generation by a few arch-fools +and arch-knaves. Some thoughtful persons regarded the book +with utter contempt and indignation; it seemed to them a crime to +have written it; a proof of ‘banausia,’ as Aristotle +would have called it, only to be outdone by the writing a +‘Comic Bible.’ After a while, however, their +indignation began to subside; their second thoughts, as usual, +were more charitable than their first; they were not surprised to +hear that the author was an honest, just, and able magistrate; +they saw that the publication of such a book involved no moral +turpitude; that it was merely meant as a jest on a subject on +which jesting was permissible, and as a money speculation in a +field of which men had a right to make money; while all which +seemed offensive in it was merely the outcome, and as it were +apotheosis, of that method of writing English history which has +been popular for nearly a hundred years. ‘Which of +our modern historians,’ they asked themselves, ‘has +had any real feeling of the importance, the sacredness, of his +subject?—any real trust in, or respect for, the characters +with whom he dealt? Has not the belief of each and all of +them been the same—that on the whole, the many always have +been fools and knaves; foolish and knavish enough, at least, to +become the puppets of a few fools and knaves who held the reins +of power? Have they not held that, on the whole, the +problems of human nature and human history have been sufficiently +solved by Gibbon and Voltaire, Gil Blas and Figaro; that our +forefathers were silly barbarians; that this glorious nineteenth +century is the one region of light, and that all before was outer +darkness, peopled by ‘foreign devils,’ Englishmen, no +doubt, according to the flesh, but in spirit, in knowledge, in +creed, in customs, so utterly different from ourselves that we +shall merely show our sentimentalism by doing aught but laughing +at them?</p> +<p>On what other principle have our English histories as yet been +constructed, even down to the children’s books, which +taught us in childhood that the history of this country was +nothing but a string of foolish wars, carried on by wicked kings, +for reasons hitherto unexplained, save on that great historic law +of Goldsmith’s by which Sir Archibald Alison would still +explain the French Revolution—</p> +<blockquote><p>‘The dog, to serve his private ends,<br /> +Went mad, and bit the man?’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>It will be answered by some, and perhaps rather angrily, that +these strictures are too sweeping; that there is arising, in a +certain quarter, a school of history books for young people of a +far more reverent tone, which tries to do full honour to the +Church and her work in the world. Those books of this +school which we have seen, we must reply, seem just as much +wanting in real reverence for the past as the school of Gibbon +and Voltaire. It is not the past which they reverence, but +a few characters or facts eclectically picked out of the past, +and, for the most part, made to look beautiful by ignoring all +the features which will not suit their preconceived +pseudo-ideal. There is in these books a scarcely concealed +dissatisfaction with the whole course of the British mind since +the Reformation, and (though they are not inclined to confess the +fact) with its whole course before the Reformation, because that +course was one of steady struggle against the Papacy and its +anti-national pretensions. They are the outcome of an +utterly un-English tone of thought; and the so-called ‘ages +of faith’ are pleasant and useful to them, principally +because they are distant and unknown enough to enable them to +conceal from their readers that in the ages on which they look +back as ideally perfect a Bernard and a Francis of Assisi were +crying all day long—‘O that my head were a fountain +of tears, that I might weep for the sins of my +people!’ Dante was cursing popes and prelates in the +name of the God of Righteousness; Boccaccio and Chaucer were +lifting the veil from priestly abominations of which we now are +ashamed even to read; and Wolsey, seeing the rottenness of the +whole system, spent his mighty talents, and at last poured out +his soul unto death, in one long useless effort to make the +crooked straight, and number that which had been weighed in the +balances of God, and found for ever wanting. To ignore +wilfully facts like these, which were patent all along to the +British nation, facts on which the British laity acted, till they +finally conquered at the Reformation, and on which they are +acting still, and will, probably, act for ever, is not to have +any real reverence for the opinions or virtues of our +forefathers; and we are not astonished to find repeated, in such +books, the old stock calumnies against our lay and Protestant +worthies, taken at second-hand from the pages of Lingard. +In copying from Lingard, however, this party has done no more +than those writers have who would repudiate any +party—almost any Christian—purpose. Lingard is +known to have been a learned man, and to have examined many +manuscripts which few else had taken the trouble to look at; so +his word is to be taken, no one thinking it worth while to ask +whether he has either honestly read or honestly quoted the +documents. It suited the sentimental and lazy liberality of +the last generation to make a show of fairness by letting the +Popish historian tell his side of the story, and to sneer at the +illiberal old notion that gentlemen of his class were given to be +rather careless about historic truth when they had a purpose to +serve thereby; and Lingard is now actually recommended as a +standard authority for the young by educated Protestants, who +seem utterly unable to see that, whether the man be honest or +not, his whole view of the course of British events since Becket +first quarrelled with his king must be antipodal to their own; +and that his account of all which has passed for three hundred +years since the fall of Wolsey is most likely to be (and, indeed, +may be proved to be) one huge libel on the whole nation, and the +destiny which God has marked out for it.</p> +<p>There is, indeed, no intrinsic cause why the ecclesiastical, +or pseudo-Catholic, view of history should, in any wise, conduce +to a just appreciation of our forefathers. For not only did +our forefathers rebel against that conception again and again, +till they finally trampled it under their feet, and so appear, +<i>primâ facie</i>, as offenders to be judged at its bar; +but the conception itself is one which takes the very same view +of nature as that cynic conception of which we spoke above. +Man, with the Romish divines, is, <i>ipso facto</i>, the same +being as the man of Voltaire, Le Sage, or Beaumarchais; he is an +insane and degraded being, who is to be kept in order, and, as +far as may be, cured and set to work by an ecclesiastical system; +and the only threads of light in the dark web of his history are +clerical and theurgic, not lay and human. Voltaire is the +very <i>experimentum crucis</i> of this ugly fact. European +history looks to him what it would have looked to his Jesuit +preceptors, had the sacerdotal element in it been wanting; what +heathen history actually did look to them. He eliminates +the sacerdotal element, and nothing remains but the chaos of apes +and wolves which the Jesuits had taught him to believe was the +original substratum of society. The humanity of his +history—even of his ‘Pucelle +d’Orléans’,—is simply the humanity of +Sanchez and the rest of those <i>vingtquatre Pères</i> who +hang gibbeted for ever in the pages of Pascal. He is +superior to his teachers, certainly, in this, that he has hope +for humanity on earth; dreams of a new and nobler life for +society, by means of a true and scientific knowledge of the laws +of the moral and material universe; in a word, he has, in the +midst of all his filth and his atheism, a faith in a righteous +and truth-revealing God, which the priests who brought him up had +not. Let the truth be spoken, even though in favour of such +a destroying Azrael as Voltaire. And what if his primary +conception of humanity be utterly base? Is that of our +modern historians so much higher? Do Christian men seem to +them, on the whole, in all ages, to have had the spirit of God +with them, leading them into truth, however imperfectly and +confusedly they may have learnt his lessons? Have they ever +heard with their ears, or listened when their fathers have +declared unto them, the noble works which God did in their days, +and in the old time before them? Do they believe that the +path of Christendom has been, on the whole, the path of life and +the right way, and that the living God is leading her +therein? Are they proud of the old British worthies? +Are they jealous and tender of the reputation of their +ancestors? Do they believe that there were any worthies at +all in England before the steam-engine and political economy were +discovered? Do their conceptions of past society and the +past generations retain anything of that great thought which is +common to all the Aryan races—that is, to all races who +have left aught behind them better than mere mounds of +earth—to Hindoo and Persian, Greek and Roman, Teuton and +Scandinavian, that men are the sons of the heroes, who were the +sons of God? Or do they believe that for civilised people +of the nineteenth century it is as well to say as little as +possible about ancestors who possessed our vices without our +amenities, our ignorance without our science; who were bred, no +matter how, like flies by summer heat, out of that everlasting +midden which men call the world, to buzz and sting their foolish +day, and leave behind them a fresh race which knows them not, and +could win no honour by owning them, and which owes them no more +than if it had been produced, as midden-flies were said to be of +old, by some spontaneous generation?</p> +<p>It is not probable that this writer will be likely to +undervalue political economy, or the steam-engine, or any other +solid and practical good which God has unveiled to this +generation. All that he does demand (for he has a right to +demand it) is that rational men should believe that our +forefathers were at least as good as we are; that whatsoever +their measure of light was, they acted up to what they knew as +faithfully as we do; and that, on the whole, it was not their +fault if they did not know more. Even now the real +discoveries of the age are made, as of old, by a very few men; +and, when made, have to struggle, as of old, against all manner +of superstitions, lazinesses, scepticisms. Is the history +of the Minié rifle one so very complimentary to our +age’s quickness of perception that we can afford to throw +many stones at the prejudices of our ancestors? The truth +is that, as of old, ‘many men talk of Robin Hood who never +shot in his bow’; and many talk of Bacon who never +discovered a law by induction since they were born. As far +as our experience goes, those who are loudest in their +jubilations over the wonderful progress of the age are those who +have never helped that progress forward one inch, but find it a +great deal easier and more profitable to use the results which +humbler men have painfully worked out as second-hand capital for +hustings-speeches and railway books, and flatter a +mechanics’ institute of self-satisfied youths by telling +them that the least instructed of them is wiser than Erigena or +Roger Bacon. Let them be. They have their +reward. And so also has the patient and humble man of +science, who, the more he knows, confesses the more how little he +knows, and looks back with affectionate reverence on the great +men of old time—on Archimedes and Ptolemy, Aristotle and +Pliny, and many another honourable man who, walking in great +darkness, sought a ray of light, and did not seek in +vain,—as integral parts of that golden chain of which he is +but one link more; as scientific forefathers, without whose aid +his science could not have had a being.</p> +<p>Meanwhile, this general tone of irreverence for our +forefathers is no hopeful sign. It is unwise to +‘inquire why the former times were better than +these’; to hang lazily and weakly over some eclectic dream +of a past golden age; for to do so is to deny that God is working +in this age, as well as in past ages; that His light is as near +us now as it was to the worthies of old time.</p> +<p>But it is more than unwise to boast and rejoice that the +former times were worse than these; and to teach young people to +say in their hearts, ‘What clever fellows we are, compared +with our stupid old fogies of fathers!’ More than +unwise; for possibly it may be false in fact. To look at +the political and moral state of Europe at this moment, +Christendom can hardly afford to look down on any preceding +century, and seems to be in want of something which neither +science nor constitutional government seems able to supply. +Whether our forefathers also lacked that something we will not +inquire just now; but if they did, their want of scientific and +political knowledge was evidently not the cause of the defect; or +why is not Spain now infinitely better, instead of being +infinitely worse off, than she was three hundred years ago?</p> +<p>At home, too—But on the question whether we are so very +much better off than our forefathers Mr. Froude, not we, must +speak: for he has deliberately, in his new history, set himself +to the solution of this question, and we will not anticipate what +he has to say; what we would rather insist on now are the moral +effects produced on our young people by books which teach them to +look with contempt on all generations but their own, and with +suspicion on all public characters save a few contemporaries of +their own especial party.</p> +<p>There is an ancient Hebrew book, which contains a singular +story concerning a grandson who was cursed because his father +laughed at the frailty of the grandfather. Whether the +reader shall regard that story (as we do) as a literal fact +recorded by inspired wisdom, as an instance of one of the great +root-laws of family life, and therefore of that national life +which (as the Hebrew book so cunningly shows) is the organic +development of the family life; or whether he shall treat it (as +we do not) as a mere apologue or myth, he must confess that it is +equally grand in its simplicity and singular in its unexpected +result. The words of the story, taken literally and simply, +no more justify the notion that Canaan’s slavery was any +magical consequence of the old patriarch’s anger than they +do the well-known theory that it was the cause of the +Negro’s blackness. Ham shows a low, foul, irreverent, +unnatural temper towards his father. The old man’s +shame is not a cause of shame to his son, but only of +laughter. Noah prophesies (in the fullest and deepest +meaning of that word) that a curse will come upon that +son’s son; that he will be a slave of slaves; and reason +and experience show that he spoke truth. Let the young but +see that their fathers have no reverence for the generation +before them, then will they in turn have no reverence for their +fathers. Let them be taught that the sins of their +ancestors involve their own honour so little that they need not +take any trouble to clear the blot off the scutcheon, but may +safely sit down and laugh over it, saying, ‘Very likely it +is true. If so, it is very amusing; and if not—what +matter?’—Then those young people are being bred up in +a habit of mind which contains in itself all the capabilities of +degradation and slavery, in self-conceit, hasty assertion, +disbelief in nobleness, and all the other ‘credulities of +scepticism’: parted from that past from which they take +their common origin, they are parted also from each other, and +become selfish, self-seeking, divided, and therefore weak: +disbelieving in the nobleness of those who have gone before them, +they learn more and more to disbelieve in the nobleness of those +around them; and, by denying God’s works of old, come, by a +just and dreadful Nemesis, to be unable to see his works in the +men of their own day; to suspect and impugn valour, +righteousness, disinterestedness in their contemporaries; to +attribute low motives; to pride themselves on looking at men and +things as ‘men who know the world,’ so the young +puppies style it; to be less and less chivalrous to women, less +and less respectful to old men, less and less ashamed of boasting +about their sensual appetites; in a word, to show all those +symptoms which, when fully developed, leave a generation without +fixed principles, without strong faith, without self-restraint, +without moral cohesion, the sensual and divided prey of any race, +however inferior in scientific knowledge, which has a clear and +fixed notion of its work and destiny. That many of these +signs are themselves more and more ominously showing in our young +men, from the fine gentleman who rides in Rotten Row to the +boy-mechanic who listens enraptured to Mr. Holyoake’s +exposures of the absurdity of all human things save Mr. +Holyoake’s self, is a fact which presses itself most on +those who have watched this age most carefully, and who (rightly +or wrongly) attribute much of this miserable temper to the way in +which history has been written among us for the last hundred +years.</p> +<p>Whether or not Mr. Froude would agree with these notions, he +is more or less responsible for them; for they have been +suggested by his ‘History of England from the Fall of +Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth.’ It was impossible +to read the book without feeling the contrast between its tone +and that of every other account of the times which one had ever +seen. Mr. Froude seems to have set to work upon the +principle, too much ignored in judging of the past, that the +historian’s success must depend on his dramatic faculty; +and not merely on that constructive element of the faculty in +which Mr. Macaulay shows such astonishing power, but on that +higher and deeper critical element which ought to precede the +constructive process, and without which the constructive element +will merely enable a writer, as was once bitterly but truly said, +‘to produce the greatest possible misrepresentation with +the least possible distortion of fact.’ That deeper +dramatic faculty, the critical, is not logical merely, but moral, +and depends on the moral health, the wideness and heartiness of +his moral sympathies, by which he can put himself—as Mr. +Froude has attempted to do, and as we think +successfully—into the place of each and every character, +and not merely feel for them, but feel with them. He does +not merely describe their actions from the outside, attributing +them arbitrarily to motives which are pretty sure to be the +lowest possible, because it is easier to conceive a low motive +than a lofty one, and to call a man a villain than to unravel +patiently the tangled web of good and evil of which his thoughts +are composed. He has attempted to conceive of his +characters as he would if they had been his own contemporaries +and equals, acting, speaking in his company; and he has therefore +thought himself bound to act toward them by those rules of +charity and courtesy, common alike to Christian morals, English +law, and decent society; namely, to hold every man innocent till +he is proved guilty; where a doubt exists, to give the prisoner +at the bar the benefit of it; not to excite the minds of the +public against him by those insinuative or vituperative epithets, +which are but adders and scorpions; and, on the whole, to believe +that a man’s death and burial is not the least reason for +ceasing to behave to him like a gentleman and a Christian. +We are not inclined to play with solemn things, or to copy Lucian +and Quevedo in writing dialogues of the dead; but what dialogues +might some bold pen dash off between the old sons of Anak, at +whose coming Hades has long ago been moved, and to receive whom +all the kings of the nation have risen up, and the little +scribblers who have fancied themselves able to fathom and +describe characters to whom they were but pigmies! Conceive +a half-hour’s interview between Queen Elizabeth and some +popular lady-scribbler, who has been deluding herself into the +fancy that gossiping inventories of millinery are history . . . +‘You pretend to judge me, whose labours, whose cares, whose +fiery trials were, beside yours, as the heaving volcano beside a +boy’s firework? You condemn my weaknesses? Know +that they were stronger than your strength! You impute +motives for my sins? Know that till you are as great as I +have been, for evil and for good, you will be as little able to +comprehend my sins as my righteousness! Poor marsh-croaker, +who wishest not merely to swell up to the bulk of the ox, but to +embrace it in thy little paws, know thine own size, and leave me +to be judged by Him who made me!’ . . . How the poor soul +would shrink back into nothing before that lion eye which saw and +guided the destinies of the world, and all the flunkey-nature (if +such a vice exist beyond the grave) come out in utter abjectness, +as if the ass in the fable, on making his kick at the dead lion, +had discovered to his horror that the lion was alive and +well—Spirit of Quevedo! finish for us the picture which we +cannot finish for ourselves.</p> +<p>In a very different spirit from such has Mr. Froude approached +these times. Great and good deeds were done in them; and it +has therefore seemed probable to him that there were great and +good men there to do them. Thoroughly awake to the fact +that the Reformation was the new birth of the British nation, it +has seemed to him a puzzling theory which attributes its success +to the lust of a tyrant and the cupidity of his courtiers. +It has evidently seemed to him paradoxical that a king who was +reputed to have been a satyr, instead of keeping as many +concubines as seemed good to him, should have chosen to gratify +his passions by entering six times into the strict bonds of +matrimony, religiously observing those bonds. It has seemed +to him even more paradoxical that one reputed to have been the +most sanguinary tyrant who ever disgraced the English throne +should have been not only endured, but loved and regretted by a +fierce and free-spoken people; and he, we suppose, could +comprehend as little as we can the reasoning of such a passage as +the following, especially when it proceeds from the pen of so +wise and venerable a writer as Mr. Hallam.</p> +<p>‘A government administered with so frequent violations, +not only of the chartered privileges of Englishmen, but of those +still more sacred rights which natural law has established, must +have been regarded, one would imagine, with just abhorrence and +earnest longings for a change. Yet contemporary authorities +by no means answer this expectation. Some mention Henry +after his death in language of eulogy;’ (not only +Elizabeth, be it remembered, but Cromwell also, always spoke of +him with deepest respect; and their language always found an echo +in the English heart;) ‘and if we except those whom +attachment to the ancient religion had inspired with hatred to +his memory, few seem to have been aware that his name would +descend to posterity among those of the many tyrants and +oppressors of innocence whom the wrath of Heaven has raised up, +and the servility of man endured.’</p> +<p>The names of even those few we should be glad to have; for it +seems to us that, with the exception of a few ultra-Protestants, +who could not forgive that persecution of the Reformers which he +certainly permitted, if not encouraged, during one period of his +reign, no one adopted the modern view of his character till more +than a hundred years after his death, when belief in all +nobleness and faith had died out among an ignoble and faithless +generation, and the scandalous gossip of such a light rogue as +Osborne was taken into the place of honest and respectful +history.</p> +<p>To clear up such seeming paradoxes as these by carefully +examining the facts of the sixteenth century has been Mr. +Froude’s work; and we have the results of his labour in two +volumes, embracing only a period of eleven years; but giving +promise that the mysteries of the succeeding time will be well +cleared up for us in future volumes, and that we shall find our +forefathers to have been, if no better, at least no worse men +than ourselves. He has brought to the task known talents +and learning, a mastery over English prose almost unequalled in +this generation, a spirit of most patient and good-tempered +research, and that intimate knowledge of human motives and +passions which his former books have shown, and which we have a +right to expect from any scholar who has really profited by +Aristotle’s unrivalled Ethics. He has fairly examined +every contemporary document within his reach, and, as he informs +us in the preface, he has been enabled, through the kindness of +Sir Francis Palgrave, to consult a great number of MSS. relating +to the Reformation, hitherto all but unknown to the public, and +referred to in his work as MSS. in the Rolls’ House, where +the originals are easily accessible. These, he states, he +intends to publish, with additions from his own reading, as soon +as he has brought his history down to the end of Henry the +Eighth’s reign.