THE

EDINBURGH REVIEW,

JANUARY, 1905.

No. CCCCXI.

ART. I. THE REFORMATION IN ENGLAND. The Cambridge Modern History. Vol. II. The Reformation (Chapters XIII-XVI.). Cambridge University Press. 1903.

*

IN returning to the Cambridge Modern History,' and taking up the story of the English Reformation, our first feeling is one of sorrow that the master mind is removed which should have watched over this volume. The editors regret the chapter on the Council of Trent which 'Lord Acton had intended to write. No living historian 'could hope to bring to this task the wealth of accumulated 'knowledge that Lord Acton commanded, or his special 'opportunities of insight.' That chapter will never be written; and an event which in the eyes of the Roman Catholic world is the most important of the sixteenth century is recorded here, though with much ability and knowledge, yet without the sanction of his high authority to explain its relation to the rest of the history.

Indeed the editors and contributors have done their work thoroughly and well; we have here a clear and thoughtful account of the great movement which fills the period with ideas and events unknown before in the history of the world. What we miss is neither clearness of presentation, nor completeness of knowledge, nor balance of judgement; all that is wanting is the mind and the man to whom all the history was present at once, and whose sympathy was as great as his knowledge. Those who knew Lord Acton best knew how the friend of Gladstone and Döllinger was a warm assertor of authority and at the same time a friend of

เ

* Edinburgh Review,' July, 1904.

VOL. CCI. NO. CCCCXI.

B

liberty, whose European training did not lessen his love for his own country, and whose interest in the English Church was only second, if second, to his interest in his own. There could be no fear of his not doing justice to England in her stormy passage from mediævalism to that position which, call it Protestant or Anglo-Catholic, is unique in Europe.

To Lord Acton the treatment of the English Reformation would have been specially interesting, for he knew, as no one now does, the relations of our insular Reformation with Rome and with Protestant Europe, and he could, better than anyone else, have kept clear of overstating, or of understating, the influence of enthusiasm upon the course of secular events, the responsible and irresponsible elements of action.

It is almost unavoidable, when history is written by several contributors, that some loss of continuity should be incurred. In the present instance, the change of sovereigns brought in capital changes in policy; but even so, many of the actors were the same men and women, and external conditions did not change with the demise of the Crown. Ecclesiastical history is done justice to, because the lines of division here coincide with the succession of princes; but such subjects as the agrarian revolution (well handled by Professor Pollard, but only slightly touched by Mr. Gairdner), and the relations with France and Spain, which involve a sequence of events, call for continuous treatment. In the first case, more prominence might have been given in this history to the dislocation of rural economy caused by the substitution of competition for custom, through capitalist tillage; which, complicated by the system of enclosures and the confiscation of abbey lands, broke up the foundations of English society, and came to a head in the time of Edward VI. In the second case, the partition of Burgundy is important as one of the dividing lines between medieval and modern, feudal and national history. The lands are thrown together, and the armies pass into the hands of great sovereigns; and the problem of Italy is no longer a quarrel of princely houses, but a lengthened national contest between France and Spain, in which France is worsted, first at Pavia, which loses her the north, and thirty years later at St. Quentin, which was the cause of her final retirement from Naples.

Mr. Gairdner, in his account of the reign of Henry VIII., tells a story with which he has long been familiar, and we miss the newer touch which gives freshness to Professor

Pollard's Edward VI.' and Professor Maitland's Elizabeth.' We want to hear more about Wolsey's policy, his place in Europe, his relation to the King, the reason of his fall. What was his policy? In the early part of Henry's reign, we can see little but the desire to shine; the conceit of cui adhaereo præest made the King pose as universal arbiter; and an arbiter who has no friends or enemies except for the moment, and little solid strength to rest upon, is too much of a weathercock to be respected. Henry, with Wolsey as his minister, had played this game for ten years before it was forced upon him that Germany did not regard him as a serious candidate for the Empire, and that Charles V. did not value highly an alliance which brought him little gold and few soldiers; and he learnt only by degrees that in balancing the Valois and Hapsburg interests his object should be, not to make France or Spain his vassal, but to keep clear of European complications as far as possible. He was more cautious after the election of Charles V. than before; Spain with the Netherlands plus the Empire was enough to sober him, and Pavia (1525) convinced him of Charles V.'s power.

