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

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 doctrine—requiresf no
fgurretahteurncfaoimrnmeesnstwtihth wanhaiehbrhieefunseosti
empeloyemle will
thee of 0 ther ds
" Anglican" and " Conservative." Mr.
knows well enough what association
raise in his readers' minds by the
of these terms. People will be inevitably led
to confound the via media school of the Refor-
mation, which represented the bulk of the
English Church, with the extravagances of 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
ism erelpaeterfdec ttloy
magarteteedrs;
wwhhiielhe their
and the more advanced Reformers were
adtiffethreisnete
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 woven. 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
spejech of the sixteenthartlin ceg ntury. Itthe was not thatth e

was loose or aweless in act or word; but there was a
businesslike habit of proceeding about him which pene-
trated through all his words and actions, and may have
made him as a husband one of the most intolerable that
ever vexed and fretted the soul of woman.

This is one of the most evasive attempts at
explaining a "large historical misconception "
that we remember to have met with. What
was "the absence of reserve " or the " busi-
nesslike habit of proceeding" which made
him so unpleasant? A king can set the
fashion in the first, and we never knew that
women particularly disliked the second.
Perhaps we do not catch Mr. Froude's mean-
ing. At all events, it says much for old Mr.
Weller's theory that the first lady who was
able to cope with these little peculiarities
should have been a widow, Catharine Parr,
the relict of Lord Latimer.