</p> +<p>But Mr. Froude’s chief text-book seems to have been +State Papers and Acts of Parliament. He has begun his work +in the only temper in which a man can write accurately and well; +in a temper of trust toward the generation whom he +describes. The only temper; for if a man has no affection +for the characters of whom he reads, he will never understand +them; if he has no respect for his subject, he will never take +the trouble to exhaust it. To such an author the Statutes +at large, as the deliberate expression of the nation’s will +and conscience, will appear the most important of all sources of +information; the first to be consulted, the last to be +contradicted; the Canon which is not to be checked and corrected +by private letters and flying pamphlets, but which is to check +and correct them. This seems Mr. Froude’s theory; and +we are at no pains to confess that if he be wrong we see no hope +of arriving at truth. If these public documents are not to +be admitted in evidence before all others, we see no hope for the +faithful and earnest historian; he must give himself up to swim +as he may on the frothy stream of private letters, anecdotes, and +pamphlets, the puppet of the ignorance, credulity, peevishness, +spite, of any and every gossip and scribbler.</p> +<p>Beginning his history with the fall of Wolsey, Mr. Froude +enters, of course, at his first step into the vexed question of +Henry’s divorce: an introductory chapter, on the general +state of England, we shall notice hereafter.</p> +<p>A very short inspection of the method in which he handles the +divorce question gives us at once confidence in his temper and +judgment, and hope that we may at last come to some clearer +understanding of it than the old law gives us, which we have +already quoted, concerning the dog who went mad to serve his +private ends. In a few masterly pages he sketches for us +the rotting and dying Church, which had recovered her power after +the Wars of the Roses over an exhausted nation; but in form only, +not in life. Wolsey, with whom he has fair and +understanding sympathy, he sketches as the transition minister, +‘loving England well, but loving Rome better,’ who +intends a reform of the Church, but who, as the Pope’s +commissioner for that very purpose, is liable to a +<i>præmunire</i>, and therefore dare not appeal to +Parliament to carry out his designs, even if he could have +counted on the Parliament’s assistance in any measures +designed to invigorate the Church. At last arises in the +divorce question the accident which brings to an issue on its +most vital point the question of Papal power in England, and +which finally draws down ruin upon Wolsey himself.</p> +<p>This appears to have begun in the winter of +1526–27. It was proposed to marry the Princess Mary +to a son of the French king. The Bishop of Tarbés, +who conducted the negotiations, advised himself, apparently by +special instigation of the evil spirit, to raise a question as to +her legitimacy.</p> +<p>No more ingenious plan for convulsing England could have been +devised. The marriage from which Mary sprang only stood on +a reluctant and doubtful dispensation of the Pope’s. +Henry had entered into it at the entreaty of his ministers, +contrary to a solemn promise given to his father, and in spite of +the remonstrances of the Archbishop of Canterbury. No +blessing seemed to have rested on it. All his children had +died young, save this one sickly girl: a sure note of divine +displeasure in the eyes of that coarse-minded Church which has +always declared the chief, if not the only, purpose of marriage +to be the procreation of children.</p> +<p>But more: to question Mary’s legitimacy was to throw +open the question of succession to half a dozen ambitious +competitors. It was, too probably, to involve England at +Henry’s death in another civil war of the Roses, and in all +the internecine horrors which were still rankling in the memories +of men; and probably, also, to bring down a French or Scotch +invasion. There was then too good reason, as Mr. Froude +shows at length, for Wolsey’s assertion to John +Cassalis—‘If his Holiness, which God forbid, shall +show himself unwilling to listen to the King’s demands, to +me assuredly it will be but grief to live longer, for the +innumerable evils which I foresee will follow . . . Nothing +before us but universal and inevitable ruin.’ Too +good reason there was for the confession of the Pope himself to +Gardner, ‘What danger it was to the realm to have this +thing hang in suspense . . . That without an heir-male, etc., the +realm was like to come to dissolution.’ Too good +reason for the bold assertion of the Cardinal-Governor of +Bologna, that ‘he knew the guise of England as few men did, +and that if the King should die without heirs-male, he was sure +that it would cost two hundred thousand men’s lives; and +that to avoid this mischief by a second marriage, he thought, +would deserve heaven.’ Too good reason for the +assertion of Hall, that ‘all indifferent and discreet +persons judged it necessary for the Pope to grant Henry a +divorce, and, by enabling him to marry again, give him the hope +of an undisputed heir-male.’ The Pope had full power +to do this; in fact, such cases had been for centuries integral +parts of his jurisdiction as head of Christendom. But he +was at once too timid and too time-serving to exercise his +acknowledged authority; and thus, just at the very moment when +his spiritual power was being tried in the balance, he chose +himself to expose his political power to the same test. +Both were equally found wanting. He had, it appeared, as +little heart to do justice among kings and princes as he had to +seek and to save the souls of men; and the Reformation followed +as a matter of course.</p> +<p>Through the tangled brakes of this divorce question Mr. Froude +leads us with ease and grace, throwing light, and even beauty, +into dark nooks where before all was mist, not merely by his +intimate acquaintance with the facts, but still more by his deep +knowledge of human character, and of woman’s even more than +of man’s. For the first time the actors in this long +tragedy appear to us as no mere bodiless and soulless names, but +as beings of like passions with ourselves, comprehensible, +coherent, organic, even in their inconsistencies. Catherine +of Arragon is still the Catherine of Shakspeare; but Mr. Froude +has given us the key to many parts of her story which Shakspeare +left unexplained, and delicately enough has made us understand +how Henry’s affections, if he ever had any for +her—faithfully as he had kept (with one exception) to that +loveless <i>mariage de convenance</i>—may have been +gradually replaced by indifference and even dislike, long before +the divorce was forced on him as a question not only of duty to +the nation, but of duty to Heaven. And that he did see it +in this latter light, Mr. Froude brings proof from his own words, +from which we can escape only by believing that the confessedly +honest ‘Bluff King Hal’ had suddenly become a +consummate liar and a canting hypocrite.</p> +<p>Delicately, too, as if speaking of a lady whom he had met in +modern society (as a gentleman is bound to do), does Mr. Froude +touch on the sins of that hapless woman, who played for +Henry’s crown, and paid for it with her life. With +all mercy and courtesy he gives us proof (for he thinks it his +duty to do so) of the French mis-education, the petty cunning, +the tendency to sensuality, the wilful indelicacy of her position +in Henry’s household as the rival of his queen, which made +her last catastrophe at least possible. Of the justice of +her sentence he has no doubt, any more than of her pre-engagement +to some one, as proved by a letter existing among +Cromwell’s papers. Poor thing! If she did that +which was laid to her charge, and more, she did nothing, after +all, but what she had been in the habit of seeing the queens and +princesses of the French court do notoriously, and laugh over +shamelessly; while, as Mr. Froude well says, ‘If we are to +hold her entirely free from guilt, we place not only the King, +but the Privy Council, the Judges, the Lords and Commons, and the +two Houses of Convocation, in a position fatal to their honour +and degrading to ordinary humanity’ (Mr. Froude should have +added Anne Boleyn’s own uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, and her +father, who were on the commission appointed to try her lovers, +and her cousin, Anthony St. Leger, a man of the very highest +character and ability, who was on the jury which found a true +bill against her). ‘We can not,’ continues Mr. +Froude, ‘acquiesce without inquiry in so painful a +conclusion. The English nation also, as well as she, +deserves justice at our hands; and it cannot be thought +uncharitable if we look with some scrutiny at the career of a +person who, but for the catastrophe with which it closed, would +not have so readily obtained forgiveness for having admitted the +addresses of the King, or for having received the homage of the +court as its future sovereign, while the King’s wife, her +mistress, as yet resided under the same roof.’ Mr. +Froude’s conclusion is, after examining the facts, the same +with the whole nation of England in Henry’s reign: but no +one can accuse him of want of sympathy with the unhappy woman, +who reads the eloquent and affecting account of her trial and +death, which ends his second volume. Our only fear is, that +by having thus told the truth he has, instead of justifying our +ancestors, only added one more to the list of people who are to +be ‘given up’ with a cynical shrug and smile. +We have heard already, and among young ladies too, who can be as +cynical as other people in these times, such speeches as, +‘Well, I suppose he has proved Anne Boleyn to be a bad +creature; but that does not make that horrid Henry any more right +in cutting off her head.’ Thus two people will be +despised where only one was before, and the fact still ignored, +that it is just as senseless to say that Henry cut off Anne +Boleyn’s head as that Queen Victoria hanged Palmer. +Death, and death of a far more horrible kind than that which Anne +Boleyn suffered, was the established penalty of the offences of +which she was convicted: and which had in her case this fearful +aggravation, that they were offences not against Henry merely, +but against the whole English nation. She had been married +in order that there might be an undisputed heir to the throne, +and a fearful war avoided. To throw into dispute, by any +conduct of hers, the legitimacy of her own offspring, argued a +levity or a hard-heartedness which of itself deserved the +severest punishment.</p> +<p>We will pass from this disagreeable topic to Mr. +Froude’s lifelike sketch of Pope Clement, and the endless +tracasseries into which his mingled weakness and cunning led him, +and which, like most crooked dealings, ended by defeating their +own object. Pages 125 <i>et sqq.</i> of Vol. I. contain +sketches of him, his thoughts and ways, as amusing as they are +historically important; but we have no space to quote from +them. It will be well for those to whom the Reformation is +still a matter of astonishment to read those pages, and consider +what manner of man he was, in spite of all pretended divine +authority, under whose rule the Romish system received its +irrecoverable wound.</p> +<p>But of all these figures, not excepting Henry’s own, +Wolsey stands out as the most grand and tragical; and Mr. Froude +has done good service to history, if only in making us understand +at last the wondrous ‘butcher’s son.’ +Shakspeare seems to have felt (though he could explain the reason +neither to his auditors nor, perhaps, to himself) that Wolsey +was, on the whole, an heroical man. Mr. Froude shows at +once his strength and his weakness; his deep sense of the +rottenness of the Church; his purpose to purge her from those +abominations which were as well known, it seems, to him as they +were afterwards to the whole people of England; his vast schemes +for education; his still vaster schemes for breaking the alliance +with Spain, and uniting France and England as fellow-servants of +the Pope, and twin-pillars of the sacred fabric of the Church, +which helped so much toward his interest in Catherine’s +divorce, as a ‘means’ (these are his own words) +‘to bind my most excellent sovereign and this glorious +realm to the holy Roman See in faith and obedience for +ever’; his hopes of deposing the Emperor, putting down the +German heresies, and driving back the Turks beyond the pale of +Christendom; his pathetic confession to the Bishop of Bayonne +that ‘if he could only see the divorce arranged, the King +re-married, the succession settled, and the laws and the Church +reformed, he would retire from the world, and would serve God the +remainder of his days.’</p> +<p>Peace be with him! He was surely a noble soul; misled, +it may be—as who is not when his turn comes?—by the +pride of conscious power; and ‘though he loved England +well, yet loving Rome better’: but still it is a comfort to +see, either in past or in present, one more brother whom we need +not despise, even though he may have wasted his energies on a +dream.</p> +<p>And on a dream he did waste them, in spite of all his +cunning. As Mr. Froude, in a noble passage, +says:—</p> +<blockquote><p>‘Extravagant as his hopes seem, the prospect +of realising them was, humanly speaking, neither chimerical nor +even improbable. He had but made the common mistake of men +of the world, who are the representatives of an old order of +things, when that order is doomed and dying. He could not +read the signs of the times; and confounding the barrenness of +death with the barrenness of winter, which might be followed by a +new spring and summer, he believed that the old life-tree of +Catholicism, which in fact was but cumbering the ground, might +bloom again in its old beauty. The thing which he called +heresy was the fire of Almighty God, which no politic +congregation of princes, no state machinery, though it were never +so active, could trample out; and as, in the early years of +Christianity, the meanest slave who was thrown to the wild beasts +for his presence at the forbidden mysteries of the Gospel saw +deeper, in the divine power of his faith, into the future even of +this earthly world, than the sagest of his imperial +persecutors,—so a truer political prophet than Wolsey would +have been found in the most ignorant of those poor men for whom +his police were searching in the purlieus of London, who were +risking death and torture in disseminating the pernicious volumes +of the English Testament.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>It will be seen from this magnificent passage that Mr. Froude +is distinctly a Protestant. He is one, to judge from his +book; and all the better one, because he can sympathise with +whatsoever nobleness, even with whatsoever mere conservatism, +existed in the Catholic party. And therefore, because he +has sympathies which are not merely party ones, but human ones, +he has given the world, in these two volumes, a history of the +early Reformation altogether unequalled. This human +sympathy, while it has enabled him to embalm in most affecting +prose the sad story of the noble though mistaken Carthusians, and +to make even the Nun of Kent interesting, because truly womanly, +in her very folly and deceit, has enabled him likewise to show us +the hearts of the early martyrs as they never have been shown +before. His sketch of the Christian Brothers, and his +little true romance of Anthony Dalaber, the Oxford student, are +gems of writing; while his conception of Latimer, on whom he +looks as the hero of the movement, and all but an English Luther, +is as worthy of Latimer as it is of himself. It is written +as history should be, discriminatingly, patiently, and yet +lovingly and genially; rejoicing not in evil, but in the truth; +and rejoicing still more in goodness, where goodness can honestly +be found.</p> +<p>To the ecclesiastical and political elements in the English +Reformation Mr. Froude devotes a large portion of his book. +We shall not enter into the questions which he discusses +therein. That aspect of the movement is a foreign and a +delicate subject, from discussing which a Scotch periodical may +be excused. <a name="citation246"></a><a href="#footnote246" +class="citation">[246]</a> North Britain had a somewhat +different problem to solve from her southern sister, and solved +it in an altogether different way: but this we must say, that the +facts and, still more, the State Papers (especially the petition +of the Commons, as contrasted with the utterly benighted answer +of the Bishops) which Mr. Froude gives are such as to raise our +opinion of the method on which the English part of the +Reformation was conducted, and make us believe that in this, as +in other matters, both Henry and his Parliament, though still +doctrinal Romanists, were sound-headed practical Englishmen.</p> +<p>This result is of the same kind as most of those at which Mr. +Froude arrives. They form altogether a general +justification of our ancestors in Henry the Eighth’s time, +if not of Henry the Eighth himself, which frees Mr. Froude from +that charge of irreverence to the past generations against which +we protested in the beginning of the article. We hope +honestly that he may be as successful in his next volumes as he +has been in these, in vindicating the worthies of the sixteenth +century. Whether he shall fail or not, and whether or not +he has altogether succeeded, in the volumes before us, his book +marks a new epoch, and, we trust, a healthier and loftier one, in +English history. We trust that they inaugurate a time in +which the deeds of our forefathers shall be looked on as sacred +heirlooms; their sins as our shame, their victories as bequests +to us; when men shall have sufficient confidence in those to whom +they owe their existence to scrutinise faithfully and patiently +every fact concerning them, with a proud trust that, search as +they may, they will not find much of which to be ashamed.</p> +<p>Lastly, Mr. Froude takes a view of Henry’s character, +not, indeed, new (for it is the original one), but obsolete for +now two hundred years. Let it be well understood that he +makes no attempt (he has been accused thereof) to whitewash +Henry: all that he does is to remove as far as he can the modern +layers of ‘black-wash,’ and to let the man himself, +fair or foul, be seen. For the result he is not +responsible: it depends on facts; and unless Mr. Froude has +knowingly concealed facts to an amount of which even a Lingard +might be ashamed, the result is that Henry the Eighth was +actually very much the man which he appeared to be to the English +nation in his own generation, and for two or three generations +after his death—a result which need not astonish us, if we +will only give our ancestors credit for having at least as much +common sense as ourselves, and believe (why should we not?) that, +on the whole, they understood their own business better than we +are likely to do.</p> +<p>‘The bloated tyrant,’ it is confessed, contrived +somehow or other to be popular enough. Mr. Froude tells us +the reasons. He was not born a bloated tyrant, any more +than Queen Elizabeth (though the fact is not generally known) was +born a wizened old woman. He was from youth, till he was +long past his grand climacteric, a very handsome, powerful, and +active man, temperate in his habits, good-humoured, frank and +honest in his speech (as even his enemies are forced to +confess). He seems to have been (as his portraits prove +sufficiently), for good and for evil, a thorough John Bull; a +thorough Englishman: but one of the very highest type.</p> +<blockquote><p>‘Had he died (says Mr. Froude) previous to +the first agitation of the divorce, his loss would have been +deplored as one of the heaviest misfortunes which had ever +befallen this country, and he would have left a name which would +have taken its place in history by the side of the Black Prince +or the Conqueror of Agincourt. Left at the most trying age, +with his character unformed, with the means of gratifying every +inclination, and married by his ministers, when a boy, to an +unattractive woman far his senior, he had lived for thirty-six +years almost without blame, and bore through England the +reputation of an upright and virtuous king. Nature had been +prodigal to him of her rarest gifts . . . Of his intellectual +ability we are not left to judge from the suspicious panegyrics +of his contemporaries. His State Papers and letters may be +placed by the side of those of Wolsey or of Cromwell, and they +lose nothing by the comparison. Though they are broadly +different, the perception is equally clear, the expression +equally powerful; and they breathe throughout an irresistible +vigour of purpose. In addition to this, he had a fine +musical taste, carefully cultivated; he spoke and wrote in four +languages; and his knowledge of a multitude of subjects, with +which his versatile ability made him conversant, would have +formed the reputation of any ordinary man. He was among the +best physicians of his age. He was his own engineer, +inventing improvements in artillery and new constructions in +shipbuilding; and this not with the condescending incapacity of a +royal amateur, but with thorough workmanlike understanding. +His reading was vast, especially in theology. He was +‘attentive,’ as it is called, ‘to his religious +duties,’ being present at the services in chapel two or +three times a day with unfailing regularity, and showing, to +outward appearance, a real sense of religious obligation in the +energy and purity of his life. In private he was +good-humoured and good-natured. His letters to his +secretaries, though never undignified, are simple, easy, and +unrestrained, and the letters written by them to him are +similarly plain and business-like, as if the writers knew that +the person whom they were addressing disliked compliments, and +chose to be treated as a man. He seems to have been always +kind, always considerate; inquiring into their private concerns +with genuine interest, and winning, as a consequence, their +sincere and unaffected attachment. As a ruler he had been +eminently popular. All his wars had been successful. +He had the splendid tastes in which the English people most +delighted; . . . he had more than once been tried with +insurrection, which he had soothed down without bloodshed, and +extinguished in forgiveness . . . And it is certain that if he +had died before the divorce was mooted, Henry VIII., like the +Roman emperor said by Tacitus to have been <i>censensu omnium +dignus imperii nisi imperasset</i>, would have been considered by +posterity as formed by Providence for the conduct of the +Reformation, and his loss would have been deplored as a perpetual +calamity.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Mr. Froude has, of course, not written these words without +having facts whereby to prove them. One he gives in an +important note containing an extract from a letter of the +Venetian Ambassador in 1515. At least, if his conclusions +be correct, we must think twice ere we deny his assertion that +‘the man best able of all living Englishmen to govern +England had been set to do it by the conditions of his +birth.’</p> +<p>‘We are bound,’ as Mr. Froude says, ‘to +allow him the benefit of his past career, and be careful to +remember it in interpreting his later actions.’ +‘The true defect in his moral constitution, that +“intense and imperious will” common to all princes of +the Plantagenet blood, had not yet been tested.’ That +he did, in his later years, act in many ways neither wisely nor +well, no one denies; that his conduct did not alienate the hearts +of his subjects is what needs explanation; and Mr. Froude’s +opinions on this matter, novel as they are, and utterly opposed +to that of the standard modern historians, require careful +examination. Now I am not inclined to debate Henry the +Eighth’s character, or any other subject, as between Mr. +Froude and an author of the obscurantist or pseudo-conservative +school. Mr. Froude is Liberal; and so am I. I wish to +look at the question as between Mr. Froude and other Liberals; +and therefore, of course, first, as between Mr. Froude and Mr. +Hallam.