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The origin of his greatness, common enough in the scandalous chronicles of
courts, seems strangely out of place in a hagiology. Cranmer rose into favor by
serving Henry in the disgraceful affair of his first divorce. He promoted the
marriage of Anne Boleyn with the King. On a frivolous pretence he pronounced
that marriage null and void. On a pretence, if possible still more frivolous, he
dissolved the ties which bound the shameless tyrant to Anne of Cleves. He
attached himself to Cromwell while the fortunes of Cromwell flourished. He voted
for cutting off Cromwell's head without a trial, when the tide of royal favor
turned. He conformed backwards and forwards as the King changed his mind. He
assisted, while Henry lived, in condemning to the flames those who denied the
doctrine of transubstantiation. He found out, as soon as Henry was dead, that
the doctrine was false. He was, however, not at a loss for people to burn. The
authority of his station and of his grey hairs was employed to overcome the
disgust with which an intelligent and virtuous child regarded persecution.
Intolerance is always bad. But the sanguinary intolerance of a man who thus
wavered in his creed excites a loathing, to which it is difficult to give vent
without calling foul names. Equally false to political and to religious
obligations, the primate was first the tool of Somerset, and then the tool of
Northumberland. When the Protector wished to put his own brother to death,
without even the semblance of a trial, he found a ready instrument in Cranmer.
In spite of the canon law, which forbade a churchman to take any part in matters
of blood, the archbishop signed the warrant for the atrocious sentence. When
Somerset had been in his turn destroyed, his destroyer received the support of
Cranmer in a wicked attempt to change the course of the succession.
The apology made for him by his admirers only renders his conduct more
contemptible. He complied, it is said, against his better judgment, because he
could not resist the entreaties of Edward. A holy prelate of sixty, one would
think, might be better employed by the bedside of a dying child, than in
committing crimes at the request of the young disciple. If Cranmer had shown
half as much firmness when Edward requested him to commit treason as he had
before shown when Edward requested him not to commit murder, he might have saved
the country from one of the greatest misfortunes that it ever underwent. He
became, from whatever motive, the accomplice of the worthless Dudley. The
virtuous scruples of another young and amiable mind were to be overcome. As
Edward had been forced into persecution, Jane was to be seduced into treason. No
transaction in our annals is more unjustifiable than this. If a hereditary title
were to be respected, Mary possessed it. If a parliamentary title were
preferable, Mary possessed that also. If the interest of the Protestant religion
required a departure from the ordinary rule of succession, that interest would
have been best served by raising Elizabeth to the throne. If the foreign
relations of the kingdom were considered, still stronger reasons might be found
for preferring Elizabeth to Jane. There was great doubt whether Jane or the
Queen of Scotland had the better claim; and that doubt would, in all
probability, have produced a war both with Scotland and with France, if the
project of Northumberland had not been blasted in its infancy. That Elizabeth
had a better claim than the Queen of Scotland was indisputable. To the part
which Cranmer, and unfortunately some better men than Cranmer, took in this most
reprehensible scheme, much of the severity with which the Protestants were
afterwards treated must in fairness be ascribed.
The plot failed; Popery triumphed; and Cranmer recanted. Most people look on his
recantation as a single blemish on an honorable life, the frailty of an
unguarded moment. But, in fact, his recantation was in strict accordance with
the system on which he had constantly acted. It was part of a regular habit. It
was not the first recantation that he had made; and, in all probability, if it
had answered its purpose, it would not have been the last. We do not blame him
for not choosing to be burned alive. It is no very severe reproach to any person
that he does not possess heroic fortitude. But surely a man who liked the fire
so little should have had some sympathy for others. A persecutor who inflicts
nothing which he is not ready to endure deserves some respect. But when a man
who loves his doctrines more than the lives of his neighbors, loves his own
little finger better than his doctrines, a very simple argument a fortiori will
enable us to estimate the amount of his benevolence.
