Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/271

1540.] lesson from what had been going on in England. The seizure of the monastic estates there by the king, and their liberal distribution amongst the nobility, excited their cupidity, and they strongly urged James to follow the example of his royal uncle. In this counsel they found a staunch coadjutor in Henry, who never ceased exciting James to follow his example, and, to make sure of his doing so, invited him to an interview at York, to which he consented.

Henry set forward, with a splendid retinue, in July, and accompanied by the queen. They passed a short time at Grafton, and so travelled through Northampton and Lincolnshire to York. The approach of the ferocious king was beheld with terror by the people. They considered that money was the likeliest thing to appease his wrath, and at every town in Lincolnshire they offered him a heavy sum of money. On entering Yorkshire the royal party was met by 200 gentlemen in coats of velvet, with 4,000 tall yeomen and serving-men, who on their knees offered their humble submission, Sir Robert Bowes being their speaker, who also presented a peace-offering of £900. At Barnesdale, the Archbishop of York appeared also at the head of 300 of the clergy, with their attendants, who made a like submission—for the archbishop himself had been one of the chief leaders of the insurrection, and he offered £600. At York, Newcastle, and Hull, the mayors and corporations made similar submissions, and presented each £100. The young queen enjoyed during this progress all the pomp and pageantry of royalty. At her dower-manor of Shire she held a court, and everywhere Henry, who was in the hey-day of his intoxication with his young queen, took care to display her to the people, and showed himself a most doting husband.

Their pleasure received a considerable check at York, for, notwithstanding great preparations had been made, the King of Scots excused his coming. The very first announcement of such a project had struck the clergy of Scotland with consternation. They hastened to point out to James the dangers of innovation—the certain mischief of aggrandising the nobility, already too powerful, with the spoils of the Church—the jeopardy of putting himself into the hands of Henry and the English, and the loss of the friendship of all foreign powers, if he was induced by Henry to attack the Church, which would render him almost wholly dependent on England. They added force to these arguments by presenting him with a gratuity of £50,000; promised him a continuance of their liberality, and pointed out to him a certain source of income of at least £100,000 per annum in the confiscations of heretics. These representations and gifts had the desired effect. James sent an excuse to Henry for not being able to meet him at York; and the disappointed king turned homeward in great disgust. The fascinations of the young queen, however, soon restored his good humour, and they arrived at Windsor, on the 26th of October, in high spirits. So complete was the satisfaction of Henry, that at Hampton Court, on the 30th, in the quaint language of the letter of council, still preserved at the feast of All Saints there, "the king received his Maker"—that is, the sacrament—"and gave Him most hearty thanks for the good life he led, and trusted to lead, with his wife." The pious Henry, kneeling at the altar, raised his eyes to heaven, and exclaimed aloud, "I render thanks to thee, O Lord, that, after so many strange accidents that have befallen my marriages, thou hast been pleased to give me a wife so entirely conformed to my inclinations as her I now have." He then requested Longland, the Bishop of Lincoln, to prepare a public form of thanksgiving to Almighty God for having blessed him with so dutiful and virtuous a queen.

Little did the uxorious monarch dream that he was at this moment standing on a mine, that would blow all his imagined happiness into the air, and send his idolised wife to the block. But at the very time that he and Catherine had been showing themselves as so beautifully conjugal a couple to the good people of the north, the mine had been preparing. It was the misfortune of all the queens of Henry VIII., that they had not only to deal with one of the most vindictive and capricious tyrants that ever existed, but that they were invariably, and necessarily, the objects of the hatred of a powerful and merciless party, which was ready to destroy its antagonist, and, as the first and telling stroke in that progress, to pull down the queen. The Papist and Protestant parties wore now nearly balanced in England; and though the heads of each trembled before the sanguinary dictator on the throne, and temporised and concealed their true views and sentiments, they not the less watched every opportunity to damage each other, and to turn, by art or flattery, the thunderbolts of Henry's easily excited wrath against their opponents.

From the moment that Henry endeavoured to remove Catherine of Arragon, and to substitute Anne Boleyn, the contest became not merely a contest betwixt two women for the crown, but betwixt the Roman Church and the Reformers; and every queen was regarded as the head of one party, and became the deadly object of the antagonism, the stratagems, and the murderous intentions of the other. The Reformers had enjoyed a series of temporary triumphs, in the elevation of Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, and still more of Anne of Cleves; and the opposite party had moved heaven and earth, and with fatal effect, for the destruction of the first Anne, and the divorce of the second. Catherine Howard was now the hope of the Romanists. She was the niece of the Duke of Norfolk, the most resolute lay-Papist in the kingdom, and the political head of that party. The public evidences of the growing influence of Catherine with the king on the northern progress, had been attentively marked by these with exultation, and by the Protestants with proportionate alarm. Both Rapin and Burnet assert, that Cranmer felt convinced, from what he saw passing, that unless some means were found to lessen the influence of the queen, and thus dash the hopes of the Catholics, he must soon follow Cromwell to the block. A most ominous circumstance which reached him was, that the royal party took up their quarters for a night at the house of Sir John Gorstwick, who, but in the preceding spring, had denounced Cranmer in open Parliament, as "the root of all heresies," and that at Gorstwick's there had been held a select meeting of the Privy Council, at which Gardiner, the unhesitating leader of the Romanists, presided. It was the signal for the Protestants to bring means of counteraction into play, and such means, unfortunately for the queen, were already stored up and at hand.