The heralds attempted their mission, and partially succeeded; but so hot a fever was not to be cooled on a sudden; and connected with the delay of the messengers, and with information of the measures which the king was procuring, their presence created, perhaps, more irritation and suspicion than their words accomplished good. The siege of Skipton continued; separate local insurrections were continually blazing; the monks everywhere were replaced in the abbeys; and Aske, who, though moderate, was a man of clear, keen decision, determined, since the king was slow in sending up his concessions, to anticipate them by calling a parliament and convocation of the northern notables, to sit at York.[173] “The king’s treasure,” which had fallen into his hands, gave him command of money; the religious houses contributed their plate; circulars were addressed to every parish and township, directing them to have their contingents ready at any moment to march; and, to insure a rapid transmission of orders, regular posts were established from Hull to Templehurst, from Templehurst to York, from York to Durham, from Durham to Newcastle. The roads were patrolled night and day; all unknown persons in town or village were examined and “ripped.”[174] The harbour at Hull was guarded with cannon, and the town held by a strong garrison under Sir Robert Constable, lest armed ships from Portsmouth might attempt to seize it. Constable himself, with whose name we have already become familiar, was now, after Robert Aske and Lord Darcy, the third great leader of the movement.[175] The weather had changed, an early winter had set in, and the rivers either fell or froze; the low marsh country again became passable, and rumours were abroad that Darcy intended to surprise Doncaster, and advance towards Nottingham; and that Aske and Constable would cross the Humber, and, passing through Lincolnshire, would cut off Suffolk, and join him at the same place.[176]
The king, feeling that the only safety was in boldness, replied by ordering Lord Shrewsbury to advance again to his old position. The danger must have been really great, as even Shrewsbury hesitated, and this time preferred to hold the line of the Trent.[177] But Henry would now hear nothing of retreat. His own musters were at last coming up in strength. The fortification of Hull, he said, was a breach of the engagement at Doncaster; and Vernon, one of the lords of the Welsh Marches, Sir Philip Draycote, and Sir Henry Sacheverell, going to Shrewsbury’s assistance, the line of the Don was again occupied. The head-quarters were at Rotherham, and a depôt of artillery and stores was established at Tickhill.[178]
In Suffolk’s camp at Lincoln a suggestion was started whether Aske’s attack might not be anticipated,—whether, by a swift, silent enterprise, it might not be possible to seize and carry off both him and Sir R. Constable. Two volunteers were found who offered to make the experiment. One of them, Anthony Curtis, a cousin of Aske, “for private malice, said that if he might have licence, he would find sureties, and would either kill his kinsman or be killed himself.”[179] Another attempt for Aske’s destruction was made by the Duke of Norfolk, who had no objection to a coalition of noblemen against Cromwell, but disdained the dictation of an unknown upstart. He supposed that he might tempt Lord Darcy to an act of treachery, and sent a questionable proposal to him by the hands of a servant of Lord Hussey, a certain Percival Cresswell. The attempt failed; but Cresswell’s account of his mission is not a little curious.
He arrived at Templehurst on Friday, November the 10th, shortly before dinner. Lord Darcy was walking with Aske himself, who was his guest at the time, and a party of the commons in the castle garden. Cresswell gave him a letter from Norfolk, which was cautiously worded, in case it should fall into wrong hands, and said he was charged also with a private message. The danger of exciting suspicion was so great that Darcy had a difficulty in arranging a separate conversation. He took Cresswell into the castle, where he left him in an anteroom full of armed men. They gathered about him, and inquired whether Cromwell, “whom they called most vilipendiously,” was put out of the king’s council. He replied that the Duke of Norfolk, Lord Oxford, Lord Sussex, and Sir William Fitzwilliam were with the king. “God save the king!” they said; “as long as noblemen of the true blood rule about the king all will be well. But how of Cromwell? Is he put from the council or no?” Cresswell said that he was still on the council. “Then, whatsoever the Lord Darcy say to you,” they answered, “show the king and the lords that until our petitions are granted we will take no pardon till we have our will.” Darcy had by this time secured a private room and a few private moments. He called Cresswell in. “Now tell your message,” he said. “The Duke of Norfolk desires you,” announced the messenger, “to deliver up Aske, quick or dead, but if possible, alive; and you shall so show yourself a true subject, and the king will so regard you.”[180] Darcy replied like a nobleman. He had given his faith, he said, and he would not stain his coat.[181] He wrote a few lines to Norfolk. “Alas, my Lord!” his letter said, “that you, being a man of so great honour, should advise or choose me to betray any living man, Frenchman, Scot, yea, or even Turk. To win for me or for mine heirs the best duke’s lands that be in France, I would not do it to no living person.”[182] The next morning, after mass, he again called Cresswell to him, and bade him tell the king that he had never done better service either to him or to his father than he was doing at that moment, and if there was to be peace, he recommended that the answer to the petition should be returned instantly.
