Page:Seventeen lectures on the study of medieval and modern history and kindred subjects.djvu/258

 a Suffolk party; but I am sure that it is a mistake to regard Henry as pulled by one or other of these alternately; or to think that the changes of his policy, and I am not at all sure that the changes were at all so great as they are commonly regarded, were dictated by any other than his own despotic will: lie used, I think, the parties, not they him; what influence he allowed them was allowed for his ends, and the moment he saw them pursuing their own ends he stopped them.

Of course such a theory about him, if true, necessitates the belief of great development of design and new purpose in the king himself: but that I think is the most natural solution of most of the critical questions of the reign. The words which More addressed to Cromwell, soon after he resigned the chancellorship, seem to be a key, almost prophetic in simplicity, to the after-history. 'Master Cromwell,' he says, 'you are now entered into the service of a most noble, wise, and liberal prince: if you will follow my poor advice, you shall in your counsel-giving to his grace, ever tell him what he ought to do, but never what he is able to do.' 'For if a lion knew his own strength, hard were it for any man to rule him.'

From the very beginning of his reign, he is finding out what he can do; from the fall of Wolsey, and especially after the sacrifice of More, he is coming to regard what he can do as the only measure of what he ought to do: he is becoming the king for whom the kingdom is, the tyrant whose every caprice is wise and sacred: he turns the theory of kingship into action; the king can do no wrong; therefore men shall call right all that he does: he is the king, not an individual; what in an individual would be theft, is no theft in him; all property is the king's, he can take it, and he takes it; all that proceeds from his mouth is law; the king's heart is in the hand of the Lord, therefore all that comes out of the king's heart is the Lord's doing.

Yet with all his grotesque and inhuman self-absorption, the miserable and growing result of the long tenure of irresponsible power, we cannot wisely deny the king some great qualities besides mere force. Contemporary foreigners, the justice of whose general judgment is amply proved by later history, and whose opinion, according to Lord Bacon's dictum,