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THE COMMERCE OF CHRISTENDOM

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Epochs of Modern History

EDITED BY

EDWARD E. MORRIS, M.A.

THE ERA
OF

THE PROTESTANT REVOLUTION

| LIBRARY OF CONGRESS \

I ~*Hf ^r !

0 " ~ — &

| UNITED STATES OP AMERICA, t

LONDON : PRINTED BY

SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE

AND PARLIAMENT STREET

Epochs of Modern History

THE ERA

OF THE

PROTESTANT REVOLUTION

BY
/
3/

FREDERIC SEEBOHM

AUTHOR OF
THE OXFORD REFORMERS — COLET, ERASMUS, AND MORE*

'•V

WITH NUMEROUS MAPS

NEW EDITION

LONDON
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.

1877

SUMMARY.

PART I.

STATE OF CHRISTENDOM.

CHAPTER I.

Introductory.

PACtK

(a) The Small Extent of Christe?idom. — Smaller than it once had been.
The Mohammedan power checked in the West, but encroaching from
the East. Kinship between Christians, Mohammedans, and Jews,
but they hate one another i

(b) The Signs of NeiuEife in Christendom. — Influence of the Cru-
sades. Inventions. Fall of Constantinople. Revival of learning.
Printing 3

c) The Widening of Christendom. — Moors driven out of Spain. Dis-
covery of America. New way to East Indies. Men's minds pre-
pared for great events 4

id) '1 he New Era one of Progress in~Civilisation. — What civilisation
is. The old Roman civilisation. Its main vice. Modern civilisa-
tion. Its strength. The crisis of the struggle between the old and
the new order of things. Plan of this book . . . .5

- CHAPTER II.

THE POWERS BELONGING TO THE OLD ORDER OF THINGS,
AND GOING OUT.

(a) The Ecclesiastical System. — The Ecclesiastical Empire. Rome its
capital. Independent of the civil power. The monks. Power of the
ecclesiastical system, by its influence over the people, by its wealth,
by the., monopoly of learning and political influence, which all cen-
tred in Rome. This Empire will be broken up in the Era . . 8

(&) The Scholastic System. — The learned world talked and wrote in
Latin, and belonged to the clergy. This made learning scholastic,
shackled science, and religion also, and kept them from the common
people. Necessity of mental freedom. The Universities. Students
pass from one to another. The result of this in the days of Wiclif.
Will be repeated in the new Era. The work of the Era . .11

vi Summary.

AGE

(c) The Feuctal System and the Forces which were breaking it iip. —
It divided countries into petty lordships. Decay of the feudal
system. Subjection of feudal lords to the Crown. Increasing power
of the Crown. The growth of commerce. Trade of the Mediter-
ranean. The manufacturing districts. The fisheries. The com-
merce of the Hanse towns. Bruges and Antwerp the central marts
of commerce. Lines of maritime, inland, and overland trade. The
towns had mostly got free. Why the towns hated feudalism and
favoured the Crown. The feudal peasantry once were more free
than afterwards under the feudal system. Where the central power
was weakest, feudal serfdom lingered longest. The towns and
commerce favoured freedom of the peasantry 15

CHAPTER III.

THE MODERN NATIONS WHICH WERE RISING INTO POWER.

(a) Italy. — Italy not a united nation. Rome, according to Machiavelli,
the cause of her disunity. Rome a centre of rottenness. Dante
and Petrarch described her vices. Recent Popes bad men. Alex-
ander VI. and Caesar Borgia. Their crimes. Effect of Papal
wickedness. Main divisions of Italy. Papal States. Venice.
.Florence. Milan. Naples. Papal politics the ruin of Italy by pro-
'moting invasion by France and Spain _ . . .

(b) Germany. — Germany had not yet attained national unity. _ The

emperor claimed to be Caesar and King of Rome. His claim to
universal empire very shadowy. How elected. The feudal cere-
mony. There were no imperial domains. Very little imperial
power. The Emperor Maximilian powerful as head of the Austrian
House of Hapsburg. Charles V. powerful because of his Austrian
and Spanish dominions. The Diets had no power to enforce their
decrees. The feudal system still prevailed. Subdivision of lordships
by law of inheritance. Constant petty feuds. Lawlessness of the
knights. The towns of Germany. Their leagues for mutual de-
fence. Want of a central power to maintain the public peace. The
condition of the peasantry growing harder and harder for want of a
central power. History of the German ' Bauer.' Rebellion his
only remedy

the nobles. Driven into the north by the Moors. Reconquest of
Spain from the Moors, except Granada which held out. Kingdoms
of Castile and Arragon united under Ferdinand and Isabella. Spain
thenceforth tends to become an absolute monarchy. Conquest of
Granada. Ferdinand's policy to complete Spain on the map. Co-
lumbus. Foreign policy. Royal marriages. Success of these alli-
ances. Domestic policy. Subjugation of the nobles. The Inquisi-
tion. Banishment of the Jews. Independent policy towards Rome.
Colonial policy. Christianity introduced into the New World, but
slavery with it ; . .

(d) France. — How all France had grown into one nation. France

claimed Milan, and Naples also. This union of all France the_ re-
sult of the Crown being hereditary, primogeniture, and intermarriage
with the royal family. The towns. Final struggle of the Crown
with Burgundy. English conquests at an end. The English wars
had helped to unite the nation and increase the power of the Crown;
but there were seeds of disunion within. The Crown had become

Summary. vii

absolute. Royal taxes without consent of the people. Royal stand-
ing army. The noblesse a privileged untaxed caste. The peasantry
not serfs, but taxed, paying rents, and tithes, and taille. Their
grievances. The middle class leave the country for the towns. Se-
paration of classes the main vice in French polity. Love of foreign
wars the chief vice in her policy . . . . . .40

{e) England.— The English nation had for long been consolidated. The
nobility not a caste. Importance of the middle classes of citizens and
yeomen. The Crown and all classes subject to the laws. The govern-
ment a constitutional monarchy, i.e. the king could make no new laws
and levy no taxes without consent of parliament. The ecclesiastics
not altogether Englishmen, but held large possessions. The Pope
also drew revenues from England. The peasantry had got free from
feudal servitude and were becoming a wage-earning class. Freedom
did not necessarily make them materially better off. They had no
share in the government, but there was nothing in the laws to pre-
vent their getting it. Henry VII. was a Welshman, and landed in
Wales. His throne precarious. Other claimants. Lambert Simnel.
Perkin Warbeck. Henry VII.'s foreign policy was alliance with
Spain. Hence the marriage with Catherine of Arragon. Henry
VII.'s domestic policy. His position as regards Parliament. His
minister, Cardinal Morton. Order maintained. Middle class fa-
voured. The way paved for the union of England and Scotland.
The Welsh finally conciliated, and England's colonial empire begun.
The tomb of Henry VII 46

CHAPTER IV.