</p> +<p>Mr. Hallam’s name is so venerable and his work so +Important, that to set ourselves up as judges in this or in any +matter between him and Mr. Froude would be mere impertinence: but +speaking merely as learners, we have surely a right to inquire +why Mr. Hallam has entered on the whole question of Henry’s +relations to his Parliament with a <i>præjudicium</i> +against them; for which Mr. Froude finds no ground whatsoever in +fact. Why are all acts both of Henry and his Parliament to +be taken <i>in malam partem</i>? They were not Whigs, +certainly: neither were Socrates and Plato, nor even St. Paul and +St. John. They may have been honest men as men go, or they +may not: but why is there to be a feeling against them rather +than for them? Why is Henry always called a tyrant, and his +Parliament servile? The epithets have become so common and +unquestioned that our interrogation may seem startling. +Still we make it. Why was Henry a tyrant? That may be +true, but must be proved by facts. Where are they? Is +the mere fact of a monarch’s asking for money a crime in +him and his ministers? The question would rather seem to +be, Were the moneys for which Henry asked needed or no; and, when +granted, were they rightly or wrongly applied? And on these +subjects we want much more information than we obtain from any +epithets. The author of a constitutional history should +rise above epithets: or, if he uses them, should corroborate them +by facts. Why should not historians be as fair and as +cautious in accusing Henry and Wolsey as they would be in +accusing Queen Victoria and Lord Palmerston? What right, +allow us to ask, has a grave constitutional historian to say that +‘We cannot, indeed, doubt that the unshackled and despotic +condition of his friend, Francis I., afforded a mortifying +contrast to Henry? What document exists in which Henry is +represented as regretting that he is the king of a free +people?—for such Mr. Hallam confesses, just above, England +was held to be, and was actually in comparison with France. +If the document does not exist, Mr. Hallam has surely stepped out +of the field of the historian into that of the novelist, +<i>à la</i> Scott or Dumas. The Parliament sometimes +grants Henry’s demands: sometimes it refuses them, and he +has to help himself by other means. Why are both cases to +be interpreted <i>in malam partem</i>? Why is the +Parliament’s granting to be always a proof of its +servility?—its refusing always a proof of Henry’s +tyranny and rapacity? Both views are mere +<i>præjudicia</i>, reasonable perhaps, and possible: but +why is not a <i>præjudicium</i> of the opposite kind as +rational and as possible? Why has not a historian a right +to start, as Mr. Froude does, by taking for granted that both +parties may have been on the whole right; that the Parliament +granted certain sums because Henry was right in asking for them; +refused others because Henry was wrong; even that, in some cases, +Henry may have been right in asking, the Parliament wrong in +refusing; and that in such a case, under the pressure of critical +times, Henry was forced to get as he could the money which he saw +that the national cause required? Let it be as folks +will. Let Henry be sometimes right, and the Parliament +sometimes likewise; or the Parliament always right, or Henry +always right; or anything else, save this strange diseased theory +that both must have been always wrong, and that, evidence to that +effect failing, motives must be insinuated, or openly asserted, +from the writer’s mere imagination. This may be a +dream: but it is as easy to imagine as the other, and more +pleasant also. It will probably be answered (though not by +Mr. Hallam himself) by a sneer: ‘You do not seem to know +much of the world, sir.’ But so would Figaro and Gil +Blas have said, and on exactly the same grounds.</p> +<p>Let us examine a stock instance of Henry’s +‘rapacity’ and his Parliament’s servility, +namely, the exactions in 1524 and 1525, and the subsequent +‘release of the King’s debts.’ What are +the facts of the case? France and Scotland had attacked +England in 1514. The Scotch were beaten at Flodden. +The French lost Tournay and Thérouenne, and, when peace +was made, agreed to pay the expenses of the war. Times +changed, and the expenses were not paid.</p> +<p>A similar war arose in 1524, and cost England immense +sums. A large army was maintained on the Scotch Border, +another army invaded France; and Wolsey, not venturing to call a +Parliament,—because he was, as Pope’s legate, liable +to a <i>præmunire</i>,—raised money by contributions +and benevolences, which were levied, it seems on the whole, +uniformly and equally (save that they weighed more heavily on the +rich than on the poor, if that be a fault), and differed from +taxes only in not having received the consent of +Parliament. Doubtless, this was not the best way of raising +money: but what if, under the circumstances, it were the only +one? What if, too, on the whole, the money so raised was +really given willingly by the nation? The sequel alone +could decide that.</p> +<p>The first contribution for which Wolsey asked was paid. +The second was resisted, and was not paid; proving thereby that +the nation need not pay unless it chose. The court gave +way; and the war became defensive only till 1525.</p> +<p>Then the tide turned. The danger, then, was not from +Francis, but from the Emperor. Francis was taken prisoner +at Pavia; and shortly after Rome was sacked by Bourbon.</p> +<p>The effect of all this in England is told at large in Mr. +Froude’s second chapter. Henry became bond for +Francis’s ransom, to be paid to the Emperor. He spent +500,000 crowns more in paying the French army; and in the terms +of peace made with France, a sum-total was agreed on for the +whole debt, old and new, to be paid as soon as possible; and an +annual pension of 500,000 crowns besides. The French +exchequer, however, still remained bankrupt, and again the money +was not paid.</p> +<p>Parliament, when it met in 1529, reviewed the circumstances of +the expenditure, and finding it all such as the nation on the +whole approved, legalised the taxation by benevolences +retrospectively: and this is the whole mare’s nest of the +first payment of Henry’s debts; if, at least, any faith is +to be put in the preamble of the Act for the release of the +King’s Debts, 21 Hen. VIII. c. 24. ‘The +King’s loving subjects, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, +and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, calling to +remembrance the inestimable costs, charges, and expenses which +the King’s Highness hath necessarily been compelled to +support and sustain since his assumption to his crown, estate, +and dignity royal, as well for the extinction of a right +dangerous and damnable schism, sprung in the Church, as for the +modifying the insatiable and inordinate ambition of them who, +while aspiring to the monarchy of Christendom, did put universal +troubles and divisions in the same, intending, if they might, not +only to have subdued this realm, but also all the rest, unto +their power and subjection—for resistance whereof the +King’s Highness was compelled to marvellous +charges—both for the supportation of sundry armies by sea +and land, and also for divers and manifold contribution on hand, +to save and keep his own subjects at home in rest and +repose—which hath been so politically handled that, when +the most part of all Christian lands have been infested with +cruel wars, the great Head and Prince of the world (the Pope) +brought into captivity, cities and towns taken, spoiled, burnt, +and sacked—the King’s said subjects in all this time, +by the high providence and politic means of his Grace, have been +nevertheless preserved, defended, and maintained from all these +inconvenients, etc.</p> +<p>‘Considering, furthermore, that his Highness, in and +about the premises, hath been fain to employ not only all such +sums of money as hath risen or grown by contributions made unto +his Grace by his loving subjects—but also, over and above +the same, sundry other notable and excellent sums of his own +treasure and yearly revenues, among which manifold great sums so +employed, his Highness also, as is notoriously known, and as doth +evidently appear by the <span class="GutSmall">ACCOUNTS OF THE +SAME</span>, hath to that use, and none other, converted all such +money as by any of his subjects hath been advanced to his Grace +by way of prest or loan, either particularly, or by any taxation +made of the same—being things so well collocate and +bestowed, seeing the said high and great fruits and effects +thereof insured to the surety and commodity and tranquillity of +this realm—of our mind and consent, do freely, absolutely, +give and grant to the King’s Highness all and every sum or +sums of money,’ etc.</p> +<p>The second release of the King’s debts, in 1544, is very +similar. The King’s debts and necessities were +really, when we come to examine them, those of the nation: in +1538–40 England was put into a thorough state of defence +from end to end. Fortresses were built along the Scottish +Border, and all along the coast opposite France and +Flanders. The people were drilled and armed, the fleet +equipped; and the nation, for the time, became one great +army. And nothing but this, as may be proved by an +overwhelming mass of evidence, saved the country from +invasion. Here were enormous necessary expenses which must +be met.</p> +<p>In 1543 a million crowns were to have been paid by Francis the +First as part of his old debt. It was not paid: but, on the +contrary, Henry had to go to war for it. The nation again +relinquished their claim, and allowed Henry to raise another +benevolence in 1545, concerning which Mr. Hallam tells us a great +deal, but not one word of the political circumstances which led +to it or to the release, keeping his sympathies and his paper for +the sorrows of refractory Alderman Reed, who, refusing (alone of +all the citizens) to contribute to the support of troops on the +Scotch Border or elsewhere, was sent down, by a sort of rough +justice, to serve on the Scotch Border himself, and judge of the +‘perils of the nation’ with his own eyes; and +being—one is pleased to hear—taken prisoner by the +Scots, had to pay a great deal more as ransom than he would have +paid as benevolence.</p> +<p>But to return. What proof is there, in all this, of that +servility which most historians, and Mr. Hallam among the rest, +are wont to attribute to Henry’s Parliaments? What +feeling appears on the face of this document, which we have given +and quoted, but one honourable to the nation? Through the +falsehood of a foreign nation the King is unable to perform his +engagements to the people. Is not the just and generous +course in such a case to release him from those +engagements? Does this preamble, does a single fact of the +case, justify historians in talking of these ‘king’s +debts’ in just the same tone as that in which they would +have spoken if the King had squandered the money on private +pleasures? Perhaps most people who write small histories +believe that this really was the case. They certainly would +gather no other impression from the pages of Mr. Hallam. No +doubt the act must have been burdensome on some people. +Many, we are told, had bequeathed their promissory notes to their +children, used their reversionary interest in the loan in many +ways; and these, of course, felt the change very heavily. +No doubt: but why have we not a right to suppose that the +Parliament were aware of that fact; but chose it as the less of +the two evils? The King had spent the money; he was unable +to recover it from Francis; could only refund it by raising some +fresh tax or benevolence: and why may not the Parliament have +considered the release of old taxes likely to offend fewer people +than the imposition of new ones? It is certainly an ugly +thing to break public faith; but to prove that public faith was +broken, we must prove that Henry compelled the Parliament to +release him; if the act was of their own free will, no public +faith was broken, for they were the representatives of the +nation, and through them the nation forgave its own debt. +And what evidence have we that they did not represent the nation, +and that, on the whole, we must suppose, as we should in the case +of any other men, that they best knew their own business? +May we not apply to this case, and to others, <i>mutatis +mutandis</i>, the argument which Mr. Froude uses so boldly and +well in the case of Anne Boleyn’s trial—‘The +English nation also, as well as . . . deserves justice at our +hands?’</p> +<p>Certainly it does: but it is a disagreeable token of the +method on which we have been accustomed to write the history of +our own forefathers, that Mr. Froude should find it necessary to +state formally so very simple a truth.</p> +<p>What proof, we ask again, is there that this old Parliament +was ‘servile’? Had that been so, Wolsey would +not have been afraid to summon it. The specific reason for +not summoning a Parliament for six years after that of 1524 was +that they were not servile; that when (here we are quoting Mr. +Hallam, and not Mr. Froude) Wolsey entered the House of Commons +with a great train, seemingly for the purpose of intimidation, +they ‘made no other answer to his harangues than that it +was their usage to debate only among themselves.’ The +debates on this occasion lasted fifteen or sixteen days, during +which, says an eye-witness, ‘there has been the greatest +and sorest hold in the Lower House,’ ‘the matter +debated and beaten’; ‘such hold that the House was +like to have been dissevered’; in a word, hard +fighting—and why not honest fighting?—between the +court party and the Opposition, ‘which ended,’ says +Mr. Hallam, ‘in the court party obtaining, with the utmost +difficulty, a grant much inferior to the Cardinal’s +original requisition.’ What token of servility is +here?</p> +<p>And is it reasonable to suppose that after Wolsey was +conquered, and a comparatively popular ministry had succeeded, +and that memorable Parliament of 1529 (which Mr. Froude, not +unjustly, thinks more memorable than the Long Parliament itself) +began its great work with a high hand, backed not merely by the +King, but by the public opinion of the majority of England, their +decisions are likely to have been more servile than before? +If they resisted the King when they disagreed with him, are they +to be accused of servility because they worked with him when they +agreed with him? Is an Opposition always in the right; a +ministerial party always in the wrong? Is it an offence +against the people to agree with the monarch, even when he agrees +with the people himself? Simple as these questions are, one +must really stop to ask them.</p> +<p>No doubt pains were often taken to secure elections favourable +to the Government. Are none taken now? Are not more +taken now? Will any historian show us the documents which +prove the existence, in the sixteenth century, of Reform Club, +Carlton Club, whippers-in and nominees, governmental and +opposition, and all the rest of the beautiful machinery which +protects our Reformed Parliament from the evil influences of +bribery and corruption? Pah!—We have somewhat too +much glass in our modern House to afford to throw stones at our +forefathers’ old St. Stephen’s. At the worst, +what was done then but that without which it is said to be +impossible to carry on a Government now? Take an instance +from the Parliament of 1539, one in which there is no doubt +Government influence was used in order to prevent as much as +possible the return of members favourable to the clergy—for +the good reason that the clergy were no doubt, on their own side, +intimidating voters by all those terrors of the unseen world +which had so long been to them a source of boundless profit and +power.</p> +<p>Cromwell writes to the King to say that he has secured a seat +for a certain Sir Richard Morrison; but for what purpose? +As one who no doubt ‘should be ready to answer and take up +such as should crack or face with literature of learning, if any +such should be.’ There was, then, free discussion; +they expected clever and learned speakers in the Opposition, and +on subjects of the deepest import, not merely political, but +spiritual; and the Government needed men to answer such. +What more natural than that so close on the ‘Pilgrimage of +Grace,’ and in the midst of so great dangers at home and +abroad, the Government should have done their best to secure a +well-disposed House (one would like to know when they would +not)? But surely the very effort (confessedly exceptional) +and the acknowledged difficulty prove that Parliament were no +mere ‘registrars of edicts.’</p> +<p>But the strongest argument against the tyranny of the Tudors, +and especially of Henry VIII. in his ‘benevolences,’ +is derived from the state of the people themselves. If +these benevolences had been really unpopular, they would not have +been paid. In one case we have seen, a benevolence was not +paid for that very reason. For the method of the Tudor +sovereigns, like that of their predecessors, was the very +opposite to that of tyrants in every age and country. The +first act of a tyrant has always been to disarm the people, and +to surround himself with a standing army. The Tudor method +was, as Mr. Froude shows us by many interesting facts, to keep +the people armed and drilled, even to compel them to learn the +use of weapons. Throughout England spread one vast military +organisation, which made every adult a soldier, and enabled him +to find, at a day’s notice, his commanding officer, whether +landlord, sheriff, or lieutenant of the county; so that, as a +foreign ambassador of the time remarks with astonishment (we +quote from memory), ‘England is the strongest nation on +earth, for though the King has not a single mercenary soldier, he +can raise in three days an army of two hundred thousand +men.’</p> +<p>And of what temper those men were it is well known +enough. Mr. Froude calls them—and we beg leave to +endorse, without exception, Mr. Froude’s +opinion—‘A sturdy high-hearted race, sound in body +and fierce in spirit, and furnished with thews and sinews which, +under the stimulus of those “great shins of beef,” +their common diet, were the wonder of the age.’ +‘What comyn folke in all this world,’ says a State +Paper in 1515, ‘may compare with the comyns of England in +riches, freedom, liberty, welfare, and all prosperity? What +comyn folk is so mighty, so strong in the felde, as the comyns of +England?’ In authentic stories of actions under Henry +VIII.—and, we will add, under Elizabeth +likewise—where the accuracy of the account is undeniable, +no disparity of force made Englishmen shrink from enemies +whenever they could meet them. Again and again a few +thousands of them carried dismay into the heart of France. +Four hundred adventurers, vagabond apprentices of London, who +formed a volunteer corps in the Calais garrison, were for years, +Hall says, the terror of Normandy. In the very frolic of +conscious power they fought and plundered without pay, without +reward, save what they could win for themselves; and when they +fell at last, they fell only when surrounded by six times their +number, and were cut to pieces in careless desperation. +Invariably, by friend and foe alike, the English are described as +the fiercest people in all Europe—English wild beasts +Benvenuto Cellini calls them; and this great physical power they +owed to the profuse abundance in which they lived, to the +soldier’s training in which every one of them was bred from +childhood.</p> +<p>Mr. Froude’s novel assertion about profuse abundance +must be weighed by those who have read his invaluable +introductory chapter. But we must ask at once how it was +possible to levy on such an armed populace a tax which they were +determined not to pay, and felt that they were not bound to pay, +either in law or justice? Conceive Lord Palmerston’s +sending down to demand a ‘benevolence’ from the army +at Aldershot, beginning with the general in command and +descending to the privates . . . What would be the +consequences? Ugly enough: but gentle in comparison with +those of any attempt to exact a really unpopular tax from a +nation of well-armed Englishmen, unless they, on the whole, +thought the tax fit to be paid. They would grumble, of +course, whether they intended to pay or not,—for were they +not Englishmen, our own flesh and blood?—and grumble all +the more in person, because they had no Press to grumble for +them: but what is there then in the M.P.’s letter to Lord +Surrey, quoted by Mr. Hallam, p. 25, or in the more pointed +letter of Warham’s, two pages on, which we do not see lying +on our breakfast tables in half the newspapers every week? +Poor, pedantic, obstructive old Warham, himself very angry at so +much being asked of his brother clergymen, and at their being +sworn as to the value of their goods (so like are old times to +new ones); and being, on the whole, of opinion that the world +(the Church included) is going to the devil, says that as he has +been ‘showed in a secret manner of his friends, the people +sore grudgeth and murmureth, and speaketh cursedly among +themselves, as far as they dare, saying they shall never have +rest of payments as long as some liveth, and that they had better +die than thus be continually handed, reckoning themselves, their +wives and children, as despoulit, and not greatly caring what +they do, or what becomes of them.’</p> +<p>Very dreadful—if true: which last point depends very +much upon who Warham was. Now, on reading Mr. +Froude’s or any other good history, we shall find that +Warham was one of the leaders of that despondent party which will +always have its antitype in England. Have we, too, not +heard within the last seven years similar prophecies of +desolation, mourning, and woe—of the Church tottering on +the verge of ruin, the peasantry starving under the horrors of +free trade, noble families reduced to the verge of beggary by +double income-tax? Even such a prophet seems Warham to have +been—of all people in that day, one of the last whom one +would have asked for an opinion.</p> +<p>Poor old Warham, however, was not so far wrong in this +particular case; for the ‘despoulit’ slaves of +Suffolk, not content with grumbling, rose up with sword and bow, +and vowed that they would not pay. Whereon the bloated +tyrant sent his prætorians, and enforced payment by scourge +and thumbscrew? Not in the least. They would not pay; +and therefore, being free men, nobody could make them pay; and +although in the neighbouring county of Norfolk, from twenty +pounds (<i>i.e.</i> £200 of our money) upward—for the +tax was not levied on men of less substance—there were not +twenty but what had consented; and though there was ‘great +likelihood that this grant should be much more than the loan +was’ (the ‘salt tears’ shed by the gentlemen of +Norfolk proceeding, says expressly the Duke of Norfolk, +‘only from doubt how to find money to content the +King’s Highness’); yet the King and Wolsey gave way +frankly and at once, and the contribution was remitted, although +the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, writing to Wolsey, treat the +insurrection lightly, and seem to object to the remission as +needless.</p> +<p>From all which facts—they are Mr. Hallam’s, not +Mr. Froude’s—we can deduce not tyranny, but lenity, +good sense, and the frank withdrawal from a wrong position as +soon as the unwillingness of the people proved it to be a wrong +one.</p> +<p>This instance is well brought forward (though only in a line +or two, by Mr. Froude) as one among many proofs that the working +classes in Henry the Eighth’s time ‘enjoyed an +abundance far beyond that which in general falls to the lot of +that order in long-settled countries, incomparably beyond what +the same class were enjoying at that very time in Germany or +France. The laws secured them; and that the laws were put +in force, we have the direct evidence of successive acts of the +Legislature, justifying the general policy by its success: and we +have also the indirect evidence of the contented loyalty of the +great body of the people, at a time when, if they had been +discontented, they held in their own hands the means of asserting +what the law acknowledged to be their right. ‘The +Government,’ as we have just shown at length, ‘had no +power to compel injustice . . . If the peasantry had been +suffering under any real grievances we should have heard of them +when the religious rebellions furnished so fair an opportunity to +press them forward. Complaint was loud enough, when +complaint was just, under the Somerset Protectorate.’