-some whiteness which perhaps will "make that blackness look more ter"rible, but which will also account for "doings that it will not account for? "Certainly Shakspeare did not regard "him as an unmitigated villain; and "make what allowances you will for Shakspeare's willingness to flatter his "daughter, is not his portrait a some"what more credible one than that of "the post-Stuart chroniclers? Have not "modern French historians, such as "Michelet, though not specially inclined "to favour English sovereigns, been "forced by the evidence of documents "to confess that he had more notion of "the sacredness of the royal word, more 66 reverence for treaties and promises, "than Francis or Charles, or any of "those contemporaries who have been "magnified to his disparagement?"

I say that such thoughts as these must come at times into our minds, and though they may not displace the opinions we have received in our nurseries, may make us disposed to look a little more sharply into the evidence. Mr. Froude assures us that he came to the study with a decided bias in favour of the common opinion. Shakspeare's authority had not the weight with him that it might have with some of us. He suspects the poets almost as much as Plato or Bacon might do. He probably had early prepossessions against the exercise of the royal Supremacy, doubts whether the Reformation was not marred by the royal influence. The sheer conscientious study of facts and documents, has, it seems to me, led him to that conception of the King's character which is the groundwork of his history. That conception has nothing necessarily to do with the opinions which he has formed respecting particular points. He may have understated the case of Catherine; he may be wrong in thinking Anne Boleyn guilty; we may not hold with him about the suddenness of the marriage with Jane Seymour; we may believe that Cromwell was unjustly given up to his enemies. All these questions are open to fresh examination. Mr. Froude has the merit of having dis

turbed our settled conclusions upon them; he may not have established the opposite. But it is not true—as some have ignorantly and some dishonestly represented that he has written an apology for the acts of an immoral and lawless tyrant. No charge was ever more directly refuted by the tone and spirit of his book. I do not know any English history which exhibits more unfeigned reverence for goodness, more contempt for baseness, or which is so utterly free from pruriency, even when the subject afforded great temptations to indulge in it.

This

What Mr. Froude has attempted to show is this; that passion was by no means the characteristic of Henry, by no means the source of even his worst acts. He was, first of all, a Tudor king, inheriting from his father and cherishing in his own mind an intensely strong sense of the power and office of a King; possessing in a high degree many of the peculiarly royal qualities—a strong will, a reverence for law, clear sense, application to business-not possessing at all in the same proportion the humane qualities, though not absolutely deficient in these; therefore at any time disposed for political ends-for what seemed to him the duty of a monarch-to sweep away the personal regards and attachments which stood in his way. policy of Henry Mr. Froude believes not to have been the cunning Machiavellian policy of his time, but to have been in the main honest and manly. He believes, as Shakspeare did, that the King felt and did not feign conscientious scruples on the subject of his marriage with Catherine; that his scruples may at a certain period have mingled with affection for Anne, but that that affection did not determine his conduct; that it was determined mainly by considerations respecting the peril of the nation if he left no male issue. Such a character is far from attractive. No one can fall into a sentimental admiration of it. But it contains dispositions which belong to the strong English mould; a vigorous sense of responsibility, comparatively cold affec

tions. It is as unlike as possible to a form of character with which it has been compared. Lord Byron talks of George IV. as compounded of two elements, Henry's being the principal. Such an opinion falls in well with the popular theory; according to that, the elder prince was worse than his successor by all that Catherine of Arragon was better than Caroline of Brunswick. But if the besetting sin of Henry was a disregard of family and personal ties, when set against the supposed obligations of the sovereign, and the besetting sin of George an impatience of all restraint upon his appetites and ease, whether it came through the laws of the household or the business of the kingdom, we perceive that the imaginary likeness is a striking contrast; we learn too, perhaps, wherein the temptations of the nineteenth century differ from those of the sixteenth.

