Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/640

Rh 606 national safeguard against despotism, had been laid in the dust by the Wars of the Hoses and the successful policy of Henry VII. The church alone retained a species of independence. That independence it was therefore Cromwell s first aim to destroy. The momentous con temporary events which suggested his scheme gave him the opportunity of effecting its accomplishment. It was the support of the Papacy which alone enabled the English clergy to make any stand against their sovereign ; and on the Continent that authority had been repudiated by several states. In England the king s mind was ripe for a breach with Rome &quot;; and the new learning had spread a general desire for ecclesiastical reform. Henry was soon persuaded to sever every bond that united England with Rome. Parliament complied with its usual facility. The clergy were forced, as the price of escape from the penalties of prsemunire, to acknowledge the king s headship of the church. And all Cromwell s foreign policy was directed to support this great revolution ; England was to be placed at the head of a Protestant league which should defy the emperor and the Pope. Such being Cromwell s policy, it was natural that he should make himself the recognized protector o f Pro testant heretics. He was unable to offer the slightest resistance to the passing of the Six Articles, by which Henry sought to fix the faith of England and terrify all parties into order, but he allowed no Lutheran to pay the penalties which the Articles enacted. He was the patron of Coverdale ; and to him was due that version of the English Bible known as the Great Bible, the first edition of which has taken his name. In 1539 he obtained the office of licenser of Bibles; and he distributed copies all over England, commanding that in every parish church whoever desired to read should have free opportunity. Whether he had any sympathy with doctrinal Protestantism is very doubtful. Foxe i*&quot; a most insufficient authority for the statement that he afyared the errors of Rome on the perusal, while in Italy, of the Latin New Testament of Erasmus ; it may, nevertheless, be true that he did read the New Testament, not without after results. 1 But his stay in Italy, while it wouid tend to make him the enemy of the Papacy, would equally tend to make him altogether anti-theological in his habits of thought. Dis tress, however, seems to have driven him to the consolations afforded by the doctrines of the old religion. lu his perplexity at Esher, he is said to have betaken himself to the repetition of prayers to the Virgin ; and his will, dated 1529, also goes to show that he was doctrinally no heretic. In it he orders the appointment of a priest at a salary of 6, 13s. 4d. per annum, to sing masses for his soul ; for the same object he saddles a bequest to his brother-in-law and sister with 8 a year, and leaves 20s. to each of the five orders of friars in London ; and he directs 20 to be divided among poor householders that they may act as his beadsmen. It is possible, however, that this may merely have been a politic deference to custom. Both the last speech of Cromwell, which announces his return to Catho licism, and his last prayer, which is Protestant in its tone, are of very doubtful authenticity. The work for which Cromwell is popularly re membered, that which earned him his distinctive title of &quot;malleus monachorum,&quot; was the abolition of the 1 Dean Hook (Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury, vol. i. p. 120) asserts of Cromwell that it is &quot; more than doubtful whether he ever understood Latin at all.&quot; But the evidence points decidedly in the opposite direction. Latimer writes to him partly in Latin (Strype, vol. i. pt. i. p. 512) ; in a letter to Henry VIII. he quotes in that language &quot;part of a letter fromMelanchthon which he had received (Strype, vol. i. pt. ii. p. 403) ; and Coverdale addresses him in terms which could not have been applied in those days except as an insult to any man ignorant of so common an accomplishment, monasteries. The means he employed to accomplish this measure were characteristic. Commissioners were sent to visit the monks and nuns, and give reports of whatever irregularities could be discovered in their conduct. The juggleries of pretended miracles were exposed ; rough farces in ridicule of the priests, and even of the sacraments, were allowed to be acted in place of the mysteries or miracle-plays. Every shrine was destroyed, all its costly gifts being seized by the king. The bones of St Thomas a Becket, the hero of a signal triumph of the Papacy over the Crown, were dug up and burnt as those of a traitor ; his name was removed from the service-book ; his festival ordered to be neglected; every window erected to his memory ruthlessly destroyed ; Cromwell even thought it worth while to publish a proclamation giving an official account of his treasons. A grant of the monastic property to the king was obtained from the Commons, who expected that the pressure of taxation would thus be relieved. And the nobles and wealthier commoners were conciliated by the chances that offered of cheap purchases of land. For seven years Cromwell was supreme in the royal council, and supreme in all the departments of the administration. He was not altogether independent ; every measure of importance had to be approved, and many were modified, by the king, who, moreover, often chose to act for himself in matters of the greatest moment, with out even seeking his minister s advice. Yet during the period of his ministry Cromwell was certainly responsible for the general character of the government. The servant of a master who spared no life that endangered his authority or even disturbed his tranquillity, living in an age when to allow any to escape whose acts or avowed opinions were inconsistent with the policy of the Government would have been considered mere weak-minded lenity, he carried out the principles of his master, he followed the practice of his age, with stern and unvarying regularity. A position of unparalleled danger, both from traitors at home and from foreign attacks, had been assumed by the Government. The greatest promptitude and vigour were essential to safety. But during Cromwell s ministry vigour and promp titude were carried to an extreme. Laws never equalled for severity in the history of England were enacted. No opposition was allowed to endure for a moment. It is true that the blood of More and Fisher, of the marquis of Exeter, Lord Montague, and the countess of Salisbury (the last of whom, indeed, was executed ten months after the death of Cromwell) was shed in no private quarrel. Cromwell s policy had been adopted by the king ; and in some cases he was no more than the king s official agent. Yet that he fully sympathized with these severities is past a doubt. The condemnation of Exeter, Montague, and the countess of Salisbury by attainder without trial was due to his suggestion. It was he, as numerous memoranda of hia remain to prove, who enforced the execution of the laws of treason upon minor offenders. It was he who doomed &quot; the Abbott Redyng to be sent down to be tryed and executed at Redyng with his complycys,&quot;- &quot; the Abbott of Glaston to be tryed at Glaston and also to be executed there with his complycys,&quot; and who ordered &quot; that the evydens be well sortyd and the indytmentts well drawn against the said abbotts and their complycys,&quot; and &quot; to send Gendon to the Towre to be rakkyd.&quot; 2 He also all attempts at persuasion proving futile superintended the trial of the seven noble Carthusians of the Charterhouse, whom, breaking through the hitherto unbroken custom, he hanged in their clerical garb, that it might be vividly 2 Ellis, Original Letters, 2d series, vol. ii. p. 121. Such entries, it must in fairness be remembered, do not imply that the cases had been prejudged ; as to the facts of the charges there was no doubt.