But his martyrdom, it is said, redeemed everything. It is extraordinary that so
much ignorance should exist on this subject. The fact is that, if a martyr be a
man who chooses to die rather than to renounce his opinions, Cranmer was no more
a martyr than Dr. Dodd. He died solely because he could not help it. He never
retracted his recantation till he found he had made it in vain. The Queen was
fully resolved that, Catholic or Protestant, he should burn. Then he spoke out,
as people generally speak out when they are at the point of death and have
nothing to hope or to fear on earth. If Mary had suffered him to live, we
suspect that he would have heard mass and received absolution, like a good
Catholic, till the accession of Elizabeth, and that he would then have
purchased, by another apostasy, the power of burning men better and braver than
himself.
We do not mean, however, to represent him as a monster of wickedness. He was not
wantonly cruel or treacherous. He was merely a supple, timid, interested
courtier, in times of frequent and violent change. That which has always been
represented as his distinguishing virtue, the facility with which he forgave his
enemies, belongs to the character. Slaves of his class are never vindictive, and
never grateful. A present interest effaces past services and past injuries from
their minds together. Their only object is self-preservation; and for this they
conciliate those who wrong them, just as they abandon those who serve them.
Before we extol a man for his forgiving temper, we should inquire whether he is
above revenge, or below it.
Somerset had as little principle as his coadjutor. Of Henry, an orthodox
Catholic, except that he chose to be his own Pope, and of Elizabeth, who
certainly had no objection to the theology of Rome, we need say nothing. These
four persons were the great authors of the English Reformation. Three of them
had a direct interest in the extension of the royal prerogative. The fourth was
the ready tool of any who could frighten him. It is not difficult to see from
what motives, and on what plan, such persons would be inclined to remodel the
Church. The scheme was merely to transfer the full cup of sorceries from the
Babylonian enchantress to other hands, spilling as little as possible by the
way. The Catholic doctrines and rites were to be retained in the Church of
England. But the King was to exercise the control which had formerly belonged to
the Roman Pontiff. In this Henry for a time succeeded. The extraordinary force
of his character, the fortunate situation in which he stood with respect to
foreign powers, and the vast resources which the suppression of the monasteries
placed at his disposal, enabled him to oppress both the religious factions
equally. He punished with impartial severity those who renounced the doctrines
of Rome, and those who acknowledged her jurisdiction. The basis, however, on
which he attempted to establish his power was too narrow to be durable. It would
have been impossible even for him long to persecute both persuasions. Even under
his reign there had been insurrections on the part of the Catholics, and signs
of a spirit which was likely soon to produce insurrection on the part of the
Protestants. It was plainly necessary, therefore, that the Crown should form an
alliance with one or with the other side. To recognize the Papal supremacy,
would have been to abandon the whole design. Reluctantly and sullenly the
government at last joined the Protestants. In forming this junction, its object
was to procure as much aid as possible for its selfish undertaking, and to make
the smallest possible concessions to the spirit of religious innovation.
From this compromise the Church of England sprang. In many respects, indeed, it
has been well for her that, in an age of exuberant zeal, her principal founders
were mere politicians. To this circumstance she owes her moderate articles, her
decent ceremonies, her noble and pathetic liturgy. Her worship is not disfigured
by mummery. Yet she has preserved, in a far greater degree than any of her
Protestant sisters, that art of striking the senses and filling the imagination
in which the Catholic Church so eminently excels. But, on the other hand, she
continued to be, for more than a hundred and fifty years, the servile handmaid
of monarchy, the steady enemy of public liberty. The divine right of kings, and
the duty of passively obeying all their commands, were her favorite tenets. She
held those tenets firmly through times of oppression, persecution, and
licentiousness; while law was trampled down; while judgment was perverted; while
the people were eaten as though they were bread. Once, and but once, for a
moment, and but for a moment, when her own dignity and property were touched,
she forgot to practice the submission which she had taught.