The king had written more than one answer; but in each draught which he had made there was a reservation attached to the promise of a general pardon, excluding in one instance ten persons, in another, six, from the benefit of it;[183] and they were withdrawn all of them in deference to the protests of the Duke of Norfolk. Ellerkar and Bowes were dismissed on the 14th of November, “with general instructions of comfort.”[184] Norfolk himself, with other commissioners, would return to the north at the end of the month with a final reply.
The ill-humour of the insurgents was meanwhile increasing; division had begun to show itself; the people suspected the gentlemen, the gentlemen, feared the people, and noisy demonstrations showed Aske that a state of inaction was too dangerous to continue. On the return of Bowes and Ellerkar a hasty council was called at York. The question was put whether they should wait or not for the arrival of the commissioners. Especial exasperation had been caused by a letter of Cromwell to Sir Ralph Evers, in which it was said that, “unless the commons would be soon pacified, there should be such vengeance taken that the whole world should speak thereof.”[185] It was proposed to cut short further parley, and leave the cause to be decided by the sword. Darcy had already selected an agent to the court of Brussels, to beg that arms and ammunition might be sent at once to Hull.[186] Sir Robert Constable declared openly, “that if his advice might be taken, seeing he had broken one point in the tables with the king, he would yet break another, and have no meeting. He would have all the country made sure from Trent northward; he doubted not they would have joined with them all Lancashire and Cheshire, which would make them strong enough to defend themselves against all men; and then,” he said, “he would be content to condescend to the meeting.”[187]
Had this advice been taken, the consequences might have been serious; but the fatal moderation of the leader prevailed over the more audacious but safer counsel. The terms offered by the government should be first discussed, but they should be discussed in security. The musters should reassemble in full force.[188] They had summoned a northern parliament and convocation. The two assemblies should sit at Pomfret and not at York, and should meet at the time of the conference.
Thus, on the 26th of November, as the king’s commissioners approached the borders of Yorkshire,[189] the news reached them that the beacons were again burning, and the force of the commons was again collecting. The conference, if conference there was to be, must be held with their hands on their sword-hilts. The black squadrons, with St. Cuthbert’s banner, would be swarming on the banks of the Don as before.[190] They had brought down extensive powers, but the king had refused absolutely to grant a complete pardon. Five or six of the worst offenders, he insisted, should be surrendered; and if the rebels were obstinate, Norfolk had been directed to protract the discussion, to win time by policy, that he might himself come to them; and in the meantime to consent to nothing, to promise nothing, and yet do and say nothing “which might give them warning and respite to fortify themselves.”[191]
But the waters had fallen low; the ground was hard; the sharpest winter had set in which had been known for years. The force which Shrewsbury had with him could not now hold its position in the face of the vast numbers which were collecting. When the number of the rebels who had reassembled was known, Sir John Russell was sent back from Nottingham to tell the king that his conditions could not be insisted upon, and to entreat him not only to grant the full pardon, but to promise also to hold a parliament in person at York.