</p> +<p>Such broad facts as these—for facts they are—ought +to make us pause ere we boast of the greater liberty enjoyed by +Englishmen of the present day, as compared with the tyranny of +Tudor times. Thank God, there is no lack of that blessing +now: but was there any real lack of it then? Certainly the +outward notes of a tyranny exist now in far greater completeness +than then. A standing army, a Government police, ministries +who bear no love to a militia, and would consider the compulsory +arming and drilling of the people as a dangerous insanity, do not +look at first sight as much like ‘free institutions’ +as a Government which, though again and again in danger not +merely of rebellion, but of internecine wars of succession, so +trusted the people as to force weapons into their hands from +boyhood. Let us not be mistaken: we are no hankerers after +retrogression: the present system works very well; let it be; all +that we say is that the imputation of despotic institutions lies, +<i>primâ facie</i>, rather against the reign of Queen +Victoria than against that of King Henry the Eighth. Of +course it is not so in fact. Many modern methods, which are +despotic in appearance, are not so in practice. Let us +believe that the same was the case in the sixteenth +century. Our governors now understand their own business +best, and make a very fair compromise between discipline and +freedom. Let us believe that the men of the sixteenth +century did so likewise. All we ask is that our forefathers +should be judged as we wish to be judged ourselves, ‘not +according to outward appearance, but with righteous +judgment.’</p> +<p>Mr. Froude finds the cause of this general contentment and +loyalty of the masses in the extreme care which the Government +took of their well-being. The introductory chapter, in +which he proves to his own satisfaction the correctness of his +opinion, is well worth the study of our political +economists. The facts which he brings seem certainly +overwhelming; of course, they can only be met by counter-facts; +and our knowledge does not enable us either to corroborate or +refute his statements. The chief argument used against them +seems to us, at least, to show that for some cause or other the +working classes were prosperous enough. It is said the Acts +of Parliament regulating wages do not fix the minimum of wages, +but the maximum. They are not intended to defend the +employed against the employer, but the employer against the +employed, in a defective state of the labour market, when the +workmen, by the fewness of their numbers, were enabled to make +extravagant demands. Let this be the case—we do not +say that it is so—what is it but a token of prosperity +among the working classes? A labour market so thin that +workmen can demand their own price for their labour, till +Parliament is compelled to bring them to reason, is surely a time +of prosperity to the employed—a time of full work and high +wages; of full stomachs, inclined from very prosperity to +‘wax fat and kick.’ If, however, any learned +statistician should be able to advance, on the opposite side of +the question, enough to weaken some of Mr. Froude’s +conclusions, he must still, if he be a just man, do honour to the +noble morality of this most striking chapter, couched as it is in +as perfect English as we have ever had the delight of +reading. We shall leave, then, the battle of facts to be +fought out by statisticians, always asking Mr. Froude’s +readers to bear in mind that, though other facts may be true, yet +his facts are no less true likewise; and we shall quote at +length, both as a specimen of his manner and of his matter, the +last three pages of this introductory chapter, in which, after +speaking of the severity of the laws against vagrancy, and +showing how they were excused by the organisation which found +employment for every able-bodied man, he goes on to +say:—</p> +<blockquote><p>‘It was therefore the expressed conviction +of the English nation that it was better for a man not to live at +all than to live a profitless and worthless life. The +vagabond was a sore spot upon the commonwealth, to be healed by +wholesale discipline if the gangrene was not incurable; to be cut +away with the knife if the milder treatment of the cart-whip +failed to be of profit.</p> +<p>‘A measure so extreme in its severity was partly +dictated by policy. The state of the country was critical; +and the danger from questionable persons traversing it, +unexamined and uncontrolled, was greater than at ordinary +times. But in point of justice as well as of prudence it +harmonised with the iron temper of the age, and it answered well +for the government of a fierce and powerful people, in whose +hearts lay an intense hatred of rascality, and among whom no one +could have lapsed into evil courses except by deliberate +preference for them. The moral sinew of the English must +have been strong indeed when it admitted of such stringent +bracing; but, on the whole, they were ruled as they preferred to +be ruled; and if wisdom can be tested by success, the manner in +which they passed the great crisis of the Reformation is the best +justification of their princes. The era was great +throughout Europe. The Italians of the age of Michael +Angelo, the Spaniards who were the contemporaries of Cortez, the +Germans who shook off the Pope at the call of Luther, and the +splendid chivalry of Francis I. of France, were no common +men. But they were all brought face to face with the same +trials, and none met them as the English met them. The +English alone never lost their self-possession, and if they owed +something to fortune in their escape from anarchy, they owed more +to the strong hand and steady purpose of their rulers.</p> +<p>‘To conclude this chapter, then.</p> +<p>‘In the brief review of the system under which England +was governed, we have seen a state of things in which the +principles of political economy were, consciously or +unconsciously, contradicted; where an attempt, more or less +successful, was made to bring the production and distribution of +wealth under the moral rule of right or wrong; and where those +laws of supply and demand, which we are now taught to regard as +immutable ordinances of nature, were absorbed or superseded by a +higher code. It is necessary for me to repeat that I am not +holding up the sixteenth century as a model which the nineteenth +might safely follow. The population has become too large, +and employment too complicated and fluctuating, to admit of such +control; while, in default of control, the relapse upon +self-interest as the one motive principle is certain to ensue, +and, when it ensues, is absolute in its operations. But as, +even with us, these so-called ordinances of nature in time of war +consent to be suspended, and duty to his country becomes with +every good citizen a higher motive of action than the advantages +which he may gain in an enemy’s market; so it is not +uncheering to look back upon a time when the nation was in a +normal condition of militancy against social injustice—when +the Government was enabled, by happy circumstances, to pursue +into detail a single and serious aim at the +well-being—well-being in its widest sense—of all +members of the commonwealth. There were difficulties and +drawbacks at that time as well as this. Of Liberty, in the +modern sense of the word—of the supposed right of every man +“to do what he will with his own,” or with +himself—there was no idea. To the question, if ever +it was asked, “May I not do what I will with my own?” +there was the brief answer, “No man may do what is wrong, +either with what is his own or with what is +another’s.” Producers, too, who were not +permitted to drive down their workmen’s wages by +competition, could not sell their goods as cheaply as they might +have done, and the consumer paid for the law in an advance of +price; but the burden, though it fell heavily on the rich, +lightly touched the poor and the rich consented cheerfully to a +tax which ensured the loyalty of the people. The working +man of modern times has bought the extension of his liberty at +the price of his material comfort. The higher classes have +gained in wealth what they have lost in power. It is not +for the historian to balance advantages. His duty is with +the facts.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Our forefathers, then, were not free, if we attach to that +word the meaning which our Transatlantic brothers seem inclined +to give to it. They had not learnt to deify self-will, and +to claim for each member of the human race a right to the +indulgence of every eccentricity. They called themselves +free, and boasted of their freedom; but their conception of +liberty was that of all old nations, a freedom which not only +allowed of discipline, but which grew out of it. No people +had less wish to exalt the kingly power into that specious +tyranny, a paternal Government; the king was with them, and +always had been, both formally and really, subject to their +choice; bound by many oaths to many duties; the minister, not the +master of the people. But their whole conception of +political life was, nevertheless, shaped by their conception of +family life. Strict obedience, stern discipline, compulsory +education in practical duties, was the law of the latter; without +such training they thought their sons could never become in any +true sense men. And when they grew up, their civic life was +to be conducted on the same principles, for the very purpose of +enabling them to live as members of a free nation. If the +self-will of the individual was curbed, now and then, +needlessly—as it is the nature of all human methods to +caricature themselves at times—the purpose was, not to +weaken the man, but to strengthen him by strengthening the body +to which he belonged. The nation was to be free, +self-helping, self-containing, unconquerable; to that great +purpose the will, the fancy—even, if need be, the mortal +life of the individual, must give way. Men must be trained +at all costs in self-restraint, because only so could they become +heroes in the day of danger; in self-sacrifice for the common +good, because only so would they remain united, while foreign +nations and evil home influences were trying to tear them +asunder. In a word, their conception of life was as a +warfare; their organisation that of a regiment. It is a +question whether the conception of corporate life embodied in a +regiment or army be not, after all, the best working one for this +world. At least the problem of a perfect society, howsoever +beautiful on paper, will always issue in a compromise, more or +less perfect—let us hope more and more perfect as the +centuries roll on—between the strictness of military +discipline and the Irishman’s <i>laissez-faire</i> ideal, +wherein ‘every man should do that which was right in the +sight of his own eyes, and wrong too, if he liked.’ +At least, such had England been for centuries; under such a +system had she thriven; a fact which, duly considered, should +silence somewhat those gentlemen who, not being of a military +turn themselves, inform Europe so patriotically and so prudently +that ‘England is not a military nation.’</p> +<p>From this dogma we beg leave to differ utterly. Britain +is at this moment, in our eyes, the only military nation in +Europe. All other nations seem to us to have military +governments, but not to be military themselves. As proof of +the assertion, we appeal merely to the existence of our +militia. While other nations are employing conscription, we +have raised in twelve months a noble army, every soul of which +has volunteered as a free man; and yet, forsooth, we are not a +military nation! We are not ashamed to tell how, but the +other day, standing in the rear of those militia regiments, no +matter where, a flush of pride came over us at the sight of those +lads, but a few months since helpless and awkward country boors, +now full of sturdy intelligence, cheerful obedience, and the +manhood which can afford to be respectful to others, because it +respects itself, and knows that it is respected in turn. +True, they had not the lightness, the order, the practical ease, +the cunning self-helpfulness of the splendid German legionaries +who stood beside them, the breast of every other private +decorated with clasps and medals for service in the wars of seven +years since. As an invading body, perhaps, one would have +preferred the Germans; but only because experience had taught +them already what it would teach in twelve months to the +Berkshire or Cambridge ‘clod.’ There, to us, +was the true test of England’s military qualities; her +young men had come by tens of thousands, of their own free will, +to be made soldiers of by her country gentlemen, and treated by +them the while as men to be educated, not as things to be +compelled; not driven like sheep to the slaughter, to be +disciplined by men with whom they had no bond but the mere +official one of military obedience; and ‘What,’ we +ask ourselves, ‘does England lack to make her a second +Rome?’ Her people have physical strength, animal +courage, that self-dependence of freemen which enabled at +Inkerman the privates to fight on literally without officers, +every man for his own hand. She has inventive genius, +enormous wealth; and if, as is said, her soldiers lack at present +the self-helpfulness of the Zouave, it is ridiculous to suppose +that that quality could long be wanting in the men of a nation +which is at this moment the foremost in the work of emigration +and colonisation. If organising power and military system +be, as is said, lacking in high quarters, surely there must be +organising power enough somewhere in the greatest industrial +nation upon earth, ready to come forward when there is a real +demand for it; and whatever be the defects of our system, we are +surely not as far behind Prussia or France as Rome was behind the +Carthaginians and the Greeks whom she crushed. A few years +sufficed for them to learn all they needed from their enemies; +fewer still would suffice us to learn from our friends. Our +working classes are not, like those of America, in a state of +physical comfort too great to make it worth while for them to +leave their home occupations; and whether that be a good or an +evil, it at least ensures us, as our militia proves, an almost +inexhaustible supply of volunteers. What a new and awful +scene for the world’s drama, did such a nation as this once +set before itself, steadily and ruthlessly, as Rome did of old, +the idea of conquest. Even now, waging war as she has done, +as it were, ἐν +παρεργᾷ, thinking war too +unimportant a part of her work to employ on it her highest +intellects, her flag has advanced in the last fifty years over +more vast and richer tracts than that of any European nation upon +earth. What keeps her from the dream which lured to their +destruction Babylon, Macedonia, Rome?</p> +<p>This: that, thank God, she has a conscience still; that, +feeling intensely the sacredness of her own national life, she +has learned to look on that of other people’s as sacred +also; and since, in the fifteenth century, she finally repented +of that wild and unrighteous dream of conquering France, she has +discovered more and more that true military greatness lies in the +power of defence, and not of attack; not in waging war, but being +able to wage it; and has gone on her true mission of replenishing +the earth more peacefully, on the whole, and more humanely, than +did ever nation before her; conquering only when it was necessary +to put down the lawlessness of the savage few for the well-being +of the civilised many. This has been her idea; she may have +confused it and herself in Caffre or in Chinese wars; for who can +always be true to the light within him? But this has been +her idea; and therefore she stands and grows and thrives, a +virgin land for now eight hundred years.</p> +<p>But a fancy has come over us during the last blessed forty +years of unexampled peace, from which our ancestors of the +sixteenth century were kept by stern and yet most wholesome +lessons; the fancy that peace, and not war, is the normal +condition of the world. The fancy is so fair that we blame +none who cherish it; after all they do good by cherishing it; +they point us to an ideal which we should otherwise forget, as +Babylon, Rome, France in the seventeenth century, forgot +utterly. Only they are in haste (and pardonable haste too) +to realise that ideal, forgetting that to do so would be really +to stop short of it, and to rest contented in some form of human +society far lower than that which God has actually prepared for +those who love Him. Better to believe that all our +conceptions of the height to which the human race might attain +are poor and paltry compared with that toward which God is +guiding it, and for which he is disciplining it by awful lessons: +and to fight on, if need be, ruthless, and yet full of +pity—and many a noble soul has learnt within the last two +years how easy it is to reconcile in practice that seeming +paradox of words—smiting down stoutly evil wheresoever we +shall find it, and saying, ‘What ought to be, we know not; +God alone can know: but that this ought not to be, we do know, +and here, in God’s name, it shall not stay.’</p> +<p>We repeat it: war, in some shape or other, is the normal +condition of the world. It is a fearful fact: but we shall +not abolish it by ignoring it, and ignoring by the same method +the teaching of our Bibles. Not in mere metaphor does the +gospel of Love describe the life of the individual good man as a +perpetual warfare. Not in mere metaphor does the apostle of +Love see in his visions of the world’s future no Arcadian +shepherd paradises, not even a perfect civilisation, but an +eternal war in heaven, wrath and woe, plague and earthquake; and +amid the everlasting storm, the voices of the saints beneath the +altar crying, ‘Lord, how long?’ Shall we +pretend to have more tender hearts than the old man of Ephesus, +whose dying sermon, so old legends say, was nought +but—‘Little children, love one another’; and +who yet could denounce the liar and the hater and the covetous +man, and proclaim the vengeance of God against all evildoers, +with all the fierceness of an Isaiah? It was enough for +him—let it be enough for us—that he should see, above +the thunder-cloud, and the rain of blood, and the scorpion swarm, +and the great angel calling all the fowl of heaven to the supper +of the great God, that they might eat the flesh of kings and +valiant men, a city of God eternal in the heavens, and yet +eternally descending among men; a perfect order, justice, love, +and peace, becoming actual more and more in every age, through +all the fearful training needful for a fallen race.</p> +<p>Let that be enough for us: but do not let us fancy that what +is true of the two extremes must not needs be true of the mean +also; that while the life of the individual and of the universe +is one of perpetual self-defence, the life of the nation can be +aught else: or that any appliances of scientific comforts, any +intellectual cultivation, even any of the most direct and +common-sense arguments of self-interest, can avail to quiet in +man those outbursts of wrath, ambition, cupidity, wounded pride, +which have periodically convulsed, and will convulse to the end, +the human race. The philosopher in his study may prove +their absurdity, their suicidal folly, till, deluded by the +strange lull of a forty years’ peace, he may look on wars +as in the same category with flagellantisms, witch-manias, and +other ‘popular delusions,’ as insanities of the past, +impossible henceforth; and may prophesy, as really wise political +economists were doing in 1847, that mankind had grown too +sensible to go to war any more. And behold, the peace +proves only to be the lull before the thunderstorm; and one +electric shock sets free forces unsuspected, transcendental, +supernatural in the deepest sense; forces which we can no more +stop, by shrieks at their absurdity, from incarnating themselves +in actual blood, and misery, and horror, than we can control the +madman in his paroxysm by telling him that he is a madman. +And so the fair vision of the student is buried once more in rack +and hail and driving storm; and, like Daniel of old when +rejoicing over the coming restoration of his people, he sees +beyond the victory some darker struggle still, and lets his notes +of triumph die away into a wail,—‘And the end thereof +shall be with a flood; and to the end of the war desolations are +determined.’</p> +<p>It is as impossible as it would be unwise to conceal from +ourselves the fact that all the Continental nations look upon our +present peace as but transitory, momentary; and on the Crimean +war as but the prologue to a fearful drama—all the more +fearful because none knows its purpose, its plot, which character +will be assumed by any given actor, and, least of all, the +<i>dénouement</i> of the whole. All that they feel +and know is that everything which has happened since 1848 has +exasperated, not calmed, the electric tension of the European +atmosphere; that a rottenness, rapidly growing intolerable alike +‘to God and the enemies of God,’ has eaten into the +vitals of Continental life; that their rulers know neither where +they are nor whither they are going, and only pray that things +may last out their time: all notes which one would interpret as +proving the Continent to be already ripe for subjection to some +one devouring race of conquerors, were there not a ray of hope in +an expectation, even more painful to our human pity, which is +held by some of the wisest among the Germans; namely, that the +coming war will fast resolve into no struggle between bankrupt +monarchs and their respective armies, but a war between nations +themselves, an internecine war of opinions and of creeds. +There are wise Germans now who prophesy, with sacred tears, a +second ‘Thirty Years’ War,’ with all its +frantic horrors, for their hapless country, which has found two +centuries too short a time wherein to recover from the exhaustion +of that first fearful scourge. Let us trust, if that war +shall beget its new Tillys and Wallensteins, it shall also beget +its new Gustavus Adolphus, and many another child of Light: but +let us not hope that we can stand by in idle comfort, and that +when the overflowing scourge passes by it shall not reach to +us. Shame to us, were that our destiny! Shame to us, +were we to refuse our share in the struggles of the human race, +and to stand by in idle comfort while the Lord’s battles +are being fought. Honour to us, if in that day we have +chosen for our leaders, as our forefathers of the sixteenth +century did, men who see the work which God would have them do, +and have hearts and heads to do it. Honour to us, if we +spend this transient lull, as our forefathers of the sixteenth +century did, in setting our house in order, in redressing every +grievance, reforming every abuse, knitting the hearts of the +British nation together by practical care and help between class +and class, man and man, governor and governed, that we may +bequeath to our children, as Henry the Eighth’s men did to +theirs, a British national life, so united and whole-hearted, so +clear in purpose and sturdy in execution, so trained to know the +right side at the first glance and take it, that they shall look +back with love and honour upon us, their fathers, determined to +carry out, even to the death, the method which we have bequeathed +to them. Then, if God will that the powers of evil, +physical and spiritual, should combine against this land, as they +did in the days of good Queen Bess, we shall not have lived in +vain; for those who, as in Queen Bess’s days, thought to +yoke for their own use a labouring ox, will find, as then, that +they have roused a lion from his den.</p> +<h2>FOOTNOTES</h2> +<p><a name="footnote219"></a><a href="#citation219" +class="footnote">[219]</a> North British Review, No. +LI., November 1856.—‘A History of England, from the +Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth.’ By J. A. +Froude, M.A., late Fellow of Exeter college, Oxford. +London: J. W. Parker and Son, West Strand. 2 vols. +1856.</p> +<p><a name="footnote246"></a><a href="#citation246" +class="footnote">[246]</a> This article appeared in the +<i>North British Review</i>.