The New World (Complete Edition). Winston Churchill

gentlemen and merchants. The Reformation is sometimes blamed for all the evils attributed to the modern economic system. Yet these evils, if such they were, had existed long before Henry VIII began to doubt the validity of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. Thomas More, who did not live to see events run their course, had already in Utopia outlined to his contemporaries the sharp features of the new economy.

      In the field of religious belief the Reformation brought profound change. The Bible now acquired a new and far-reaching authority. The older generation considered that Holy Writ was dangerous in the hands of the unlearned and should only be read by priests. “I never read the Scripture,” said the Duke of Norfolk, “nor never will read it. It was merry in England afore the new learning came up: yea, I would all things were as hath been in time past.” But complete printed Bibles, translated into English by Tyndal and Coverdale, had appeared for the first time late in the autumn of 1535, and were now running through several editions. The Government enjoined the clergy to encourage Bible-reading, and there were well founded rumours that Thomas Cromwell, the King’s vicegerent in spiritual affairs, had helped to promote the translation. Preaching, even by licensed preachers, was altogether suspended until Michaelmas, except in the presence of a bishop, and in August 1536 Cromwell ordered the Paternoster and Commandments to be taught in the mother tongue instead of in Latin. Next year The Institution of a Christian Man, prepared by Cranmer for popular edification, displayed a distinct leaning to the New Opinion. Here indeed was a change and a revelation. The country folk were deeply agitated, particularly in the fiercely Catholic and economically backward North.

      In the autumn, when the new taxes came to be assessed after Michaelmas, farmers and yokels collected in large numbers throughout the North of England and Lincolnshire, swearing to resist the taxes and maintain the old order in the Church. The revolt, which took the name of “the Pilgrimage of Grace”, was spontaneous. Its leader, a lawyer named Robert Aske, had his position thrust upon him. The nobles and higher clergy took no part. Although the rebels greatly outnumbered the loyal levies, and the King had no regular troops except the Yeomen of the Guard, Henry at once showed what Wolsey had called his “royal stomach”. He refused to compromise with rebellion. When his Commissioners of Taxes were taken prisoners by the rebels in Lincolnshire he sent a terrifying message: “This assembly is so heinous that unless you can persuade them to disperse and send a hundred of their ringleaders with halters round their necks to the Lieutenant to do with them as shall be thought best... we see no way to save them. For we have already sent... the Duke of Suffolk, our Lieutenant,... with a hundred thousand men, horse and foot, in harness, with munitions and artillery.... We have also appointed another great army to invade their territories as soon as they are out of them, and to burn, spoil, and destroy their goods, wives, and children with all extremity.”

      After this the Commissioners reported that the common people as a whole were prepared to recognise the King as Supreme Head of the Church and to allow him for this once to have the first-fruits and the tenths from the clergy, together with the subsidy he was demanding. “But,” they said, “he shall have no more money of the commons during his life, nor shall he suppress no more abbeys.” They still protested against the King’s choice of counsellors, and demanded the surrender of Cromwell, Cranmer, and four bishops who were suspected of heresy.

      The King replied with vigour. “Concerning choosing of Counsellors, I never have read, heard, nor known that princes’ counsellors and prelates should be appointed by rude and ignorant common people.... How presumptuous then are ye, the rude commons of one shire, and that one of the most brute and beastly of the whole realm, and of least experience, to find fault with your Prince. ...As to the suppression of religious houses, know that this is granted us by all the nobles, spiritual and temporal, of this our realm, by Act of Parliament, and not set forth by any counsellors upon their mere will and phantasy as you full falsely would persuade our realm.” If they did not submit, the King added, they with their wives and children would be utterly destroyed by the sword. The Yorkshire rebels had much the same aims, as their oath shows: “For the love I do bear unto Almighty God’s faith I swear... to expulse all villein blood and evil counsels against the Commonwealth from His Grace and his Privy Council, to keep afore me the Cross of Christ, in my heart His faith, the restitution of the Church, the suppression of these heretics and their opinions.”

      In early 1537 the rebellion collapsed as quickly as it had arisen, but Henry determined to make examples of the ringleaders. Seventy were hanged as traitors at Carlisle Assizes alone, and when Norfolk, the victorious general, seemed inclined to clemency the King sent word that he desired a large number of executions. Altogether some two hundred and fifty of the insurgents were put to death.

      The rebels had objected to the taxes and the suppression of the monasteries. Henry now replied by tightening up the collection of taxes, and began suppressing the larger monasteries the moment the revolt was put down. As a further blow to the old school the Government commissioned in Paris a great printing of English Bibles, more sumptuous than any previous edition, and in September 1538 directed that every parish in the country should purchase a Bible of the largest volume in English, to be set up in each church, where the parishioners might most commodiously resort to the same and read it. Six copies were set up in St Paul’s, in the City of London, and multitudes thronged the cathedral all day to read them, especially, we are told, when they could get any person that had an audible voice to read aloud. This Bible has remained the basis of all later editions, including the Authorised Version prepared in the reign of James I.

      Up to this point Thomas Cromwell had consistently walked with success. But he now began to encounter the conservatism of the older nobility. They were more than content with the political revolution, but they wanted the Reformation to stop with the assertion of the royal supremacy, and they opposed the doctrinal changes of Cranmer and his following. The Duke of Norfolk headed the reaction, and the King, who was rigidly orthodox, except where his lusts or interests were stirred, agreed with it. Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester and later Queen Mary’s adviser, was the brain behind the Norfolk party. Its leaders took pains to point out that France and the Emperor might invade England and execute the sentence of deposition which the Pope had pronounced. The King himself was anxious to avoid a total religious cleavage with the European Powers. The Catholic front seemed overwhelmingly strong, and the only allies which Cromwell could find abroad were minor German princelings. With these large issues in their keeping, Norfolk’s faction vigilantly awaited their chance. It came, like so much of the action of this memorable reign, as a result of the conjugal affairs of the King.

      As Henry refused to compromise with the Continental Lutherans on matters of doctrine or modifications of the Church services, Cromwell could do no more than seek a political alliance with the Lutheran princes of Northern Germany, bring over learned Lutheran divines, and negotiate a German marriage for one of the English princesses, or even for Henry himself. The King was now a widower. One Continental house he considered marrying into was the Duchy of Cleves, which to some extent shared his own attitude in religion, hating the Papacy, yet restricting Lutheranism. Then news arrived of a startling diplomatic development. The French and Imperial Ambassadors waited together on the King to inform him that Francis I had invited the Emperor Charles V, who was in his Spanish dominions, to pass through Paris on his way to put down a revolt at Ghent, and the Emperor had accepted. The two sovereigns had resolved to forget old grudges and make common cause.

      An alliance with the princes of Northern Germany against the two Catholic monarchs now seemed imperative, and negotiations for a marriage between Henry and Anne, the eldest Princess of Cleves, were hurried on. Anne’s charms, Cromwell reported, were on everybody’s lips. “Everyone,” he announced, “praises her beauty both of face and body. One says she excels the Duchess of Milan as the golden sun does the silver moon.” Holbein, the Court painter, and a masterly delineator of his age, had already been sent over to paint the portrait, which may now be seen in the Louvre. It does not flatter the Princess. “This,” the English Ambassador at Cleves warned the King, “is a very lively image.” Anne, he added, spoke only German, spent her time chiefly in needlework, and could not sing or play any instrument. She was thirty years old, very tall and thin, with an assured and resolute countenance, slightly pockmarked, but was said to possess wit and animation, and did not over-indulge in beer.

      Anne spent Christmas at Calais, waiting for storms