Elizabeth clearly discerned the advantages which were to be derived from a close
connection between the monarchy and the priesthood. At the time of her
accession, indeed, she evidently meditated a partial reconciliation with Rome;
and, throughout her whole life, she leaned strongly to some of the most
obnoxious parts of the Catholic system. But her imperious temper, her keen
sagacity, and her peculiar situation, soon led her to attach herself completely
to a church which was all her own. On the same principle on which she joined it,
she attempted to drive all her people within its pale by persecution. She
supported it by severe penal laws, not because she thought conformity to its
discipline necessary to salvation; but because it was the fastness which
arbitrary power was making strong for itself, because she expected a more
profound obedience from those who saw in her both their civil and their
ecclesiastical chief than from those who, like the Papists, ascribed spiritual
authority to the Pope, or from those who, like some of the Puritans, ascribed it
only to Heaven. To dissent from her establishment was to dissent from an
institution founded with an express view to the maintenance and extension of the
royal prerogative.
This great Queen and her successors, by considering conformity and loyalty as
identical at length made them so. With respect to the Catholics, indeed, the
rigor of persecution abated after her death. James soon found that they were
unable to injure him, and that the animosity which the Puritan party felt
towards them drove them of necessity to take refuge under his throne. During the
subsequent conflict, their fault was anything but disloyalty. On the other hand,
James hated the Puritans with more than the hatred of Elizabeth. Her aversion to
them was political; his was personal. The sect had plagued him in Scotland,
where he was weak; and he was determined to be even with them in England, where
he was powerful. Persecution gradually changed a sect into a faction. That there
was anything in the religious opinions of the Puritans which rendered them
hostile to monarchy has never been proved to our satisfaction. After our civil
contests, it became the fashion to say that Presbyterianism was connected with
Republicanism; just as it has been the fashion to say, since the time of the
French Revolution, that Infidelity is connected with Republicanism. It is
perfectly true that a church constituted on the Calvinistic model will not
strengthen the hands of the sovereign so much as a hierarchy which consists of
several ranks, differing in dignity and emolument, and of which all the members
are constantly looking to the Government for promotion. But experience has
clearly shown that a Calvinistic church, like every other church, is disaffected
when it is persecuted, quiet when it is tolerated, and actively loyal when it is
favored and cherished. Scotland has had a Presbyterian establishment during a
century and a half. Yet her General Assembly has not, during that period, given
half so much trouble to the government as the Convocation of the Church of
England gave during the thirty years which followed the Revolution. That James
and Charles should have been mistaken in this point is not surprising. But we
are astonished, we must confess, that men of our own time, men who have before
them the proof of what toleration can effect, men who may see with their own
eyes that the Presbyterians are no such monsters when government is wise enough
to let them alone, should defend the persecutions of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries as indispensable to the safety of the church and the
throne.
How persecution protects churches and thrones was soon made manifest. A
systematic political opposition, vehement, daring, and inflexible, sprang from a
schism about trifles, altogether unconnected with the real interests of religion
or of the state. Before the close of the reign of Elizabeth this opposition
began to show itself. It broke forth on the question of the monopolies. Even the
imperial Lioness was compelled to abandon her prey, and slowly and fiercely to
recede before the assailants. The spirit of liberty grew with the growing wealth
and intelligence of the people. The feeble struggles and insults of James
irritated instead of suppressing it; and the events which immediately followed
the accession of his son portended a contest of no common severity, between a
king resolved to be absolute, and a people resolved to be free.
The famous proceedings of the third Parliament of Charles, and the tyrannical
measures which followed its dissolution, are extremely well described by Mr.
Hallam. No writer, we think, has shown, in so clear and satisfactory a manner,
that the Government then entertained a fixed purpose of destroying the old
parliamentary constitution of England, or at least of reducing it to a mere
shadow. We hasten, however, to a part of his work which, though it abounds in
valuable information and in remarks well deserving to be attentively considered,
and though it is, like the rest, evidently written in a spirit of perfect
impartiality, appears to us, in many points, objectionable.
We pass to the year 1640. The fate of the short Parliament held in that year
clearly indicated the views of the king. That a Parliament so moderate in
feeling should have met after so many years of oppression is truly wonderful.