</p> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FROUDE'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND***</p> +<pre> + + +***** This file should be named 3144-h.htm or 3144-h.zip****** + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/3/1/4/3144 + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will +be renamed. + +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. 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FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.12.12.00*END* + + + + + +This etext was produced from the 1890 Macmillan and Co. "Plays and +Puritans and Other Historical Essays" edition by David Price, email +ccx074@coventry.ac.uk + + + + + +FROUDE'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND {1} + +by Charles Kingsley + + + + +There appeared a few years since a 'Comic History of England,' duly +caricaturing and falsifying all our great national events, and +representing the English people, for many centuries back, as a mob of +fools and knaves, led by the nose in each generation by a few arch- +fools and arch-knaves. Some thoughtful persons regarded the book +with utter contempt and indignation; it seemed to them a crime to +have written it; a proof of 'banausia,' as Aristotle would have +called it, only to be outdone by the writing a 'Comic Bible.' After +a while, however, their indignation began to subside; their second +thoughts, as usual, were more charitable than their first; they were +not surprised to hear that the author was an honest, just, and able +magistrate; they saw that the publication of such a book involved no +moral turpitude; that it was merely meant as a jest on a subject on +which jesting was permissible, and as a money speculation in a field +of which men had a right to make money; while all which seemed +offensive in it was merely the outcome, and as it were apotheosis, of +that method of writing English history which has been popular for +nearly a hundred years. 'Which of our modern historians,' they asked +themselves, 'has had any real feeling of the importance, the +sacredness, of his subject?--any real trust in, or respect for, the +characters with whom he dealt? Has not the belief of each and all of +them been the same--that on the whole, the many always have been +fools and knaves; foolish and knavish enough, at least, to become the +puppets of a few fools and knaves who held the reins of power? Have +they not held that, on the whole, the problems of human nature and +human history have been sufficiently solved by Gibbon and Voltaire, +Gil Blas and Figaro; that our forefathers were silly barbarians; that +this glorious nineteenth century is the one region of light, and that +all before was outer darkness, peopled by 'foreign devils,' +Englishmen, no doubt, according to the flesh, but in spirit, in +knowledge, in creed, in customs, so utterly different from ourselves +that we shall merely show our sentimentalism by doing aught but +laughing at them? + +On what other principle have our English histories as yet been +constructed, even down to the children's books, which taught us in +childhood that the history of this country was nothing but a string +of foolish wars, carried on by wicked kings, for reasons hitherto +unexplained, save on that great historic law of Goldsmith's by which +Sir Archibald Alison would still explain the French Revolution - + + +'The dog, to serve his private ends, +Went mad, and bit the man?' + + +It will be answered by some, and perhaps rather angrily, that these +strictures are too sweeping; that there is arising, in a certain +quarter, a school of history books for young people of a far more +reverent tone, which tries to do full honour to the Church and her +work in the world. Those books of this school which we have seen, we +must reply, seem just as much wanting in real reverence for the past +as the school of Gibbon and Voltaire. It is not the past which they +reverence, but a few characters or facts eclectically picked out of +the past, and, for the most part, made to look beautiful by ignoring +all the features which will not suit their preconceived pseudo-ideal. +There is in these books a scarcely concealed dissatisfaction with the +whole course of the British mind since the Reformation, and (though +they are not inclined to confess the fact) with its whole course +before the Reformation, because that course was one of steady +struggle against the Papacy and its anti-national pretensions. They +are the outcome of an utterly un-English tone of thought; and the so- +called 'ages of faith' are pleasant and useful to them, principally +because they are distant and unknown enough to enable them to conceal +from their readers that in the ages on which they look back as +ideally perfect a Bernard and a Francis of Assisi were crying all day +long--'O that my head were a fountain of tears, that I might weep for +the sins of my people!' Dante was cursing popes and prelates in the +name of the God of Righteousness; Boccaccio and Chaucer were lifting +the veil from priestly abominations of which we now are ashamed even +to read; and Wolsey, seeing the rottenness of the whole system, spent +his mighty talents, and at last poured out his soul unto death, in +one long useless effort to make the crooked straight, and number that +which had been weighed in the balances of God, and found for ever +wanting. To ignore wilfully facts like these, which were patent all +along to the British nation, facts on which the British laity acted, +till they finally conquered at the Reformation, and on which they are +acting still, and will, probably, act for ever, is not to have any +real reverence for the opinions or virtues of our forefathers; and we +are not astonished to find repeated, in such books, the old stock +calumnies against our lay and Protestant worthies, taken at second- +hand from the pages of Lingard. In copying from Lingard, however, +this party has done no more than those writers have who would +repudiate any party--almost any Christian--purpose. Lingard is known +to have been a learned man, and to have examined many manuscripts +which few else had taken the trouble to look at; so his word is to be +taken, no one thinking it worth while to ask whether he has either +honestly read or honestly quoted the documents. It suited the +sentimental and lazy liberality of the last generation to make a show +of fairness by letting the Popish historian tell his side of the +story, and to sneer at the illiberal old notion that gentlemen of his +class were given to be rather careless about historic truth when they +had a purpose to serve thereby; and Lingard is now actually +recommended as a standard authority for the young by educated +Protestants, who seem utterly unable to see that, whether the man be +honest or not, his whole view of the course of British events since +Becket first quarrelled with his king must be antipodal to their own; +and that his account of all which has passed for three hundred years +since the fall of Wolsey is most likely to be (and, indeed, may be +proved to be) one huge libel on the whole nation, and the destiny +which God has marked out for it. + +There is, indeed, no intrinsic cause why the ecclesiastical, or +pseudo-Catholic, view of history should, in any wise, conduce to a +just appreciation of our forefathers. For not only did our +forefathers rebel against that conception again and again, till they +finally trampled it under their feet, and so appear, prima facie, as +offenders to be judged at its bar; but the conception itself is one +which takes the very same view of nature as that cynic conception of +which we spoke above. Man, with the Romish divines, is, ipso facto, +the same being as the man of Voltaire, Le Sage, or Beaumarchais; he +is an insane and degraded being, who is to be kept in order, and, as +far as may be, cured and set to work by an ecclesiastical system; and +the only threads of light in the dark web of his history are clerical +and theurgic, not lay and human. Voltaire is the very experimentum +crucis of this ugly fact. European history looks to him what it +would have looked to his Jesuit preceptors, had the sacerdotal +element in it been wanting; what heathen history actually did look to +them. He eliminates the sacerdotal element, and nothing remains but +the chaos of apes and wolves which the Jesuits had taught him to +believe was the original substratum of society. The humanity of his +history--even of his 'Pucelle d'Orleans,--is simply the humanity of +Sanchez and the rest of those vingtquatre Peres who hang gibbeted for +ever in the pages of Pascal. He is superior to his teachers, +certainly, in this, that he has hope for humanity on earth; dreams of +a new and nobler life for society, by means of a true and scientific +knowledge of the laws of the moral and material universe; in a word, +he has, in the midst of all his filth and his atheism, a faith in a +righteous and truth-revealing God, which the priests who brought him +up had not. Let the truth be spoken, even though in favour of such a +destroying Azrael as Voltaire. And what if his primary conception of +humanity be utterly base? Is that of our modern historians so much +higher? Do Christian men seem to them, on the whole, in all ages, to +have had the spirit of God with them, leading them into truth, +however imperfectly and confusedly they may have learnt his lessons? + +Have they ever heard with their ears, or listened when their fathers +have declared unto them, the noble works which God did in their days, +and in the old time before them? Do they believe that the path of +Christendom has been, on the whole, the path of life and the right +way, and that the living God is leading her therein? Are they proud +of the old British worthies? Are they jealous and tender of the +reputation of their ancestors? Do they believe that there were any +worthies at all in England before the steam-engine and political +economy were discovered? Do their conceptions of past society and +the past generations retain anything of that great thought which is +common to all the Aryan races--that is, to all races who have left +aught behind them better than mere mounds of earth--to Hindoo and +Persian, Greek and Roman, Teuton and Scandinavian, that men are the +sons of the heroes, who were the sons of God? Or do they believe +that for civilised people of the nineteenth century it is as well to +say as little as possible about ancestors who possessed our vices +without our amenities, our ignorance without our science; who were +bred, no matter how, like flies by summer heat, out of that +everlasting midden which men call the world, to buzz and sting their +foolish day, and leave behind them a fresh race which knows them not, +and could win no honour by owning them, and which owes them no more +than if it had been produced, as midden-flies were said to be of old, +by some spontaneous generation? + +It is not probable that this writer will be likely to undervalue +political economy, or the steam-engine, or any other solid and +practical good which God has unveiled to this generation. All that +he does demand (for he has a right to demand it) is that rational men +should believe that our forefathers were at least as good as we are; +that whatsoever their measure of light was, they acted up to what +they knew as faithfully as we do; and that, on the whole, it was not +their fault if they did not know more. Even now the real discoveries +of the age are made, as of old, by a very few men; and, when made, +have to struggle, as of old, against all manner of superstitions, +lazinesses, scepticisms. Is the history of the Minie rifle one so +very complimentary to our age's quickness of perception that we can +afford to throw many stones at the prejudices of our ancestors? The +truth is that, as of old, 'many men talk of Robin Hood who never shot +in his bow'; and many talk of Bacon who never discovered a law by +induction since they were born. As far as our experience goes, those +who are loudest in their jubilations over the wonderful progress of +the age are those who have never helped that progress forward one +inch, but find it a great deal easier and more profitable to use the +results which humbler men have painfully worked out as second-hand +capital for hustings-speeches and railway books, and flatter a +mechanics' institute of self-satisfied youths by telling them that +the least instructed of them is wiser than Erigena or Roger Bacon. +Let them be. They have their reward. And so also has the patient +and humble man of science, who, the more he knows, confesses the more +how little he knows, and looks back with affectionate reverence on +the great men of old time--on Archimedes and Ptolemy, Aristotle and +Pliny, and many another honourable man who, walking in great +darkness, sought a ray of light, and did not seek in vain,--as +integral parts of that golden chain of which he is but one link more; +as scientific forefathers, without whose aid his science could not +have had a being. + +Meanwhile, this general tone of irreverence for our forefathers is no +hopeful sign. It is unwise to 'inquire why the former times were +better than these'; to hang lazily and weakly over some eclectic +dream of a past golden age; for to do so is to deny that God is +working in this age, as well as in past ages; that His light is as +near us now as it was to the worthies of old time. + +But it is more than unwise to boast and rejoice that the former times +were worse than these; and to teach young people to say in their +hearts, 'What clever fellows we are, compared with our stupid old +fogies of fathers!' More than unwise; for possibly it may be false +in fact. To look at the political and moral state of Europe at this +moment, Christendom can hardly afford to look down on any preceding +century, and seems to be in want of something which neither science +nor constitutional government seems able to supply. Whether our +forefathers also lacked that something we will not inquire just now; +but if they did, their want of scientific and political knowledge was +evidently not the cause of the defect; or why is not Spain now +infinitely better, instead of being infinitely worse off, than she +was three hundred years ago? + +At home, too--But on the question whether we are so very much better +off than our forefathers Mr. Froude, not we, must speak: for he has +deliberately, in his new history, set himself to the solution of this +question, and we will not anticipate what he has to say; what we +would rather insist on now are the moral effects produced on our +young people by books which teach them to look with contempt on all +generations but their own, and with suspicion on all public +characters save a few contemporaries of their own especial party. + +There is an ancient Hebrew book, which contains a singular story +concerning a grandson who was cursed because his father laughed at +the frailty of the grandfather. Whether the reader shall regard that +story (as we do) as a literal fact recorded by inspired wisdom, as an +instance of one of the great root-laws of family life, and therefore +of that national life which (as the Hebrew book so cunningly shows) +is the organic development of the family life; or whether he shall +treat it (as we do not) as a mere apologue or myth, he must confess +that it is equally grand in its simplicity and singular in its +unexpected result. The words of the story, taken literally and +simply, no more justify the notion that Canaan's slavery was any +magical consequence of the old patriarch's anger than they do the +well-known theory that it was the cause of the Negro's blackness. +Ham shows a low, foul, irreverent, unnatural temper towards his +father. The old man's shame is not a cause of shame to his son, but +only of laughter. Noah prophesies (in the fullest and deepest +meaning of that word) that a curse will come upon that son's son; +that he will be a slave of slaves; and reason and experience show +that he spoke truth. Let the young but see that their fathers have +no reverence for the generation before them, then will they in turn +have no reverence for their fathers. Let them be taught that the +sins of their ancestors involve their own honour so little that they +need not take any trouble to clear the blot off the scutcheon, but +may safely sit down and laugh over it, saying, 'Very likely it is +true. If so, it is very amusing; and if not--what matter?'--Then +those young people are being bred up in a habit of mind which +contains in itself all the capabilities of degradation and slavery, +in self-conceit, hasty assertion, disbelief in nobleness, and all the +other 'credulities of scepticism': parted from that past from which +they take their common origin, they are parted also from each other, +and become selfish, self-seeking, divided, and therefore weak: +disbelieving in the nobleness of those who have gone before them, +they learn more and more to disbelieve in the nobleness of those +around them; and, by denying God's works of old, come, by a just and +dreadful Nemesis, to be unable to see his works in the men of their +own day; to suspect and impugn valour, righteousness, +disinterestedness in their contemporaries; to attribute low motives; +to pride themselves on looking at men and things as 'men who know the +world,' so the young puppies style it; to be less and less chivalrous +to women, less and less respectful to old men, less and less ashamed +of boasting about their sensual appetites; in a word, to show all +those symptoms which, when fully developed, leave a generation +without fixed principles, without strong faith, without self- +restraint, without moral cohesion, the sensual and divided prey of +any race, however inferior in scientific knowledge, which has a clear +and fixed notion of its work and destiny. That many of these signs +are themselves more and more ominously showing in our young men, from +the fine gentleman who rides in Rotten Row to the boy-mechanic who +listens enraptured to Mr. Holyoake's exposures of the absurdity of +all human things save Mr. Holyoake's self, is a fact which presses +itself most on those who have watched this age most carefully, and +who (rightly or wrongly) attribute much of this miserable temper to +the way in which history has been written among us for the last +hundred years. + +Whether or not Mr. Froude would agree with these notions, he is more +or less responsible for them; for they have been suggested by his +'History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of +Elizabeth.' It was impossible to read the book without feeling the +contrast between its tone and that of every other account of the +times which one had ever seen. Mr. Froude seems to have set to work +upon the principle, too much ignored in judging of the past, that the +historian's success must depend on his dramatic faculty; and not +merely on that constructive element of the faculty in which Mr. +Macaulay shows such astonishing power, but on that higher and deeper +critical element which ought to precede the constructive process, and +without which the constructive element will merely enable a writer, +as was once bitterly but truly said, 'to produce the greatest +possible misrepresentation with the least possible distortion of +fact.' That deeper dramatic faculty, the critical, is not logical +merely, but moral, and depends on the moral health, the wideness and +heartiness of his moral sympathies, by which he can put himself--as +Mr. Froude has attempted to do, and as we think successfully--into +the place of each and every character, and not merely feel for them, +but feel with them. He does not merely describe their actions from +the outside, attributing them arbitrarily to motives which are pretty +sure to be the lowest possible, because it is easier to conceive a +low motive than a lofty one, and to call a man a villain than to +unravel patiently the tangled web of good and evil of which his +thoughts are composed. He has attempted to conceive of his +characters as he would if they had been his own contemporaries and +equals, acting, speaking in his company; and he has therefore thought +himself bound to act toward them by those rules of charity and +courtesy, common alike to Christian morals, English law, and decent +society; namely, to hold every man innocent till he is proved guilty; +where a doubt exists, to give the prisoner at the bar the benefit of +it; not to excite the minds of the public against him by those +insinuative or vituperative epithets, which are but adders and +scorpions; and, on the whole, to believe that a man's death and +burial is not the least reason for ceasing to behave to him like a +gentleman and a Christian. We are not inclined to play with solemn +things, or to copy Lucian and Quevedo in writing dialogues of the +dead; but what dialogues might some bold pen dash off between the old +sons of Anak, at whose coming Hades has long ago been moved, and to +receive whom all the kings of the nation have risen up, and the +little scribblers who have fancied themselves able to fathom and +describe characters to whom they were but pigmies! Conceive a half- +hour's interview between Queen Elizabeth and some popular lady- +scribbler, who has been deluding herself into the fancy that +gossiping inventories of millinery are history . . . 