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grant be once levied, albeit the king's grace go not beyond the sea, yet nothing shall be restored again, albeit they be showed the contrary. I have heard say, moreover, that when the people be commanded to make fires and tokens of joy for the taking of the French king, divers of them have spoken that they have more cause to weep than to rejoice thereat. And divers, as it hath been showed me secretly, have wished openly that the French king were at his liberty again, so as there were a good peace, and the king should not attempt to win France, the winning whereof should be more chargeful to England than profitable, and the keeping thereof much more chargeful than the winning. Also it hath been told me secretly that divers have recounted and repeated what infinite sums of money the king's grace hath spent already in invading of France, once in his royal person, and two other sundry times by his several noble captains, and little or nothing in comparison of his costs hath prevailed; insomuch that the king's grace at this hour hath not one foot of land more in France than his most noble father had, which lacked no riches or wisdom to win the kingdom of France, if he had thought it expedient."

But such warning was of little use. The people said, "If men should give their goods by a commission, then it would be worse than the taxes of France, and England should be bond and not free." The clothiers of Suffolk had been frightened into submission by the king's commissioners; but the men who worked for the clothiers now showed the agents of despotism where the burthen of oppressive taxation must chiefly fall. The narrative of Hall is deeply interesting, and shows of what solid stuff-the sturdy compound of acute feeling and plain sense-the Anglo-Saxon was composed. The people of Suffolk had begun "to rage and assemble themselves in companies." The duke of Suffolk was for subduing them by the strong hand, and directed that their harness should be taken from them. The people now openly rebelled, and the duke called upon the gentlemen to assist him. But they would not fight against their neighbours.

More moderate counsels prevailed. "The duke of Norfolk, high treasurer and admiral of England, hearing of this, gathered a great power in Norfolk, and came towards the commons, and of his nobleness he sent to the commons to know their intent, which answered, that they would live and die in the king's causes, and to the king to be obedient: when the duke wist that, he came to them, and then all spake at once, so that he wist not what they meant. Then he asked who was their captain, and bade that he should speak; then a well-aged man of fifty years and above, asked license of the duke to speak, which granted with good will.

"My lord,' said this man, whose name was John Greene, 'sith you ask who is our captain, forsooth his name is Poverty, for he and his cousin Necessity hath brought us to this doing. The cloth-makers have put all these people, and a far greater number from work; the husbandmen have put away their servants, and given up household; they say the king asketh so much that they be not able to do as they have done before this time, and then of necessity must we die wretchedly: wherefore, my lord, now, according to your wisdom, consider our necessity.'

"The duke was sorry to hear their complaint, and well he knew that it was true: then he said, 'Neighbours, sever yourselves asunder, let every man depart to his home, and choose further four that shall answer for the remnant, and on my honour I will send to the king and make humble intercession for your pardon, which I trust to obtain, so that you will depart.' Then all they answered they would, and so they departed home." The despot now learned

[1525 A.D.]

that his absolute rule was to have some limit. But for the artisans of Suffolk, England, at this period, would probably have passed into the condition of France, where the abuse of the royal power had long before deprived the people of their rights.

Henry, with a meanness equal to his rapacity, affected not to know "that the commissioners were so straight as to demand a sixth of every man's substance." Wolsey took the blame upon himself. Pardons were issued for all the rioters, the commissions were revoked, and the old trick of a voluntary "benevolence" was again resorted to. The rich did not dare to show the spirit of the poor, and they yielded to irregular exactions in the form of gifts and loans, under the terror of such speeches as one which Wolsey made to the mayor and aldermen of London: "It were better that some should suffer indigence than the king at this time should lack; and therefore beware, and resist not, nor ruffle not in this case, for it may fortune to cost some their heads."

THE EMPEROR AT WAR WITH THE POPE

After the capture of Francis I the emperor made no attempt to follow up his success by any bold measures against France. He was without the means of paying an army to invade his rival's territories, and was too prudent, even if he had possessed the necessary finances, to risk an assault upon a brave and proud nation, who would maintain the integrity of their own kingdom though their king was a captive. Charles V told the English envoys that it was best to be quiet. "The deer was in the net, and thought need only to be taken for the division of his skin." He concluded an armistice with France for six months. He had complaints to make against the English government. His ambassador, De Praet, had been insulted. A secret envoy of France had been in communication with Wolsey in London. He had discovered that the princess Mary, who had long been contracted to him, had been the object of a matrimonial negotiation both with France and with Scotland. Charles now demanded that the contract should be fulfilled. Henry declined to complete the arrangement on account of the youth of his daughter, and insisted that the marriage should depend upon the ability of the emperor to give him the crown of France, or his willingness to surrender Francis to his, the king of England's, keeping. Charles, it is said, assumed an arrogant tone in these negotiations; but there was a greater impediment to friendship than his haughty bearing. He had no money to give Henry or his profuse minister.

