The Press. — London, England, 1858-03-20 00:00:00

flitraturt. History of England, from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. By J. A. Froude, M.A. Vols. 111., and IV. London : J. W. Parker and Son. ALL mankind are suspicious of great dis coverers. They have found out by experience how easily people are duped by their own hobbies, and what disproportionate magni tude any new system or new fact is almost certain to assume in the mind of its promul gator. To take an instance from a subject recently noticed in these columns. The late Rev. Mr. Bowles happened to come into pos session of certain unpublished letters from Pope to Miss Martha and Teresa Blount. He could not sit still under so great a dis covery. As he read and re-read his treasures, they gradually began to respond to the cra vings of his own mind. New lights began to dawn upon him. He must construct an hypothesis. And so forth comes a life of the poet, in which the world is informed that they have hitherto entirely misjudged him ; that he was a rake and a seducer, and that his in timacy with the aforesaid young ladies involved a criminal intrigue. Mr. Bowles's assertions, of course, made some impression at the time, though an able champion of the poet ap peared in the person of Lord Byron ; but we believe they are now universally rejected, and that the world has returned to its previous opinion on the subject. Mr. Froude is a more careful, perhaps a more conscientious, inquirer the.) Mr. Bowles. So that although he 1)1 )fosses t , ) give us an entirely new character of llcliry V I IT., he can not emancipate himself from facts sufficiently to make his performance answer to his pro mises. Fired by the idea that he had dis covered an entirely new mode of writing his tory, he seems to have greatly overrated the results to be obtained by it. His character of Henry VIII. does not, after all, materially differ from that which most moderate men had agreed to accept. Nor, in comparing the tenor of his two new volumes with the lan guage of Hallam and Hume, do we find any novelty of view at all in proportion to the noise with which they have been heralded. The two volumes now before us come down to the death of Henry VIII., the first of them terminating with the downfall of Crom well in MO. This volume (III.) embraces a period of five years. The principal events which it contains are the Northern Rebellion of the Romanists, usually known as " The Pilgrimage of Grace," followed by the con spiracy in which the Marquis of Exeter lost his head, the attempt to settle the doctrine of the Church of England by the promulgation of " The Six Articles," the King's marriage with Anne of Cleves, and the disgrace of his chief Minister. Mr. Froude shines in narrative, and his account of the Yorkshire and Lincolnshire in surrections is remarkably spirited and graphic. He, too, follows the example first set by Lord Macaulay, of ascertaining with some care the personal character and social condition of the principal dramatis persona ; thereby helping us to a much more accurate conception of political movements than we should otherwise be able to arrive at. For instance, our view of this popular rising, and of the light in which it appeared to Henry himself, is much altered by knowing that Aske, the principal leader, was a person of distinction, and related to the Earls of Cumberland, instead of being, as Sir J. Mackintosh represents him, " a man of "Yorkshire, whose station entitled him to be " called a gentleman." Mr. Froude's story of the rebellion is on the whole, we should think, tolerably impartial. lie implies, though ho does not sufficiently mark, the distinction to be drawn between the different classes of mal contents. The yeomanry and peasantry had, he thinks, real grounds of complaint in the enclosures and Statute of Uses, quite in dependent of their religious principles. The clergy wero actuated, in his opinion, by little else than a desire to regain their property and - while the gentry were led rather - and romantic attachment to privileges ; while the by an imaginative and THE PRESS, MARCH 20, 1858 anoient forms, to the shrines which their ancestors had enriched, and to the ceremonies whose daily symbolism had coloured their own lives from infancy. The insurrection rapidly assumed the most formidable dimen sions, and had all its members been inspired by a common spirit, it seems likely that Henry's throne would have been lost. But the gentry did not sympathise with the grie vances of the yeomanry, which, in fact, were benefits to themselves; and the priests were vexed at the moderation of the gentry. The ecclesiastics were filled with the most ferocious and determined spirit. When the commonalty wanted to know what the gentlemen would do—" Kill the gentlemen," the priests cried, "if they will not join us." And the following passage shows that they were at one time in real danger : _ • When the letter [one addressed by the King to the insurgents] was brought in, the insurgent council were sitting in the chapter-house of the cathedral. The cooler-headed among the gentlemen, even those among them who on the whole sympathised in the rising, had seen by this time that success was doubtful, and that if obtained it would be attended with many inconveniences to themselves. The enclosures would go down, the cattle farms would be confiscated. The yeomen's tenures would bo everywhere revised. The probability, however, was, that, without concert, without discipline, without a leader, they would be destroyed in detail; their best plan would be to secure their own safety. Their prudence nearly cost them their lives. " We, the gentlemen," says one of them, when the letters came, thought "to read them secretly among our selves ; bat as we were reading them the commons present cried that they would bear them read or else pull them from us. And therefore I read the letters openly ; and because there was a little clause there which we feared would stir the commons, I did leave that clause unread, which was perceived by a canon there, and he said openly the letter was falsely read, by reason whereof I was like to be slain." The assembly broke into confusion. The alarm spread that the gentlemen would betray the cause, as in fact they intended to do. The clergy and the leaders of the commons clamoured to . go forward and attack Suffolk; and two hundred of the most violent went out into the cloister to consult by themselves. After a brief conference they resolved that the clergy had been right from the first : that the gentlemen were no true friends of the cause, and they had better kill them. They went back into the chapter•house, and, guarding the doors, prepared to eze• cute their intention, when some one cried that it was better to leave them till the next day. They should go with them into action, and if they flinched they would kill them then. There was a debate. The two hundred went out again—again changed their minds and returned ; but by this time the intended victims had escaped by a private entrance into the house of the murdered chancellor, and barricaded the door. It was now evening. The cloisters were growing dark, and the mob finally retired to the camp, swearing that they would return at daybreak. The gentlemen then debated what