Ignorant what the answer would be, Norfolk, with the other commissioners, went on to Doncaster, having prepared his way by a letter to Lord Darcy, to do away the effect of his late overtures.[192] He arrived at the town on the 28th of November. On Monday the 27th, the northern notables, laity and clergy, had assembled at Pomfret. Thirty-four peers and knights, besides gentlemen and extemporized leaders of the commons, sate in the castle hall;[193] the Archbishop of York and his convocation, in Pomfret church. The discussions of the latter body were opened by the archbishop in a sermon, in which he dared to declare the meeting unlawful and the insurrection traitorous. He was swiftly silenced: a number of soldiers dragged him out of the pulpit, and threw him down upon the pavement. He was rescued and carried off by a party of his friends, or in a few more moments he would have been murdered.[194] The clergy, delivered from his control, drew up a list of articles, pronouncing successively against each step which had been taken in the Reformation;[195] and other articles simultaneously were drawn by the council in the hall. One by one, as the form of each was resolved upon, they were read aloud to the assembly, and were received with shouts of “Fiat! Fiat!”
Ten knights were then told off, and ten followers for every knight, to ride down to Doncaster and arrange the preliminaries of the meeting. They saw the duke on the day of his arrival; and on Wednesday the 29th, Lord Darcy, Robert Aske, and three hundred of the most eminent of their party, passed the bridge of the Don with a safe conduct into the town. Wearing their pilgrim’s badges, the five wounds of Christ crossed on their breasts, “they made obeisance on their knees before the duke and earls, and did humbly require to have the king’s most merciful and free pardon for any of their offences committed.” This done, they presented their resolutions, on which they had just determined at Pomfret, and the discussion opened. The duke’s hands were tied; he could undertake nothing. The debate continued till Saturday, “exceeding perplexed,” messengers hurrying to and fro between Doncaster and Pomfret. At length, on Saturday, Sir John Russell came with the king’s revised commission.
Against his judgment Henry had yielded to the entreaties of the Privy Council. He foresaw that to allow a commotion of such a kind to pass wholly unpunished, was to acknowledge a virtual defeat, and must encourage conduct which would soon lead to a repetition of the same scenes. He refused to admit that Norfolk was justified in his despondency. Skipton still held out. Lord Clifford and Sir William Musgrave had gained possession of Carlisle, and were raising men there. Lord Derby was ready to move with the musters of Cheshire and Lancashire. Besides Shrewsbury’s forces, and the artillery at Tickhill, Suffolk had eight thousand men in high order at Lincoln. He “marvelled that Norfolk should write to him in such extreme and desperate sort, as though the world were turned upside down.” “We might think,” he said, “that either things be not so well looked on as they might be, when you can look but only to the one side; or else that ye be so perplexed with the brutes on the one part, that ye do omit to write the good of the other. We could be as well content to bestow some time in the reading of an honest remedy as of so many extreme and desperate mischiefs.” Nevertheless, he said, if the rebels would be contented with the two concessions which Norfolk had desired,—a free pardon and a parliament at York,—these, but only these, might be made. No further engagements of any kind should or might be entered into. If more were insisted on, the commissioners should protract the time as skilfully as they could, and send secret expresses to Lord Derby and the Duke of Suffolk, who would advance by forced marches to their support.[196] With this letter he sent a despatch to Suffolk, bidding him hold himself in readiness, and instructing him at the same time to use his influence in the West Riding to induce the people to return to their allegiance, and permitting him to make liberal offers and promises in the name of his government.[197]
The limitation of the new commission was as clear as language could make it. If the Duke of Norfolk committed himself more deeply, it was against the king’s express commands, and in the face of repeated warnings.
On the day of Russell’s arrival an agreement was made and signed. The pardon and the parliament were directly promised. It appears, certainly, that further engagements were virtually entered upon, or that words were used, perhaps intentionally vague, which were interpreted by the insurgents through their hopes and wishes. They believed, perhaps they were led to believe, that their entire petition had been granted;[198] they had accomplished the object of their pilgrimage, and they were satisfied.
As the conference closed, Aske again fell upon his knees, “and most humbly required the Duke of Norfolk and all the earls and lords of his part, to desire the lords of the north part to relinquish and refuse thenceforth to nominate him by the name of captain; and they promised: which done, the said Aske, in the presence of all the lords, pulled off his badge crossed with the five wounds, and in a semblable manner did all the lords there, and all others there present, saying all these words, ‘We will wear no badge nor figure but the badge of our sovereign Lord.’”[199] A fine scene ... yet, as we sometimes witness with a sudden clearance after rain, leaving hanging vapours in the sky, indicating surely that the elements were still unrelieved.
