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14 | <Metadata name="Content">Secondary Sources: The Divorce of Catherine of Aragon, by JA Froude: Introduction</Metadata>
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15 | <Metadata name="Page_topic">Secondary Sources: The Divorce of Catherine of Aragon, by JA Froude: Introduction</Metadata>
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16 | <Metadata name="Author">Marilee Mongello</Metadata>
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17 | <Metadata name="Title">Secondary Sources: The Divorce of Catherine of Aragon, by JA Froude: Introduction</Metadata>
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34 |
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35 | <table border="0" cellpadding="3" width="100%" height="667">
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36 | <tr>
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37 | <td width="25%" height="29"></td>
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38 | <td valign="top" width="50%" height="29">&nbsp;</td>
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39 | <td width="25%" height="29"></td>
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40 | </tr>
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41 | <tr>
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42 | <td width="25%" height="3"></td>
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43 | <td width="50%" height="3"><font size="3"></font></td>
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44 | <td width="25%" height="3"></td>
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45 | </tr>
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46 | <tr>
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47 | <td width="25%" height="610"></td>
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48 | <td valign="top" width="50%" height="610">
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49 | <p align="center">&nbsp;</p>
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50 | <p align="center"><b><font size="7">The Divorce of<br>Catherine of Aragon</font></b><br>
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51 | <font size="5">by
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52 | JA Froude, 1891</font></p>
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53 | <p align="center">
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54 | <img border="0" src="_httpdocimg_/aragon-new1.jpg" alt="miniature portrait of Katharine of Aragon by Lucas Horenbout" width="325" height="321"></td>
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55 | <td width="25%" height="610"></td>
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56 | </tr>
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57 | </table>
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58 | <blockquote>
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59 | <blockquote>
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60 | <font style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"></font>
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61 | <font face="Times New Roman">
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62 | <div align="left">
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63 | <b>INTRODUCTION</b></div>
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64 | <p align="left">THE mythic element cannot be eliminated out of history. Men
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65 | who play leading parts on the world's stage gather about them the admiration
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66 | of friends and the animosity of disappointed rivals or political enemies.
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67 | The atmosphere becomes charged with legends of what they have said or done
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68 | -- some inventions, some distortions of facts, but rarely or never accurate.
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69 | Their outward acts, being public, cannot be absolutely misstated; their
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70 | motives, being known only to themselves, are an open field for imagination;
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71 | and as the disposition is to believe evil rather than good, the portraits
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72 | drawn may vary indefinitely, according to the sympathies of the describer,
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73 | but are seldom too favourable. The more distinguished a man is the more he
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74 | is talked about. Stories are current about him in his own lifetime,
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75 | guaranteed apparently by the highest authorities; related, insisted upon;
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76 | time, place, and circumstance accurately given -- most of them mere
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77 | malicious lies; yet, if written down, to reappear in memoirs a hundred years
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78 | hence, they are likely to pass for authentic, or at least probable. Even
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79 | where there is no malice, imagination will still be active. People believe
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80 | or disbelieve, repeat or suppress, according to their own inclinations; and
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81 | death, which ends the feuds of unimportant persons, lets loose the tongues
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82 | over the characters of the great. Kings are especially sufferers; when alive
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83 | they hear only flattery; when they are gone men revenge, themselves by
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84 | drawing hideous portraits of them, and the more distinguished they may have
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85 | been the more minutely their weaknesses are dwelt upon. <i>&quot;C'est un plaisir
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86 | indicible,&quot;</i> says Voltaire, <i>&quot;de donner des décrets contre des
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87 | souverains morts quand on ne peut en lancer contre eux de leur vivant de
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88 | peur de perdre ses oreilles.&quot;</i> The dead sovereigns go their way. Their
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89 | real work for good or evil lives after them; but they themselves are where
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90 | the opinions expressed about their character affect them no more. To CÊsar
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91 | or Napoleon it matters nothing what judgment the world passes upon their
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92 | conduct. It is of more importance for the ethical value of history that acts
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93 | which as they are related appear wicked should be duly condemned, that acts
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94 | which are represented as having advanced the welfare of mankind should be
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95 | duly honoured, than that the real character of individuals should be
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96 | correctly appreciated. To appreciate any single man with complete accuracy
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97 | is impossible. To appreciate him even proximately is extremely difficult.
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98 | Rulers of kingdoms may have public reasons for what they do, which at the
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99 | time may be understood or allowed for. Times change, and new interests rise.