A treaty was entered into with the government of France, under the regency of the queen-mother, in which this essential condition of an alliance

No very material attempt had been made since the reign of Edward III to levy a general imposition without consent of parliament, and in the most remote and irregular times it would be difficult to find a precedent for so universal and enormous an exaction; since tallages, however arbitrary, were never paid by the barons or freeholders, nor by their tenants; and the aids to which they were liable were restricted to particular cases. If Wolsey, therefore, could have procured the acquiescence of the nation under this yoke, there would probably have been an end of parliaments for all ordinary purposes, though, like the statesgeneral of France, they might still be convoked to give weight and security to great innovations. We cannot, indeed, doubt that the unshackled condition of his friend, though rival, Francis I, afforded a mortifying contrast to Henry. Even under his tyrannical administration there was enough to distinguish the king of a people who submitted, in murmuring, to violations of their known rights, from one whose subjects had almost forgotten that they ever possessed any. But the courage and love of freedom natural to the English commons, speaking in the hoarse voice of tumult, though very ill supported by their supe riors, preserved England in so great a peril.-HALLAM.cc]

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was amply provided for. But whilst the French cabinet made the most lavish engagements with Henry and Wolsey, having the full consent of the parliament of Paris, a protest was solemnly recorded against these conditions, that Francis might at some future time repudiate the contracts made in his absence. The conduct of each of the governments exhibits the low cunning of the most unscrupulous chafferers, instead of the high faith that should belong to all the transactions of great nations.

The policy of England now more and more inclined to a league with France, which was completed in August, 1525. Meanwhile, Francis remained in captivity-first in Italy and afterwards in Spain. Negotiations for his release were at length entered into at Madrid, he having, after repeated refusals, consented to restore Burgundy to the emperor. After being a prisoner for more than a year, the king of France was released; and when his foot touched the French territory, he exclaimed, "Now I am again a king!" French historians say that after his capture he wrote, "All is lost, except honour." When he became free, all was gained at the price of honour. He refused to ratify his engagement for the surrender of Burgundy, to which he had solemnly sworn. The pope dispensed with his oath, and Henry instructed his ambassadors to urge him to violate it. In these dishonourable transactions the apprehension of the power of Charles V might have influenced the secret conduct of the English government, as the same fear impelled the court of Rome, and other Italian states, to open hostility with the emperor. The war upon which the pope entered against the emperor, in 1526, has a claim upon our sympathy, for it was a war for the independence of Italy. Clement VII engaged in this war as a temporal prince, but his position as bishop of Rome had a material influence upon its results."

The doctrines of Luther had made considerable progress in Germany. Many pious and moderate men had adopted them from an earnest principle. The wordly minded had taken their sides in the contest of opinions from the hope of political or personal advantage. The turbulent and discontented of the cities, and the fierce adventurers of the mercenary armies, saw in the general hatred of the papal power a coming opportunity for spoliation. Clement VII had stirred up this spirit into a bitter hostility to himself amongst the Germans, by his rupture of an alliance with the emperor. George Frundsberg, a German noble of great influence, had raised an army of sixteen thousand men, with small pay and large promises. In November, 1526, his fierce lance-knights crossed the Alps, made more ferocious even than their ordinary temper by hunger and all destitution. "If I get to Rome," said their leader, "I will hang the pope." Bourbon, now the general of the emperor's armies in Italy, had no resources for the supply of a mutinous army of various nations but the plunder of some hostile state. In January, 1527, he marched from Milan at the head of twenty-five thousand men.