The king had resolved on concession, but not on such concession as the Pomfret council demanded and Norfolk had seemed to promise. He would yield liberally to the substantial interests of the people, but he would yield little to their imaginative sympathies; and to the clergy and the reactionist lords he would not yield a step. The enclosures he intended should be examined, the fines on renewals of leases should be fixed, and the relations of landlord and tenant so moderated that “rich and poor men might live together, every one in his degree according to his calling.”[200] The abbey lands would not be restored to the monks, but he saw the inconvenience of attaching them to the domains of the crown. They should be disposed of rapidly on terms favourable to the people and unfavourable to himself. In this direction he was ready to do all that he was desired to do; but undo the Reformation—never.
A remarkable state paper, in Cromwell’s handwriting, indicates the policy which the king then intended. The northern parliament was to meet the following summer. There is not the smallest doubt that Henry meant to observe his own promises. He would be present in person. The queen would accompany him, and the opportunity would be taken for her coronation. Meanwhile, to clear up all misunderstandings, every nobleman and gentleman who had taken part in the insurrection was to be sent for, and should learn from the king himself the bearing of the measures against which they had clamoured, the motives which had led to the adoption of such measures, and the extent to which they would be further carried. A similar invitation should be sent to the principal persons in all other English counties, to come to London and give their advice on questions of social and local reform; and, further, to receive directions to try various experiments in such matters before the meeting of parliament, “that his Grace might see what fruit should succeed of them, and so alter and change as he should think meet.” To do away with the suspicion that the government were favouring heresy, copies of the “Articles of Faith” were to be scattered liberally through England; select preachers were to be sent in sufficient numbers into the north to explain their meaning; and next there follows a passage which, as written by Cromwell, was a foreshadowing of his own fate.
“Forasmuch as the rebels made the maintenance of the faith one of the chief grounds and cause of the rebellion, it shall be necessary that the King’s Highness, in the mean season, see his laws, heretofore taken for the establishment of an unity in the points of religion, put in such experience and execution in those parts as it may appear that his Grace earnestly mindeth and desireth an agreement specially in those things; which will not be done without his Highness do some notable act in those quarters for that purpose.”
Finally, a lieutenant-general and a council should be permanently established at York as a court of appeal, empowered to hear and decide all local causes and questions. That the government might not again be taken by surprise, garrisons, Cromwell thought, might be established in the great towns, “in such order as they might be continued without hatred of the people.” The ordnance stores should be kept in better preparation, and should be more regularly examined; and, above all, the treasury must be better furnished to meet unforeseen expenses, “experience showing that princes be not so easily served save where there is prompt payment for service rendered, and the honest labourer is not kept waiting for his hire.”[201]
These well-considered suggestions were carried at once into effect. By the end of December many of the gentlemen who had been out in the insurrection had been in London; in their interviews with the king they had been won back to an unreserved allegiance, and had returned to do him loyal service. Lord Darcy and Sir Robert Constable had been invited with the rest; they had declined to present themselves: the former pretended to be ill; Constable, when the king’s messenger came to him, “using no reverend behaviour nor making any convenable answer such as might have tended to his Grace’s satisfaction,” shut himself up in a remote castle on the Yorkshire coast.[202] Of the three leaders who had thrown themselves into the insurrection with a fixed and peremptory purpose, Aske alone, the truest and the bravest, ventured to the king’s presence. Henry being especially desirous to see a man who had shaken his throne, paid him the respect of sending his request by the hands of a gentleman of the bedchamber. He took him now, he said, for his faithful subject, he wished to talk with him, and to hear from his own lips the history of the rising.[203]
Aske consulted Lord Darcy. Darcy advised him to go, but to place relays of horses along the road, to carry six servants with him, leaving three at Lincoln, Huntingdon, and Ware, and taking three to London, that in case the king broke faith, and made him prisoner, a swift message might be brought down to Templehurst, and Darcy, though too sick to pay his court to Henry, would be well enough to rescue Aske from the Tower.[204] They would have acted more wisely if they had shown greater confidence. Aske went, however. He saw the king, and wrote out for him a straightforward and manly statement of his conduct—extenuating nothing—boasting of nothing—relating merely the simple and literal truth. Henry repeated his assurance to him that the parliament should meet at York; and Aske returned, hoping perhaps against hope; at all events, exerting himself to make others hope that the promises which they supposed to have been made to them at Doncaster would eventually be realized. To one person only he ventured to use other language. Immediately that he reached Yorkshire, he wrote to the king describing the agitation which still continued, and his own efforts to appease it. He dwelt upon the expectations which had been formed; in relating the expressions which were used by others, he indicated not obscurely his own dissatisfaction.