Hyde extols its loyal and conciliatory spirit. Its conduct, we are told, made
the excellent Falkland in love with the very name of Parliament. We think,
indeed, with Oliver St. John, that its moderation was carried too far, and that
the times required sharper and more decided councils. It was fortunate, however,
that the king had another opportunity of showing that hatred of the liberties of
his subjects which was the ruling principle of all his conduct. The sole crime
of the Commons was that, meeting after a long intermission of parliaments, and
after a long series of cruelties and illegal imposts, they seemed inclined to
examine grievances before they would vote supplies. For this insolence they were
dissolved almost as soon as they met.
Defeat, universal agitation, financial embarrassments, disorganization in every
part of the government, compelled Charles again to convene the Houses before the
close of the same year. Their meeting was one of the great eras in the history
of the civilized world. Whatever of political freedom exists either in Europe or
in America has sprung, directly or indirectly, from those institutions which
they secured and reformed. We never turn to the annals of those times without
feeling increased admiration of the patriotism, the energy, the decision, the
consummate wisdom, which marked the measures of that great Parliament, from the
day on which it met to the commencement of civil hostilities.
The impeachment of Strafford was the first, and perhaps the greatest blow. The
whole conduct of that celebrated man proved that he had formed a deliberate
scheme to subvert the fundamental laws of England. Those parts of his
correspondence which have been brought to light since his death, place the
matter beyond a doubt. One of his admirers has, indeed, offered to show "that
the passages which Mr. Hallam has invidiously extracted from the correspondence
between Laud and Strafford, as proving their design to introduce a thorough
tyranny, refer not to any such design, but to a thorough reform in the affairs
of state, and the thorough maintenance of just authority." We will recommend two
or three of these passages to the especial notice of our readers.
All who know anything of those times, know that the conduct of Hampden in the
affair of the ship-money met with the warm approbation of every respectable
Royalist in England. It drew forth the ardent eulogies of the champions of the
prerogative and even of the Crown lawyers themselves. Clarendon allows Hampden's
demeanor through the whole proceeding to have been such, that even those who
watched for an occasion against the defender of the people, were compelled to
acknowledge themselves unable to find any fault in him. That he was right in the
point of law is now universally admitted. Even had it been otherwise, he had a
fair case. Five of the judges, servile as our Courts then were, pronounced in
his favor. The majority against him was the smallest possible. In no country
retaining the slightest vestige of constitutional liberty can a modest and
decent appeal to the laws be treated as a crime. Strafford, however, recommends
that, for taking the sense of a legal tribunal on a legal question, Hampden
should be punished, and punished severely, "whipped," says the insolent
apostate, "whipped into his senses. If the rod," he adds, "be so used that it
smarts not, I am the more sorry." This is the maintenance of just authority.
In civilized nations, the most arbitrary governments have generally suffered
justice to have a free course in private suits. Stratford wished to make every
cause in every court subject to the royal prerogative. He complained that in
Ireland he was not permitted to meddle in cases between party and party. "I know
very well," says he, "that the common lawyers will be passionately against it,
who are wont to put such a prejudice upon all other professions, as if none were
to be trusted, or capable to administer justice, but themselves: yet how well
this suits with monarchy, when they monopolize all to be governed by their
year-books, you in England have a costly example." We are really curious to know
by what arguments it is to be proved, that the power of interfering in the
law-suits of individuals is part of the just authority of the executive
government.
It is not strange that a man so careless of the common civil rights, which even
despots have generally respected, should treat with scorn the limitations which
the constitution imposes on the royal prerogative. We might quote pages: but we
will content ourselves with a single specimen: "The debts of the Crown being
taken off, you may govern as you please: and most resolute I am that may be done
without borrowing any help forth of the King's lodgings."