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100 | The circumstances no longer exist which would explain their conduct. The
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101 | student looks therefore for an explanation in elements which he thinks he
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102 | understands -- in pride, ambition, fear, avarice, jealousy, or sensuality;
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103 | and, settling the question thus to his own satisfaction, resents or
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104 | ridicules attempts to look for other motives.</p>
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105 | </font><font style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">
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106 | <font style="font-family: Times New Roman">
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107 | <p align="left">So long as his moral judgment is generally correct, he
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108 | inflicts no injury, and he suffers none. Cruelty and lust are proper objects
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109 | of abhorrence; he learns to detest them in studying the Tiberius of Tacitus,
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110 | though the character described by the great Roman historian may have been a
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111 | mere creation of the hatred of the old Roman aristocracy. The manifesto of
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112 | the Prince of Orange was a libel against Philip the Second; but the Philip
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113 | of Protestant tradition is an embodiment of the persecuting spirit of
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114 | Catholic Europe which it would be now useless to disturb. The tendency of
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115 | history is to fall into wholesome moral lines whether they be accurate or
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116 | not, and to interfere with harmless illusions may cause greater errors than
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117 | it aspires to cure. Crowned offenders are arraigned at the tribunal of
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118 | history for the crimes which they are alleged to have committed. It may be
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119 | sometimes shown that the crimes were not crimes at all, that the sufferers
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120 | had deserved their fate, that the severities were useful and essential for
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121 | some great and valuable purpose. But the reader sees in the apology for acts
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122 | which he had regarded as tyrannical a defence of tyranny itself. Preoccupied
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123 | with the received interpretation, he finds deeds excused which he had learnt
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124 | to execrate; and in learning something which, even if true, is of no real
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125 | moment to him, he suffers in the maiming of his perceptions of the
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126 | difference between right and wrong. The whitewashing of the villains of
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127 | tradition is, therefore, justly regarded as waste of labour. If successful,
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128 | it is of imperfect value; if unsuccessful, it is a misuse of industry which
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129 | deserves to be censured. Time is too precious to be squandered over
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130 | paradoxes. The dead are gone; the censure of mankind has written their
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131 | epitaphs, and so they may be left. Their true award will be decided
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132 | elsewhere. </p>
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133 | </font><font face="Times New Roman">
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134 | <p align="left">This is the commonsense verdict. When the work of a man is
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135 | done and ended; when, except indirectly and invisibly, he affects the living
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136 | world no more, the book is closed, the sentence is passed, and there he may
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137 | be allowed to rest. The case is altered, however, when the dead still live
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138 | in their actions, when their principles and the effects of their conduct are
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139 | still vigorous and operative, and the movements which they initiated
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140 | continue to be fought over. It sometimes happens that mighty revolutions can
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141 | be traced to the will and resolution of a single man, and that the conflict
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142 | continues when he is gone. The personal character of such a man becomes then
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143 | of intrinsic importance as an argument for attack or defence. The changes
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144 | introduced by Henry VIII. are still denounced or defended with renewed
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145 | violence; the ashes of a conflict which seemed to have been decided are
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146 | again blown into a flame; and what manner of man Henry was, and what the
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147 | statesmen and churchmen were who stood by him and assisted him in reshaping
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148 | the English constitution, becomes a practical question of our own time. By
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149 | their fruits ye shall know them. A good tree cannot bear evil fruit, neither
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150 | can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Roman Catholics argue from the
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151 | act to the man, and from the man back to the act. The Reformation, they say,
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152 | was a rebellion against an authority appointed by God for the rule of the
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153 | world; it was a wicked act in itself; the author or the authors of it were
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154 | presumably, therefore, themselves wicked; and the worst interpretation of
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155 | their conduct is antecedently probable, because a revolt against the Church
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156 | of Christ could only have originated in depraved hearts. Or again, inverting
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157 | the argument, they say with sufficient plausibility that the sins and crimes
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158 | of the King are acknowledged facts of history; that from so bad a man no
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159 | good thing could ever rise; that Henry was a visible servant of the devil,
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160 | and therefore the Reformation, of which he was the instrument, was the
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161 | devil's work. If the picture drawn of him by his Catholic contemporaries is
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162 | correct, the inference is irresistible. That picture, however, was drawn by
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163 | those whose faith he wounded and whose interests he touched, and therefore
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164 | might be regarded with suspicion. Religious animosity is fertile in calumny,
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165 | because it assumes beforehand that every charge is likely to be true in
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166 | proportion to its enormity, and Catholic writers were credulous of evil when
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167 | laid to the charge of so dangerous an adversary. But the Catholics have not
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168 | been Henry's only accusers; all sorts and sects have combined in the general
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169 | condemnation. The Anglican High Churchman is as bitter against him as
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170 | Reginald Pole himself. He admits and maintains the separation from Rome
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171 | which Henry accomplished for him; but he abhors as heartily as Pole or
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172 | Lingard the internal principles of the Reformation. He resents the control
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173 | of the clergy by the civil power. He demands the restoration of the
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174 | spiritual privileges which Henry and his parliaments took away from them. He
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175 | aspires to the recovery of ecclesiastical independence. He therefore with
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176 | equal triumph points to the blots in Henry's character, and deepens their
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177 | shade with every accusation, proved or unproved, which he can find in
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178 | contemporary records. With him, too, that a charge was alleged at the time
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179 | is evidence sufficient to entitle him to accept it as a fact. </p>
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180 | <p align="left">Again, Protestant writers have been no less unsparing, from
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181 | an imprudent eagerness to detach their cause from a disreputable ally. In