On all these grounds, but especially on the last, I hold Mr. Froude's idea of the King to be more consistent with itself, less dangerous to morality, fuller of historical light than that which it supersedes. The Tudor age is that age which was to show what the sovereign could do, as the Stuart was that which was to show what he could not do. Strictly speaking, one is not less important for the history of the constitution than the other; but if we throw back the mere constitutional watchwords of Prerogative and Privilege, which are most important for the second period, to the first, we involve ourselves in great confusion. The privileges of the Commons, if they were sometimes affronted, were quite as often vindicated by that very prerogative which was afterwards set in opposition to them. The power of the Commons as against the Lords, as against the ecclesiastical authority, was never more brought out than in Henry's time. The King's supremacy was felt to be the assertion of a national principle; the Nation realised its own existence in the existence of its ruler. And that perilous blasphemy which threatened under James and Charles to confound the king with God, existed far

less in the time when the royal power was a fact, and not a theory. The King, casting off his allegiance to a foreign bishop, was claiming indeed an authority which became fearful; but the claim was in itself one of subjection to an actual spiritual Ruler, the confession of an invisible King of kings, and Lord of lords. In that confession lay the faith of England in the sixteenth century; its faith and its morality also. Faith or trust was the watchword of the Reformation. But faith or trust in a doctrine, or as a doctrine, had no worth for the practical English mind. Trust or faith in a Person, and that not chiefly because He was powerful, but because He was righteous, was that which associated itself with their old loyalty. It could not be satisfied with any visible monarch who so often showed himself to be unrighteous; but without the visible monarch, the invisible would have been indistinct and shadowy. The representative of generations of Welsh and Saxon sovereigns, now no longer bowing to a foreign priest, educated his subjects into a belief in One who lived for ever and ever. All the doctors in the world could supply no such education; they could only do good so far as they helped to administer that which a better Wisdom had provided; in so far as they used the open English Bible to explain to the English people how kings had ruled in old time the chosen people in the name of the unseen Lord of Hosts, how all visible idolatry had been the cause of their degradation and his.

Mr. Froude's insurrection against our prevalent and customary notion of Henry's character has been exceedingly helpful in restoring this older and simpler apprehension of our annals. His two last volumes will do much to strengthen and deepen it. Many who fancied they disliked the former for their parodox, will dislike these for their freedom from paradox. They will complain of them as wanting excitement and novelty, as maintaining very much. those old notions respecting the characters and events of the time which (under

protest) we should like to exchange for others more racy and startling. When we had hoped that Lord Macaulay had given us reasons for despising Cranmer, we find him resuming his claims upon our affection and admiration. Somerset and Northumberland prove to be much what we supposed they were; Edward is still a hopeful, conscientious, highly cultivated boy. Whether Foxe is a safe authority or not, Mr. Froude will not excuse us from paying our ancient homage to the Marian martyrs. Nevertheless, these two volumes respecting Edward and Mary are, I conceive, at least equal in originality, in historical research, in biographical interest, in right and noble feeling, and in clearness and simplicity of style, to those which preceded them. I should have added as a more marked characteristic of them than all, a rigid impartiality, if that title were not open to the greatest mistake. Most just Mr. Froude is in bringing forth the virtues both of Protestants and Catholics; most just in exposing their sins. But there is no impartiality in this sense, that he looks down upon both as from a higher judgment-seat of his own; or in this sense, that he treats their differences as insignificant, such as only school controversialists would trouble themselves with. From this arrogance and frivolity, which are the great diseases of modern historians, he is, if not absolutely free, yet more free than any, so far as I know, who have handled the subject before him, unless they have lent themselves to the views of a faction, and have made the history repeat its decrees. His impartiality arises from no love for an Anglican Via Media, which gives those who walk in it a title to insult the passengers on either side of the road. He regards the attempt of divines to cut such a path as this as feeble and abortive. He always prefers strong men to weak men; he does not condemn vehemence except where he believes it to be wholly or partly insincere. But he sees more clearly, I think, than any previous historian, that the Protestant dogmatizers of Edward's reign, and the Catholic dogmatizers of Mary's reign,

were not only of necessity persecutors, but were of necessity trucklers to dishonest statesmen, practisers of statecraft. They might affect to hate compromises; but the ends which they proposed to themselves made very discreditable compromises inevitable. They could not establish the opinions which they thought it all-important to esta blish, except by the sacrifice of both manliness and godliness. Those who fancied they were pushing the Reformation to the furthest point, had to discover that they were forgetting the very meaning of reformation, that all the moral abuses which they had denounced were re-appearing under another name, and could justify themselves as well on Protestant as on Popish maxims; that they had swept away the barriers which hindered man's access to God, only that they might with more comfort and satisfaction present their offerings to the

devil.