THE NEED OF REFORM AND DANGER OF REVOLUTION.

{a) The Necessity for Reform.— -Italy and Germany not yet united na-
tions. The lack of international peace and justice. The serfdom
of the German peasantry still continued. The_ ecclesiastical and
scholastic systems needed reform. The alternatives were reform or
revolution 55

ifi) The Train laid for R evolut ion.— Chiefly among the German peasan-
try. Their ecclesiastical as well as feudal grievances. Contemporary
testimony. Successful rebellion of the Swiss in 1315, and the pea
sants of the Graubund 1 441-71. Unsuccessful rebellion of the Lol-
lards and Hussite wars 1415-1436. Threats of rebellion in Fran-
conia in 1476. The Bundschtih. Rebellion in Kempten 1492. In
Elsass 1493. Both again in 1501-2. In the Black Forest 1 512-13,
under Joss Fritz. In 1514 in Wurtemberg and_the Austrian Alps.
The Swabian leagueoTnobles against the peasants. Far and wide
the train was laid for future revolution. The train laid not where
serfdom was at its worst, but where freedom was nearest in sight . 57

v'm Summary.

PART II.
THE PROTESTANT REVOLUTION.

CHAPTER I.

REVIVAL OF LEARNING AND REFORM AT FLORENCE.

PAGE.

(a) The Revivers of Learning at Florence. — The Republic of Florence.
Power in the hands of the Medici. Cosmo de' Medici 1389-1464.
Lorenzo de' Medici 1448-1492. Florence the Modern Athens.
Michael Angelo. The Platonic Academy, Ficino, Politian, and
Pico della Mirandola. Semi-pagan tendencies of the revival of
learning 66

(Jj) The great Florentine Reformer, Girolamo Savonarola, 1452-1498.
— He becomes a religious reformer. Made Prior of St. Mark at
Florence. Stirs up in the people the spirit of reform and freedom.
Death of Lorenzo and Innocent VIII. The French Invasion of
Italy. The Medici expelled. The republic restored. Savonarola's
reforms. He becomes fanatical. Is martyred by order of Pope
Alexander VI .69.

(r) Savonarola' s Influence on the Revivers of Learning. — His influence

over Pico, Politian, and Ficino . mz

(d) Niccolo Machiavelli, 1469-1527. — Secretary to the Republic at
Florence, and then serves the Medici. Writes ' The Prince,' in which
he codifies the vicious maxims of Italian policy since called ' Machia-
vellian' 73-

CHAPTER II.

THE OXFORD REFORMERS.

(a) The Spirit of Revival of Learning and Reform is carriea from
Italy to Oxford. — Distinction and connection between the Revival
of learning and Religious reform. Both against the Scholastic
system. The reform movement crushed at Florence. Revivers of
learning at Oxford. Grocyn and Linacre go to Italy, and return to
Oxford. John Colet does the same (1485-1496) . . . .74.

{?>) Colet, More, and Erasmus Join in fellow-work. — Colet unites the
spirit of the new learning and religious reform. Lectures on St.
Paul's Epistles at Oxford. Attacks the schoolmen. He urges also
the need of ecclesiastical reform. Colet attracts disciples and fellow-
workers. Thomas More. Erasmus. Early life of Erasmus. He
comes to Oxford. Makes friends with Colet and Thomas More.
Comes under Colet's influence (1496-1500) 78;

(c) The Oxford Students are scattered till the Accession of Henry
VIII. — Exactions of Empson and Dudley. More offends Henry
VII. The circle of Oxford students formed again in London . . 80

id) On the accession of Henry VIII. they commence their fellow-work.
Hopes on the accession of Henry VIII. The Oxford students in
Court favour. Erasmus Greek professor at Cambridge (1509) . 81

(e) Erasmus writes his 'Praise of Folly.' — Satire on the scholastic

theologians, monks, and popes (151 1) .... .82

Summary. jx

PAGE

[f) Colet founds St. PauTs School — It is a school of the new learning,
and excites the malice of men of the old school. His sermon on
Ecclesiastical Reform. Escapes from a charge of heresy (1510) . 84

(g) The Continental Wars of Henry VIII., 1511-1512.— The Holy
Alliance against France. Henry VIII.'s first campaign. Wolsey.
Julius II. succeeded by Leo X. Henry persists in invading France.
Gains the Battle of the Spurs. Scotch invasion of England. Battle
of Flodden. Henry VIII. now joins France against Spain. Louis
XII. succeeded by Francis I. Francis I. invades Italy and re-
covers Milan. Again Spain and_ England combine against France.
These wars of kings against the interests of Europe, and tended to
make kings absolute. The example of France. Narrow escape of
England. Colet preaches against the wars. Erasmus is against
them too, and also More ... 86

{h) The kind of Reform aimed at by the Oxford Reformers. — Erasmus
made a Councillor of Prince Charles. More drawn into Henry
VIII.'s service. The ' Christian Prince ' of Erasmus. More's
• Utopia.' They entered thoroughly into the spirit of modern
civilisation. The character of their religious reform. The New
Testament of Erasmus (1516). .The kind of ecclesiastical reform
urged by the Oxford Reformers} They aimed at a broad and tole-
rant Church, and were likely to oppose schism . . . .00

CHAPTER III.

