Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/311

A.D. 1547.] were divided amongst a number of people, there would be far more difficulty of its ever being recovered by his family than if it went to the Crown, he immediately petitioned the king that all his estate, which he represented as "good and stately gear," might be settled on Prince Edward. The idea was well adapted to the avaricious character of Henry, who, therefore, though on the point of having earth and all its possessions wrested by death from his reluctant hands, consented to the request, and promised the disappointed expectants some other equivalent.

This manœuvre of Norfolk's only rendered the Seymours the more eager for his death. The king was rapidly sinking, there was no time to lose; a bill of attainder was passed through the Peers on the 26th of January, 1547; on the 27th the Royal assent was given in due form, and an order was dispatched to the Tower to execute the duke at an early hour in the morning. Before that morning the soul of the tyrant was called to its dread account, and the life of the old nobleman was saved as by a miracle.

The closing scene of Henry VIII. was in perfect keeping with the latter years of his life. Whilst he was rapidly approaching his last hour no one dared to tell him so unpleasant a truth. He lay like the indomitable tyrant that he was, terrible to the latest moment. His attendants stood at a distance in silent fear. His queen was not present, for she was worn out with constant watching, and perhaps with terror and anxiety, for a contemporary writer asserts that the morose king had revived the idea of putting her to death for her heresy. Be that as it may, she was absent, and no one was found courageous enough to tell him the truth, till Sir Anthony Denny approached his bed, and leaning over it, said to him that "all human aid was now vain, and that it was meete for him to review his past life, and seek for God's mercy through Christ."

Henry, who was giving impatient vent to his pain in loud cries, suddenly stopped, turned a fierce look on the speaker, and asked, "What judge had sent him to pass this sentence upon him?" Denny replied, "Your physicians." The physicians then ventured to approach, and offered him some medicine to relieve his agony; but he repulsed them with these words, "After the judges have once passed sentence on a criminal, they have no more to do with him; therefore, begone." He was then asked whether he would not confer with some of his divines. He replied, "With none but Cranmer, and with him not yet. I will first repose myself a little, and as I find myself, so shall I determine."

Awaking in about an hour from his sleep and feeling himself going, he sent for Cranmer; but the primate, who had attended three successive days in the House of Lords to give his vote for the iniquitous bill of attainder, had retired to his house at Croydon, and when he arrived the king was unable to speak. Cranmer entreated him to give some sign of his hope in the saving mercy of Christ, and Henry, looking steadily at him for a moment, pressed his hand and expired. Thévet says that he manifested strong remorse for the murder of Anne Boleyn, and for his other crimes, and the terrors of awakening conscience seem to have peopled his presence with the victims of his injustice. He cast wild looks into a gloomy recess of his chamber, and exclaimed, "Monks! monks!" Another writer says, that, "warned of approaching dissolution, and consumed with the death-thirst, he called for a cup of white-wine, and turning to one of his attendants, cried, 'All is lost!' These were his last words."

For some time before his death he was constantly attended by his confessor, the Bishop of Rochester, heard mass daily in his chamber, and received the communion in one kind. He seemed anxious by some further benefactions to make amends for the destruction of the funds for religion and education; and about a month before his death, he endowed the magnificent establishment of Trinity College, Cambridge, for a master and sixty fellows and scholars; reopened the church of the Grey Friars, which, with St. Bartholomew's Hospital, and an ample revenue, he gave to the city of London.

Henry VIII. was fifty-five years and seven months old at his death, and had reigned thirty-seven years, nine months, and six days. His will was dated December 30th, 1546. He was authorised by Act of Parliament to settle the succession by his will, and he now named his son, Prince Edward, as his lawful successor, and, in default of heirs, then the Princess Mary, and her heirs; failing that, the Princess Elizabeth, and her heirs. After Elizabeth, was named the Lady Frances, the eldest daughter of his sister the Queen of France, and her heirs; and such failing, the Lady Eleanor, the youngest daughter of the late queen of France. On the failure of all these, then to his heirs-at-law; but no particular mention was made in the succession of his sister Margaret, Queen of Scotland, and of her issue. Yet he left to Margaret £3,000 in plate and jewels, and £1,000 in money, besides her jointure. To each of his daughters he gave £10,000 in plate, jewels, and furniture, as a marriage portion, and an annuity of £3,000 whilst remaining unmarried. Nor did he forget to leave large funds for masses to be said for his soul. He left £600 a year to the church at Windsor, for priests to say mass for his soul every day, and for four abiits a year, and sermons, and distribution of alms at every one of them, and for a maintenance of thirteen poor knights. Thus his will displayed the fact that, though he had renounced the Pope, he had not renounced the Pope's religion.

Of the great political, moral, and religious changes which took place or took root in this reign, we shall speak in our review of the century; we will here only say a few words on the character of this extraordinary monarch.

In his youth, the beauty of his person, the accomplishment of his mind, and the taste for gaiety and magnificence in his Court, prognosticated something very different from the fierce, gloomy, and bloody scene into which it rapidly degenerated. He was in his better days as active and exemplary in the discharge of the duties of his exalted station, as he was joyous, and disposed to pleasure and parade. He attended diligently at the council board, consulted with his ministers, who were selected for their great talents, read himself and directed despatches, corresponded with his various ambassadors and commanders, and would himself see into everything. He was not only a poet and musician of no mean order, but prided himself on his achievements as an author, and judge of faiths and