any of his wives with that expensive ceremony should make him privy to," and acquainted him after Anne Boleyn.'

the marriage to the king in his palace, and to the | Jane Seymour. Having some doubt or misgiv. queen in the Tower, "that it might be for the sal- ing as to these children to be begotten, he provation of their souls;" and he summoned each to posed that he should be allowed to bequeath the appear in his ecclesiastical court at Lambeth, to crown by letters-patent, or by his last will, to show cause why a sentence of divorce should not any person whom he might think proper; and be passed. Dr. Sampson appeared for the king, the obsequious parliament passed a bill accordand Drs. Wotton and Barbour for the queen-of ingly! It was understood that the king hereby course all three were appointed by the king. The contemplated the appointing of his natural son, objections were read in the court, and the doctors the Duke of Richmond, to be his successor; but and divines soon joined in opinion. On the 17th at this very moment the duke died, in the eighof May, the day on which her brother and friends teenth year of his age, to the great grief of Henry, were executed, and two days after she herself who, like a very Turk, had no affection for his had received sentence of death, Cranmer, having daughters, but a great deal for his son. The "God alone before his eyes," pronounced that the Lady Mary, who had been living in seclusion at marriage of Anne Boleyn was, and always had Hunsden, under the displeasure of her father for been, utterly null and void, in consequence of her attachment to her mother, and to the discicertain just and lawful impediments which, it was pline of the Romish church, made her peace with said, were unknown at the time of the union, but the court a few weeks before the Duke of Richhad lately been confessed to the archbishop (Cran- mond's death, being obliged by Cromwell to submer) by the lady herself. The process, after scribe to certain most humiliating articles of subAnne's death, was submitted to the members of mission and acknowledgment. She received a the convocation and the two houses of parlia- suitable establishment, but was not restored in ment; and the church, commons, and lords fully blood-still remaining by law a bastard. confirmed it, thus cutting Elizabeth off from the succession.'

In the mouth of June the king caused parliament to agree to a new act of succession, entailing the crown on such issue as he might have by

1 Lord Herbert; Journals; Godwin, Wilkins; Burnet. Burnet gives the whole of Cranmer's strange letter to the king.

2 After imploring the king's merciful heart and fatherly pity, Mary acknowledged that she had most unkindly and most unnaturally offended his most excellent highness, in that she had not been sufficiently obedient to his just, wise, and most virtuous laws. Then followed the confession "of me, the Lady Mary." First she confessed and acknowledged the king's majesty to be her sovereign lord and king, to whose laws, statutes, &c., she was bound to yield implicit obedience. In the second place she agreed to recognize, accept, take, repute, and acknowledge the king's highness to be supreme head of the Church of England; and she utterly renounced all manner of remedy which she by any means might claim of the Bishop of Rome, &c. But the last clause is by far the most striking of all:-"Item, I do freely, frankly, and for the discharge of my duty towards God, the king's highness, and his laws, without other respect recognize and acknowledge that the marriage heretofore had between his majesty and my mother, the late princess-dowager, was, by God's law and man's law, incestuous and unlawful."-Letter with Deed, from the Princess Mary to the king, in State Papers.

This parliament is remarkable for the act incorporating Wales with England.

"As Henry was descended from the Tudors, a Welsh family, he naturally directed his attention to the native country of his paternal ancestors. It might be divided into two portions-that which had been originally conquered by the arms of his predecessors; and that which had been won by the courage and perseverance of the individuals afterwards called the lordsmarchers. The former had been apportioned into shires, and was governed by the laws of England; the latter comprised 141 districts or lordships, which had been granted to the first conquerors, and formed so many distinct and independent jurisdictions. From then the king's writs and the king's officers were excluded. They acknowledged no other laws or customs than their own. The lords, like so many counts-palatine, had their own courts, civil and criminal, appointed their own officers and judges, punished or pardoned offences according to their pleasure, and received all the emoluments arising from the administration of justice within their respective domains. But the

The parliament, which by successive prorogations had sat for the unprecedented term of six years, was now dissolved; and Henry, after all their passive obedience, seems to have been disgusted at some feeble effort at opposition.3 He great evil was that this multitude of petty and separate jurisdictions, by holding out the prospect of impunity, proved an incitement to crime. The most atrocious offender, if he could only flee from the scene of his transgression, and purchase the protection of a neighbouring lord, was sheltered from the pursuit of justice.