THE WITTENBERG REFORMERS.

(a) Martin Ltdher becomes a Reformer. — Luther born 1483. Sent to
school and to the University of Erfurt. Becomes a monk. Adopts
the theology of St. Augustine, and in this differed from the Oxford
Reformers. He removes to Wittenberg. Visits Rome. Reads the
New Testament of Erasmus and finds out the difference in their
theology (1483-15 16) . 94

(b) The sale of Indulgences. — Leo X.'s scheme to get money by indul-
gences. Offers princes a share in the spoil. Erasmus writes bit-
terly against it, but pope and kings will not listen (1517) . • -97

selling indulgences. Luther's theses against indulgences. He is
backed by the Elector of Saxony. Philip Melanchthon comes to
Wittenberg (1517-1519) 98

(d) The Election of Charles V. to the Empire (1519).— Death of Maxi-
milian. Candidates for the Empire. Charles V. elected through
the influence of the Elector of Saxony. Extent of Charles V.'s
rule . . . 100

(e) Luther s Breach with Rome. — Luther finds himself a Hussite.

Rumoured Papal Bull against Luther. Luther's pamphlet to the
nobility of the German nation, and another on the ' Babylonish Cap-
tivity of the Church.' The Bull arrives (1520) 102

if) The Elector of Saxony consults Erasmus, Dec. 6, 1520. — Aleander,
the Pope's nuncio, tries to win over the Elector of Saxony. The
Elector asks advice of Erasmus. The advice of Erasmus. The
Elector follows it, and urges moderation on Luther .... 105

(g) Luther hirns the Pope's Bull, Dec. 10, 1520, notwithstanding the

cautions of the Elector. Erasmus fears revolution . . . 107

Summary.

CHAPTER IV

THE CRISIS. — REFORM OR REVOLUTION. — REFORM REFUSED
BY THE RULING POWERS.

PAGE

(a) Ulrich von Hutten a7id Franz von Sickingen. — The Robin Hoods
of Germany side with Luther. Ulrich von Hutten. His satire
upon Rome. His German popular rhymes against Rome. De-
mands freedom from Rome. Small chances of Reform . . .109

(b) The Diet of Worms meets z%th Jamiary, 1521. — ' Agenda ' at the
Diet of Worms : — to stop private war, to settle disputes, to provide
central power in the Emperor's absence, and to take notice of the
books of Martin Luther. No hope for the peasantry. Brief from
Rome about Luther. The Electors hesitate to sanction the edict
against Luther. Hutten adjures the Emperor not to yield to Rome.
Luther summoned to Worms #. 112

and Antichrist. Luther sets off for Worms. His journey. Popular
excitement. Luther's heroic firmness. He enters Worms . .116

(d) Luther before the Diet. — Luther's first appearance before the Diet.

He asks for time to consider his answer. They give him till the
next day. Excitement in Worms. Luther's second appearance
before.the Diet. His speech. Repeats his speech in Latin. Re-
fuses to recant. The Emperor decides against Luther. Threats of
Revolution. The Electors urge delay. Luther leaves Worms.
What Luther did at Worms for Germany and for Christendom . 120

(e) Edict against Luther. — Fears of the papal party. Rumours of

Luther's capture. The Elector of Saxony leaves Worms. Treaty
between Charles V. and the Pope. The Edict issued against Luther.
Letter from Valdez, the Emperor's secretary . _. . . 125
{J) Political Reasons for the Decision at Worms. — Rivalship between
Spain and France. Intrigues of princes. France the common
enemy of the Pope, Spain, and England. Reform refused by the
ruling powers from political motives 127

CHAPTER V.

REVOLUTION.

(a) The Prophets of Revohdion.— Popular feeling against the Edict.
Luther in the Wartburg. In his absence wilder spirits take the
lead. The prophets of Zwickau. Luther comes back to Wittenberg
and confronts the prophets. His common sense prevails. The
prophets driven from Wittenberg. Miinzer becomes the prophet of
the peasantry (1522) 131

(b) The End of Sickingen and Hutten.— The Council of Regency under
the Elector of Saxony strives to avert the storm, but meets_ with
opposition. Franz von Sickingen takes to the sword, but is de-
feated and killed. Hutten's death. The peasantry get nothing
from the knights (1523) . 134

(c) The Peasants' War.— Carlstadt and_Munzer_ stir up rebellion. In-
surrection of the peasantry in Swabia. Their twelve articles. Not
likely to be granted by either Pope, nobles, or Luther. Swabian
peasants crushed in April 1525. Insurrection on the Neckar, April
1525. The peasants' revenge for Swabian slaughters. The retalia-
tion of the nobles, May 1525. Insurrection in Franconia. Revolu-
tion in the towns of Franconia. Diary of a citizen of Rothenburg.

Summary. xi

PAGE

' Insurrection in Elsass and Lorraine put down, May 1525. Insur-
rection in Bavaria, the Tyrol, and Carinthia. Miinzer heads an
insurrection in Thuringia. His mad proclamation. Death of
Miinzer. The attitude of Luther during the Peasants' War. Who
was really to blame? Death of the Elector of Saxony, May 1525 . 136
(d) The Sack of Rome, 1527.— Alliance of the Pope and the Emperor
against France. Henry VIII. joins it. Pope Leo X. dies, 1521.
Adrian VI. and Clement VII. Pope, 1523. Duke of Bourbon joins
the league against France. Francis I. crosses the Alps, but made
prisoner at the battle of Pavia. Rupture between Charles V. and
the Pope. Result of the Diet of Spires. March of a German
army on Rome. The Sack of Rome. Result of the Papal policy . 149

PART III.

RESULTS OF THE PROTESTANT

REVOLUTION.

CHAPTER I.

REVOLTS FROM ROME.
I.) IN SWITZERLAND AND GERMANY.