Such was the theory of that thorough reform in the state which Strafford
meditated. His whole practice, from the day on which he sold himself to the
court, was in strict conformity to his theory. For his accomplices various
excuses may be urged; ignorance, imbecility, religious bigotry. But Wentworth
had no such plea. His intellect was capacious. His early prepossessions were on
the side of popular rights. He knew the whole beauty and value of the system
which he attempted to deface. He was the first of the Rats, the first of those
statesmen whose patriotism has been only the coquetry of political prostitution,
and whose profligacy has taught governments to adopt the old maxim of the
slave-market, that it is cheaper to buy than to breed, to import defenders from
an Opposition than to rear them in a Ministry. He was the first Englishman to
whom a peerage was a sacrament of infamy, a baptism into the communion of
corruption. As he was the earliest of the hateful list, so was he also by far
the greatest; eloquent, sagacious, adventurous, intrepid, ready of invention,
immutable of purpose, in every talent which exalts or destroys nations
pre-eminent, the lost Archangel, the Satan of the apostasy. The title for which,
at the time of his desertion, he exchanged a name honorably distinguished in the
cause of the people, reminds us of the appellation which, from the moment of the
first treason, fixed itself on the fallen Son of the Morning,
"Satan;--so call him now--His former name Is heard no more in heaven."
The defection of Strafford from the popular party contributed mainly to draw on
him the hatred of his contemporaries. It has since made him an object of
peculiar interest to those whose lives have been spent, like his, in proving
that there is no malice like the malice of a renegade; Nothing can be more
natural or becoming than that one turncoat should eulogize another.
Many enemies of public liberty have been distinguished by their private virtues.
But Strafford was the same throughout. As was the statesman, such was the
kinsman and such the lover. His conduct towards Lord Mountmorris is recorded by
Clarendon. For a word which can scarcely be called rash, which could not have
been made the subject of an ordinary civil action, the Lord Lieutenant dragged a
man of high rank, married to a relative of that saint about whom he whimpered to
the peers, before a tribunal of slaves. Sentence of death was passed. Everything
but death was inflicted. Yet the treatment which Lord Ely experienced was still
more scandalous. That nobleman was thrown into prison, in order to compel him to
settle his estate in a manner agreeable to his daughter-in-law, whom, as there
is every reason to believe, Strafford had debauched. These stories do not rest
on vague report. The historians most partial to the minister admit their truth,
and censure them in terms which, though too lenient for the occasion, axe still
severe. These facts are alone sufficient to justify the appellation with which
Pym branded him "the wicked Earl."
In spite of all Strafford's vices, in spite of all his dangerous projects, he
was certainly entitled to the benefit of the law; but of the law in all its
rigor; of the law according to the utmost strictness of the letter, which
killeth. He was not to be torn in pieces by a mob, or stabbed in the back by an
assassin. He was not to have punishment meted out to him from his own iniquitous
measure. But if justice, in the whole range of its wide armory, contained one
weapon which could pierce him, that weapon his pursuers were bound, before God
and man, to employ.
"If he may Find mercy in the law, 'tis his: if none, Let him not seek't of us."
Such was the language which the Commons might justly use.
Did then the articles against Strafford strictly amount to high treason? Many
people, who know neither what the articles were, nor what high treason is, will
answer in the negative, simply because the accused person, speaking for his
life, took that ground of defense. The journals of the Lords show that the
judges were consulted. They answered, with one accord, that the articles on
which the earl was convicted amounted to high treason. This judicial opinion,
even if we suppose it to have been erroneous, goes far to justify the
Parliament. The judgment pronounced in the Exchequer Chamber has always been
urged by the apologists of Charles in defense of his conduct respecting
ship-money. Yet on that occasion there was but a bare majority in favor of the
party at whose pleasure all the magistrates composing the tribunal were
removable. The decision in the case of Strafford was unanimous; as far as we can
judge, it was unbiased; and, though there may be room for hesitation, we think,
on the whole, that it was reasonable. "It may be remarked," says Mr. Hallam,
"that the fifteenth article of the impeachment, charging Strafford with raising
money by his own authority, and quartering troops on the people of Ireland, in
order to compel their obedience to his unlawful requisitions, upon which, and
upon one other article, not upon the whole matter, the Peers voted him guilty,
does, at least, approach very nearly, if we may not say more, to a substantive
treason within the statute of Edward the Third, as a levying of war against the
King." This most sound and just exposition has provoked a very ridiculous reply.
