The New World (Complete Edition). Winston Churchill

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СКАЧАТЬ Cromwell, in turn mercenary soldier in Italy, cloth agent, and money-lender, had served his apprenticeship in statecraft under Wolsey, but he had also learned the lessons of his master’s downfall. Ruthless, cynical, Machiavellian, Cromwell was a man of the New Age. His ambition was matched by his energy and served by a penetrating intelligence. When he succeeded Wolsey as the King’s principal Minister he made no effort to inherit the pomp and glory of the fallen Cardinal. Nevertheless his were more solid achievements in both State and Church. In the administration of the realm Cromwell devised new methods to replace the institutions he found at hand. Before his day Government policy had for centuries been both made and implemented in the royal household. Though Henry VII had improved the system he had remained in a sense a medieval king. Thomas Cromwell thoroughly reformed it during his ten years of power, and when he fell in 1540 policy was already carried out by Government departments, operating outside the household. Perhaps his greatest accomplishment, though not so dramatic as his other work, was his inception of the Government service of modern England. Cromwell is the uncommemorated architect of our great departments of State.

      As First Minister Cromwell handled the dissolution of the monasteries with conspicuous, cold-blooded efficiency. It was a step which appealed to the well-to-do. The high nobility and country gentry acquired on favourable terms all kinds of fine estates. Sometimes a neighbouring merchant, or a syndicate of City men and courtiers, bought or leased the confiscated lands. Many local squires had long been stewards of monastic lands, and now bought properties which they had managed for generations. Throughout the middle classes there was great irritation at the privileges and wealth of the Church. They resented the undue proportion of the national income engrossed by those who rendered no economic service. The King was assured of the support of Parliament and the prosperous classes. Most of the displaced monks, nearly ten thousand in all, faced their lot with relief or fortitude, assisted by substantial pensions. Some even married nuns, and many became respectable parish clergy. The dissolution brought lands into the Crown’s possession worth at the time over £100,000 a year, and by the sale or lease of the rest of the former monastic properties the Crown gained a million and a half—a huge sum for those days, though probably much less than the properties were worth. The main result of this transaction was in effect, if not in intention, to commit the landed and mercantile classes to the Reformation settlement and the Tudor dynasty.

      The immediate impact on the masses is more difficult to judge. There does not seem to have been any widespread unemployment or distress among the sturdy proletariat, but many poor, weak, and ailing folk, especially in the North, who had found their only succour in the good works of the monastic orders, were left untended for a long time. In the North also, where the old traditions died hard, the new order aroused stiffer resistance than in the South, and the new lay landlord could be harsher than his clerical predecessor. But laymen were not the only enclosing landlords, and more than one pre Reformation abbot had sought by one means or another to improve farming and husbandry through enclosure. English agriculture, to meet the demands of a growing population and an expanding cloth industry, was turning from arable farming to pasture. Hence the broad acres on the ecclesiastical estates were now fertilised by the ideas and the money of their new owners, the country 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 СКАЧАТЬ