(a) Meaning of Revolt from Rome.— A political change. The Teutonic
nations revolted ; the Romanic nations remained under Rome. In
some nations there was a national revolt ; in some divided action and
civil wars r5~

(b) The Revolt in Switzerland (1524-1531).— The Swiss cantons.
Civil power vested in the people. Ulrich Zwingle, the Swiss re-
former, settles at Zurich. Zurich assumes to itself ecclesiastical
powers. Berne does the same soon after. Civil war. Peace of
Cappel. Character of Zwingle. Luther quarrels with Zwingle . 159

postponed for ten generations. The Diet of Spires, 1526, left each
state to take its own course about Luther. Hence arose Protestant
states, with national churches free from Rome, while others remained
Catholic. The Second Diet of Spires, 1529, reversed the decision,
notwithstanding the protest of the Protestant princes. Civd war
averted by the Turks' attack on Vienna. The Turks driven back.
Charles V. turned again upon German heretics. Diet of Augsburg.
The ' Augsburg Confession.' Protestant princes form the league of
Schmalkald for mutual defence. Civil war postponed during Luther's
life, but it begins soon after his death. Spanish conquest of Ger-
many. Revolt of the Protestant princes. Defeat of Charles V. ;
his abdication and death. The Peace of Augsburg (1555) and its
rule of mock toleration. Evils brought upon Germany by Charles
V.'s policy . l6z

xii Summary.

CHAPTER II.

REVOLT OF ENGLAND FROM ROME.

PAGE

(a) Its Political Character. — In England the revolt from Rome was

national and came at first from political causes .... 167

(l>) Reasons for Henry VIII.'s Loyalty to Rome. — Henry VIII. de-
fends the divine authority of the Pope, and writes a book against
Luther in r52i. He tells Sir Thomas More of a secret reason for it.
Henry VIII.'s marriage with Catherine of Arragon. Secret doubts
about its validity. Its unsatisfactory beginning. Its validity rested
on the divine authority of the Pope. Henry VIII.'s anxiety about
it and the succession. His anxiety to keep on good terms with the
Pope and Charles V. Execution of the Duke of Buckingham for
having his eye upon the succession to the throne (1521) . . . 167

the knowledge of Henry VIII.'s secret reasons on Sir Thomas More's
mind. Reaction in the minds of Erasmus and More against Luther 171

(d) Reasons for Henry VIII.'s Change of Policy. — Wolsey the great
war minister of Henry VIII. More opposed to the wars with France.
Charles V.'s treachery, and the Pope's. Henry VIII.'s foreign
policy all at sea again (1527)

(e) The Crisis. Henry VIII. determines iipon the Divorce from Cathe-
rine of Arragon. — Results of breach with Spain. Political reasons
for the divorce from Catherine. Wolsey tries to get the Pope to
grant a divorce, but fails. Henry VIII. takes the matter into his
own hands (1527-1529) 175

(f) Fall of Wolsey (1529-1530.) 176

\g) The Parliament of 1529-1536. Revolt of England from Rome. —

Sir Thomas More lord chancellor. Parliament of 1529 a crisis in
English history, like the Diet of Worms in German history. Com-
plaints against the clergy and ecclesiastical abuses. Wolsey's at-
tempts at ecclesiastical reform under papal authority. The king and
parliament now take up the matter. Petition of the Commons
against ecclesiastical grievances. Practical reforms. The divorce
question laid before the universities by Cranmer. Farther reforms.
The king declared supreme head of the Church of England instead
of the Pope. The king marries Anne Boleyn. The revolt of Eng-
land from Rome is now completed . . . . . . 177

(h) Heresy still punished in England. — There had been no change of
religious creed. Heretics still persecuted, and among them Tindal,
the translator of the New Testament. Sir Thomas More's zeal
against heresy 180-

(i) Execution of Sir Thomas More. — More himself has to suffer for
conscience' sake. More and Fisher sent to the Tower. Execution
of Sir Thomas More and Bishop Fisher (1535) 181

(k) Death of Erasmus in 1536. — Review of the results produced by the

work of the Oxford Reformers. 185

(/) Dissolution of the Mojiasteries and Reform of the Universities
(1536).— The work set a-going by the Oxford Reformers goes on.
Cromwell, now ecclesiastical minister of Henry VIII., enquires into
the state of the monasteries. Dissolution of the monasteries and
destruction of shrines. Reform of the Universities. Parliament
of 1529-36 dissolved. Tindal's translation of the Bible sanctioned.
Martyrdom of Tindal . . 186

(m) Later Years of Henry VIII. (1 536-1 547). — Execution of Anne
Boleyn. Henry VIII. marries Jane Seymour. A Catholic rebellion
in the North, fomented by the Pope and Reginald Pole, is quelled.

Summary. xiii

PAGE
Birth of Edward VI. and death of the queen. Henry VIII. marries
Anne of Cleves, but does not like her. Cromwell sacrificed to get
rid of her. Reconciliation with Charles V. Henry VIII. 's last two
marriages. Alliance with Spain, and wars with France. Want of
money. Death of Henry VIII. in 1547. Reform goes on during
the reign of Edward VI. Catholic reaction under Queen Mary.
' England become finally Protestant under Queen Elizabeth . . 188
(») Infltience of Henry VIII 's Reign on the English Co7istitution. —
How far the constitution was maintained. The revolt from Rome
accomplished by constitutional means. The power of Parliament
maintained. It preserved its control over taxation, and over the
making of new laws. On the whole, the Parliaments of Henry VIII.
deserve well of Englishmen. Unjust state trials the chief blot on
the reign of Henry VIII. England fared much better than France
and Spain 191

CHAPTER III.

REVOLT OF DENMARK AND SWEDEN AND (LATER) OF
THB NETHERLANDS.

(«) Denmark and Sweden. — Both Denmark and Sweden throw off the
yoke of Christian II., and then separate. The Swedes elect Gus-
tavus Vasa king. Sweden, under him, becomes a Protestant nation.
Denmark also, under her new king, becomes Protestant (1525-1560). 193

(£) The Revolt of the Netherlands.— Policy of Philip II. to subjectthe
Netherlanders to Spain and to Rome. They revolt, and the ' United
Provinces ' become a Protestant nation (1581) 194

CHAPTER IV.

THE GENEVAN REFORMERS.