"The king, however, put an end to this mischievous and anomalous state of things. In 1536, it was enacted that the whole of Wales should thenceforth be united and incorporated with the realm of England; that all the natives should enjoy and inherit the same rights, liberties, and laws which were enjoyed and inherited by others the king's subjects; that the custom of gavel-kind should cease; that the several lordshipsmarchers should be annexed to the neighbouring counties; that all judges and justices of the peace should be appointed by the king's letters-patent; that no lord should have the power to par don any treason, murder, or felony, committed within his lordship; and that the different shires in Wales, with one borough in each, should return members to parliament. Most of these regulations were extended to the county-palatine of Chester."-Lingard. Sir James Mackintosh, it will be seen, viewed this as a general benefit to the English constitution.

"Some direct benefits the constitution owes to this reign. The act which established parliamentary representation in so consi derable a territory as Wales, may be regarded as the principal reformation in the House of Commons since its legal maturity in the time of Edward I. That principality had been divided into twelve shires, of which eight were ancient, and four owed their origin to a statute in Henry's reign. Knights, citizens, and burgesses were now directed to be chosen, and sent to parla ment, from the shires, cities, and boroughs of Wales. A short time before, the same privileges were granted to the county-palatine of Chester, of which the preamble contains a memorable recognition and establishment of the principles which are the basis of the elective part of our constitution. Nearly thirty members were thus added to the house on the principle of the Chester bill-that it is disadvantageous to a province to be unre presented; that representation is essential to good government; and that those who are bound by the laws ought to have a reasonable share of direct influence on the passing of laws. As the

holidays, especially such as fell in harvest-time; to declare the Scriptures, with the Apostolic, Nicene, and Athanasian creeds, the sole standards of faith; to order every parish priest to expound these to his parishioners in plain English, and to direct the printing and distribution of an English translation of the Bible, one copy of which was to be kept in every parish church. The king, in his wisdom, insisted on the necessity of auricular confession, and denounced any questioning of the real presence in the eucharist as a damnable heresy to be punished with fire and fagot. Purgatory, he confessed, puzzled him, and steering a middle course, he declared himself to be uncertain on this head, and kindly permitted his subjects to pray for the souls of their departed friends, provided only that they fell into none of the old abuses of enriching religious houses and shrines for this object.

now named commissioners to take possession of | images; to abrogate a number of saints' days or the suppressed monasteries, and to prepare measures for the seizure of others. If these men, mostly the friends of Cromwell or of Cranmer, had a better religion before their eyes, they certainly were not blind to the charms of lucre, and the temptations of fair houses and fat glebes; and most of them made a very rich harvest for themselves out of the spoils of the monks and nuns. The superiors of the suppressed houses were promised small pensions for life, which were very irregularly paid. All the monks, not twenty-four years of age, were absolved from their vows, and turned loose on the world without any kind of provision: the rest, if they wished to continue in the profession, were divided among the greater houses that were still left standing. The poor nuns were turned adrift to beg or starve, having nothing given to them save one common gown for each. At the same time the crowds of poor who, by a defective but ancient system, had derived their support from the monastic establishments, became furious at finding their resources cut off, and at seeing the monks who had fed them now begging like themselves by the roadside. In the midst of these general discontents, Cranmer and Cromwell issued certain doctrinal injunctions to the clergy, which were too novel to find immediate favour with the multitude; and certain Protestant reformers, who had more courage than they, ventured to print books against image-worship, auricular confession, transubstantiation, and other fundamental tenets and prac-scendants or representatives of the original foundtices of the Roman church. The king, who assumed all the authority in matters of dogmas that had ever been claimed by the popes, and much more than they had ever put in practice in England, pronounced awards and sentences which irritated both parties alike, and all these questions were referred to him-thus occupying a good deal of his time, and keeping in dangerous activity his old polemical bile.

Henry was by no means backward in issuing his final orders and decrees spiritual; and (the Reformers herein concealing their ulterior views) | he was led to reduce the number of sacraments from seven to three-baptism, the Lord's Supper, and penance; to forbid the direct adoration of practical advantages are only generally alleged, and could scarcely have been proved, they must have been inferred from the nature of a House of Commons. The British constitution was not thought to be enjoyed by a district till a popular representation was bestowed upon it. Election by the people was regarded, not as a source of tumult, but as the principle most capable of composing disorder in territories not represented."-Sir James Mackintosh, History of England.

