Albert Frederick Pollard

“ The consequences to himself of a demise of the Crown were only too clear; his ambition had led him into so many crimes and had made him so many enemies that his life was secure only so long as he controlled the government and prevented the administration of justice. There was no room for repentance; he could expect no mercy when his foes were once in a position to bring him to book. The accession of Mary would almost inevitably be followed by his own attainder; and the prospect drove him to make one last desperate bid for life and for power. ”

“ Running himself the universal race for wealth, he yet held it to be his special office and duty to hear poor men's complaints, to redress their wrongs, and to relieve their oppression. He strove to stay the economic revolution which was accumulating vast estates in the hands of the few, and turning the many into landless labourers or homeless vagrants; but his only success was an Act of Parliament whereby he gave his tenants legal security against eviction by himself. ”

“ Scotland, now little more than a province of France, had no desire to see a half-Spanish princess on the English throne, and France was even more reluctant to witness the transference of England's resources to the hands of Charles V. The Emperor was fully occupied with the French war, and Mary had nothing on which to rely except the temper of England. Northumberland's endeavour to alter the Succession might well seem worth the making. He could appeal to the fact that no woman had sat on the English throne, and that the only attempt to place one there had been followed by civil war. ”

“ The tendency towards religious change, which Henry VIII had failed to stop, was still strong, and Warwick threw himself into the stream. Privately he seems, if he believed in anything, to have favoured Catholic doctrines; and the consciousness of his insincerity made him all the louder in his professions of Protestant zeal, and all the more eager to push to extremes the principles of the Reformers. He became, in Hooper's words, "a most holy and fearless instrument of the Word of God." ”

“ No one could better turn to his own purposes the passions and interests of others, or throw away his tools with less compunction when they had served his end. Masking profound ambitions under the guise of the utmost deference to his colleagues, he never at the time of his greatest influence attempted to claim a position of formal superiority. Afterwards, when he was practically ruler of England, he sat only fourth in the order of precedence at the Council-board; and content with the substance of power, he eschewed such titles as Protector of the Realm or Governor of the King's person. ”

“ The alliance of England, Scotland, and France was a combination which Charles could not afford to attack, more particularly when the league between Henry II, Maurice of Saxony, and the reviving Protestant Princes in Germany gave him more than enough to do to defend himself. France, the persecutor of heresy at home, lent her support to the English government while it pursued its campaign against Roman doctrine, just as she had countenanced Henry VIII while he was uprooting the Roman jurisdiction. ”

“ Doctrinal unity was in fact incompatible with that appeal to private judgment which was the essence of the Reformation, and Somerset's government was wise in limiting its efforts to securing an outward and limited uniformity.
Even this was sufficiently difficult. Eager Reformers began at once to agitate for the removal of those parts of the Book of Common Prayer which earned Gardiner's commendation, while Catholics resented its departure from the standard of orthodoxy set up by the Six Articles. Religious liberty was in itself distasteful to the majority ”

“ All English strongholds in Scotland were to be given up without compensation; England bound itself to make no war on that country unless fresh grounds of offence were given, and condoned the marriage of Mary to the Dauphin of France. The net result was the abandonment of the whole Tudor policy towards Scotland, the destruction of English influence across the Border, and the establishment of French control in Edinburgh. ”

“ Charles V, moreover, although he disliked the religious changes in England and declined to take any active part against the Scots, gave the French to understand that he considered the Scots his enemies. Somerset, meanwhile, did his best to keep on friendly terms with Charles, and sought to mitigate his dislike of the First Act of Uniformity by granting the Princess Mary a dispensation to hear mass in private. Unless the Emperor's attention was absorbed elsewhere, a French attack on England might provoke an imperial onslaught on France. ”

“ There arose a master of prophetic invective in Latimer and a master of liturgies in Cranmer, but no one meet to be compared with the great religious thinkers of the world. Hence the influence of English Reformers on foreign Churches was even less than that of foreign divines in England. Anglicans never sought to proselytise other Christian Churches, nor England to wage other than defensive wars of religion; in Ireland and Scotland, which appear to afford exceptions, the religious motive was always subordinate to a political end. ”