"It should seem to be an Irish construction this," says, an assailant of Mr.
Hallam, "which makes the raising money for the King's service, with his
knowledge, and by his approbation, to come under the head of levying war on the
King, and therefore to be high treason." Now, people who undertake to write on
points of constitutional law should know, what every attorney's clerk and every
forward schoolboy on an upper form knows, that, by a fundamental maxim of our
polity, the King can do no wrong; that every court is bound to suppose his
conduct and his sentiments to be, on every occasion, such as they ought to be;
and that no evidence can be received for the purpose of setting aside this loyal
and salutary presumption. The Lords therefore, were bound to take it for granted
that the King considered arms which were unlawfully directed against his people
as directed against his own throne.
The remarks of Mr. Hallam on the bill of attainder, though, as usual, weighty
and acute, do not perfectly satisfy us. He defends the principle, but objects to
the severity of the punishment. That, on great emergencies, the State may
justifiably pass a retrospective act against an offender, we have no doubt
whatever. We are acquainted with only one argument on the other side, which has
in it enough of reason to bear an answer. Warning, it is said, is the end of
punishment. But a punishment inflicted, not by a general rule, but by an
arbitrary discretion, cannot serve the purpose of a warning. It is therefore
useless; and useless pain ought not to be inflicted. This sophism has found its
way into several books on penal legislation. It admits however of a very simple
refutation. In the first place, punishments ex post facto are not altogether
useless even as warnings. They are warnings to a particular class which stand in
great need of warnings to favorites and ministers. They remind persons of this
description that there maybe a day of reckoning for those who ruin and enslave
their country in all forms of the law. But this is not all. Warning is, in
ordinary cases, the principal end of punishment; but it is not the only end. To
remove the offender, to preserve society from those dangers which are to be
apprehended from his incorrigible depravity, is often one of the ends. In the
case of such a knave as Wild, or such a ruffian as Thurtell, it is a very
important end. In the case of a powerful and wicked statesman, it is infinitely
more important; so important, as alone to justify the utmost severity, even
though it were certain that his fate would not deter others from imitating his
example. At present, indeed, we should think it extremely pernicious to take
such a course, even with a worse minister than Strafford, if a worse could
exist; for, at present, Parliament has only to withhold its support from a
Cabinet to produce an immediate change of hands. The case was widely different
in the reign of Charles the First. That Prince had governed during eleven years
without any Parliament; and, even when Parliament was sitting, had supported
Buckingham against its most violent remonstrances.
Mr. Hallam is of opinion that a bill of pains and penalties ought to have been
passed; but he draws a distinction less just, we think, than his distinctions
usually are. His opinion, so far as we can collect it, is this, that there are
almost insurmountable objections to retrospective laws for capital punishment,
but that, where the punishment stops short of death, the objections are
comparatively trifling. Now the practice of taking the severity of the penalty
into consideration, when the question is about the mode of procedure and the
rules of evidence, is no doubt sufficiently common. We often see a man convicted
of a simple larceny on evidence on which he would not be convicted of a
burglary. It sometimes happens that a jury, when there is strong suspicion, but
not absolute demonstration, that an act, unquestionably amounting to murder, was
committed by the prisoner before them, will find him guilty of manslaughter. But
this is surely very irrational. The rules of evidence no more depend on the
magnitude of the interests at stake than the rules of arithmetic. We might as
well say that we have a greater chance of throwing a size when we are playing
for a penny than when we are playing for a thousand pounds, as that a form of
trial which is sufficient for the purposes of justice, in a matter affecting
liberty and property, is insufficient in a matter affecting life. Nay, if a mode
of proceeding be too lax for capital cases, it is, a fortiori, too lax for all
others; for in capital cases, the principles of human nature will always afford
considerable security. No judge is so cruel as he who indemnifies himself for
scrupulosity in cases of blood, by license in affairs of smaller importance. The
difference in tale on the one side far more than makes up for the difference in
weight on the other.
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