(a) Rise of a new School of_ Reform (1536-1541). — A Protestant move-
ment which was not national, but which influenced the Protestants

of France, England, Scotland, and America more than Luther did . 195

(b) John Calvin. — His ' Institutes ' gave logical form to the * Calvinistic '
doctrines. Calvin settles at Geneva. Becomes a kind of dictator
of the Genevan state. His severe discipline and intolerance. He
founds schools (1509-1564) ... I 196

(fi) Influence of the Genevan School on Western Protestantism.— -The
French Huguenots, the Scotch Covenanters, the English Puritans,
the Pilgrim Fathers of New England, all of the Genevan school.
Their historical importance, and influence 011 national character . 198

CHAPTER V.

REFORM WITHIN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH.

a) The Italian Reformers. — Efforts at Reform within the Church.
Improvement in the character of Popes. The Mediating Reformers
of Italy. Valdez, Pole, Contarini. Paul III. makes some of them
Cardinals. Chances of a reconciliation with Protestants under
Paul III. Contarini and Melanchthon try to make peace at the
Diet of Ratisbon, but the Pope draws back, and Luther- also.
Everything left over till the Council of Trent (1534-1541) . 19*

xiv Summary.

PAGE

(b) The new Order of the Society of Jesus (1540). — Ignatius Loyola, a

Spanish knight. Wounded in 1521. Resolves to become a. general
of an army of saints instead of soldiers. His austerities. Resolves
to found the 'Order of Jesus.' To prepare himself, studies at the
University of Paris. At Paris meets Francis Xavier. Xavier
becomes a disciple and the great Jesuit missionary to the Indies,
China, and Japan. Character of the Jesuits. Their success and
influence. Causes of their ultimate unpopularity .... 203

Jesuits prevail over the mediating reformers. The Inquisition
introduced into Rome by Carraffa, afterwards Pope Paul IV. The
Council adjourned till 1555 under Paul IV. The Roman Catholic
Church reformed in morals, but made more rigid than ever in creed ?o6

CHAPTER VI.

THE FUTURE OF SPAIN AND FRANCE.

(a) The Future of Spain. — Growth of absolute monarchy in Spain.
Philip II. in close league with the Papacy. Seeks to establish
Spanish and Papal supremacy together. Fatal results of his policy 2o3

(b) The FtiHire of France. — Everything sacrificed to gratify the am-
bition of the absolute monarchy under Francis I. The curse which
the absolute monarchy was to France. Struggle with the Hugue-
nots in France. Massacre of St. Bartholomew in 1572. Tolera-
tion for a time under the Edict of Nantes. Its revocation in 1685,
and the banishment of the Huguenots, who came to England . .210

CHAPTER VII.

GENERAL RESULTS OF THE ERA OF THE PROTESTANT REVOLUTION.

(a) On the Growth of National Life. — Influence of the Protestant
Revolution on national life — where it succeeded — where it failed —
where it partly failed and partly succeeded . . . . 212

(b) On the Relations of Nations to each other. — Small improvement in

the dealings between nations. The Oxford Reformers not listened
to in this. Henry VIII. the last English king to dream of re-
covering France. Hugo Grotius afterwards urges International
reform 213

if) Influence 011 the Growth of National Languages and Literature. —
Luther's Bible and Hymns fix the character of the German lan-
guage. Influence of Calvin's writings on the French language.
Influence of Tindal's New Testament on the English version of the
Bible, and so upon the English language 214

(d) Effects in stimulating National Educatio7i. — Schools founded by
Savonarola, Colet, Luther, Calvin, Knox, the Pilgrim Fathers, and
the Jesuits • 216

0) Jnfltience 071 Domestic Life.— Political importance of domestic Hfe.
Danger to it from the existence in a country of large celibate classes.
Dissolution of monasteries and permission to the clergy to marry, a
step gained for modern civilisation 217

(/) Influence on popular Religion. — The Protestant movement popu-
larised religion, and strengthened individual conviction . . . 2L7_

Summary. xv

PAGE

{£) Want of Progress in Toleration. — Change from Catholic to Pro-
testant creeds was change from one rigid scholastic creed to others
equally rigid. Small connection between claiming freedom of
thought and conceding it to others. Persecution did not make'?the
persecuted tolerant. Yet toleration was after all one of the ulti-
mate results of the Protestant revolution . . . . . .219

(h) The Causes why the Success of the Era was so partial. — Progress
must be gradual. Limited by the range of knowledge. Limited
view of the universe. The earth still thought to be in the centre.
The crystalline spheres. Heaven beyond. The motion of the
spheres regarded with awe, and in popular superstition referred to
angels._ Astrology laughed at by some but believed in by others.
Belief in visions and inspirations, and in prodigies. Universal
belief in witchcraft. Witches as well as heretics burned. Bar-
barism of criminal law everywhere. The age not prepared for
toleration 221

(/) Beginning of Progress in Scientific Inquiry, — The range of geo-
graphical and astronomical knowledge widened. Nicolas Copernicus
argues that the sun is in the centre of the universe. His great
work not published till he was on his death-bed. He was followed
by Tycho Brahe, Kepler, and Galileo before the century was
closed 225

CHAPTER VIII.

ECONOMIC RESULTS OF THE ERA.

Results of the Era on what remained of the old serfdom. In Ger-
many, personal services continued. In France, the old rents and
payments chiefly in kind continued till 1789. In England, the old
rents were chiefly in fixed money payments. Effect of the dis-
covery of the silver mines in the New World. The fall in the value
of money caused a great rise in prices. German peasants' services
not lessened by it ; nor the French peasants' rents in produce, but it
reduced the burden of the English peasants' rents in money to
one-sixth or one-eighth of the value of the land. This would have
made them peasant proprietors had they held on to their land, but
their tendency was to leave their land and become labourers for
wages. Change from peasant proprietorship of land and of looms
to labour for wages chiefly the result of the growth of commerce
and capital and the use of machinery. These changes had begun
in the sixteenth century, and they completed the silent downfall of
the feudal system in England . 227

CONCLUSION.