'You pretend to +judge me, whose labours, whose cares, whose fiery trials were, beside +yours, as the heaving volcano beside a boy's firework? You condemn +my weaknesses? Know that they were stronger than your strength! You +impute motives for my sins? Know that till you are as great as I +have been, for evil and for good, you will be as little able to +comprehend my sins as my righteousness! Poor marsh-croaker, who +wishest not merely to swell up to the bulk of the ox, but to embrace +it in thy little paws, know thine own size, and leave me to be judged +by Him who made me!' . . . How the poor soul would shrink back into +nothing before that lion eye which saw and guided the destinies of +the world, and all the flunkey-nature (if such a vice exist beyond +the grave) come out in utter abjectness, as if the ass in the fable, +on making his kick at the dead lion, had discovered to his horror +that the lion was alive and well--Spirit of Quevedo! finish for us +the picture which we cannot finish for ourselves. + +In a very different spirit from such has Mr. Froude approached these +times. Great and good deeds were done in them; and it has therefore +seemed probable to him that there were great and good men there to do +them. Thoroughly awake to the fact that the Reformation was the new +birth of the British nation, it has seemed to him a puzzling theory +which attributes its success to the lust of a tyrant and the cupidity +of his courtiers. It has evidently seemed to him paradoxical that a +king who was reputed to have been a satyr, instead of keeping as many +concubines as seemed good to him, should have chosen to gratify his +passions by entering six times into the strict bonds of matrimony, +religiously observing those bonds. It has seemed to him even more +paradoxical that one reputed to have been the most sanguinary tyrant +who ever disgraced the English throne should have been not only +endured, but loved and regretted by a fierce and free-spoken people; +and he, we suppose, could comprehend as little as we can the +reasoning of such a passage as the following, especially when it +proceeds from the pen of so wise and venerable a writer as Mr. +Hallam. + +'A government administered with so frequent violations, not only of +the chartered privileges of Englishmen, but of those still more +sacred rights which natural law has established, must have been +regarded, one would imagine, with just abhorrence and earnest +longings for a change. Yet contemporary authorities by no means +answer this expectation. Some mention Henry after his death in +language of eulogy;' (not only Elizabeth, be it remembered, but +Cromwell also, always spoke of him with deepest respect; and their +language always found an echo in the English heart;) 'and if we +except those whom attachment to the ancient religion had inspired +with hatred to his memory, few seem to have been aware that his name +would descend to posterity among those of the many tyrants and +oppressors of innocence whom the wrath of Heaven has raised up, and +the servility of man endured.' + +The names of even those few we should be glad to have; for it seems +to us that, with the exception of a few ultra-Protestants, who could +not forgive that persecution of the Reformers which he certainly +permitted, if not encouraged, during one period of his reign, no one +adopted the modern view of his character till more than a hundred +years after his death, when belief in all nobleness and faith had +died out among an ignoble and faithless generation, and the +scandalous gossip of such a light rogue as Osborne was taken into the +place of honest and respectful history. + +To clear up such seeming paradoxes as these by carefully examining +the facts of the sixteenth century has been Mr. Froude's work; and we +have the results of his labour in two volumes, embracing only a +period of eleven years; but giving promise that the mysteries of the +succeeding time will be well cleared up for us in future volumes, and +that we shall find our forefathers to have been, if no better, at +least no worse men than ourselves. He has brought to the task known +talents and learning, a mastery over English prose almost unequalled +in this generation, a spirit of most patient and good-tempered +research, and that intimate knowledge of human motives and passions +which his former books have shown, and which we have a right to +expect from any scholar who has really profited by Aristotle's +unrivalled Ethics. He has fairly examined every contemporary +document within his reach, and, as he informs us in the preface, he +has been enabled, through the kindness of Sir Francis Palgrave, to +consult a great number of MSS. relating to the Reformation, hitherto +all but unknown to the public, and referred to in his work as MSS. in +the Rolls' House, where the originals are easily accessible. These, +he states, he intends to publish, with additions from his own +reading, as soon as he has brought his history down to the end of +Henry the Eighth's reign. + +But Mr. Froude's chief text-book seems to have been State Papers and +Acts of Parliament. He has begun his work in the only temper in +which a man can write accurately and well; in a temper of trust +toward the generation whom he describes. The only temper; for if a +man has no affection for the characters of whom he reads, he will +never understand them; if he has no respect for his subject, he will +never take the trouble to exhaust it. To such an author the Statutes +at large, as the deliberate expression of the nation's will and +conscience, will appear the most important of all sources of +information; the first to be consulted, the last to be contradicted; +the Canon which is not to be checked and corrected by private letters +and flying pamphlets, but which is to check and correct them. This +seems Mr. Froude's theory; and we are at no pains to confess that if +he be wrong we see no hope of arriving at truth. If these public +documents are not to be admitted in evidence before all others, we +see no hope for the faithful and earnest historian; he must give +himself up to swim as he may on the frothy stream of private letters, +anecdotes, and pamphlets, the puppet of the ignorance, credulity, +peevishness, spite, of any and every gossip and scribbler. + +Beginning his history with the fall of Wolsey, Mr. Froude enters, of +course, at his first step into the vexed question of Henry's divorce: +an introductory chapter, on the general state of England, we shall +notice hereafter. + +A very short inspection of the method in which he handles the divorce +question gives us at once confidence in his temper and judgment, and +hope that we may at last come to some clearer understanding of it +than the old law gives us, which we have already quoted, concerning +the dog who went mad to serve his private ends. In a few masterly +pages he sketches for us the rotting and dying Church, which had +recovered her power after the Wars of the Roses over an exhausted +nation; but in form only, not in life. Wolsey, with whom he has fair +and understanding sympathy, he sketches as the transition minister, +'loving England well, but loving Rome better,' who intends a reform +of the Church, but who, as the Pope's commissioner for that very +purpose, is liable to a praemunire, and therefore dare not appeal to +Parliament to carry out his designs, even if he could have counted on +the Parliament's assistance in any measures designed to invigorate +the Church. At last arises in the divorce question the accident +which brings to an issue on its most vital point the question of +Papal power in England, and which finally draws down ruin upon Wolsey +himself. + +This appears to have begun in the winter of 1526-27. It was proposed +to marry the Princess Mary to a son of the French king. The Bishop +of Tarbes, who conducted the negotiations, advised himself, +apparently by special instigation of the evil spirit, to raise a +question as to her legitimacy. + +No more ingenious plan for convulsing England could have been +devised. The marriage from which Mary sprang only stood on a +reluctant and doubtful dispensation of the Pope's. Henry had entered +into it at the entreaty of his ministers, contrary to a solemn +promise given to his father, and in spite of the remonstrances of the +Archbishop of Canterbury. No blessing seemed to have rested on it. +All his children had died young, save this one sickly girl: a sure +note of divine displeasure in the eyes of that coarse-minded Church +which has always declared the chief, if not the only, purpose of +marriage to be the procreation of children. + +But more: to question Mary's legitimacy was to throw open the +question of succession to half a dozen ambitious competitors. It +was, too probably, to involve England at Henry's death in another +civil war of the Roses, and in all the internecine horrors which were +still rankling in the memories of men; and probably, also, to bring +down a French or Scotch invasion. There was then too good reason, as +Mr. Froude shows at length, for Wolsey's assertion to John Cassalis-- +'If his Holiness, which God forbid, shall show himself unwilling to +listen to the King's demands, to me assuredly it will be but grief to +live longer, for the innumerable evils which I foresee will follow . +. . Nothing before us but universal and inevitable ruin.' Too good +reason there was for the confession of the Pope himself to Gardner, +'What danger it was to the realm to have this thing hang in suspense +. . . That without an heir-male, etc., the realm was like to come to +dissolution.' Too good reason for the bold assertion of the +Cardinal-Governor of Bologna, that 'he knew the guise of England as +few men did, and that if the King should die without heirs-male, he +was sure that it would cost two hundred thousand men's lives; and +that to avoid this mischief by a second marriage, he thought, would +deserve heaven.' Too good reason for the assertion of Hall, that +'all indifferent and discreet persons judged it necessary for the +Pope to grant Henry a divorce, and, by enabling him to marry again, +give him the hope of an undisputed heir-male.' The Pope had full +power to do this; in fact, such cases had been for centuries integral +parts of his jurisdiction as head of Christendom. But he was at once +too timid and too time-serving to exercise his acknowledged +authority; and thus, just at the very moment when his spiritual power +was being tried in the balance, he chose himself to expose his +political power to the same test. Both were equally found wanting. +He had, it appeared, as little heart to do justice among kings and +princes as he had to seek and to save the souls of men; and the +Reformation followed as a matter of course. + +Through the tangled brakes of this divorce question Mr. Froude leads +us with ease and grace, throwing light, and even beauty, into dark +nooks where before all was mist, not merely by his intimate +acquaintance with the facts, but still more by his deep knowledge of +human character, and of woman's even more than of man's. For the +first time the actors in this long tragedy appear to us as no mere +bodiless and soulless names, but as beings of like passions with +ourselves, comprehensible, coherent, organic, even in their +inconsistencies. Catherine of Arragon is still the Catherine of +Shakspeare; but Mr. Froude has given us the key to many parts of her +story which Shakspeare left unexplained, and delicately enough has +made us understand how Henry's affections, if he ever had any for +her--faithfully as he had kept (with one exception) to that loveless +mariage de convenance--may have been gradually replaced by +indifference and even dislike, long before the divorce was forced on +him as a question not only of duty to the nation, but of duty to +Heaven. And that he did see it in this latter light, Mr. Froude +brings proof from his own words, from which we can escape only by +believing that the confessedly honest 'Bluff King Hal' had suddenly +become a consummate liar and a canting hypocrite. + +Delicately, too, as if speaking of a lady whom he had met in modern +society (as a gentleman is bound to do), does Mr. Froude touch on the +sins of that hapless woman, who played for Henry's crown, and paid +for it with her life. With all mercy and courtesy he gives us proof +(for he thinks it his duty to do so) of the French mis-education, the +petty cunning, the tendency to sensuality, the wilful indelicacy of +her position in Henry's household as the rival of his queen, which +made her last catastrophe at least possible. Of the justice of her +sentence he has no doubt, any more than of her pre-engagement to some +one, as proved by a letter existing among Cromwell's papers. Poor +thing! If she did that which was laid to her charge, and more, she +did nothing, after all, but what she had been in the habit of seeing +the queens and princesses of the French court do notoriously, and +laugh over shamelessly; while, as Mr. Froude well says, 'If we are to +hold her entirely free from guilt, we place not only the King, but +the Privy Council, the Judges, the Lords and Commons, and the two +Houses of Convocation, in a position fatal to their honour and +degrading to ordinary humanity' (Mr. Froude should have added Anne +Boleyn's own uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, and her father, who were on +the commission appointed to try her lovers, and her cousin, Anthony +St. Leger, a man of the very highest character and ability, who was +on the jury which found a true bill against her). 'We can not,' +continues Mr. Froude, 'acquiesce without inquiry in so painful a +conclusion. The English nation also, as well as she, deserves +justice at our hands; and it cannot be thought uncharitable if we +look with some scrutiny at the career of a person who, but for the +catastrophe with which it closed, would not have so readily obtained +forgiveness for having admitted the addresses of the King, or for +having received the homage of the court as its future sovereign, +while the King's wife, her mistress, as yet resided under the same +roof.' Mr. Froude's conclusion is, after examining the facts, the +same with the whole nation of England in Henry's reign: but no one +can accuse him of want of sympathy with the unhappy woman, who reads +the eloquent and affecting account of her trial and death, which ends +his second volume. Our only fear is, that by having thus told the +truth he has, instead of justifying our ancestors, only added one +more to the list of people who are to be 'given up' with a cynical +shrug and smile. We have heard already, and among young ladies too, +who can be as cynical as other people in these times, such speeches +as, 'Well, I suppose he has proved Anne Boleyn to be a bad creature; +but that does not make that horrid Henry any more right in cutting +off her head.' Thus two people will be despised where only one was +before, and the fact still ignored, that it is just as senseless to +say that Henry cut off Anne Boleyn's head as that Queen Victoria +hanged Palmer. Death, and death of a far more horrible kind than +that which Anne Boleyn suffered, was the established penalty of the +offences of which she was convicted: and which had in her case this +fearful aggravation, that they were offences not against Henry +merely, but against the whole English nation. She had been married +in order that there might be an undisputed heir to the throne, and a +fearful war avoided. To throw into dispute, by any conduct of hers, +the legitimacy of her own offspring, argued a levity or a hard- +heartedness which of itself deserved the severest punishment. + +We will pass from this disagreeable topic to Mr. Froude's lifelike +sketch of Pope Clement, and the endless tracasseries into which his +mingled weakness and cunning led him, and which, like most crooked +dealings, ended by defeating their own object. Pages 125 et sqq. of +Vol. I. contain sketches of him, his thoughts and ways, as amusing as +they are historically important; but we have no space to quote from +them. It will be well for those to whom the Reformation is still a +matter of astonishment to read those pages, and consider what manner +of man he was, in spite of all pretended divine authority, under +whose rule the Romish system received its irrecoverable wound. + +But of all these figures, not excepting Henry's own, Wolsey stands +out as the most grand and tragical; and Mr. Froude has done good +service to history, if only in making us understand at last the +wondrous 'butcher's son.' Shakspeare seems to have felt (though he +could explain the reason neither to his auditors nor, perhaps, to +himself) that Wolsey was, on the whole, an heroical man. Mr. Froude +shows at once his strength and his weakness; his deep sense of the +rottenness of the Church; his purpose to purge her from those +abominations which were as well known, it seems, to him as they were +afterwards to the whole people of England; his vast schemes for +education; his still vaster schemes for breaking the alliance with +Spain, and uniting France and England as fellow-servants of the Pope, +and twin-pillars of the sacred fabric of the Church, which helped so +much toward his interest in Catherine's divorce, as a 'means' (these +are his own words) 'to bind my most excellent sovereign and this +glorious realm to the holy Roman See in faith and obedience for +ever'; his hopes of deposing the Emperor, putting down the German +heresies, and driving back the Turks beyond the pale of Christendom; +his pathetic confession to the Bishop of Bayonne that 'if he could +only see the divorce arranged, the King re-married, the succession +settled, and the laws and the Church reformed, he would retire from +the world, and would serve God the remainder of his days.' + +Peace be with him! He was surely a noble soul; misled, it may be--as +who is not when his turn comes?--by the pride of conscious power; and +'though he loved England well, yet loving Rome better': but still it +is a comfort to see, either in past or in present, one more brother +whom we need not despise, even though he may have wasted his energies +on a dream. + +And on a dream he did waste them, in spite of all his cunning. As +Mr. Froude, in a noble passage, says:- + + + 'Extravagant as his hopes seem, the prospect of realising them was, +humanly speaking, neither chimerical nor even improbable. He had but +made the common mistake of men of the world, who are the +representatives of an old order of things, when that order is doomed +and dying. He could not read the signs of the times; and confounding +the barrenness of death with the barrenness of winter, which might be +followed by a new spring and summer, he believed that the old life- +tree of Catholicism, which in fact was but cumbering the ground, +might bloom again in its old beauty. The thing which he called +heresy was the fire of Almighty God, which no politic congregation of +princes, no state machinery, though it were never so active, could +trample out; and as, in the early years of Christianity, the meanest +slave who was thrown to the wild beasts for his presence at the +forbidden mysteries of the Gospel saw deeper, in the divine power of +his faith, into the future even of this earthly world, than the +sagest of his imperial persecutors,--so a truer political prophet +than Wolsey would have been found in the most ignorant of those poor +men for whom his police were searching in the purlieus of London, who +were risking death and torture in disseminating the pernicious +volumes of the English Testament.' + + +It will be seen from this magnificent passage that Mr. Froude is +distinctly a Protestant. He is one, to judge from his book; and all +the better one, because he can sympathise with whatsoever nobleness, +even with whatsoever mere conservatism, existed in the Catholic +party. And therefore, because he has sympathies which are not merely +party ones, but human ones, he has given the world, in these two +volumes, a history of the early Reformation altogether unequalled. +This human sympathy, while it has enabled him to embalm in most +affecting prose the sad story of the noble though mistaken +Carthusians, and to make even the Nun of Kent interesting, because +truly womanly, in her very folly and deceit, has enabled him likewise +to show us the hearts of the early martyrs as they never have been +shown before. His sketch of the Christian Brothers, and his little +true romance of Anthony Dalaber, the Oxford student, are gems of +writing; while his conception of Latimer, on whom he looks as the +hero of the movement, and all but an English Luther, is as worthy of +Latimer as it is of himself. It is written as history should be, +discriminatingly, patiently, and yet lovingly and genially; rejoicing +not in evil, but in the truth; and rejoicing still more in goodness, +where goodness can honestly be found. + +To the ecclesiastical and political elements in the English +Reformation Mr. Froude devotes a large portion of his book. We shall +not enter into the questions which he discusses therein. That aspect +of the movement is a foreign and a delicate subject, from discussing +which a Scotch periodical may be excused. {2} North Britain had a +somewhat different problem to solve from her southern sister, and +solved it in an altogether different way: but this we must say, that +the facts and, still more, the State Papers (especially the petition +of the Commons, as contrasted with the utterly benighted answer of +the Bishops) which Mr. Froude gives are such as to raise our opinion +of the method on which the English part of the Reformation was +conducted, and make us believe that in this, as in other matters, +both Henry and his Parliament, though still doctrinal Romanists, were +sound-headed practical Englishmen. + +This result is of the same kind as most of those at which Mr. Froude +arrives. They form altogether a general justification of our +ancestors in Henry the Eighth's time, if not of Henry the Eighth +himself, which frees Mr. Froude from that charge of irreverence to +the past generations against which we protested in the beginning of +the article. We hope honestly that he may be as successful in his +next volumes as he has been in these, in vindicating the worthies of +the sixteenth century. Whether he shall fail or not, and whether or +not he has altogether succeeded, in the volumes before us, his book +marks a new epoch, and, we trust, a healthier and loftier one, in +English history. We trust that they inaugurate a time in which the +deeds of our forefathers shall be looked on as sacred heirlooms; +their sins as our shame, their victories as bequests to us; when men +shall have sufficient confidence in those to whom they owe their +existence to scrutinise faithfully and patiently every fact +concerning them, with a proud trust that, search as they may, they +will not find much of which to be ashamed. + +Lastly, Mr. Froude takes a view of Henry's character, not, indeed, +new (for it is the original one), but obsolete for now two hundred +years. Let it be well understood that he makes no attempt (he has +been accused thereof) to whitewash Henry: all that he does is to +remove as far as he can the modern layers of 'black-wash,' and to let +the man himself, fair or foul, be seen. For the result he is not +responsible: it depends on facts; and unless Mr. Froude has +knowingly concealed facts to an amount of which even a Lingard might +be ashamed, the result is that Henry the Eighth was actually very +much the man which he appeared to be to the English nation in his own +generation, and for two or three generations after his death--a +result which need not astonish us, if we will only give our ancestors +credit for having at least as much common sense as ourselves, and +believe (why should we not?) that, on the whole, they understood +their own business better than we are likely to do. + +'The bloated tyrant,' it is confessed, contrived somehow or other to +be popular enough. Mr. Froude tells us the reasons. He was not born +a bloated tyrant, any more than Queen Elizabeth (though the fact is +not generally known) was born a wizened old woman. He was from +youth, till he was long past his grand climacteric, a very handsome, +powerful, and active man, temperate in his habits, good-humoured, +frank and honest in his speech (as even his enemies are forced to +confess). He seems to have been (as his portraits prove +sufficiently), for good and for evil, a thorough John Bull; a +thorough Englishman: but one of the very highest type. + + +'Had he died (says Mr. Froude) previous to the first agitation of the +divorce, his loss would have been deplored as one of the heaviest +misfortunes which had ever befallen this country, and he would have +left a name which would have taken its place in history by the side +of the Black Prince or the Conqueror of Agincourt. Left at the most +trying age, with his character unformed, with the means of gratifying +every inclination, and married by his ministers, when a boy, to an +unattractive woman far his senior, he had lived for thirty-six years +almost without blame, and bore through England the reputation of an +upright and virtuous king. Nature had been prodigal to him of her +rarest gifts . . . Of his intellectual ability we are not left to +judge from the suspicious panegyrics of his contemporaries. His +State Papers and letters may be placed by the side of those of Wolsey +or of Cromwell, and they lose nothing by the comparison. Though they +are broadly different, the perception is equally clear, the +expression equally powerful; and they breathe throughout an +irresistible vigour of purpose. In addition to this, he had a fine +musical taste, carefully cultivated; he spoke and wrote in four +languages; and his knowledge of a multitude of subjects, with which +his versatile ability made him conversant, would have formed the +reputation of any ordinary man. He was among the best physicians of +his age. He was his own engineer, inventing improvements in +artillery and new constructions in shipbuilding; and this not with +the condescending incapacity of a royal amateur, but with thorough +workmanlike understanding. His reading was vast, especially in +theology. He was 'attentive,' as it is called, 'to his religious +duties,' being present at the services in chapel two or three times a +day with unfailing regularity, and showing, to outward appearance, a +real sense of religious obligation in the energy and purity of his +life. In private he was good-humoured and good-natured. His letters +to his secretaries, though never undignified, are simple, easy, and +unrestrained, and the letters written by them to him are similarly +plain and business-like, as if the writers knew that the person whom +they were addressing disliked compliments, and chose to be treated as +a man. He seems to have been always kind, always considerate; +inquiring into their private concerns with genuine interest, and +winning, as a consequence, their sincere and unaffected attachment. +As a ruler he had been eminently popular. All his wars had been +successful. He had the splendid tastes in which the English people +most delighted; . . . he had more than once been tried with +insurrection, which he had soothed down without bloodshed, and +extinguished in forgiveness . . . And it is certain that if he had +died before the divorce was mooted, Henry VIII., like the Roman +emperor said by Tacitus to have been censensu omnium dignus imperii +nisi imperasset, would have been considered by posterity as formed by +Providence for the conduct of the Reformation, and his loss would +have been deplored as a perpetual calamity.' + + +Mr. Froude has, of course, not written these words without having +facts whereby to prove them. One he gives in an important note +containing an extract from a letter of the Venetian Ambassador in +1515. At least, if his conclusions be correct, we must think twice +ere we deny his assertion that 'the man best able of all living +Englishmen to govern England had been set to do it by the conditions +of his birth.' + +'We are bound,' as Mr. Froude says, 'to allow him the benefit of his +past career, and be careful to remember it in interpreting his later +actions.' 