What are the grounds of the statement, so often made, and repeated here, that Wolsey in his fourteen years of power raised England from the rank of a second-rate 'power among the nations'? It is difficult to separate Wolsey from his master. Which was responsible for the traditional alliance with Spain in 1522, and the fantastic idea of partitioning France in 1526, recalling the Plantagenet wars? The grand design came to nothing, since Charles V. did not see his own advantage in it. Did Henry himself, did Wolsey believe in it? It is hardly credible. The shifting alliances and wars until 1529 point to a want of clear counsels, rather than an adjustment of the European balance, or a settled preference of Flemings or French as commercial neighbours. England had indeed little to do with the main movements of European history, which centred in the person of Charles V. Diplomacy, except that of Rome, was a new thing; the division of Europe into nations was incomplete, and nations knew less of each than Europe now knows of the East. England's true policy was that of Henry VII. and of Elizabeth, an insular policy, aiming at no conquests, building up the strength of the nation by economy, commerce, and a strong navy. Wolsey's 'spirited' foreign policy did not strengthen England in proportion to its expense and its showy appearance. No doubt he kept England before the world,

and personally played a splendid part among the statesmen of Europe. He knew the value of a cardinal's trappings and a stately presence; and even now he imposes by his magnificence. He was a man of imagination, capacity and quickness; at home he did well as Chancellor, without much experience; he was a good organiser and administrator, economical in finance, a patron of learning. He had some large designs of Church reform; he protected the Church from the storm which fell upon her when he was gone; but he was an enemy of Parliaments, and flattered Henry's absolutism. He created nothing durable, whereas Cromwell has left his mark on the country to this day. That he fell is no more than to say that he served Henry VIII., who when he was tired of a minister, always listened to his enemies. He was too brilliant-urit fulgore suo-and he did not, after all, keep the peace, or make his master the arbiter of Europe.

After the European settlement of Cambray (1529) Henry reverted to his father's policy of peace abroad, unification at home, and consolidation of the royal power. Wales was organised, Ireland taken in hand, approaches made towards union with Scotland; the Church was humbled, the royal power was strengthened in every direction; a process which, after the disintegration produced by the Wars of the Roses, no doubt made for unity; for if the King was now King more completely than ever, England was also more completely England.

The steps of Henry's anti-papal action are marked by the phases of the divorce affair. They may be regarded as moves in the game answering moves from the other side, or as part of a larger game the plan of which was already laid. We believe that if there had been no dispute about the divorce, there would still have been a quarrel with the Church. Every powerful King of England had scores to settle with the Church, and Henry's quarrel, once begun, was sure to be carried through to the end. Cromwell pointed out to him what could be done, and he knew how to do it. We must not deny to Henry VIII., able statesman as he was, a design beyond passion and obstinacy in separating his kingdom from Rome. Whether he acted as a tyrant and a libertine, or as a man of stricken conscience and the kindly father of his people, or as a secular politician, he was a statesman and did not often act without a meaning. All with him was clear and complete for the moment: his impulses, though furious, were never blind; he was a man not

only of imperious will, but of strong intellect; and he had spent twenty years of his life in a practical study of the politics of Europe. Original in action, he was not original in thought; but he learnt something from each of the heads which he set one after another rolling; and it is to be noted that he was served at the critical period by Cranmer, the most versatile and ingenious of churchmen, and that his statecraft was guided by Cromwell, than whom no more clear-sighted, if not far-sighted politician has ever borne rule in England.

In Thomas Cromwell, Henry had a minister as free from scruples as himself. Mr. Goldwin Smith's characterisation of him is admirable:

'Cromwell was exceedingly able, daring, and absolutely without scruple . . . His gospel was Machiavelli. Religious convictions he probably had none. Of conscience he was wholly devoid. But he saw that, in the King's present temper, Protestantism, or at least war on the Pope and clergy, was the winning game. He pricked the King onward and opened to him a vista not only of power, but of immense spoils.'

When a tyrant conceives a thirst for blood, his most acceptable servant is the minister who will point out victims and prepare them for sacrifice. Cromwell wrote in his notebook, 'Item, the Abbot of Glaston to be tried at Glaston, and also to be executed there with his complices. Item, 'to see that the evidence be well sorted, and the indictments 'well drawn against the said abbots and their complices.' This is but one instance out of many. He who could write this in his private notes must have been a bad man and worthy of his fate. Henry must have despised the morality of his áme damnée, and we cannot be surprised at his contemptuous rejection and destruction of the tool that had served him, when it was blunted by use.

Cromwell was a very able administrator. But if we look for statesmanship, what do we find? No consistency in foreign politics; at home, naked despotism, degradation of Parliament, and exaltation of royal power in its place, arbitrary taxation, wholesale confiscations and executions, an uncertain balancing of old and new in religion; and finally the extinction of one estate of the realm in the assumption of supreme ecclesiastical power. The King's despotic power could be and was overthrown in the course

* Political History of England, i. 326.