The Protestant Revolution was the beginning of a great revolutionary
wave which broke in the French Revolution of 1789. The move-
men^ was inevitable, and might have been peacefully met and aided
by timely reforms : but the refusal of reform at the time of the
crisis involved ten generations in the turmoils of revolution , 231

COLOURED MAPS.

At the beginning.
i. Christendom &c.
2. The Commerce of Christendom

At the end.

3. Serfdom, and Rebellions against it,

before 1515.

4. The Peasants' War, 1525.

SMALL MAPS.

PnGE

Chief Roman Roads 6

The Ecclesiastical Emphe of Rome . . . ■. .11

The Universities 13

Italy 24

The Seven Prince Electors of Germany . . . .27

Spain and Naples . . . s 34

The Growth of France 40

France in the Era 41

French Provinces claimed by Henry VIII 86

Countries under the Rule of Charles V. .... 102

Extent of the Revolt from Rome 157

The Revolt in Switzerland 159

ERA C

OF THE

PROTESTANT REVOLUTION.

PART I.
STATE OF CHRISTENDOM.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY.

(a) The Small Extent of Christendom.

In the map at the beginning of this volume the light
portion marks the Old World as it was known at the
commencement of the era of which we have to speak.

A glance will show how small a portion of the known
world belonged to Christendom — that marked red and
striped red. And only the red part belonged The smail-
to Western or Roman Christendom, with christen-
which we have mostly to do. The part striped dom.
red had long ago severed itself from the Western and
belonged to the Eastern Churches, which by the Roman
Church were regarded as heretical and alien. Thus the
Christendom of which Rome was the capital embraced
only the western half of the peninsula of Europe. And
not even all that. For there was a little bit of Spain
(marked blue) which did not belong to Christendom.
B

State of Christendom.

PT. I.

We may note next how much smaller Christendom
was than it had once been. It had once covered not only
„ „ , the parts coloured red and striped red, but

Smaller than , ■*• . . - , - -_ . .. —.

it once had also those coloured dark blue, i.e. all Europe,
been. ^a y[-m0V) anc[ the African shores of the

Mediterranean Sea. But the dark blue portions had been
conquered from Christendom by her great rival Moham-
medan power, whose religion, though only

TheMoham- , .. r,, ' , . . .° ' , , ^ -I

medan half as old as Christianity, was thought to

power. number many times as many adherents as

there were Christians, and covered a much larger area
than Christendom — all the countries marked blue.

More than 700 years — twenty generations — ago the
Mohammedan Moors, after conquering the African shores
Checked in °f tne Mediterranean, had pushed on into
the West. Spain and threatened Christendom from the
West. Defeated and checked at the great battle of Tours
in 732, after a struggle of 700 years they still held a foot-
hold in Spain — the rich southern province of Granada.

But whilst checked in the West, Mohammedan arms
were encroaching upon Christendom from the East.
But en- The old Empire of the East and part of
fro°m?heS Hungary had fallen into their hands. In
East. 1453, i.e. in the lifetime of the fathers of the

men of the new era, Constantinople had been taken by
the Turks. The old capital of the Eastern Roman
Empire now became the capital of the great Ottoman
Empire. We see then how near to Rome Turkish con-
quests had come. Only the Adriatic separated the Otto-
man Empire from Italy. Once the Turks had even got a
footing in the heel of Italy. It really seemed not unlikely
that the capital of Christendom might itself some day
fall into their hands.

No wonder the Turks' were the terror of the Chris-
tians. And yet they had one thing m common, and it is

ch.-i. Introductory. 3

well that we should remember it. They were worshippers
of the same God. Both Christians and Mo- Kinship
hammedans professed to trace back their faith between

r Christians,

to Abraham. Though Christendom was small Mohamme-

and dwindling, the area of the religion in- j^and

herited from Abraham was large and increas- _, ,

-^ , . But they

mg. But this was no consolation to men to hate one

whom their fellow Christians of the Eastern another-
Churches were heretics, the ' unbelieving Jews ' the ob-
jects of scorn, and the ' infidel ' Turks of terror.

(b) The Signs of New Life in Christendom.

Christendom had never felt herself so small or so
beset with enemies. And yet there were signs of a new
life springing up. The new era was to be one of hope
and progress.

The Crusades of the Christian nations, intended to
dislodge the ' Infidel' out of Jerusalem, though they had
failed in that object, had awakened Europe to _ „

... _ 1 _TT , 1 Influence of

new life. East and West were brought nearer the Cru-
together. Knights and soldiers and pilgrims sades*
brought home from new lands new thoughts and wider
notions. Commerce with the East was extended. Mari-
time enterprise was stimulated. There was

... -i • T, • , Inventions.

improvement in ships. The manner s compass
was discovered, and under its guidance longer voyages
could safely be made. The invention of gun- Fan 0f con-
powder had changed the character of war and ^a^mople.
enlarged the scale on which it was waged.

The recent conquests of the Turks were indirectly the
cause of new life to Christendom. They re- Revival of
suited in a great revival of learning in Europe, learning.
Driven from the East, learned Greeks and Jews came
to settle in Italy. Greek and Hebrew were again studied

4 State of Christendom. pt. i.

in Europe. The literature, the history, the poetry, the
philosophy and arts of old Greece and Rome were re-
vived. And the result was that a succession of poets,
painters, sculptors, and historians sprang up in Christen-
dom such as had not been known for centuries. Above
all, the invention of printing had come just in
time to spread whatever new ideas were afloat
with a rapidity never known before.

So it is easy to see there were abundant signs of new
life in Christendom, however small, and hemmed in, and
threatened she might be. A new era was coming on,
and now observe how Christendom was widened, and
fresh room found for the civilisation of the new era to
work in.

(i) In 149"% the Moors were at last and for ever driven

out of Spain by the conquest of Granada by

driven out of Ferdinand and Isabella, and men felt that a

Spam. turn k^ come jn thg tide 0f victory in favour

of Christians.