'The true defect in his moral constitution, that "intense +and imperious will" common to all princes of the Plantagenet blood, +had not yet been tested.' That he did, in his later years, act in +many ways neither wisely nor well, no one denies; that his conduct +did not alienate the hearts of his subjects is what needs +explanation; and Mr. Froude's opinions on this matter, novel as they +are, and utterly opposed to that of the standard modern historians, +require careful examination. Now I am not inclined to debate Henry +the Eighth's character, or any other subject, as between Mr. Froude +and an author of the obscurantist or pseudo-conservative school. Mr. +Froude is Liberal; and so am I. I wish to look at the question as +between Mr. Froude and other Liberals; and therefore, of course, +first, as between Mr. Froude and Mr. Hallam. + +Mr. Hallam's name is so venerable and his work so Important, that to +set ourselves up as judges in this or in any matter between him and +Mr. Froude would be mere impertinence: but speaking merely as +learners, we have surely a right to inquire why Mr. Hallam has +entered on the whole question of Henry's relations to his Parliament +with a praejudicium against them; for which Mr. Froude finds no +ground whatsoever in fact. Why are all acts both of Henry and his +Parliament to be taken in malam partem? They were not Whigs, +certainly: neither were Socrates and Plato, nor even St. Paul and +St. John. They may have been honest men as men go, or they may not: +but why is there to be a feeling against them rather than for them? +Why is Henry always called a tyrant, and his Parliament servile? The +epithets have become so common and unquestioned that our +interrogation may seem startling. Still we make it. Why was Henry a +tyrant? That may be true, but must be proved by facts. Where are +they? Is the mere fact of a monarch's asking for money a crime in +him and his ministers? The question would rather seem to be, Were +the moneys for which Henry asked needed or no; and, when granted, +were they rightly or wrongly applied? And on these subjects we want +much more information than we obtain from any epithets. The author +of a constitutional history should rise above epithets: or, if he +uses them, should corroborate them by facts. Why should not +historians be as fair and as cautious in accusing Henry and Wolsey as +they would be in accusing Queen Victoria and Lord Palmerston? What +right, allow us to ask, has a grave constitutional historian to say +that 'We cannot, indeed, doubt that the unshackled and despotic +condition of his friend, Francis I., afforded a mortifying contrast +to Henry? What document exists in which Henry is represented as +regretting that he is the king of a free people?--for such Mr. Hallam +confesses, just above, England was held to be, and was actually in +comparison with France. If the document does not exist, Mr. Hallam +has surely stepped out of the field of the historian into that of the +novelist, a la Scott or Dumas. The Parliament sometimes grants +Henry's demands: sometimes it refuses them, and he has to help +himself by other means. Why are both cases to be interpreted in +malam partem? Why is the Parliament's granting to be always a proof +of its servility?--its refusing always a proof of Henry's tyranny and +rapacity? Both views are mere praejudicia, reasonable perhaps, and +possible: but why is not a praejudicium of the opposite kind as +rational and as possible? Why has not a historian a right to start, +as Mr. Froude does, by taking for granted that both parties may have +been on the whole right; that the Parliament granted certain sums +because Henry was right in asking for them; refused others because +Henry was wrong; even that, in some cases, Henry may have been right +in asking, the Parliament wrong in refusing; and that in such a case, +under the pressure of critical times, Henry was forced to get as he +could the money which he saw that the national cause required? Let +it be as folks will. Let Henry be sometimes right, and the +Parliament sometimes likewise; or the Parliament always right, or +Henry always right; or anything else, save this strange diseased +theory that both must have been always wrong, and that, evidence to +that effect failing, motives must be insinuated, or openly asserted, +from the writer's mere imagination. This may be a dream: but it is +as easy to imagine as the other, and more pleasant also. It will +probably be answered (though not by Mr. Hallam himself) by a sneer: +'You do not seem to know much of the world, sir.' But so would +Figaro and Gil Blas have said, and on exactly the same grounds. + +Let us examine a stock instance of Henry's 'rapacity' and his +Parliament's servility, namely, the exactions in 1524 and 1525, and +the subsequent 'release of the King's debts.' What are the facts of +the case? France and Scotland had attacked England in 1514. The +Scotch were beaten at Flodden. The French lost Tournay and +Therouenne, and, when peace was made, agreed to pay the expenses of +the war. Times changed, and the expenses were not paid. + +A similar war arose in 1524, and cost England immense sums. A large +army was maintained on the Scotch Border, another army invaded +France; and Wolsey, not venturing to call a Parliament,--because he +was, as Pope's legate, liable to a praemunire,--raised money by +contributions and benevolences, which were levied, it seems on the +whole, uniformly and equally (save that they weighed more heavily on +the rich than on the poor, if that be a fault), and differed from +taxes only in not having received the consent of Parliament. +Doubtless, this was not the best way of raising money: but what if, +under the circumstances, it were the only one? What if, too, on the +whole, the money so raised was really given willingly by the nation? +The sequel alone could decide that. + +The first contribution for which Wolsey asked was paid. The second +was resisted, and was not paid; proving thereby that the nation need +not pay unless it chose. The court gave way; and the war became +defensive only till 1525. + +Then the tide turned. The danger, then, was not from Francis, but +from the Emperor. Francis was taken prisoner at Pavia; and shortly +after Rome was sacked by Bourbon. + +The effect of all this in England is told at large in Mr. Froude's +second chapter. Henry became bond for Francis's ransom, to be paid +to the Emperor. He spent 500,000 crowns more in paying the French +army; and in the terms of peace made with France, a sum-total was +agreed on for the whole debt, old and new, to be paid as soon as +possible; and an annual pension of 500,000 crowns besides. The +French exchequer, however, still remained bankrupt, and again the +money was not paid. + +Parliament, when it met in 1529, reviewed the circumstances of the +expenditure, and finding it all such as the nation on the whole +approved, legalised the taxation by benevolences retrospectively: +and this is the whole mare's nest of the first payment of Henry's +debts; if, at least, any faith is to be put in the preamble of the +Act for the release of the King's Debts, 21 Hen. VIII. c. 24. 'The +King's loving subjects, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and +Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, calling to remembrance +the inestimable costs, charges, and expenses which the King's +Highness hath necessarily been compelled to support and sustain since +his assumption to his crown, estate, and dignity royal, as well for +the extinction of a right dangerous and damnable schism, sprung in +the Church, as for the modifying the insatiable and inordinate +ambition of them who, while aspiring to the monarchy of Christendom, +did put universal troubles and divisions in the same, intending, if +they might, not only to have subdued this realm, but also all the +rest, unto their power and subjection--for resistance whereof the +King's Highness was compelled to marvellous charges--both for the +supportation of sundry armies by sea and land, and also for divers +and manifold contribution on hand, to save and keep his own subjects +at home in rest and repose--which hath been so politically handled +that, when the most part of all Christian lands have been infested +with cruel wars, the great Head and Prince of the world (the Pope) +brought into captivity, cities and towns taken, spoiled, burnt, and +sacked--the King's said subjects in all this time, by the high +providence and politic means of his Grace, have been nevertheless +preserved, defended, and maintained from all these inconvenients, +etc. + +'Considering, furthermore, that his Highness, in and about the +premises, hath been fain to employ not only all such sums of money as +hath risen or grown by contributions made unto his Grace by his +loving subjects--but also, over and above the same, sundry other +notable and excellent sums of his own treasure and yearly revenues, +among which manifold great sums so employed, his Highness also, as is +notoriously known, and as doth evidently appear by the ACCOUNTS OF +THE SAME, hath to that use, and none other, converted all such money +as by any of his subjects hath been advanced to his Grace by way of +prest or loan, either particularly, or by any taxation made of the +same--being things so well collocate and bestowed, seeing the said +high and great fruits and effects thereof insured to the surety and +commodity and tranquillity of this realm--of our mind and consent, do +freely, absolutely, give and grant to the King's Highness all and +every sum or sums of money,' etc. + +The second release of the King's debts, in 1544, is very similar. +The King's debts and necessities were really, when we come to examine +them, those of the nation: in 1538-40 England was put into a +thorough state of defence from end to end. Fortresses were built +along the Scottish Border, and all along the coast opposite France +and Flanders. The people were drilled and armed, the fleet equipped; +and the nation, for the time, became one great army. And nothing but +this, as may be proved by an overwhelming mass of evidence, saved the +country from invasion. Here were enormous necessary expenses which +must be met. + +In 1543 a million crowns were to have been paid by Francis the First +as part of his old debt. It was not paid: but, on the contrary, +Henry had to go to war for it. The nation again relinquished their +claim, and allowed Henry to raise another benevolence in 1545, +concerning which Mr. Hallam tells us a great deal, but not one word +of the political circumstances which led to it or to the release, +keeping his sympathies and his paper for the sorrows of refractory +Alderman Reed, who, refusing (alone of all the citizens) to +contribute to the support of troops on the Scotch Border or +elsewhere, was sent down, by a sort of rough justice, to serve on the +Scotch Border himself, and judge of the 'perils of the nation' with +his own eyes; and being--one is pleased to hear--taken prisoner by +the Scots, had to pay a great deal more as ransom than he would have +paid as benevolence. + +But to return. What proof is there, in all this, of that servility +which most historians, and Mr. Hallam among the rest, are wont to +attribute to Henry's Parliaments? What feeling appears on the face +of this document, which we have given and quoted, but one honourable +to the nation? Through the falsehood of a foreign nation the King is +unable to perform his engagements to the people. Is not the just and +generous course in such a case to release him from those engagements? +Does this preamble, does a single fact of the case, justify +historians in talking of these 'king's debts' in just the same tone +as that in which they would have spoken if the King had squandered +the money on private pleasures? Perhaps most people who write small +histories believe that this really was the case. They certainly +would gather no other impression from the pages of Mr. Hallam. No +doubt the act must have been burdensome on some people. Many, we are +told, had bequeathed their promissory notes to their children, used +their reversionary interest in the loan in many ways; and these, of +course, felt the change very heavily. No doubt: but why have we not +a right to suppose that the Parliament were aware of that fact; but +chose it as the less of the two evils? The King had spent the money; +he was unable to recover it from Francis; could only refund it by +raising some fresh tax or benevolence: and why may not the +Parliament have considered the release of old taxes likely to offend +fewer people than the imposition of new ones? It is certainly an +ugly thing to break public faith; but to prove that public faith was +broken, we must prove that Henry compelled the Parliament to release +him; if the act was of their own free will, no public faith was +broken, for they were the representatives of the nation, and through +them the nation forgave its own debt. And what evidence have we that +they did not represent the nation, and that, on the whole, we must +suppose, as we should in the case of any other men, that they best +knew their own business? May we not apply to this case, and to +others, mutatis mutandis, the argument which Mr. Froude uses so +boldly and well in the case of Anne Boleyn's trial--'The English +nation also, as well as . . . deserves justice at our hands?' + +Certainly it does: but it is a disagreeable token of the method on +which we have been accustomed to write the history of our own +forefathers, that Mr. Froude should find it necessary to state +formally so very simple a truth. + +What proof, we ask again, is there that this old Parliament was +'servile'? Had that been so, Wolsey would not have been afraid to +summon it. The specific reason for not summoning a Parliament for +six years after that of 1524 was that they were not servile; that +when (here we are quoting Mr. Hallam, and not Mr. Froude) Wolsey +entered the House of Commons with a great train, seemingly for the +purpose of intimidation, they 'made no other answer to his harangues +than that it was their usage to debate only among themselves.' The +debates on this occasion lasted fifteen or sixteen days, during +which, says an eye-witness, 'there has been the greatest and sorest +hold in the Lower House,' 'the matter debated and beaten'; 'such hold +that the House was like to have been dissevered'; in a word, hard +fighting--and why not honest fighting?--between the court party and +the Opposition, 'which ended,' says Mr. Hallam, 'in the court party +obtaining, with the utmost difficulty, a grant much inferior to the +Cardinal's original requisition.' What token of servility is here? + +And is it reasonable to suppose that after Wolsey was conquered, and +a comparatively popular ministry had succeeded, and that memorable +Parliament of 1529 (which Mr. Froude, not unjustly, thinks more +memorable than the Long Parliament itself) began its great work with +a high hand, backed not merely by the King, but by the public opinion +of the majority of England, their decisions are likely to have been +more servile than before? If they resisted the King when they +disagreed with him, are they to be accused of servility because they +worked with him when they agreed with him? Is an Opposition always +in the right; a ministerial party always in the wrong? Is it an +offence against the people to agree with the monarch, even when he +agrees with the people himself? Simple as these questions are, one +must really stop to ask them. + +No doubt pains were often taken to secure elections favourable to the +Government. Are none taken now? Are not more taken now? Will any +historian show us the documents which prove the existence, in the +sixteenth century, of Reform Club, Carlton Club, whippers-in and +nominees, governmental and opposition, and all the rest of the +beautiful machinery which protects our Reformed Parliament from the +evil influences of bribery and corruption? Pah!--We have somewhat +too much glass in our modern House to afford to throw stones at our +forefathers' old St. Stephen's. At the worst, what was done then but +that without which it is said to be impossible to carry on a +Government now? Take an instance from the Parliament of 1539, one in +which there is no doubt Government influence was used in order to +prevent as much as possible the return of members favourable to the +clergy--for the good reason that the clergy were no doubt, on their +own side, intimidating voters by all those terrors of the unseen +world which had so long been to them a source of boundless profit and +power. + +Cromwell writes to the King to say that he has secured a seat for a +certain Sir Richard Morrison; but for what purpose? As one who no +doubt 'should be ready to answer and take up such as should crack or +face with literature of learning, if any such should be.' There was, +then, free discussion; they expected clever and learned speakers in +the Opposition, and on subjects of the deepest import, not merely +political, but spiritual; and the Government needed men to answer +such. What more natural than that so close on the 'Pilgrimage of +Grace,' and in the midst of so great dangers at home and abroad, the +Government should have done their best to secure a well-disposed +House (one would like to know when they would not)? But surely the +very effort (confessedly exceptional) and the acknowledged difficulty +prove that Parliament were no mere 'registrars of edicts.' + +But the strongest argument against the tyranny of the Tudors, and +especially of Henry VIII. in his 'benevolences,' is derived from the +state of the people themselves. If these benevolences had been +really unpopular, they would not have been paid. In one case we have +seen, a benevolence was not paid for that very reason. For the +method of the Tudor sovereigns, like that of their predecessors, was +the very opposite to that of tyrants in every age and country. The +first act of a tyrant has always been to disarm the people, and to +surround himself with a standing army. The Tudor method was, as Mr. +Froude shows us by many interesting facts, to keep the people armed +and drilled, even to compel them to learn the use of weapons. +Throughout England spread one vast military organisation, which made +every adult a soldier, and enabled him to find, at a day's notice, +his commanding officer, whether landlord, sheriff, or lieutenant of +the county; so that, as a foreign ambassador of the time remarks with +astonishment (we quote from memory), 'England is the strongest nation +on earth, for though the King has not a single mercenary soldier, he +can raise in three days an army of two hundred thousand men.' + +And of what temper those men were it is well known enough. Mr. +Froude calls them--and we beg leave to endorse, without exception, +Mr. Froude's opinion--'A sturdy high-hearted race, sound in body and +fierce in spirit, and furnished with thews and sinews which, under +the stimulus of those "great shins of beef," their common diet, were +the wonder of the age.' 'What comyn folke in all this world,' says a +State Paper in 1515, 'may compare with the comyns of England in +riches, freedom, liberty, welfare, and all prosperity? What comyn +folk is so mighty, so strong in the felde, as the comyns of England?' +In authentic stories of actions under Henry VIII.--and, we will add, +under Elizabeth likewise--where the accuracy of the account is +undeniable, no disparity of force made Englishmen shrink from enemies +whenever they could meet them. Again and again a few thousands of +them carried dismay into the heart of France. Four hundred +adventurers, vagabond apprentices of London, who formed a volunteer +corps in the Calais garrison, were for years, Hall says, the terror +of Normandy. In the very frolic of conscious power they fought and +plundered without pay, without reward, save what they could win for +themselves; and when they fell at last, they fell only when +surrounded by six times their number, and were cut to pieces in +careless desperation. Invariably, by friend and foe alike, the +English are described as the fiercest people in all Europe--English +wild beasts Benvenuto Cellini calls them; and this great physical +power they owed to the profuse abundance in which they lived, to the +soldier's training in which every one of them was bred from +childhood. + +Mr. Froude's novel assertion about profuse abundance must be weighed +by those who have read his invaluable introductory chapter. But we +must ask at once how it was possible to levy on such an armed +populace a tax which they were determined not to pay, and felt that +they were not bound to pay, either in law or justice? Conceive Lord +Palmerston's sending down to demand a 'benevolence' from the army at +Aldershot, beginning with the general in command and descending to +the privates . . . What would be the consequences? Ugly enough: but +gentle in comparison with those of any attempt to exact a really +unpopular tax from a nation of well-armed Englishmen, unless they, on +the whole, thought the tax fit to be paid. They would grumble, of +course, whether they intended to pay or not,--for were they not +Englishmen, our own flesh and blood?--and grumble all the more in +person, because they had no Press to grumble for them: but what is +there then in the M.P.'s letter to Lord Surrey, quoted by Mr. Hallam, +p. 25, or in the more pointed letter of Warham's, two pages on, which +we do not see lying on our breakfast tables in half the newspapers +every week? Poor, pedantic, obstructive old Warham, himself very +angry at so much being asked of his brother clergymen, and at their +being sworn as to the value of their goods (so like are old times to +new ones); and being, on the whole, of opinion that the world (the +Church included) is going to the devil, says that as he has been +'showed in a secret manner of his friends, the people sore grudgeth +and murmureth, and speaketh cursedly among themselves, as far as they +dare, saying they shall never have rest of payments as long as some +liveth, and that they had better die than thus be continually handed, +reckoning themselves, their wives and children, as despoulit, and not +greatly caring what they do, or what becomes of them.' + +Very dreadful--if true: which last point depends very much upon who +Warham was. Now, on reading Mr. Froude's or any other good history, +we shall find that Warham was one of the leaders of that despondent +party which will always have its antitype in England. Have we, too, +not heard within the last seven years similar prophecies of +desolation, mourning, and woe--of the Church tottering on the verge +of ruin, the peasantry starving under the horrors of free trade, +noble families reduced to the verge of beggary by double income-tax? +Even such a prophet seems Warham to have been--of all people in that +day, one of the last whom one would have asked for an opinion. + +Poor old Warham, however, was not so far wrong in this particular +case; for the 'despoulit' slaves of Suffolk, not content with +grumbling, rose up with sword and bow, and vowed that they would not +pay. Whereon the bloated tyrant sent his praetorians, and enforced +payment by scourge and thumbscrew? Not in the least. They would not +pay; and therefore, being free men, nobody could make them pay; and +although in the neighbouring county of Norfolk, from twenty pounds +(i.e. 200 pounds of our money) upward--for the tax was not levied on +men of less substance--there were not twenty but what had consented; +and though there was 'great likelihood that this grant should be much +more than the loan was' (the 'salt tears' shed by the gentlemen of +Norfolk proceeding, says expressly the Duke of Norfolk, 'only from +doubt how to find money to content the King's Highness'); yet the +King and Wolsey gave way frankly and at once, and the contribution +was remitted, although the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, writing to +Wolsey, treat the insurrection lightly, and seem to object to the +remission as needless. + +From all which facts--they are Mr. Hallam's, not Mr. Froude's--we can +deduce not tyranny, but lenity, good sense, and the frank withdrawal +from a wrong position as soon as the unwillingness of the people +proved it to be a wrong one. + +This instance is well brought forward (though only in a line or two, +by Mr. Froude) as one among many proofs that the working classes in +Henry the Eighth's time 'enjoyed an abundance far beyond that which +in general falls to the lot of that order in long-settled countries, +incomparably beyond what the same class were enjoying at that very +time in Germany or France. The laws secured them; and that the laws +were put in force, we have the direct evidence of successive acts of +the Legislature, justifying the general policy by its success: and +we have also the indirect evidence of the contented loyalty of the +great body of the people, at a time when, if they had been +discontented, they held in their own hands the means of asserting +what the law acknowledged to be their right. 