“I do perceive,” he said, “a marvellous conjecture in the hearts of the people, which is, they do think they shall not have the parliament in convenient time; secondly, that your Grace hath by your letters written for the most part of the honourable and worshipful of these shires to come to you, whereby they fear not only danger to them, but also to their own selves; thirdly, they be in doubt of your Grace’s pardon by reason of a late book answering their first articles, now in print,[205] which is a great rumour amongst them; fourthly, they fear the danger of fortifying holds, and especially because it is said that the Duke of Suffolk would be at Hull, and to remain there; fifthly, they think your Grace intendeth not to accomplish their reasonable petitions by reason now the tenths is in demand; sixthly, they say the report is my lord privy seal[206] is in as great favour with your Grace as ever he was, against whom they most specially do complain;
“Finally, I could not perceive in all the shires, as I came from your Grace homewards, but your Grace’s subjects be wildly minded in their hearts towards commotions or assistance thereof, by whose abetment yet I know not; wherefore, sir, I beseech your Grace to pardon me in this my rude letter and plainness of the same, for I do utter my poor heart to your Grace to the intent your Highness may perceive the danger that may ensue; for on my faith I do greatly fear the end to be only by battle.”[207]
These were the words of a plain, honest man, who was convinced that his conduct had been right, that his demands had been wise, and was ready to return to rebellion when he found his expectations sliding away. Here, as so often in this world, we have to regret that honesty of purpose is no security for soundness of understanding; that high-hearted, sincere men, in these great questions, will bear themselves so perversely in their sincerity, that at last there is no resource but to dismiss them out of a world in which they have lost their way, and will not, or cannot, recover themselves.
But Aske, too, might have found a better fate, if the bad genius of his party had not now, in an evil hour for him and for many more, come forward upon the scene.
There were glad hearts at Rome when the news came that the English commons had risen for the Church. The Pope would lose no time in despatching his blessings and his help to his faithful children. His advances had been scorned—his hopes had been blighted—his offers of renewed cordiality had been flung back to him in an insulting act of parliament; the high powers, it seemed, had interfered at last to avenge his quarrel and theirs. Rumour painted the insurgents as in full triumph; but their cause was the cause of the world, and should not be left in their single hands. If France and the Empire were entangled in private quarrels, Scotland was free to act, and to make victory sure.
On Christmas eve, at St. Peter’s, at the marvellous mass, when as the clock marked midnight, the church, till then enveloped in darkness, shone out with the brilliance of a thousand tapers, a sword and cap were laid upon the altar: the sword to smite the enemies of the faith, the cap, embroidered with the figure of a dove, to guard the wearer’s life in his sacred enterprise. The enchanted offerings were a present of the Holy Father to James the Fifth; they were to be delivered in Scotland with the same ceremonials with which they had been consecrated;[208] and at Rome prayers were sent up that the prince would use them in defence of Holy Church against those enemies for whom justice and judgment were now prepared; that, in estimating the value of the gifts, he would remember their mystic virtue and spiritual potency.[209]
The Scotch were, indeed, ill-selected as allies to the northern English, their hereditary enemies;[210] but religion had reconciled more inveterate antagonisms, and to the sanguine Paul, and his more sanguine English adviser, minor difficulties seemed as nothing, and vanished in the greatness of their cause.