(2) In 1492 came the discovery of the New World by
Columbus, followed up by the Spanish conquests of
Discovery of Mexico and Peru, the Portuguese settlements
America. jn Brazil, and the gaining of a foothold in the
New World by Sebastian Cabot for England — the embryo
of those great colonies, the New England, or extension
of England across the Atlantic, in which half the English
people now dwelL

(3) In 1497 Vasco de Gama sailed for the first time
round the Cape of Good Hope, and a new way was opened
New way to to Asia and the East Indies, and out of this in
East indies, t]ie far futUre came England's Indian Empire
and Australian colonies.

CH. I.

Introductory. 5

Looking again at the map, and adding to the Old World
the countries coloured in shadow which were brought
to light mostly during the childhood of the men of the
new era, we cannot wonder that they spoke of them as
belonging to a ' new world.' And bearing in mind that
having reached the West Indies, knowing of no Pacific
Ocean between, they thought they had reached the East
Indies from the west, and so had been, as it were, round
the world, we may realize how grand the new discoveries
must have seemed to them. Men of that day did not of
course see what we know now, how wide a field these new
discoveries would open for Christian civilisation to extend
itself into. But still they gave an immediate feeling of
relief to pent-up Christendom, a spur to commerce and
maritime enterprise, new light to science, new ■ , . . ,

\ . ' . a . . . ; . Men's minds

sources of wealth, and new direction to the prepared for
energies of nations, and more or less to all SKat event&
men a sense that they were living in an age of progress
and change which prepared them to look into the future
with hope, and to expect great events to happen in their
time.

(d) The New Era one of Progress in Civilisation.
In what Modern Civilisation consists.

The work of the new era was to gain for Christendom
a fresh step in the onward course of civilisation.

And when we speak of advance in civilisation, what
do we mean? Not simply advance in popu- whatcivili-
lation, wealth, luxury, but far more, that which <satl0n is-
lies hid in the derivation of the word, viz., advance in the
art of living together in civil society.

And in order clearly to understand the work that
was to be done in this era of progress, the difference
must be marked between (i) the old form of civilisation

State of Christendom.

PT. I.

The old
Roman

civilisation

which was to be left behind and (2) the new form of civili-
sation towards which fresh steps were to be gained.

(1) The old Roman civilisation had come about by
the conquest of the uncivilised tribes of Western Europe

by the Romans, — by their uniting the known
world in one great empire. Its ends were
brought together by roads, commerce was
encouraged, and Latin became the language understood by
the educated all over it.
Rome was the centre
of it all. The Roman
Empire was in fact a
network of Roman
towns, with all the
threads of it drawn
towards Rome. These
towns were camps,from
which the conquerors
ruled the districts
round. Little account
was taken of the coun-
try people. They were

looked upon as hopelessly rustic and barbarian. Under
this system all the conquered countries were made pro-
vinces of the Roman Empire, not for their own but for
the conquerors' good. The masses of the
people were governed by Roman governors
for the benefit, not of themselves, but of a small number
of Roman citizens. This vice— this blot— in the Roman
polity was no doubt the cause of its decay.

(2) The aim of modern civilisation is obviously far
Modern higher than this. It has not yet reached its
civilisation. goal, but it has been tending towards, not
one vast universal empire, but the formation of several
compact and separate nations, living peaceably side
by side, respecting one another's rights and freedom.

CHI EF ROMAN ROADS \

Its main
vice.

ch, i. Introductory. 7

And, looking within each nation, it has aimed at
making all men, town and country, rich and poor
alike, citizens for whose common weal the nation is to
be governed, and who ultimately shall govern _

7i t .-u- • r j • -t Its strength.

themselves. In this aim of modern civilisa-
tion to secure the common weal of the people lies its power
and strength.

Now the passage from the old decaying form of
civilisation to the new, better, and stronger one, involved
a change ; and this change must needs take
place slowly and by degrees. The old order tne struggle
of things had gradually for long been going oidlnTthe*5
out ; the new order of things had gradually new order
for long been coming in. But in this era was ° mgs'
to be the crisis of the change — the final decisive struggle
between the two forces ; and in this lies its importance
and its interest.

Before we begin the story of this struggle, we must
briefly consider what it was in the state of pianofthis
Christendom which brought it on ; and this book,
will be done best by our examining —

(i) The powers which belonged to the old order of
things, and were now dying out.

(2) The state of the modern nations which were
growing up in their place.

In doing so, we shall try to lay most stress on the
condition of the masses of the people ; and this will
bring out clearly some of the main points in which, if
modern^ civilisation was to go on, there was a necessity for
reform, and t^he danger there was. that, if the needful reforn .
were much longer withheld, there would be revolution.

Then in Part II. will come the story of the struggle;
and in Part III. its results on the different nations. We
shall end with trying to take stock of the amount of pro-
gress gained during the era, and to look forward at the
prospects of the future that arise out of it.

State of Christendom.

T. I.

CHAPTER II.

THE POWERS BELONGING TO THE OLD ORDER OF
THINGS, AND GOING OUT.

{a) The Ecclesiastical System.

Western Christendom was united under one Eccle-
siastical system — the Roman, or, as it called itself, the
< Holy Catholic' Church.

It was, in fact, a great Ecclesiastical Empire, of which
Rome was the capital, and the Pope of Rome the head.
The Eccle- *n Past generations there had been schisms
siastical — i.e. for a while there were two rival Popes

Empire, and . . , , , ,. ,

Rome the excommunicating each other — but after much
capital. trouble and scandal the schisms had been

ended, and now all was one again.

Europe was mapped out into ecclesiastical provinces,
at the head of each of which was an archbishop. Each
province was divided into dioceses, with bishops at their
head, and each diocese into parishes, each with its parish
priest. Thus there was an ecclesiastical network all over
Europe, all the threads of which were drawn towards
Rome, and held in the hands of the Pope and his cardinals.

