CHAP. powerful. He was an Englishman, and no Englishman had IX. been pope since Nicholas Brakespear in the middle of the twelfth century. He would never live in Rome, and Rome had no fancy to lose the pomp, the amusement, and the importance attaching to the papal residence in the Vatican. Above all, Wolsey could not be relied upon to further the imperialist interests, which were only partially and intermittently identical with those of England. The choice of the conclave fell, on January 9, 1522, neither upon him nor upon England's second string, Giulio dei Medici, but upon Adrian of Utrecht, formerly tutor to the emperor. The brilliant Florentine patron of art and literature was to be succeeded by a homely Flemish monk, frugal, impecunious, narrow, ascetic, who had nothing to recommend him to the Roman populace but feeble health and the prospect that his reign would be brief. Clerk, the British agent in Rome, was acutely disappointed, and recommended that Wolsey should entice Adrian VI., the new pope, to England, where he would probably die from the effects of the journey and the climate, for so it was most likely that the cardinal would be elected to succeed. Like master, like man. Charles, too, was forward with consolations of a more substantial kind, and promised to obtain for the disappointed candidate a pension drawn from the vacant benefices in Spain. Marine disputes and a fresh victory for the Spanish harquebus in Italy, the battle of the Bicocca on April 27, 1522, precipitated the preconcerted rupture with France, and on May 29, while Charles and Henry were worshipping at Canterbury, Clarencieux' herald was delivering the English defiance to Francis at Lyons. So began one of the most purposeless and injurious contests in which this country has ever been engaged, a war waged to the accompaniment of solemn, religious pretexts, while the Turks were overflowing the plains of Hungary and beating down the heroic resistance of the Christian defenders of Rhodes a war of fruitless raids and ravages, framed upon a scheme as disturbing to the balance of power in the west as it was fatal to the interests of Christendom in the east. The final arrangements for the struggle were concerted between Henry and Charles at Windsor on June 19, and then in accordance with the plan the emperor embarked at Southampton and proceeded to Spain, leaving Henry to guard his Flemish 1522 WAR WITH FRANCE. 241 IX. possessions. Surrey, the eldest son of the conqueror of Flodden, CHAP. was named to command the force intended for the invasion of France, and Wolsey addressed himself to the task of finding the men and the money. Commissioners were despatched on March 20 into all the shires of England to inquire into the value of land, houses, and movables, and to array the maritime counties against an invasion. To meet initial expenses a loan of £20,000 was demanded of the London merchants, and later in the year a property tax was levied under the name of a loan with a promise of repayment. In the city of London the prospect of an additional tenth or thirteenth aroused the liveliest dissatisfaction. "O my Lord," said an alderman, "it is not two months since the king had of the city £20,000 in ready money on loan, whereby the city is very bare of money. For God's sake remember this, that rich merchants in ware be bare of money." Wolsey so far relented as to allow the citizens to make their own returns, and to promise that the contents should not be made public; and precautions were taken lest the particulars of clerical wealth should be divulged to the laity. But it was a crushing requisition, amounting to a tenth from the laity and a fourth from the clergy; and there was an ominous innovation in the method of collection, for the privy seals, instead of being sent to the individuals from whom the money was demanded, were addressed to the separate hundreds, with schedules attached to them of the taxable property and the amounts to be collected. It was in form a loan, in reality a tax. Meanwhile the first acts of war had been committed. Surrey, who had sacked Morlaix in July, crossed the Straits of Dover in August, and marched, burning and ravaging, through the Boulonnois and Artois. Since the French had been instructed to avoid a general action, and the Anglo-imperial army was incapable of conducting a serious siege, the effort had no strategic purpose or useful result. It enabled a certain number of broken Englishmen to enrich themselves by plundering the miserable French peasantry. It exhibited the fact that the imperial horse, being irregularly paid, were not to be relied upon in a protracted campaign. It inflicted infinite cruelties upon a number of innocent villagers, and infinitesimal damage upon the military resources of France. It spread dysentery in IX. CHAP. the English camp, wasted English treasure, and formed the worst of all possible preludes to a serious and permanent recovery of any portion of the French possessions. By October 16 Surrey was back in Calais. A more serious prospect confronted England in the north. The Duke of Albany, bred, schooled, and possessing land in France, had reappeared in Scotland, invited by the estates and welcomed by the queen. That Albany should assume the government of Scotland was viewed in London as part of the French design, and a preparation for a Scottish inroad across the border. Henry denounced the French gentleman to the estates and slandered him to the queen, but to no purpose. Margaret confessed that she had desired Albany's presence because she had been ill-treated, but protested that her son had nothing to fear from him. Albany avowed that he had assisted the queen at Rome to procure a divorce from her husband Angus, but "prayed he might break his neck" if ever he intended to marry her. The estates repudiated Henry's right to interfere. In