It is in showing how these discoveries forced themselves upon the minds of the better Protestant teachers during their prosperity, how manfully they spoke againt the evils which their own system was developing, yet how hard, how impossible it was for them to discover where the evil lay, or to devise a remedy for it it is in showing how the Divine medicine of adversity provided that for them which they were wanting and could not invent for themselves, and how courageously some of them drank that medicine to the dregs; how others, who had been loudest in using all the cant phrases of their school, in denouncing the most earnest men as half-hearted, and in invoking the judgments of God and man upon their opponents, were shown in the day of trouble to be the atheists they had always really been-it is for these discoveries that Protestants owe so much gratitude to Mr. Froude. It is not for me to say what Roman Catholics ought to learn or may learn from him; but I cannot help hoping that they will appreciate the frankness of his confessions respecting the first reign, his desire to do Mary justice, his acknowledgment of the advantage which

Gardiner had over his opponents whilst he was their prisoner, his readiness to show that much of the Catholic feeling of the English people was a genuine reverence for what was sacred, which the Reformers could not insult without imperilling all which it was most their duty to maintain. To both Protestant and Romanist, and still more, perhaps, to the English Churchman, the great worth of the volumes lies in the comparison which they afford between the two reigns, and in the proof which is derived from them that the refusal of Henry and Elizabeth to sanction Protestantism or Romanism merely as such, may have been inspired by a good spirit (however much in either or both it degenerated into tyranny), and may have led to results for which all generations have to be grateful. Protestants in the strongest sense (though not exactly in the sense of the Diet of Spyers)— because they maintained that independence of the English Sovereign upon any foreign rule which all the Plantagenets had been trying to maintain; Catholics (though in the opposite sense to that of the Catholic League)-inasmuch as they had no wish to separate England from the general fellowship of Christendom, provided she were not forced to outrage any Christendom principle they discovered by instinct what the doctors could not discover by logic; they saved their country from becoming utterly the victim of theological dissensions, which threatened its highest spiritual interests as well as its common earthly honesty; they vindicated the connexion between its politics and its worship; they prepared the way for a time when their own efforts to produce uniformity of faith should be felt to be poor and futile, when they should yield to a desire for unity of faith, which no schemes of statesmen or of Churchmen shall be able to stifle or to satisfy.

I have preferred to speak of the total impression which these volumes have made upon me, of the general lessons which they have taught me, than to comment upon particular passages. It

No. 10.-VOL. II.

The

is a book written for study and not for effect; yet there are narratives which are most effective. rising in the West and in Norfolk in the year 1549 is admirably described; Wyatt's insurrection, especially the termination of it, with still greater spirit. We can only give the beginning, not the best part of the latter story. Mr. Froude has exhibited the Queen in all the weakness, discontent, and mawkishness of her passion for Philip; he has to show her hereafter soured and darkened by fanaticism; he can represent her also in all the true dignity of a Tudor princess.

"Had Wyatt, said Noailles, been able to reach London simultaneously with this answer, he would have found the gates open and the whole population eager to give him welcome. To his misfortune he lingered on the way, and the queen had time to use his words against him. The two gentlemen returned indignant at his insolence. The next morning Count Egmont waited on Mary to say that he and his companions were at her service, and would stand by her to their death. Perplexed as she was, Egmont said he found her 'marvellously firm.' The marriage, she felt, must, at all events, be postponed for the present; the prince could not come till the insurrection was at an end; and, while she was grateful for the offer, she not only thought it best to decline the ambassadors' kindness, but she recommended them, if possible, to leave London and the country without delay. Their party was large enough to irritate the people, and too small to be of use. She bade Egmont, therefore, tell the Emperor that from the first she had put her trust in God, and that she trusted in Him still; and for themselves, she told them to go at once, taking her best wishes with them. They obeyed. Six Antwerp merchant sloops were in the river below the bridge, waiting to sail. They stole on board, dropped down the tide, and were gone.

"The afternoon of the same day the queen herself, with a studied air of dejection, rode through the streets to the Guildhall, attended by Gardiner and the remnant of the guard. In St. Paul's Churchyard she met Pembroke, and slightly bowed as she passed him. Gardiner was observed to stoop to his saddle. The hall was crowded with citizens; some brought there by hatred, some by respect, many by pity, but more by curiosity. When the queen entered she stood forward on the steps, above the throng. and, in her deep man's voice, she spoke to them.