1 "The pensions to the superiors of the dissolved greater monasteries, says a writer not likely to spare Henry's government, appear to have varied from £266 to £6 per annum. The priors of cells received generally £13. A few, whose services merited the distinction, obtained £20. were allotted pensions of £6, £4, or £2,

To the other monks

with a small sum

Most of these changes were far too sudden; but the people seem to have more particularly regretted the curtailing of their holidays. Many of the nobility and gentry fanned the flames of discontent, though, for the most part, they afterwards found means of convincing the king that they had acted under compulsion of the people. The hereditary patrons of the suppressed monasteries pretended that those houses and lands ought by no means to fall to the crown, but that, if it was suitable and necessary to take them from the religious orders, they ought to revert to the de

ers and benefactors. In the month of October the commons of Lincolnshire, being assembled touching certain subsidies to be paid to the king, suddenly, as if animated by one spirit, took up arms to the number of 20,000 men, forcing certain lords and gentlemen to be their leaders, and to swear to their articles. Such as refused they threw into prison, and a few they killed. The king sent a great force against these rebels, under the command of the Earls of Shrewsbury, Kent, Rutland, and Huntingdon, and the Duke of Suffolk-the last having the highest authority. Suffolk found the insurrection so formidable, that, instead of fighting, he was glad to negotiate; and even the king himself, furious as to each at his departure, to provide for his immediate wants. The pensions to nuns averaged about £4.- Lingard, vi. 341.) He admits that these were ten times their present value in money; and surely they were not unreasonably small. Compare them with those generally and justly thought munificent, which this country bestows on her veterans of Chelsea and Greenwich. The monks had no right to expect more than the means of that hard fare to which they ought, by their rules, to have been confined in their convents. The whole revenues were not to be shared among them as private property. It cannot of course be denied that the compulsory change of life, was to many a severe and unmerited hardship; but no great revolution-and the Reformation as little as any-could be achieved without much private suffering."-Hallam's Const. Hist. Eng., note, p. 72.

1

who was now at Newark, and who made a good use of it in buying over some of the ringleaders, and in exciting jealousies and dissensions among the ignorant insurgents. The Earl of Shrewsbury was constituted the king's lieutenant north of the Trent; and the Duke of Norfolk was despatched into Yorkshire, with the Marquis of Exeter, and an army of 5000 men. Including all the forces, there was a regular army of about 10,000 men in the field; but the rebels at one time were estimated at 40,000, being under the nominal command of Robert Aske, a gentleman of Yorkshire, who was not destitute either of talent or of energy. These men of the north had given a religious character to their rising, and had bound themselves by oath to stand by each other "for the love which they bore to Almighty God, his faith, the holy church, the king's person, and the persons of the nobility, to expel all villain blood and evil counsellors from the privy council, not for any private profit, nor to do displeasure to any private person, nor to slay or murder through envy, but for the restitution of the church, and the suppression of heretics and their opinions." They painted on their banners the figure of Christ in his agony; they wore upon their sleeves the emblem of the

he was, seems to have been more willing to rely on his pen than on his sword. By entertaining the proposal of a redress of grievances; by forwarding their petition to court; and by giving them fair promises, Suffolk stayed the first dangerous fury of the insurgents, gained time, and promoted dissensions among them; so that when Henry answered them, he was enabled to do so in a high tone. "The king," says an historian, who lived in servile times, "had a spirit befitting his greatness; and, perceiving them to shrink, could not dissemble the rage he had conceived at the presumption of this rascally rout, that durst capitulate with their sovereign, and seek to curb the unlimited power of kings." Henry's answer "to the petitions of the traitors and rebels in Lincolnshire" has been preserved; and a most characteristic document it is! It ended by requiring them to deliver up into the hands of his lieutenants no fewer than 100 persons, to be punished according to their demerits, at his will and pleasure. The insurgents, however, did not disperse till the 30th of October; and before they retired to their homes a fierce rebellion broke out beyond the Trent. Of the men of Lincolnshire, fifteen victims were given up to satisfy the royal vengeance. Among these were holy Dr. Makerel, the prior of Barlings, or Oxley, and Captain Cobbler, the chief leader, who is said by some historians to have been the prior himself, though it is conjectured, from a contemporary paper, that the real name of this Captain Cobbler was Melton.3 These men were respited for a season, but they were afterwards executed as traitors with the usual barbarity. But Henry's thirst of blood grew with his years. On the 9th of October a priest and a butcher were hanged at Windsor by martial law, "for words spoken" about the insurgents. At the same time, Dr. Mallet, who had been chaplain to the late Queen Catherine, was summarily executed at Chelmsford, in Essex, for some words spoken to the like effect. Meanwhile the insurrection north of the Trent spread from Yorkshire into Durham, Northumberland, Westmoreland, and Lancashire; and nothing seemed wanting but a proper leader to overthrow this most tyrannical government. Henry was five wounds of the Saviour, with the name of greatly alarmed; but he told Wriothesley that Jesus; and they called their march the "Pilhe would rather sell all his plate than fail to sub-grimage of Grace." Wherever they advanced due these traitors "in such sort that all others should take warning by their example." Some money was sent to the Earl of Suffolk,

they restored the monks and nuns to their houses; and by tremendous threats they compelled the people to take their oaths and join their ranks. Every man was summoned to be at a place of rendezvous at a fixed hour, and in his best array, as he would answer for it before the High Judge at the day of doom, as he would avoid the pulling down of his house, the loss of his goods, and the destruction of his body. The cities of Hull, York, and Pontefract admitted the "Pilgrims

of Grace," and took the vows.