Clement, meanwhile, had concluded a separate treaty with Lannoy, one of the imperial generals, for a suspension of arms. Bourbon refused to be a party to the arrangement. He was the commander of men who, if he disappointed their hopes of booty, would turn and rend him. At last he moved out of Tuscany towards Rome. The pope made no attempt to defend the passes of the Roman territory. He appears to have relied too securely upon his spiritual weapons. He excommunicated Bourbon and his troops, denouncing the Germans as Lutherans and the Spaniards as Moors. On the 5th of May Bourbon and his men were encamped before the magnificent_capital; and as they gazed upon its domes and towers, they were told that the treasures which had there been accumulating for centuries would be theirs at

[1527 A. D.] the morrow's dawn. On that morrow the Eternal City was assaulted in three separate attacks. The morning was misty, and their approach to the suburbs was unperceived. There was a brave resistance of the few who defended the outworks. Bourbon leaped from his horse, and planting a scaling-ladder against the wall, shouted to his men to follow him. A ball from the ramparts terminated his career. His death produced no relaxation in the ardour of his followers. Their prey was before them, and in a few hours the devoted city was in their hands. The pope and his cardinals shut themselves up in the castle of St. Angelo.

The intelligence of the triumph of his arms, and of the excesses which disgraced it,1 produced in the emperor a singular attempt of policy to discriminate between the spiritual and the temporal power of the pope. By his command the people were called upon to mourn in his dominions, and to offer up prayers for the deliverance of the pontiff. This has been called "hypocrisy." It was an attempt to refine upon an occurrence which in the eyes of the multitude was a victory over the papal power, desecrated by wielding the carnal weapon. The people of England took this broad view of the question. The English chronicler Hall, who is a tolerably faithful expositor of the popular feeling, says, "The king was sorry, and so were many prelates; but the commonalty little mourned for it. The pope was a ruffian. He began the mischief and was well served." Wolsey, according to the same authority, called upon the king to show himself a defender of the church; and Hall puts this answer into Henry's mouth: "I more lament this evil chance than my tongue can tell; but when you say that I am defender of the faith, I assure you that this war between the emperor and the pope is not for the faith, but for temporal possessions and dominions." We may take such formal speeches in the old historians for what they are worth-the setting forth of current opinion.m

MATRIMONIAL TREATIES

While Bourbon led his hungry followers to the sack of Rome, the kings of England and France were idly employed in devising offensive leagues and matrimonial alliances. Francis before his liberation from captivity had been contracted to Leonora, the emperor's sister; but his subsequent offer to proceed to the solemnisation of marriage was rejected by Charles, on the ground that he had not yet complied with the other obligations of the treaty; now Henry, to widen the breach between the two sovereigns, tendered to Francis the hand of the princess Mary, who had reached her eleventh year. The French monarch, equally anxious to bind his English brother to his interests, accepted the offer, March 24th, 1527, urged an immediate marriage, and made light of the objections which the father drew from the immature age of his daughter. But Henry was inflexible; and the French ambassadors, the bishop of Tarbes and the viscount of Turenne, at length, on April 30th, signed a treaty by which it was agreed that the princess should marry either Francis, or his second son the duke of Orleans; Francis, as it was afterwards explained, if that monarch should remain a widower till she arrived at the age of puberty; the duke of Orleans, if in the interval it should be deemed desirable by both parties that the king should marry Leonora.

Two other treaties were concluded at the same time, that both monarchs should jointly make war on the emperor, if he rejected the proposals which

[Guicciardini's dd account of this pillage, which Gibbon ee declared more destructive than that of the Goths, will be found in the history of Italy, volume ix, chapter xiv.]

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they meant to offer; that Henry for himself, his heirs and successors, should renounce all claim to any lands at that time in possession of the king of France, and that Francis and his successors should pay forever to Henry and his heirs a yearly rent of fifty thousand crowns of gold, in addition to all other sums due to him from the French monarch. It was during the conferences respecting this marriage that the bishop of Tarbes, if we may believe the suspicious assertion of the king and the cardinal, ventured to ask whether the legitimacy of the princess were unimpeachable. What could prompt him to put the question, we are not informed. It is certain that he had no such instructions from his court, which still continued to solicit the union; and the public afterwards believed that he spoke by the suggestion of Wolsey, who sought to supply the king with a decent pretext for opening his project of a divorce.

Before their departure Henry gave to the ambassadors a magnificent entertainment at Greenwich. Three hundred lances were broken before supper; in the evening the company withdrew to the ball-room, where they were entertained with an oration and songs, a fight at barriers, and the dancing of maskers. About midnight the king and Turenne retired with six others, disguised themselves as Venetian noblemen, and returning took out ladies to dance. Henry's partner was Anne Boleyn. That lady had gained an ascendancy over the heart of the king, to whom a divorce from Catherine was now become an object of greater importance than the friendship of the most powerful prince in Christendom.