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182 | Elizabeth's time it was a point of honour and loyalty to believe in the
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183 | innocence of her mother. If Anne Boleyn was condemned on forged or false
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184 | evidence to make way for Jane Seymour, what appears so clearly to us must
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185 | have been far clearer to Henry and his Council; of all abominable crimes
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186 | committed by tyrannical princes there was never one more base or cowardly
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187 | than Anne's execution; and in insisting on Anne's guiltlessness they have
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188 | condemned the King, his ministers, and his parliaments. Having discovered
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189 | him to have murdered his wife, they have found him also to have been a
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190 | persecutor of the truth. The Reformation in England was at its outset
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191 | political rather than doctrinal. The avarice and tyranny of the Church
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192 | officials had galled the limbs of the laity. Their first steps were to break
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193 | the chains which fretted them, and to put a final end to the temporal power
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194 | of the clergy. Spiritual liberty came later, and came slowly from the
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195 | constitution of the English mind. Superstition had been familiarised by
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196 | custom, protected by natural reverence, and shielded from inquiry by the
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197 | peculiar horror attaching to unbelief. The nation had been taught from
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198 | immemorial time that to doubt on the mysteries of faith was the worst crime
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199 | which man could commit; and while they were willing to discover that on
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200 | their human side the clergy were but brother mortals of questionable
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201 | character, they drew a distinction between the Church as a national
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202 | institution and the doctrines which it taught. An old creed could not yield
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203 | at once. The King did much; he protected individual Lutherans to the edge of
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204 | rashness. He gave the nation the English Bible. He made Latimer a bishop. He
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205 | took away completely and for ever the power of the prelates to punish what
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206 | they called heresy <i>ex officio</i> and on their own authority; but the
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207 | zeal of the ultra-Protestants broke loose when the restraint was taken off;
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208 | the sense of the country was offended by the irreverence with which objects
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209 | and opinions were treated which they regarded as holy, and Parliament, which
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210 | had put a bit in the mouth of the ecclesiastical courts, was driven to a
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211 | substitute in the Bill of the Six Articles. The advanced section in popular
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212 | movements is usually unwise. The characteristic excellence of the English
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213 | Reformation is, that throughout its course it was restrained by the law, and
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214 | the Six Articles Bill, tempered as it was in the execution, was a
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215 | permissible, and perhaps useful, measure in restraint of intemperance. It
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216 | was the same in Germany. Anabaptists continued to be burnt in Saxony and
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217 | Hesse long after Luther's revolt; Calvin thought the stake a fitting penalty
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218 | for doubts upon the Trinity. John Knox, in Scotland, approved of
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219 | witch-burning and sending mass-priests to the gallows. Henry could not
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220 | disregard the pronounced feeling of the majority of the English people. He
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221 | was himself but one of them, and changed slowly as they changed. Yet
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222 | Protestant tradition has assumed that the bloody whip with six strings was
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223 | an act of arbitrary ferocity. It considers that the King could, and ought
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224 | to, have advanced at once into an understanding of the principle of
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225 | toleration -- toleration of the new opinions, and a more severe repression
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226 | of the old. The Puritans and Evangelicals forgot that he had given them the
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227 | English Testament. They forgot that by setting his foot upon the bishops he
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228 | had opened the pulpits to themselves, and they classed him among the
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229 | persecutors, or else joined in the shallow laughs of the ultramontane
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230 | Catholics at what they pleased to call his inconsistency. </p>
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231 | <p align="left">Thus from all sides a catena of invective has been wrapped
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232 | about Henry's character. The sensible part of the country held its tongue.
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233 | The speakers and writers were the passionate and fanatical of both
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234 | persuasions, and by them the materials were supplied for the Henry VIII. who
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235 | has been brought down to us by history, while the candid and philosophic
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236 | thinkers of the last and present centuries have accepted the traditional
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237 | figure. In their desire to be impartial they have held the balance equal
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238 | between Catholics and Protestants, inclining slightly to the Catholic side,
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239 | from a wish to conciliate a respectable body who had been unjustly maligned
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240 | and oppressed; while they have lavished invectives upon the early Reformers
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241 | violent enough to have satisfied even Pole himself, whose rhetoric has
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242 | formed the base of their declamation. </p>
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243 | <p align="left">Liberal philosophy would have had a bad time of it in
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244 | England, perhaps in all Europe, if there had been no Henry VIII. to take the
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245 | Pope by the throat. But one service writers like Macaulay have undoubtedly
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246 | accomplished. They have shown that it is entirely impossible to separate the
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247 | King from his ministers -- to condemn Henry and to spare Cranmer. Protestant
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248 | writers, from Burnet to Southey, have tried to save the reforming bishops
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249 | and statesmen at Henry's expense. Cranmer, and Latimer, and Ridley have been
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250 | described as saints, though their master was a villain. But the cold
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251 | impartiality of Macaulay has pointed out unanswerably that in all Henry's
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252 | most questionable acts his own ministers and his prelates were active
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253 | participants -- that his Privy Council, his parliaments, his judges on the
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254 | bench, the juries empanelled to try the victims of his tyranny, were equally
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255 | his accomplices; some actively assisting; the rest, if these acts were
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256 | really criminal, permitting themselves to be bribed or terrified into
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257 | acquiescence. The leading men of all descriptions, the nation itself,
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258 | through the guilt of its representatives, were all stained in the same
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259 | detestable colours. It may be said, indeed, that they were worse than the
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260 | King himself. For the King at least may be pleaded the coarse temptations of
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261 | a brutal nature; but what palliation can be urged for the peers and judges
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262 | who sacrificed Anne Boleyn, or More, or Fisher, according to the received
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263 | hypothesis? Not even the excuse of personal fear of an all-powerful despot.