the course of the summer both parties prepared for action. The Earl of Shrewsbury was sent to muster the English forces in the north; whilst Albany marched southwards at the head of a force estimated at 80,000 men, and threatened Carlisle and the western border. The moment was favourable; for Carlisle was defenceless, and Shrewsbury was delayed at York for lack of transport and provisions. But Albany's heart was not in the business, and the three most powerful Scottish earls, Huntley, Argyle, and Arran, were in no mood to risk another Flodden. In this crisis Dacre, the warden of the western marches, proved himself a cool and adroit diplomatist. He obtained an interview with the Scottish leaders, and by a policy of bluff granted a truce for a month on September 11, which his rivals should never have accepted. Albany disbanded his army and returned to France on October 20, and Henry and Wolsey, saved by the promptitude and resource of their agent, affected to be disappointed of a signal victory over the Scots. A war with the old enemies of the country was always popular until the moment came for finding the money. Henry had governed without a parliament for eight years, but faced 1523 THE QUESTION OF SUPPLIES. 243 IX. with the prospect of exceptional military expenditure protracted CHAP. over an indefinite period, he was constrained to appeal to parliament and to convocation for supplies. Accordingly on April 15, 1523, the commons met in the great chamber of Blackfriars, and not improbably out of deference to the king chose Sir Thomas More as their speaker. A fortnight later they learnt what was expected of them. The cardinal came down and explained how Francis had broken the league and made war upon the emperor's dominions; how he had withheld the tributes and payments due to England; how he had despoiled the king's subjects, and sent Albany to Scotland to invade the realm; and how to meet this emergency, a sum of £800,000 would be required to be raised by a tax of four shillings in the pound upon every man's lands and goods. It was a staggering amount, unparalleled in the recent annals of English finance; but when the house reassembled upon the next day, their speaker urged upon them that acquiescence was a duty. This, however, was by no means the view of the commons, and a lively debate ensued. It was argued that there was not so much money out of the king's hands in all the realm, and that the tax if levied would reduce men "to barter clothes for victuals and bread for cheese". Added to this, the king had already levied a loan of two shillings in the pound from the laity, and four shillings a pound from the spirituality, and now if this burden were superadded, how could men live? "The realm itself for want of money would grow in a sort barbarous and ignoble." After long debate a committee was sent to the cardinal to beseech him to move the king to be content with some easier sum. Wolsey replied that he would rather have his tongue plucked out of his head with a pair of pincers than do anything of the kind, and with this uncompromising reply the envoys returned to the commons.1 Nevertheless the discussion continued, and that not only within the walls of the house. Wolsey, indignant that a matter of state should be "blown abroad in every alehouse," determined to read the members a lesson in deportment. But here the cardinal met his match. More was in favour of the subsidy, and had done his best to commend it to the commons; but as 1 Hall, Chron. of Henry VIII., ed. Whibley, i., 284-86. IX. CHAP. speaker, he was guardian of the forms of the house, and prepared to defend them. A question arose as to whether the cardinal should be admitted with his full retinue. More in a skilful speech averted the adoption of a resolution hostile to Wolsey, while intimating that he was in agreement with the general sense of the house. "Masters," he said, "forasmuch as my lord cardinal lately, ye wot well, laid to our charge the lightness of our tongues for things uttered out of this house, it shall not in my mind be amiss to receive him in all his pomp, with his maces, his pillars, his poleaxes, his crosses, his hat, and his great seal too, to the intent that if he find the like fault in us hereafter, we may be the bolder from ourselves to lay blame on those that his grace bringeth hither with him." When the cardinal appeared and proceeded to ask the opinion of various members of the house, he was met by an obstinate and preconcerted silence. "Masters," he broke out, "unless it be the manner of your house, as in likelyhood it is, by the mouth of your speaker whom you have chosen for trusty and wise (as indeed he is) in such cases to utter your mind, here is without doubt a marvellous obstinate silence." More fell upon his knees and reverently excused the silence of the house, pointing out that while the commons might listen to communications from outside, it was not in accordance with their privileges to debate with strangers. Wolsey retired discomfited. He had come to convince and reprove; he had only succeeded in exasperating his audience. In the course of his exhortations he had described the luxury of the kingdom, as if "he grudged that any man should fare well and be well clothed but himself". It is not surprising that autocrats with hot tempers and vast schemes should pay scant respect to the sluggish currents of the general mind.1 The argument in the commons rose at times to high questions of national policy. A rising lawyer, by name Thomas Cromwell, wrote and perhaps delivered a speech which concentrates the whole case against the war policy and the war In view of the uncertainty of the succession, it was the summit of unwisdom to venture the king's life in a French 2 Letters and Papers, Hen. VIII., iii., 2958; Merriman, Life and Letters of Thomas Cromwell, i., 30-44. |