tated the answer. Touching the maintenance of the faith, he says, he marvels not a little that ignorant people like them should go about, or take upon them to instruct him, "who something had been noted to be learned." As for the maintenance of the church, this was so general a proposition that, without distinctions made as to which was the real and true church, no man could answer it; but he told them that, mean what church they might, it pertained not to them, the commons, to meddle in the matter, and that he could not but reckon it a great unkindness and unnaturalness in them to prefer that a churl or two should enjoy the property of the monasteries in support of vicious and abominable lives, rather than that he, their prince, should have the profits, for the support of his extreme charges incurred in their defence. In the end, he told them that the greatest concession he could make was, to pardon them their rebellion upon their delivering

The Lords Darcy, Lumley, Latimer, and Nevil, together with Edward Lee, Archbishop of York, with a vast number of the knights and gentlemen of the northern counties, joined the insurgents; but the tremendous threats favoured their pleading afterwards that they had done so upon compulsion. The undisciplined host was amenable to no authority, and there arose many conflicting opinions as to the proper mode of conducting their campaign. It is also very evident that some of their chiefs were already bought by Suffolk, for there was much difference of opinion and contention in the camp. When they moved upon Doncaster they were checked by the Earl of Shrewsbury and the Duke of Norfolk. The royal army, however, readily agreed to an armistice, during which the insurgents named delegates, who laid their demands before the king, who, in the meantime, had sent more money to the Duke of Suffolk.' The king also despatched the Lord-admiral How-up to him "ten of their ringleaders and provokard, and other soldiers and statesmen, to the north, with most elaborate instructions as to the way in which they were to proceed with the rebels. They were particularly charged to withdraw all fear of punishment from the Lord Darcy and the rest of the nobility that had joined the people; to offer them safe-conducts for the present, and a free pardon for the future."

The paper presented by the northern delegates was longer than that which had been sent up by the men of Lincolnshire, but the chief grounds of complaint were the same in both. The most striking of the additional clauses (to some of which Henry deigned not to reply) were that the heresies of Wyckliffe, Huss, Luther, Melancthon, and others, should be rooted out, and that all heretical books whatsoever should be utterly destroyed; that the supremacy of the church, inasmuch as related to the care of souls, should be restored to the pope, who should have the consecration of bishops, with the first-fruits and tenths, as formerly; that the Lady Mary should be declared legitimate, and the statutes to the contrary annulled; that the pains and penalties against such as kept hand-guns and crossbows should be repealed, unless used in the king's parks and forests upon his royal deer; that parliament should be restored to its ancient privileges, and that the manner of conducting the elections of knights of the shire and members for boroughs should be reformed; that the cruel statute of treason for words spoken should be abrogated, and that the common law should be used as it was in the beginning of his grace's reign. Henry himself dic

1 The sum sent at this time amounted to about £10,000, and Wriothesley, in the name of the king, thanked Cromwell for the " great labours and travails" he had taken in the getting of this together.-State Papers.

2 Letter of the king.-State Papers.

ers, such as he should name and appoint." The insurgents rejected these terms, and kept the field; nor did the royal army consider itself strong enough to hazard a battle. Henry was put to his straits in order to send £6000 more to the north; and the Duke of Norfolk and the lord-admiral were ordered to look after and fortify the fords of the Don, the works at Nottingham, and the bridges and fords there. By this time it was the 21st of November; the weather was cold and stormy, and the rebels began to feel an anxiety to return to their agricultural labours. The Duke of Norfolk, however, was again glad to negotiate, and he made more promises than the king would ratify. The insurgents now became furious, and the royal army was compelled to retreat to the south of the Don and the Trent. At last Norfolk was authorized to give such assurances to the rebels as induced them to separate; and the king wrote gracious letters to his "trusty and well-beloved" Captain Aske, Lord Darcy, and others, expressing his earnest desire to see and converse with them, trusting that they were in heart repentant, and that he should have cause to reward them for their fidelity. They were both wise enough to decline the invitation; but Aske, it should seem, really undertook to oppose, if not to betray his party.*

A.D. 1537.

As early as the 23d of January, bills and scrolls were stuck up, by night, upon the church doors, containing these words:-" Commons, be ye true among yourselves, and stick one to another, for the gentlemen have deceived you; but yet, if need be, ye

State Papers; from a fair copy preserved in the Chapterhouse. The letter is supposed to be in the handwriting of Sir Ralph Sadler, but there are a few minute corrections in the king's hand.

▲ State Papers.