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264 | For Henry had no Janissaries or PrÊtorians to defend his person or execute
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265 | his orders. He had but his hundred yeomen of the guard, not more numerous
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266 | than the ordinary followers of a second-rate noble. The Catholic leaders,
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267 | who were infuriated at his attacks upon the Church, and would if they could
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268 | have introduced foreign armies to dethrone him, insisted on his weakness as
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269 | an encouragement to an easy enterprise. Beyond those few yeomen they urged
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270 | that he had no protection save in the attachment of the subjects whom he was
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271 | alienating. What strange influence was such a king able to exercise that he
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272 | could overawe the lords and gentry of England, the learned professions, the
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273 | municipal authorities? How was it that he was able to compel them to be the
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274 | voluntary instruments of his cruelty? Strangest of all, he seems to have
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275 | needed no protection, but rather to have been personally popular, even among
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276 | those who disapproved his public policy. The air was charged with threats of
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277 | insurrection, but no conspiracy was ever formed to kill him, like those
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278 | which so often menaced the life of his daughter. When the North was in arms
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279 | in the Pilgrimage of Grace, and a question rose among the leaders whether in
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280 | the event of victory the King was to be deposed, it was found that anyone
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281 | who proposed to remove him would be torn in pieces by the people.</p>
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282 | <p align="left">Granting that Henry VIII. was, as Dickens said of him, &quot;a
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283 | spot of blood and grease&quot; on the page of English history, the contemporary
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284 | generation of Englishmen must have been fit subjects of such a sovereign.
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285 | Every country, says Carlyle, gets as good a government as it deserves. The
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286 | England of the Cromwells and the Cranmers, the Howards and the Fitzwilliams,
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287 | the Wriothesleys and the Pagets, seems to have been made of baser materials
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288 | than any land of which mankind has preserved a record. Roman Catholics may
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289 | fairly plead that out of such a race no spiritual reform is likely to have
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290 | arisen which could benefit any human soul. Of all the arguments which can be
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291 | alleged for the return of England to the ancient fold, this is surely the
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292 | most powerful. </p>
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293 | <p align="left">Yet England shows no intention of returning. History may say
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294 | what it pleases, yet England remains tenacious of the liberties which were
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295 | then won for us, and unconscious of the disgrace attaching to them;
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296 | unconscious, also, that the version of the story which it accepts contains
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297 | anything which requires explanation. The legislation of Henry VIII., his
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298 | Privy Council, and his parliaments is the Magna Charta of the modern world.
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299 | The Act of Appeals and the Act of Supremacy asserted the national
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300 | independence, and repudiated the interference of foreign bishop, prince, or
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301 | potentate within the limits of the English empire. The clergy had held for
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302 | many centuries an <i>imperium in imperio.</i> Subject themselves to no law
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303 | but their own, they had asserted an irresponsible jurisdiction over the
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304 | souls and bodies of the people. The Act for the submission of these persons
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305 | reduced them to the common condition of subjects under the control of the
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306 | law. Popes were no longer allowed to dispense with ordinary obligations.