they should do. Lincoln cathedral is a , natural fortress. The main body of the insurgents lay round the bottom of the bill on which the cathedral stands ; the gentlemen, with their retinues, seem to have been lodged in the houses round the close, and to have been left in undisputed possession of their quarters for the night. Suffolk was known to be advancing. They determined, if possible, to cut their way to him in the morning, or else to hold out in their present position till they were relieved. Meanwhile, however, the division in the council bad extended to the camp. Alarmed by the desertions, surprised by the rapidity with which the King's troops had been collected, and with the fatal distrust of one another which forms the best security of governments from the danger of insurrection, the farmers and villagers were disposed in large numbers to follow the example of their natural leaders. The party of the squires were for peace : the party of the clergy for a battle. The former in the darkness moved off in a body and joined the party in the cathedral. There was now no longer danger. The gentry were surrounded by depen dants on whom they could rely; and though still inferior in number, were better armed and disciplined than the brawling crowd of fanatics in the camp. When day broke they d.lsoended the hill, and told the people that for the present their enterprise must be relinquished. The King had said that they were misinformed on the character of his measures. It was, perhaps, true, and for the present they must wait and see. If they were deceived they might make a fresh insurrection. They were heard in sullen silence, but they were obeyed. There was no resistance. Here we see the same respect for the landed gentry on the part of the agricultural popula tion which a century afterwards placed at the disposal of King Charles some of the finest light cavalry in Europe. At a later period of the rebellion, when, if a battle had been fought, the chances are the victory would have been with the insurgents, it is difficult to acquit the King of having pro mised more than he ever intended to perform. Tho enemy was, at all events, deluded by ex pectations of redress, which never came, into dispersing his forces ; and, once dissipated, the disease was never permitted to come to a head again. Mr. Froude's narrative of the promulgatron of the " Six Articles "—an adoption of the Fronde whole cycle of sacerdotal doctri ne —requires f no f g u r r e t a h t e u r n c fa o i m rn m e e s n s t w t i h th w an h a ieh br h ie e f u n se o s ti empeloyemle will thee of 0 the r ds " Anglican" and " Conservative." Mr. knows well enough what associ a ti on raise in his readers' minds by the of these terms. People will be inevitably l e d to confound the via media school of the Refor mation, which represented the bulk of the English Church, with the extravaga nces o f a modern clique, to whom the word Anglican is popularly, but erroneously applied. And this is the more unfair, because in those essential points wherein Protestantism differs from Romanism both the moderate i s m e rel p a e te rf d ec t t l o y m ag a r t e t e e d rs ; w w h h i i e l h e their and the more advanced Reformers were a d t iffe th re is ne t e not essential, and which were subsequently settled by the country in favour of the moderate party. His employment of the word Conservative represents the converse of this injustice. He would apply to the obstruc tives of the sixteenth century an appellation which represents at the present day the party of real progress. To establish any analogy between them, we ought to have public meet ings all over the country for the re-enactment of Protection, the repeal of the Reform Bill, and the restoration of religious disabilities. The publication of the " Six Articles " was in reality no real check to the Reformation. It was merely a manifestation of the genuine English spirit, that whatever is to be done well must be done deliberately. It was but gathering up the louse threads of the move ment, embodying its results in a definite shape, and exhibiting the exact stage of pro gress at which the public opinion of the Church had then arrived. This done, the country was ready for a fresh start. The Six Articles were merely a " landing-place," and, as far as we can judge, represented no retro gressive principle. On the subjecttof King Henry's marriages our readers are already acquainted with Mr. Froude's peculiar style of dissertation. A long contemplation of that monarch has, we presume, assimilated the biographer's lan guage to that which he tells us was one of his hero's characteristics. No doubt the interests of history sometimes demand that the veil should be lifted from those infirmities which are the secret explanation of many an his torical problem. But what we complain of in Mr. Froude is that he is coarse without being clear—that when he raises the veil he con trives that we should see double—and while imprinting upon our minds certain very dis• agreeable impressions, leaves us in doubt both of the exact reality and the number of persons he intends to implicate. The whole account of the King's marriage with and di vorce from Anne of Cloves will bear out our observations ; and we shall anticipate a little by extracting a passage from Mr. Froude's re flections on the execution of Catharine Howard of a similarly unsatisfactory character: — Extraordinary circumstances, and the necessity of arriving at a just understanding of a remarkable man, must furnish my excuse for saying a few words upon a subject which I would gladly have avoided, and for calling in question one of the largest historical misconceptions which I believe has ever been formed. It is not easy to draw out in detail the evidence on which we form our opi nion of character. We judge living men nut from single facts, but from a thousand trifles ; and sound estimates of historical persons are pieced together from a general study of their actions, their writings, the description of friends and enemies, from those occasional allusions which we find scattered over contemporary correspondence, from materials which, in the instance of Henry VIII., consist of many thousand documents. Ont of so large a mass toler able evidence would he forthcoming of vicious tendencies, if vicious tendencies had existed. We rise from the laborious perusal with the conviction, rather, that the King's disposition was naturally cold. The indolence and gaiety of early years gave way, when the complications of his life commenced, to the sternness of a statesman engaged in incessant and arduous labours. He had no leisure, per haps he had little inclination, to attend to the trifles out of which the cords of happy marriages are wov en. A qneen was part of the State furniture, existing to be the mother of his children; and children he rather desired officially, than front any wish for them in themselves. Except in the single instance of Anne Boleyn, whom he evidently loved, he entered marriage as a duty, and a duty it soon became, even towards her. While, again, he combined with muck tain in ects, which is st even midst of he refinement and cultivation an absence of reserve on cer plain sub spe j ech of the sixteenth artlin ce g ntury. It the wa s not thatth e