“ This comparative moderation, while consonant with the Protector's own inclination, was also rendered advisable by the critical condition of England's relations with foreign powers. Any violent breach with Catholicism, any bitter persecution of its adherents, would have turned into open enmity the lukewarm friendship of Charles V, precipitated that hostile coalition of Catholic Europe for which the Pope and Cardinal Pole were intriguing, and rendered impossible the union with Scotland on which the Tudors had set their hearts. ”

“ A few schools were founded by private benefactors, and it is probable that education gained on the whole by its emancipation from the control of the Church. But it was not until the closing years of the reign that the government made a serious endeavour to secure the adequate maintenance of those schools whose foundations had been shaken by the abolition of chantries; and Edward VI's services to education consisted principally in assigning a fixed annual pension to schools whose endowments of much greater potential value had been appropriated. ”

“ Land, in the eyes of its military feudal lord, was valuable less as a source of money than as a source of men; it was not rent but service that he required, and he was seldom tempted to reduce his service-roll in order to swell his revenues. But the Black Death and the Peasants' Revolt, co-operating with more silent and gradual causes, weakened the mutual bonds of interest between landlord and tenant, while the extension of commerce produced a wealthy class which slowly gained admission into governing circles and established itself on the land. ”

“ This struggle was fought over the Protector's attitude towards the momentous social revolution of the sixteenth century, a movement which lay at the root of most of the internal difficulties of Tudor governments, and vitally affected the history of the reign of Edward VI. It was in effect the breaking up of the foundations upon which society had been based for five hundred years, the substitution of competition for custom as the regulating principle of the relations between the various classes of the community.
Social organisation in medieval times was essentially conservative ”

“ The penalties attached to its non-observance by the First Act of Uniformity were milder than those imposed by any of the subsequent Acts, and they were limited to the clergy. Neither in the First Act of Uniformity nor in the First Book of Common Prayer is there any attempt to impose a doctrinal test or dogmatic unity. All that was enforced was a uniformity of service; and even here considerable latitude was allowed in details like vestments and ritual. A few months later a licensed preacher declared at St Paul's, that faith was not to be "coacted," but that every man might believe as he would. ”

“ Sir John Mason, for instance, an able and educated politician, described his repeal of Henry VIII's laws concerning verbal treason as the worst act done in that generation; and in accordance with this view a bill was introduced declaring it felony to preach and hold "divers" opinions. Differences about the definition of the offence apparently caused this bill to fail; but measures sufficiently drastic were passed to stifle any opposition to the new government. Ministers sought to perpetuate their tenure of office by making it high treason for anyone to attempt to turn them out. ”

“ Cranmer himself had for some years been engaged upon a reform of the Church services which developed into the First Book of Common Prayer, and the real break in religious policy came, not at the accession of Edward VI, but after the fall of Somerset and the expulsion of the Catholics from the Council. The statute procured by Henry VIII from Parliament, which enabled his son, on coming of age, to annul all Acts passed during his minority, was probably due to an overweening sense of the importance of the kingly office ”

“ The Council and the governing classes generally were in no mood for measures of conciliation, and disasters abroad and disorders at home afforded a good pretext for removing the man to whom it was convenient to ascribe them.
The malcontents found an excellent party-leader in Warwick; few men in English history have shown a greater capacity for subtle intrigue , or smaller respect for principle. A brilliant soldier, a skilful diplomatist, and an accomplished man of the world, he was described at the time as the modern Alcibiades. ”

“ The Royal Supremacy was perhaps somewhat nakedly asserted when, at the commencement of the reign, Bishops renewed their commissions to exercise spiritual jurisdiction, and when in the first session of Parliament the form of episcopal election was exchanged for direct nomination by royal letters patent. But the former practice had been enforced, and the latter suggested, in the reign of Henry VIII, and Somerset secured a great deal more episcopal co-operation than did either Northumberland or Elizabeth. ”