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307 | Clerical privileges were abolished. The spiritual courts, with their
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308 | intolerable varieties of iniquity, were swept away, or coerced within
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309 | rational limits. The religious houses were suppressed, their enormous wealth
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310 | was applied for the defence of the realm, and the worse than Augean dunghill
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311 | of abuses was cleared out with resolute hand. These great results were
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312 | accomplished in the face of papal curses, in defiance of superstitious
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313 | terrors, so despicable when bravely confronted, so terrible while the
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314 | spectre of supernatural power was still unexorcised; in the face, too, of
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315 | earthly perils which might make stout hearts shake, of an infuriated
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316 | priesthood stirring the people into rebellion, of an exasperated Catholic
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317 | Europe threatening fire and sword in the name of the Pope. These were
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318 | distinguished achievements, not likely to have been done at all by an
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319 | infamous prince and infamous ministers; yet done so well that their work is
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320 | incorporated in the constitution almost in the form in which they left it;
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321 | and this mighty revolution, the greatest and most far-reaching in modern
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322 | times, was accomplished without a civil war, by firmness of hand, by the
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323 | action of Parliament, and a resolute enforcement of the law. Nor has the
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324 | effect of Henry's legislation been confined to England. Every great country,
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325 | Catholic or Protestant, has practically adopted its chief provisions. Popes
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326 | no longer pretend a power of deposing princes, absolving subjects from their
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327 | allegiance, or selling dispensations for offences against the law of the
|
---|
328 | land. Appeals are no longer carried from the national courts to the court of
|
---|
329 | the Rota. The papal treasury is no longer supplied by the plunder of the
|
---|
330 | national clergy, collected by resident papal officials. Bishops and
|
---|
331 | convocations have ceased to legislate above and independent of the secular
|
---|
332 | authority, and clerks who commit crimes bear the same penalties as the
|
---|
333 | profane. The high quality of the Reformation statutes is guaranteed by their
|
---|
334 | endurance; and it is hard to suppose that the politicians who conceived and
|
---|
335 | carried them out were men of base conditions. The question is not of the
|
---|
336 | character of the King. If nothing was at issue but the merits or demerits of
|
---|
337 | a single sovereign, he might be left where he lies. The question is of the
|
---|
338 | characters of the reforming leaders, who, jointly with the King, were the
|
---|
339 | authors of this tremendous and beneficent revolution. Henry in all that he
|
---|
340 | did acted with these men and through them. Is it possible to believe that
|
---|
341 | qualities so opposite as the popular theory requires existed in the same
|
---|
342 | persons? Is it possible, for instance, that Cranmer, who composed or
|
---|
343 | translated the prayers in the English Liturgy, was the miserable wretch
|
---|
344 | which Macaulay or Lingard describes? The era of Elizabeth was the outspring
|
---|
345 | of the movement which Henry VIII. commenced, and it was the grandest period
|
---|
346 | in English history. Is it credible that so invigorating a stream flowed from
|
---|
347 | a polluted fountain? </p>
|
---|
348 | <p align="left">Before accepting a conclusion so disgraceful -- before
|
---|
349 | consigning the men who achieved so great a victory, and risked and lost
|
---|
350 | their lives in the battle, to final execration -- it is at least permissible
|
---|
351 | to pause. The difficulty can only be made light of by impatience, by
|
---|
352 | prejudice, or by want of thought. To me at any rate, who wished to discover
|
---|
353 | what the real history of the Reformation had been, it seemed so
|
---|
354 | considerable, that, dismissing the polemical invectives of later writers, I
|
---|
355 | turned to the accounts of their conduct, which had been left behind by the
|
---|
356 | authors of it themselves. Among the fortunate anomalies of the situation,
|
---|
357 | Henry departed from previous custom in holding annual parliaments. At every
|
---|
358 | step which he took, either in the rearrangement of the realm or in his own
|
---|
359 | domestic confusions, he took the Lords and Commons into his council, and
|
---|
360 | ventured nothing without their consent. The preambles of the principal
|
---|
361 | statutes contain a narrative clear and precise of the motives of everything
|
---|
362 | that he did -- a narrative which at least may have been a true one, which
|
---|
363 | was not put forward as a defence, but was a mere explanation of acts which
|
---|
364 | on the surface seemed violent and arbitrary. If the explanation is correct,
|
---|
365 | it shows us a time of complications and difficulties, which, on the whole,
|
---|
366 | were successfully encountered. It shows us severe measures severely
|
---|
367 | executed, but directed to public and necessary purpose, involving no
|
---|
368 | sycophancy or baseness, no mean subservience to capricious tyranny, but such
|
---|
369 | as were the natural safeguards during a dangerous convulsion, or remedies of
|
---|
370 | accidents incidental to hereditary monarchy. The story told is clear and
|
---|
371 | distinct; pitiless, but not dishonourable. Between the lines can be read the
|
---|
372 | storm of popular passions, the beating of the national heart when it was
|
---|
373 | stirred to its inmost depths. We see established institutions rooted out,
|
---|
374 | idols overthrown, and injured worshippers exasperated to fury; the air, as
|
---|
375 | was inevitable at such a crisis, full of flying rumours, some lies, some
|
---|
376 | half lies with fragments of truth attaching to them, bred of malice or dizzy
|
---|
377 | brains, the materials out of which the popular tradition has been built. It
|
---|
378 | was no insular revolution. The stake played for was the liberty of mankind.
