his supremacy over England; he dissolved the monasteries; he sent the
noblest and wisest in England to the scaffold; he reduced Wales to law and
order and gave her a constitution; he married and unmarried as he liked; he
disposed of the succession to the throne of England by his will; and his
people never murmured. Only once, when the Pilgrimage of Grace broke out,
was his throne in any danger, and that insurrection he easily suppressed.
He made war with France; he invaded Scotland more than once, and every time
with striking success. He played his vigorous part in European politics,
and at his death he left his realm inviolate. It is an amazing record,
which might well dazzle a writer of Froude's temperament and training. But
there are dark shades in the picture, which Froude was content to make
little of, if not to ignore. He is fond of contrasting Henry's way with
conspirators with that of his daughter Elizabeth. He sneers at her
"tenderness" towards high-born traitors, and never ceases to reproach her
with her one act of repression after the Yorkshire rising. But he had not a
word to say against the tyrannical murders of Henry VIII. Elizabeth truly
boasted that she never punished opinion: Henry sent to the scaffold better
men than himself for holding academical opinions contrary to his own.
Cardinal Fisher may have been--after the publication of Chappuys's letters
it is not possible to deny that he was--technically guilty of treason. But
he was a saint and an old man past eighty, and "the earth on the edge of
the grave was already crumbling under his feet." The king spared neither
age nor worth nor innocence. He had been the familiar friend of More; he
had walked through his gardens at Chelsea leaning on his arm; More had been
his chancellor; he was still the greatest of his subjects; while frankly
admitting that he differed in opinion from the king on the question of the
royal supremacy, he promised that he would not try to influence others.
Henry was inexorable. He not only condemned him to die a traitor's
death,--he added a callous message, which still rouses the indignation of
every generous soul, that he should "not use many words on the scaffold."