'The Government,' as we +have just shown at length, 'had no power to compel injustice . . . If +the peasantry had been suffering under any real grievances we should +have heard of them when the religious rebellions furnished so fair an +opportunity to press them forward. Complaint was loud enough, when +complaint was just, under the Somerset Protectorate.' + +Such broad facts as these--for facts they are--ought to make us pause +ere we boast of the greater liberty enjoyed by Englishmen of the +present day, as compared with the tyranny of Tudor times. Thank God, +there is no lack of that blessing now: but was there any real lack +of it then? Certainly the outward notes of a tyranny exist now in +far greater completeness than then. A standing army, a Government +police, ministries who bear no love to a militia, and would consider +the compulsory arming and drilling of the people as a dangerous +insanity, do not look at first sight as much like 'free institutions' +as a Government which, though again and again in danger not merely of +rebellion, but of internecine wars of succession, so trusted the +people as to force weapons into their hands from boyhood. Let us not +be mistaken: we are no hankerers after retrogression: the present +system works very well; let it be; all that we say is that the +imputation of despotic institutions lies, prima facie, rather against +the reign of Queen Victoria than against that of King Henry the +Eighth. Of course it is not so in fact. Many modern methods, which +are despotic in appearance, are not so in practice. Let us believe +that the same was the case in the sixteenth century. Our governors +now understand their own business best, and make a very fair +compromise between discipline and freedom. Let us believe that the +men of the sixteenth century did so likewise. All we ask is that our +forefathers should be judged as we wish to be judged ourselves, 'not +according to outward appearance, but with righteous judgment.' + +Mr. Froude finds the cause of this general contentment and loyalty of +the masses in the extreme care which the Government took of their +well-being. The introductory chapter, in which he proves to his own +satisfaction the correctness of his opinion, is well worth the study +of our political economists. The facts which he brings seem +certainly overwhelming; of course, they can only be met by counter- +facts; and our knowledge does not enable us either to corroborate or +refute his statements. The chief argument used against them seems to +us, at least, to show that for some cause or other the working +classes were prosperous enough. It is said the Acts of Parliament +regulating wages do not fix the minimum of wages, but the maximum. +They are not intended to defend the employed against the employer, +but the employer against the employed, in a defective state of the +labour market, when the workmen, by the fewness of their numbers, +were enabled to make extravagant demands. Let this be the case--we +do not say that it is so--what is it but a token of prosperity among +the working classes? A labour market so thin that workmen can demand +their own price for their labour, till Parliament is compelled to +bring them to reason, is surely a time of prosperity to the employed- +-a time of full work and high wages; of full stomachs, inclined from +very prosperity to 'wax fat and kick.' If, however, any learned +statistician should be able to advance, on the opposite side of the +question, enough to weaken some of Mr. Froude's conclusions, he must +still, if he be a just man, do honour to the noble morality of this +most striking chapter, couched as it is in as perfect English as we +have ever had the delight of reading. We shall leave, then, the +battle of facts to be fought out by statisticians, always asking Mr. +Froude's readers to bear in mind that, though other facts may be +true, yet his facts are no less true likewise; and we shall quote at +length, both as a specimen of his manner and of his matter, the last +three pages of this introductory chapter, in which, after speaking of +the severity of the laws against vagrancy, and showing how they were +excused by the organisation which found employment for every able- +bodied man, he goes on to say:- + + +'It was therefore the expressed conviction of the English nation that +it was better for a man not to live at all than to live a profitless +and worthless life. The vagabond was a sore spot upon the +commonwealth, to be healed by wholesale discipline if the gangrene +was not incurable; to be cut away with the knife if the milder +treatment of the cart-whip failed to be of profit. + +'A measure so extreme in its severity was partly dictated by policy. +The state of the country was critical; and the danger from +questionable persons traversing it, unexamined and uncontrolled, was +greater than at ordinary times. But in point of justice as well as +of prudence it harmonised with the iron temper of the age, and it +answered well for the government of a fierce and powerful people, in +whose hearts lay an intense hatred of rascality, and among whom no +one could have lapsed into evil courses except by deliberate +preference for them. The moral sinew of the English must have been +strong indeed when it admitted of such stringent bracing; but, on the +whole, they were ruled as they preferred to be ruled; and if wisdom +can be tested by success, the manner in which they passed the great +crisis of the Reformation is the best justification of their princes. +The era was great throughout Europe. The Italians of the age of +Michael Angelo, the Spaniards who were the contemporaries of Cortez, +the Germans who shook off the Pope at the call of Luther, and the +splendid chivalry of Francis I. of France, were no common men. But +they were all brought face to face with the same trials, and none met +them as the English met them. The English alone never lost their +self-possession, and if they owed something to fortune in their +escape from anarchy, they owed more to the strong hand and steady +purpose of their rulers. + +'To conclude this chapter, then. + +'In the brief review of the system under which England was governed, +we have seen a state of things in which the principles of political +economy were, consciously or unconsciously, contradicted; where an +attempt, more or less successful, was made to bring the production +and distribution of wealth under the moral rule of right or wrong; +and where those laws of supply and demand, which we are now taught to +regard as immutable ordinances of nature, were absorbed or superseded +by a higher code. It is necessary for me to repeat that I am not +holding up the sixteenth century as a model which the nineteenth +might safely follow. The population has become too large, and +employment too complicated and fluctuating, to admit of such control; +while, in default of control, the relapse upon self-interest as the +one motive principle is certain to ensue, and, when it ensues, is +absolute in its operations. But as, even with us, these so-called +ordinances of nature in time of war consent to be suspended, and duty +to his country becomes with every good citizen a higher motive of +action than the advantages which he may gain in an enemy's market; so +it is not uncheering to look back upon a time when the nation was in +a normal condition of militancy against social injustice--when the +Government was enabled, by happy circumstances, to pursue into detail +a single and serious aim at the well-being--well-being in its widest +sense--of all members of the commonwealth. There were difficulties +and drawbacks at that time as well as this. Of Liberty, in the +modern sense of the word--of the supposed right of every man "to do +what he will with his own," or with himself--there was no idea. To +the question, if ever it was asked, "May I not do what I will with my +own?" there was the brief answer, "No man may do what is wrong, +either with what is his own or with what is another's." Producers, +too, who were not permitted to drive down their workmen's wages by +competition, could not sell their goods as cheaply as they might have +done, and the consumer paid for the law in an advance of price; but +the burden, though it fell heavily on the rich, lightly touched the +poor and the rich consented cheerfully to a tax which ensured the +loyalty of the people. The working man of modern times has bought +the extension of his liberty at the price of his material comfort. +The higher classes have gained in wealth what they have lost in +power. It is not for the historian to balance advantages. His duty +is with the facts.' + + +Our forefathers, then, were not free, if we attach to that word the +meaning which our Transatlantic brothers seem inclined to give to it. +They had not learnt to deify self-will, and to claim for each member +of the human race a right to the indulgence of every eccentricity. +They called themselves free, and boasted of their freedom; but their +conception of liberty was that of all old nations, a freedom which +not only allowed of discipline, but which grew out of it. No people +had less wish to exalt the kingly power into that specious tyranny, a +paternal Government; the king was with them, and always had been, +both formally and really, subject to their choice; bound by many +oaths to many duties; the minister, not the master of the people. +But their whole conception of political life was, nevertheless, +shaped by their conception of family life. Strict obedience, stern +discipline, compulsory education in practical duties, was the law of +the latter; without such training they thought their sons could never +become in any true sense men. And when they grew up, their civic +life was to be conducted on the same principles, for the very purpose +of enabling them to live as members of a free nation. If the self- +will of the individual was curbed, now and then, needlessly--as it is +the nature of all human methods to caricature themselves at times-- +the purpose was, not to weaken the man, but to strengthen him by +strengthening the body to which he belonged. The nation was to be +free, self-helping, self-containing, unconquerable; to that great +purpose the will, the fancy--even, if need be, the mortal life of the +individual, must give way. Men must be trained at all costs in self- +restraint, because only so could they become heroes in the day of +danger; in self-sacrifice for the common good, because only so would +they remain united, while foreign nations and evil home influences +were trying to tear them asunder. In a word, their conception of +life was as a warfare; their organisation that of a regiment. It is +a question whether the conception of corporate life embodied in a +regiment or army be not, after all, the best working one for this +world. At least the problem of a perfect society, howsoever +beautiful on paper, will always issue in a compromise, more or less +perfect--let us hope more and more perfect as the centuries roll on-- +between the strictness of military discipline and the Irishman's +laissez-faire ideal, wherein 'every man should do that which was +right in the sight of his own eyes, and wrong too, if he liked.' At +least, such had England been for centuries; under such a system had +she thriven; a fact which, duly considered, should silence somewhat +those gentlemen who, not being of a military turn themselves, inform +Europe so patriotically and so prudently that 'England is not a +military nation.' + +From this dogma we beg leave to differ utterly. Britain is at this +moment, in our eyes, the only military nation in Europe. All other +nations seem to us to have military governments, but not to be +military themselves. As proof of the assertion, we appeal merely to +the existence of our militia. While other nations are employing +conscription, we have raised in twelve months a noble army, every +soul of which has volunteered as a free man; and yet, forsooth, we +are not a military nation! We are not ashamed to tell how, but the +other day, standing in the rear of those militia regiments, no matter +where, a flush of pride came over us at the sight of those lads, but +a few months since helpless and awkward country boors, now full of +sturdy intelligence, cheerful obedience, and the manhood which can +afford to be respectful to others, because it respects itself, and +knows that it is respected in turn. True, they had not the +lightness, the order, the practical ease, the cunning self- +helpfulness of the splendid German legionaries who stood beside them, +the breast of every other private decorated with clasps and medals +for service in the wars of seven years since. As an invading body, +perhaps, one would have preferred the Germans; but only because +experience had taught them already what it would teach in twelve +months to the Berkshire or Cambridge 'clod.' There, to us, was the +true test of England's military qualities; her young men had come by +tens of thousands, of their own free will, to be made soldiers of by +her country gentlemen, and treated by them the while as men to be +educated, not as things to be compelled; not driven like sheep to the +slaughter, to be disciplined by men with whom they had no bond but +the mere official one of military obedience; and 'What,' we ask +ourselves, 'does England lack to make her a second Rome?' Her people +have physical strength, animal courage, that self-dependence of +freemen which enabled at Inkerman the privates to fight on literally +without officers, every man for his own hand. She has inventive +genius, enormous wealth; and if, as is said, her soldiers lack at +present the self-helpfulness of the Zouave, it is ridiculous to +suppose that that quality could long be wanting in the men of a +nation which is at this moment the foremost in the work of emigration +and colonisation. If organising power and military system be, as is +said, lacking in high quarters, surely there must be organising power +enough somewhere in the greatest industrial nation upon earth, ready +to come forward when there is a real demand for it; and whatever be +the defects of our system, we are surely not as far behind Prussia or +France as Rome was behind the Carthaginians and the Greeks whom she +crushed. A few years sufficed for them to learn all they needed from +their enemies; fewer still would suffice us to learn from our +friends. Our working classes are not, like those of America, in a +state of physical comfort too great to make it worth while for them +to leave their home occupations; and whether that be a good or an +evil, it at least ensures us, as our militia proves, an almost +inexhaustible supply of volunteers. What a new and awful scene for +the world's drama, did such a nation as this once set before itself, +steadily and ruthlessly, as Rome did of old, the idea of conquest. +Even now, waging war as she has done, as it were, [Greek text which +cannot be reproduced] thinking war too unimportant a part of her work +to employ on it her highest intellects, her flag has advanced in the +last fifty years over more vast and richer tracts than that of any +European nation upon earth. What keeps her from the dream which +lured to their destruction Babylon, Macedonia, Rome? + +This: that, thank God, she has a conscience still; that, feeling +intensely the sacredness of her own national life, she has learned to +look on that of other people's as sacred also; and since, in the +fifteenth century, she finally repented of that wild and unrighteous +dream of conquering France, she has discovered more and more that +true military greatness lies in the power of defence, and not of +attack; not in waging war, but being able to wage it; and has gone on +her true mission of replenishing the earth more peacefully, on the +whole, and more humanely, than did ever nation before her; conquering +only when it was necessary to put down the lawlessness of the savage +few for the well-being of the civilised many. This has been her +idea; she may have confused it and herself in Caffre or in Chinese +wars; for who can always be true to the light within him? But this +has been her idea; and therefore she stands and grows and thrives, a +virgin land for now eight hundred years. + +But a fancy has come over us during the last blessed forty years of +unexampled peace, from which our ancestors of the sixteenth century +were kept by stern and yet most wholesome lessons; the fancy that +peace, and not war, is the normal condition of the world. The fancy +is so fair that we blame none who cherish it; after all they do good +by cherishing it; they point us to an ideal which we should otherwise +forget, as Babylon, Rome, France in the seventeenth century, forgot +utterly. Only they are in haste (and pardonable haste too) to +realise that ideal, forgetting that to do so would be really to stop +short of it, and to rest contented in some form of human society far +lower than that which God has actually prepared for those who love +Him. Better to believe that all our conceptions of the height to +which the human race might attain are poor and paltry compared with +that toward which God is guiding it, and for which he is disciplining +it by awful lessons: and to fight on, if need be, ruthless, and yet +full of pity--and many a noble soul has learnt within the last two +years how easy it is to reconcile in practice that seeming paradox of +words--smiting down stoutly evil wheresoever we shall find it, and +saying, 'What ought to be, we know not; God alone can know: but that +this ought not to be, we do know, and here, in God's name, it shall +not stay.' + +We repeat it: war, in some shape or other, is the normal condition +of the world. It is a fearful fact: but we shall not abolish it by +ignoring it, and ignoring by the same method the teaching of our +Bibles. Not in mere metaphor does the gospel of Love describe the +life of the individual good man as a perpetual warfare. Not in mere +metaphor does the apostle of Love see in his visions of the world's +future no Arcadian shepherd paradises, not even a perfect +civilisation, but an eternal war in heaven, wrath and woe, plague and +earthquake; and amid the everlasting storm, the voices of the saints +beneath the altar crying, 'Lord, how long?' Shall we pretend to have +more tender hearts than the old man of Ephesus, whose dying sermon, +so old legends say, was nought but--'Little children, love one +another'; and who yet could denounce the liar and the hater and the +covetous man, and proclaim the vengeance of God against all +evildoers, with all the fierceness of an Isaiah? It was enough for +him--let it be enough for us--that he should see, above the thunder- +cloud, and the rain of blood, and the scorpion swarm, and the great +angel calling all the fowl of heaven to the supper of the great God, +that they might eat the flesh of kings and valiant men, a city of God +eternal in the heavens, and yet eternally descending among men; a +perfect order, justice, love, and peace, becoming actual more and +more in every age, through all the fearful training needful for a +fallen race. + +Let that be enough for us: but do not let us fancy that what is true +of the two extremes must not needs be true of the mean also; that +while the life of the individual and of the universe is one of +perpetual self-defence, the life of the nation can be aught else: or +that any appliances of scientific comforts, any intellectual +cultivation, even any of the most direct and common-sense arguments +of self-interest, can avail to quiet in man those outbursts of wrath, +ambition, cupidity, wounded pride, which have periodically convulsed, +and will convulse to the end, the human race. The philosopher in his +study may prove their absurdity, their suicidal folly, till, deluded +by the strange lull of a forty years' peace, he may look on wars as +in the same category with flagellantisms, witch-manias, and other +'popular delusions,' as insanities of the past, impossible +henceforth; and may prophesy, as really wise political economists +were doing in 1847, that mankind had grown too sensible to go to war +any more. And behold, the peace proves only to be the lull before +the thunderstorm; and one electric shock sets free forces +unsuspected, transcendental, supernatural in the deepest sense; +forces which we can no more stop, by shrieks at their absurdity, from +incarnating themselves in actual blood, and misery, and horror, than +we can control the madman in his paroxysm by telling him that he is a +madman. And so the fair vision of the student is buried once more in +rack and hail and driving storm; and, like Daniel of old when +rejoicing over the coming restoration of his people, he sees beyond +the victory some darker struggle still, and lets his notes of triumph +die away into a wail,--'And the end thereof shall be with a flood; +and to the end of the war desolations are determined.' + +It is as impossible as it would be unwise to conceal from ourselves +the fact that all the Continental nations look upon our present peace +as but transitory, momentary; and on the Crimean war as but the +prologue to a fearful drama--all the more fearful because none knows +its purpose, its plot, which character will be assumed by any given +actor, and, least of all, the denouement of the whole. All that they +feel and know is that everything which has happened since 1848 has +exasperated, not calmed, the electric tension of the European +atmosphere; that a rottenness, rapidly growing intolerable alike 'to +God and the enemies of God,' has eaten into the vitals of Continental +life; that their rulers know neither where they are nor whither they +are going, and only pray that things may last out their time: all +notes which one would interpret as proving the Continent to be +already ripe for subjection to some one devouring race of conquerors, +were there not a ray of hope in an expectation, even more painful to +our human pity, which is held by some of the wisest among the +Germans; namely, that the coming war will fast resolve into no +struggle between bankrupt monarchs and their respective armies, but a +war between nations themselves, an internecine war of opinions and of +creeds. There are wise Germans now who prophesy, with sacred tears, +a second 'Thirty Years' War,' with all its frantic horrors, for their +hapless country, which has found two centuries too short a time +wherein to recover from the exhaustion of that first fearful scourge. +Let us trust, if that war shall beget its new Tillys and +Wallensteins, it shall also beget its new Gustavus Adolphus, and many +another child of Light: but let us not hope that we can stand by in +idle comfort, and that when the overflowing scourge passes by it +shall not reach to us. Shame to us, were that our destiny! Shame to +us, were we to refuse our share in the struggles of the human race, +and to stand by in idle comfort while the Lord's battles are being +fought. Honour to us, if in that day we have chosen for our leaders, +as our forefathers of the sixteenth century did, men who see the work +which God would have them do, and have hearts and heads to do it. +Honour to us, if we spend this transient lull, as our forefathers of +the sixteenth century did, in setting our house in order, in +redressing every grievance, reforming every abuse, knitting the +hearts of the British nation together by practical care and help +between class and class, man and man, governor and governed, that we +may bequeath to our children, as Henry the Eighth's men did to +theirs, a British national life, so united and whole-hearted, so +clear in purpose and sturdy in execution, so trained to know the +right side at the first glance and take it, that they shall look back +with love and honour upon us, their fathers, determined to carry out, +even to the death, the method which we have bequeathed to them. +Then, if God will that the powers of evil, physical and spiritual, +should combine against this land, as they did in the days of good +Queen Bess, we shall not have lived in vain; for those who, as in +Queen Bess's days, thought to yoke for their own use a labouring ox, +will find, as then, that they have roused a lion from his den. + + + +Footnotes: + + +{1} North British Review, No. LI., November 1856.--'A History of +England, from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth.' By J. +A. Froude, M.A., late Fellow of Exeter college, Oxford. London: J. +W. Parker and Son, West Strand. 2 vols. 1856. + +{2} This article appeared in the North British Review. + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg Etext Froude's History of England, by Kingsley + diff --git a/old/frdhe10.zip b/old/frdhe10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..3c838a3 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/frdhe10.zip |