|
---|
379 | All Europe was watching England, for England was the hinge on which the fate
|
---|
380 | of the Reformation turned. Could it be crushed in England, the Catholics
|
---|
381 | were assured of universal victory, and therefore tongues and pens were busy
|
---|
382 | everywhere throughout Christendom, Catholic imagination representing Henry
|
---|
383 | as an incarnate Satan, for which, it must be admitted, his domestic
|
---|
384 | misadventures gave them tempting opportunities. So thick fell the showers of
|
---|
385 | calumny, that, bold as he was, he at times himself winced under it. He
|
---|
386 | complained to Charles V. of the libels circulated about him in France and
|
---|
387 | Flanders. Charles, too, had suffered in the same way. He answered,
|
---|
388 | humorously, that &quot;if kings gave occasion to be spoken about they would be
|
---|
389 | spoken about; kings were not kings of tongues.&quot; Henry VIII. was an easy mark
|
---|
390 | for slander; but if all slanders are to pass as true which are flung at
|
---|
391 | public men whose policy provides them with an army of calumniators, the
|
---|
392 | reputation of the best of them is but a spotted rag. The clergy were the
|
---|
393 | vocal part of Europe. They had the pulpits; they had the writing of the
|
---|
394 | books and pamphlets. They had cause to hate Henry, and they hated him with
|
---|
395 | an intensity of passion which could not have been more savage had he been
|
---|
396 | the devil himself. But there are men whose enmity is a compliment. They
|
---|
397 | libelled Luther almost as freely as they libelled the English king. I
|
---|
398 | myself, after reading and weighing all that I could find forty years ago in
|
---|
399 | prints or manuscripts, concluded that the real facts of Henry's conduct were
|
---|
400 | to be found in the Statute Book and nowhere else; that the preambles of the
|
---|
401 | Acts of Parliament did actually represent the sincere opinion about him of
|
---|
402 | the educated laymen of England, who had better opportunities of knowing the
|
---|
403 | truth than we can have, and that a modern Englishman may be allowed to
|
---|
404 | follow their authority without the imputation of paradox or folly. </p>
|
---|
405 | <p align="left">With this impression, and with the Statute Book for a guide,
|
---|
406 | I wrote the opening portion of my &quot;History of England, from the Fall of
|
---|
407 | Wolsey to the Defeat of the Armada.&quot; The Published criticisms upon my work
|
---|
408 | were generally unfavourable. Catholic writers inherited the traditions and
|
---|
409 | the temper of their forefathers, and believed the eatena of their own
|
---|
410 | historians. Protestants could not believe in a defence of the author of the
|
---|
411 | Six Articles Bill. Secular reviewers were easily witty at the &quot;model
|
---|
412 | husband&quot; whom they supposed me to be imposing upon them, and resented the
|
---|
413 | interference with a version of the story authenticated by great names among
|
---|
414 | my predecessors. The public, however, took an interest in what I had to say.
|
---|
415 | The book was read, and continues to be read; at the close of my life,
|
---|
416 | therefore, I have to go once more over the ground; and as I am still
|
---|
417 | substantially alone in maintaining an opinion considered heretical by
|
---|
418 | orthodox historians, I have to decide in what condition I am to leave my
|
---|
419 | work behind me. In the thirty-five years which have elapsed since those
|
---|
420 | early volumes appeared large additions have been made to the materials for
|
---|
421 | the history of the period. The vast collection of manuscripts in the English
|
---|
422 | Record Office, which then were only partially accessible, have been sorted,
|
---|
423 | catalogued, and calendared by the industry of my friends Mr. Brewer and Mr.
|
---|
424 | Gairdner. Private collections in great English houses have been examined and
|
---|
425 | reported on by the Historical Manuscripts Commission. Foreign archives at
|
---|
426 | Paris, Simancas, Rome, Venice, Vienna, and Brussels have been searched to
|
---|
427 | some extent by myself, but in a far larger degree by able scholars specially
|
---|
428 | appointed for the purpose. In the despatches, thus made accessible, of the
|
---|
429 | foreign ambassadors resident at Henry's court we have the invaluable, if not
|
---|
430 | impartial, comments of trained and responsible politicians who related from
|
---|
431 | day to day the events which were passing under their eyes. Being Catholics,
|
---|
432 | and representatives of Catholic powers, they were bitterly hostile to the
|
---|
433 | Reformation -- hostile alike on political grounds and religious -- and
|
---|
434 | therefore inclined to believe and report the worst that could be said both
|
---|
435 | of it and of its authors. But they wrote before the traditions had become
|
---|
436 | stereotyped; their accounts are fresh and original; and, being men of the
|
---|
437 | world, and writing in confidence to their own masters, they were as
|
---|
438 | veracious as their prejudices would allow them to be. Unconsciously, too,
|
---|
439 | they render another service of infinite importance. Being in close
|
---|
440 | communication with the disaffected English peers and clergy, and engaged
|
---|
441 | with them secretly in promoting rebellion, the ministers of Charles V.
|
---|
442 | reveal with extraordinary clearness the dangers with which the Government
|
---|
443 | had to deal. They make it perfectly plain that the Act of Supremacy, with
|
---|
444 | its stern and peremptory demands, was no more than a legitimate and
|
---|
445 | necessary defence against organised treason. </p>
|
---|
446 | <p align="left">It was thus inevitable that much would have to be added to
|
---|
447 | what I had already published. When a microscope is applied to the petal of a
|
---|
448 | flower or the wing of an insect, simple outlines and simple surfaces are
|
---|
449 | resolved into complex organisms with curious and beautiful details. The
|
---|
450 | effect of these despatches is precisely the same -- we see with the eyes, we
|
---|
451 | hear with the ears, of men who were living parts of the scenes which they
|
---|
452 | describe. Stories afterwards elaborated into established facts we trace to
|
---|
453 | their origin in rumours of the hour; we read innumerable anecdotes, some
|
---|
454 | with the clear stamp of truth on them, many mere creations of passing wit or
|
---|
455 | malice, no more authentic than the thousands like them which circulate in
|
---|
456 | modern society, guaranteed by the positive assertions of personal witnesses,
|
---|
457 | yet visibly recognisable as lies. Through all this the reader must pick his
|
---|
458 | way and use his own judgment. He knows that many things are false which are
|
---|
459 | reported about his own eminent contemporaries. He may be equally certain
|
---|
460 | that lies were told as freely then as now. He will probably allow his
|
---|
461 | sympathies to guide him. He will accept as fact what fits in with his creed
|
---|
462 | or his theory. He will share the general disposition to believe evil,
|
---|
463 | especially about kings and great men. The exaggerated homage paid to
|
---|
464 | princes, when they are alive, has to be compensated by suspecting the worst
|
---|
465 | of them as soon as they are gone. But the perusal of all these documents
|
---|
466 | leaves the broad aspect of the story, in my opinion, precisely where it was.