Reginald Pole was now a cardinal. When hopes of peace with England had finally clouded, he was invited to Rome. It was soon after announced that he was to be raised to high dignity in the Roman Church; and although he was warned that the acceptance of such a position would sanction the worst interpretation of his past proceedings, he contented himself with replying with his usual protestations of good meaning, and on the 20th of December he received a cardinal’s hat.[211]
His promotion, like the consecration of the cap and sword, was a consequence of the reports from England. He had been selected a representative of the Holy See on the outbreak of the rebellion which he had foretold, and he was armed with a rank adequate to his mission, and with discretionary instructions either to proceed to England or to the nearest point to it, in France or Flanders, to which he could venture.
The condition in which he might find his own country was uncertain. If the first rumours were correct, the king might be in the power of the insurgents, or, at least, be inclined to capitulate. It was possible that the struggle was still in progress—that the friends of the Church might require assistance and direction. It was necessary, therefore, to be provided for either contingency. To the Pope, with whom he had no disguise, and under whose direction he, of course, was acting, he spoke freely of his mission as intended to support the insurrection, that the people of England might have a leader near at hand of the old royal blood, with authority from the Pope to encourage them, yet beyond the reach of the tyrant’s hand.[212] With the English government he manœuvred delicately and dexterously. At the end of December he wrote a respectful letter to Henry, making no allusion to any intended commission, but, in his capacity merely of an English subject, going over the points at issue between his country and the Papacy, and giving his reasons for believing the right to be with the See of Rome; but stating at the same time his desire “to satisfy his Majesty, or else to be himself satisfied,” and offering “to repair into Flanders, there to discuss and reason with such as his Highness would appoint to entreat that matter with him.”[213]
The proposal seemed so reasonable to Henry, that, if Pole, he said, was coming to Flanders really with no concealed intention, he would consent willingly; and persons were selected who should go over and dispute with him.[214] The mask was carefully sustained. In his general correspondence with his friends, although he did not disguise his commission from the Holy See, or suggest as a possibility that he might himself be convinced in the intended discussion, yet he spoke beforehand of his expedition merely as a peaceful one; and since he intended to commence with argument, he perhaps conceived himself to be keeping within the letter of the truth.
As his legatine credentials, five pastoral epistles were prepared by Paul.
The first was an address to his well-beloved children in England, whose apostacy he knew to have been forced upon them, and who now were giving noble proof of their fidelity in taking arms for the truth. He lauded them for their piety; he exhorted them to receive, obey, and assist his excellent representative in the high work on which he was sent.
The second was to James of Scotland—a companion to another and more explicit letter which accompanied the cap and sword—commending Pole to his care, and again dwelling on the exploits which lay before him to execute in England.
The third and fourth were to Francis and the Regent of the Netherlands. The French and Imperial ambassadors had both been consulted on Pole’s intended expedition, and both had signified their approval of it. Paul now implored the King of France to consider the interests which were compromised by the unhappy war in Europe, and to remember his duty as a Christian prince. He urged both Francis and the Regent Mary to receive Pole as they would receive himself, as engaged upon the deepest interests of Holy Church.
A last letter was to the Prince Bishop of Liège, claiming his general assistance, and begging him, should it be necessary, to supply the legate with money.
With these missives, and with purposes of a very plain character, Reginald Pole left Rome in February. France was his first object. The events in England of the few last weeks had prepared a different reception for him from that which he expected.
The king had not lost a moment in correcting the misconceptions which the Duke of Norfolk had permitted at Doncaster. The insurgents supposed that they had done good service to the commonwealth; the king regarded them as pardoned traitors who must reward his forgiveness by loyal obedience for the future. A chasm lay between the two estimates of the same subject, which would not readily be filled. The majority of the gentlemen had returned from their visit to London, converts to Henry’s policy—or at any rate determined to support it. The clergy, and such of the people as were under their influence, remained a sullen minority. The intentions of the government were made purposely obvious. Large garrisons, with ammunition and cannon, were thrown into Newcastle, Scarborough, and Hull. Royal officers penetrated the country where the power of the knights and nobles was adequate to protect them, compelling suspected persons to sue out their pardons by taking the oath of allegiance in a form constructed for the occasion.[215] The most conspicuous insurgents were obliged to commit themselves to acquiescence in all the measures against which they had risen. They had believed themselves victorious: they were enduring the consequences of defeat.