“ His enemies, such as Warwick and Southampton, who seem to have been the prime movers in Seymour's ruin, perceived more clearly than Somerset, how fatally his brother's death would undermine his own position and alienate popular favour in the struggle on which he had now embarked in the cause of the poor against the great majority of the Council and of the ruling classes in England. ”

“ Yet another method of extracting the utmost monetary value from the land was the raising of rents; it had rarely occurred to the uncommercial feudal lord to interfere with the ancient service or rent which his tenants paid for their lands, but respect for immemorial custom counted for little against the retired trader's habit of demanding the highest price for his goods. The direct result of these tendencies was to pauperise a large section of the community, though the aggregate wealth of the whole was increased. ”

“ That the majority of the nation disliked both these changes and their method may perhaps be assumed, but the men of the Old Learning made little stand against the men of the New. In a revolution the first advantage generally lies with the aggressors. The Catholics had not been rallied, nor the Counter-Reformation organised, and their natural leaders had been silenced for their opposition to the government. But there were deeper causes at work; the Catholic Church had latterly denied to the laity any voice in the determination of Catholic doctrine ”

“ Parliament was more complaisant in religious matters, and passed the Second Act of Uniformity, besides another Act removing from the marriage of priests the stigma hitherto attaching to the practice as being only a licensed evil. The Second Act of Uniformity extended the scope of religious persecution by imposing penalties for recusancy upon laymen ”

“ Blackness was taken by assault; Boulogneberg was dismantled and abandoned by the English; and the French forces sat down to besiege Boulogne.
The success of the French was mainly due to England's domestic troubles. Levies which had been raised for service in France were diverted to Devon or Norfolk. Fortunately, both these revolts were crushed before the war with France had lasted a fortnight. The rising in the west, for which religion had furnished a pretext and enclosures the material, died away after the fight at the Barns of Crediton, and the relief of Exeter by Russell on August 9. ”

“ It consisted of the sixteen executors, except Somerset and Southampton, and the twelve assistants named by Henry VIII, but they now held office, not in virtue of their appointment by Henry's will, but of their commission from the boy-King At the same time the Protector received a fresh commission. He was no longer bound to act by the advice of his colleagues; he was empowered to summon such councillors as he thought convenient, and to add to their numbers at will. No longer the first among equals, he became King in everything but name and prestige ”

“ In November and December Convocation recommended the administration of the Sacrament in both kinds, and liberty for priests to marry; but the latter change did not receive parliamentary sanction until the following year. The bill against " unreverent " speaking of the Sacrament was, by skilful parliamentary strategy which seems to have been due to Somerset, combined with one for its administration in both kinds, the motive being obviously to induce Catholics to vote for it for the sake of the first part, and Reformers for the sake of the second. ”

“ Parliament met on the following day, and it soon proved that Northumberland had been wise in his generation. Parliament could not restore Somerset to life, but it could at least ensure that no one should again be condemned by similar methods. It rejected a new treason bill designed to supply the place of the former expiring Act, and passed another providing that accusations must be made within three months of the offence, and that the prisoner must be confronted with two witnesses to his crime. ”

“ The public at large were put in mind of Somerset's ill-success abroad; the landed, gentry needed no reminder of his attempts to check their enclosures. Protestant zealots recalled his slackness in dealing with Mass-priests, and Catholics hated his Prayer Book. Hopes were held out to all; Gardiner in the Tower expected his release; Bonner appealed against his deprivation; and Southampton made sure of being restored to the woolsack. ”

“ The clamour raised by the advent of this foreign legion has somewhat obscured the comparative insignificance of its influence on the development of the English Church. The continental Reformers came too late to affect the moderate changes introduced during Somerset's protectorate, and even the Second Prayer-book of Edward VI owed less to their persuasions than has often been supposed. England never became Lutheran, Zwinglian, or Calvinistic ”