|
---|
467 | It is made more interesting by the greater fulness of particulars; it is
|
---|
468 | made more vivid by the clear view which they afford of individual persons
|
---|
469 | who before were no more than names. But I think now, as I thought forty
|
---|
470 | years ago, that through the confusions and contradictions of a stormy and
|
---|
471 | angry time, the statutebook remains the safest guide to follow. If there be
|
---|
472 | any difference, it is that actions which till explained appeared
|
---|
473 | gratuitously cruel, like the execution of Bishop Fisher, are seen beyond
|
---|
474 | dispute to have been reasonable and just. Bishop Fisher is proved by the
|
---|
475 | words of the Spanish Ambassador himself to have invited and pressed the
|
---|
476 | introduction of a foreign Catholic army into England in the Pope's interest.
|
---|
477 | </p>
|
---|
478 | <p align="left">Thus I find nothing to withdraw in what I then wrote, and
|
---|
479 | little to alter save in correcting some small errors of trivial moment; but,
|
---|
480 | on the other hand, I find much to add; and the question rises in what way I
|
---|
481 | had better do it, with fair consideration for those who have bought the book
|
---|
482 | as it stands. To take the work to pieces and introduce the new material into
|
---|
483 | the text or the notes will impose a necessity of buying a new copy, or of
|
---|
484 | being left with an inferior one, on the many friends who least deserve to be
|
---|
485 | so treated. I have concluded, therefore, on writing an additional volume,
|
---|
486 | where such parts of the story as have had important light thrown upon them
|
---|
487 | can be told over again in ampler form. The body of the history I leave as it
|
---|
488 | stands. It contains what I believe to be a true account of the time, of the
|
---|
489 | immediate causes which brought about the changes of the sixteenth century,
|
---|
490 | and of the characters and principles of the actors in them. I have only to
|
---|
491 | fill up certain deficiencies and throw light into places hitherto left dark.
|
---|
492 | For the rest, I do not pretend to impartiality. I believe the Reformation to
|
---|
493 | have been the greatest incident in English history; the root and source of
|
---|
494 | the expansive force which has spread the Anglo-Saxon race over the globe,
|
---|
495 | and imprinted the English genius and character on the constitution of
|
---|
496 | mankind. I am unwilling to believe more evil than I can help of my
|
---|
497 | countrymen who accomplished so beneficent a work, and in a book written with
|
---|
498 | such convictions the mythical element cannot be wholly wanting. Even things
|
---|
499 | which immediately surround us, things which we see and touch, we do not
|
---|
500 | perceive as they are; we perceive only our own sensations, and our
|
---|
501 | sensations are a combined result of certain objects and of the faculties
|
---|
502 | which apprehend them. Something of ourselves must always be intermixed
|
---|
503 | before knowledge can reach us; in every conclusion which we form, in every
|
---|
504 | conviction which is forced upon us, there is still a subjective element. It
|
---|
505 | is so in physical science. It is so in art. It is so in our speculations on
|
---|
506 | our own nature. It is so in religion. It is so even in pure mathematics. </p>
|
---|
507 | <p align="left">The curved and rectilineal figures on which we reason are
|
---|
508 | our own creation, and have no existence exterior to the reasoning mind. Most
|
---|
509 | of all is it so in history, where we have no direct perceptions to help us,
|
---|
510 | but are dependent on the narratives of others whose beliefs were necessarily
|
---|
511 | influenced by their personal dispositions. The first duty of an historian is
|
---|
512 | to be on his guard against his own sympathies; but he cannot wholly escape
|
---|
513 | their influence. In judging of the truth of particular statements, the
|
---|
514 | conclusion which he will form must be based partly upon evidence and partly
|
---|
515 | upon what he conceives to be likely or unlikely. In a court of justice,
|
---|
516 | where witnesses can be cross-examined, uncertain elements can in some degree
|
---|
517 | be eliminated; yet, after all care is taken, judges and juries have been
|
---|
518 | often blinded by passion and prejudice. When we have nothing before us but
|
---|
519 | rumours set in circulation, we know not by whom or on what authority, and we
|
---|
520 | are driven to consider probabilities, the Protestant, who believes the
|
---|
521 | Reformation to have been a victory of truth over falsehood, cannot come to
|
---|
522 | the same conclusion as the Catholic, who believes it to have been a curse,
|
---|
523 | or perhaps to the same conclusion as the indifferent philosopher, who
|
---|
524 | regards Protestant and Catholic alike with benevolent contempt. For myself,
|
---|
525 | I can but say that I have discriminated with such faculty as I possess. I
|
---|
526 | have kept back nothing. I have consciously distorted nothing which conflicts