"Her subjects had risen in rebellion against her, she said; she had been told that the cause was her intended marriage with the Prince of

U

Spain; and, believing that it was the real cause, she had offered to hear and to respect their objections. Their leader had betrayed in his answer his true motives; he had demanded possession of the Tower of London and of her own person. She stood there, she said, as lawful Queen of England, and she appealed to the loyalty of her great city to save her from a presumptuous rebel, who, under specious pretences, intended to 'subdue the laws to his will, and to give scope to rascals and forlorn persons to make general havoc and spoil.' As to her marriage, she had supposed that so magnificent an alliance could not have failed to be agreeable to her people. To herself, and, she was not afraid to say, to her council, it seemed to promise high advantage to the commonwealth. Marriage, in itself, was indifferent to her; she had been invited to think of it by the desire of the country that she should have an heir; but she could continue happily in the virgin state in which she had hitherto passed her life. She would call a parliament, and the subject should be considered in all its bearings; if, on mature consideration, the Lords and Commons of England should refuse to approve of the Prince of Spain as a fitting husband for her, she promised, on the word of a queen, that she would think of him no

more.

The spectacle of her distress won the sympathy of her audience; the boldness of her bearing commanded their respect; the promise of a parliament satisfied, or seemed to satisfy, all reasonable demands: and among the wealthy citizens there was no desire to see London in possession of an armed mob, in whom the Anabaptist leaven was deeply interfused. The speech, therefore, had remarkable success. The queen returned to Westminster, leaving the corporation converted to the prudence of supporting her. Twenty-five thousand men were enrolled the next day for the protection of the crown and the capital; Lord William Howard was associated with the mayor in the command; and Wyatt, who had reached Greenwich on Thursday, and had wasted two days there, uncertain whether he should not cross the river in boats to Black wall, arrived on Saturday morning at Southwark, to find the gates closed on London Bridge, and the drawbridge flung down into the water."

As I have no excuse for indulging in the narratives of the deaths in Oxford or at Smithfield, I will take the conclusion of the whole matter.

"This was the 14th of November. The same day, or the day after, a lady-in-waiting carried the queen's last wishes to her successor. They were the same which she had already mentioned to De Feria-that her debts should be paid, and that the Catholic religion might be maintained, with an addi

tional request that her servants should be properly cared for. Then, taking leave of a world in which she had played so ill a part, she prepared, with quiet piety, for the end. On the 16th, at midnight, she received the last rites of the Church. Towards morning, as she was sinking, mass was said at her bedside. At the elevation of the Host, unable to speak or move, she fixed her eyes upon the body of her Lord; and as the last words of the benediction were uttered, her head sunk, and she was gone.

"A few hours later, at Lambeth, Pole followed her, and the reign of the Pope in England, and the reign of terror, closed together.

“No English sovereign ever ascended the throne with larger popularity than Mary Tudor. The country was eager to atone to her for her mother's injuries; and the instinetive loyalty of the English towards their natural sovereign was enhanced by the abortive efforts of Northumberland to rob her of her inheritance. She had reigned little more than five years, and she descended into the grave amidst curses deeper than the acclamations which had welcomed her accession. In that brief time she had swathed her name in the horrid epithet which will cling to it for ever; and yet from the passions which in general tempt sovereigns into crime, she was entirely free; to the time of her accession she had lived a blameless, and, in many respects, a noble life; and few men or women have lived less capable of doing knowingly a wrong -thing.

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Philip's conduct, which could not extinguish her passion for him, and the collapse of the inflated imaginations which had surrounded her supposed pregnancy, it can hardly be doubted affected her sanity. Those forlorn hours when she would sit on the ground with her knees drawn to her face; those restless days and nights when, like a ghost, she would wander about the palace galleries, rousing herself only to write tearblotted letters to her husband; those bursts of fury over the libels dropped in her way; or the marchings in procession behind the Host in the London streets-these are all symptoms of hysterical derangement, and leave little room, as we think of her, for other feelings than pity. But if Mary was insane, the madness was of a kind which placed her absolutely under her spiritual directors; and the responsibility for her cruelties, if responsibility be anything but a name, rests first with Gardiner, who commenced them, and, secondly, and in a higher degree, with Reginald Pole. Because Pole, with the council, once interfered to prevent an imprudent massacre in Smithfield; because, being legate, he left the common duties of his diocese to subordinates; he is not to be held innocent of atrocities which could neither have been commenced nor continued without his sanction; and he was notoriously the one person in the council whom