|
---|
527 | with my own views. I have accepted what seems sufficiently proved. I have
|
---|
528 | rejected what I can find no support for save in hearsay or prejudice. But
|
---|
529 | whether accepting or rejecting, I have endeavoured to follow the rule that
|
---|
530 | incidents must not be lightly accepted as authentic which are inconsistent
|
---|
531 | with the universal laws of human nature, and that to disprove a calumny it
|
---|
532 | is sufficient to show that there is no valid witness for it. </p>
|
---|
533 | <p align="left">Finally, I do not allow myself to be tempted into
|
---|
534 | controversy with particular writers whose views disagree with my own. To
|
---|
535 | contradict in detail every hostile version of Henry VIII.'s or his
|
---|
536 | ministers' conduct would be as tedious as it would be irritating and
|
---|
537 | unprofitable. My censors have been so many that a reply to them all is
|
---|
538 | impossible, and so distinguished that a selection would be invidious. Those
|
---|
539 | who wish for invectives against the King, or Cranmer, or Cromwell, can find
|
---|
540 | them everywhere, from school manuals to the grave works of elaborate
|
---|
541 | historians. For me, it is enough to tell the story as it presents itself to
|
---|
542 | my own mind, and to leave what appears to me to be the truth to speak for
|
---|
543 | itself. </p>
|
---|
544 | <p align="left">The English nation throughout their long history have borne
|
---|
545 | an honourable reputation. Luther quotes a saying of Maximilian that there
|
---|
546 | were three real sovereigns in Europe -- the Emperor, the King of France, and
|
---|
547 | the King of England. The Emperor was a king of kings. If he gave an order to
|
---|
548 | the princes of the Reich, they obeyed or disobeyed as they pleased. The King
|
---|
549 | of France was a king of asses. He ordered about his people at his will, and
|
---|
550 | they obeyed like asses. The King of England was king of a loyal nation who
|
---|
551 | obeyed him with heart and mind as loyal and faithful subjects. This was the
|
---|
552 | character borne in the world by the fathers of the generation whom popular
|
---|
553 | historians represent as having dishonoured themselves by subserviency to a
|
---|
554 | bloodthirsty tyrant. It is at least possible that popular historians have
|
---|
555 | been mistaken, and that the subjects of Henry VIII. were neither much better
|
---|
556 | nor much worse than those who preceded or came after them. </p>
|
---|
557 | <hr>
|
---|
558 | <p align="left"><font size="2">From <i>The Divorce of Catherine of Aragon:
|
---|
559 | The Story as Told by the Imperial Ambassadors Resident at the Court of Henry
|
---|
560 | VIII</i> by J.A. Froude.&nbsp; Published in New York by C. Scribner's Sons,
|
---|
561 | 1891.</font></p>
|
---|
562 | </blockquote>
|
---|
563 | </blockquote>
|
---|
564 |
|
---|
565 | <p align="center"><a href="_httpextlink_&amp;rl=1&amp;href=http:%2f%2fenglishhistory.net%2ftudor%2ffroudeone.html">
|
---|
566 | <font size="2">to Chapter One</font></a></p>
|
---|
567 | <p align="center"><a href="_httpextlink_&amp;rl=1&amp;href=http:%2f%2fenglishhistory.net%2ftudor%2fsecondary.html">
|
---|
568 | <font size="2">to Secondary Sources</font></a></p>
|
---|
569 | <p align="center">
|
---|
570 | <a href="_httpextlink_&amp;rl=1&amp;href=http:%2f%2fenglishhistory.net%2ftudor%2fmonarchs%2faragon.html"><font size="2">to
|
---|
571 | Katharine of Aragon website</font></a></p>
|
---|
572 | </font>
|
---|
573 | </font>
|
---|
574 | <blockquote>
|
---|
575 | <blockquote>
|
---|
576 | <font style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">
|
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577 | <font face="Times New Roman">
|
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578 | </font><font style="FONT-FAMILY: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">
|
---|
579 | </font>
|
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580 | <p class="3text" align="left">&nbsp;</p>
|
---|
581 | </font>
|
---|
582 | </blockquote>
|
---|
583 | </blockquote>
|
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584 |
|
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585 |
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586 |
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587 | <!-- text below generated by server. PLEASE REMOVE --><!-- Counter/Statistics data collection code --><script language="JavaScript" src="_httpextlink_&amp;rl=0&amp;href=http:%2f%2fhostingprod.com%2fjs%5fsource%2fgeov2.js"></script><script language="javascript">geovisit();</script><noscript><img src="_httpextlink_&amp;rl=0&amp;el=direct&amp;href=http://visit.webhosting.yahoo.com/visit.gif?us1108082630" alt="setstats" border="0" width="1" height="1"></noscript>
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589 | </Content>
|
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590 | </Section>
|
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591 | </Archive>
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