This ecclesiastical empire kept itself as free as pos-
sible from the civil power in each nation. It considered
T , , itself above kings and princes. It was more

Independent . , . , . , .. , .

of the civil ancient than any of their thrones and king-
power, doms. Kings were not secure on their thrones
till they had the sanction of the Church. On the other
hand the clergy claimed to be free from prosecution

ch. ii. The Ecclesiastical System. 9

under the criminal laws of the lands they lived in. They
struggled to keep their own ecclesiastical laws and
courts, many of them receiving authority from Rome, and
with final appeal, not to the Crown but to the Pope.

In addition to the parochial clergy, there were may-
orders of monks and friars. The friars, especially ol
the Dominican and Franciscan rival mendicant orders,
swarmed everywhere. In most towns there

1 .- , . The monks.

were one, two, or half-a-dozen monastic
houses, and so numerous were the members of these
religious orders that they had become, by the favour of
the Popes, more important and powerful in many ways
than the parochial clergy.

It is essential to mark what a power this eccle-
siasticaLsystem wielded over the nations. The „

, . . , n , . -, • , 1 , -, Power of the.

ecclesiastics held in their hands the keys, as ecclesiastical
it were, not only of heaven but of earth. system,

Practically they alone baptized ; and married people
(though unmarried themselves). They had the charge
of men on their death-beds ; they alone , - a

7 J by influence

buried, and could refuse Christian burial in over the
the churchyards. They regulated the dis- people;
position of the goods of deceased persons. When a .
man made a will, it had to- be proved in their eccle-
siastical courts. If men disputed their claims, doubted
their teaching, or rebelled from their doctrines, they
virtually condemned them to the stake, by handing
thern over to the civil power, which acted in submis-
sion to their dictates. It will be obvious at once how
great a power all these things must have given them over
the minds, the fears, the happiness, and the lives of the
people.

The ordinary revenues of the clergy were large. They
had a right to ' tithes ; ' i.e. to a tenth part of by its
the produce of the whole land of Christen- wealth;

10 State of Christendom. ft. i.

dom. This had belonged to them for hundreds of years.
In addition to this they claimed fees for almost everything
they did.

The friars, according to the rules of their founders,
ought to have got their living by begging alms in return
for their preachings and their prayers for the living and
the dead. But their vow of poverty had not kept them
poor. People thought that by giving property to the
religious orders they could save their souls ; so rich men,
sometimes in their lifetime but oftener on their deathbeds,
gave them large possessions. In spite of laws passed
by the civil powers to prevent it, it was said that they
had got about a third of the land of Europe into their
possession.

Thus the revenues and riches of the clergy were larger
than those of the kings and princes of Europe.

These were not the sole secrets of their power. From
the fact that the clergy were almost the only educated
people in Europe, they became the lawyers
nopoiyof and diplomatists, envoys, ambassadors, mi-
leammg nisters, chancellors, and even prime minis-

ters of princes. They were mixed up with the politics
of Europe, and the reins of the State in most countries
were in the hands of ecclesiastics. They received pro-
and political motion to bishoprics very often in return for
influence, §uoh political services.

We cannot fail to see how vast the political power
of such an ecclesiastical system as this must have been.
The Pope, through his army of ecclesiastics all over
Christendom, had the strings in his hand by which to
which all influence the politics of Europe. And one.
centred in of the great complaints of the best men of the
Rome- day was that this political influence was used

by Rome for her own ends instead of the good of Europe,
and that the immense ecclesiastical revenues tended to

The Ecclesiastical System.

flow out of the provinces into the coffers of the Popes and
cardinals of Rome.

All this of course ten-
ded to hinder the ; .

, . . , This Empire

growth and mde- wiiibe
pendence of the broken up,
separate nations, and to
prevent all classes within
them from becoming united
into a compact nation.

It was one great work
of the era to break up this
ecclesiastical empire — to free
several nations (those marked

white on the map) from its yoke. So that Rome was no

longer to be the capital of Christendom.

(b) The Scholastic Syste?n.

There was another power in Europe which was
Roman and not national ; which tended to keep classes
of people apart, and so stood in the way of the growth of
national life in the separate nations.

The learned world was a world of its own, severed
from the masses of the people by its scholastic system.
All the learned men in Europe talked and The learned
wrote letters and books in Latin — the Ian- ™nd wrote e
guage of Rome. Some of them did not Latin,
even know the common language of the countries they
lived in. And as. Latin was the language of learning,
so Rome was the capital of the learned world. Thus
the learned world was closely connected with the eccle-
siastical system. Learned people were looked upon
as belonging to the clergy ; and the Pope had long
claimed them as subjects of his ecclesiasti- and belonged
cal empire. So for centuries in England a to the clergy.

1 2 State of Christendom. PT. L

man convicted of a crime, by pleading that he could
read and write, could claim benefit of clergy, i.e. to be
tried in an ecclesiastical court, and this by long abuse
came to mean exemption from the punishments of the
criminal law of the land.

This tended to give to knowledge and learning a clerical
or scholastic character. Knowledge was tied down by
m . , scholastic rules which had grown up in times

This made ... . , • n .

learning _ when the ecclesiastics were the only educated
4 scholastic,' pe0p]e# The mediaeval scholars— ' the school-
men J as they were called — looked at everything with
ecclesiastical eyes. All knowledge had thus got to be
looked upon almost as a part of theology. Matters of
science — e.g. whether the earth moved round the sun
shackled or the sun round the earth — were settled by
science, texts from the Bible, instead of by examining
into the facts. So there was no freedom of inquiry even
in scientific matters. A man who made discoveries in
science might be stopped and punished if he found
out that the ecclesiastical authorities were wrong in
anything.

Under the scholastic system the Christian religion,
which in the days of Christ and the apostles was a thing
and religion of the heart (love of God and one's neigh-
also, bour), had become mixed up with a mass of
human speculations. The chief handybook of the theo-
logy of the schoolmen was a great folio volume of more
than 1,000 pages.

Thus the scholastic system tended to keep both
science and religion the property of a clerical class, and
out of the hands of the common people, to whom
and kept Latin was a dead language ; while at the

them from same time it kept the learning even of the

the common x °

people. learned world shackled by scholastic rules.

It is important to see>this clearly, because one great

CH. II.

The Scholastic SysU

part of the work of the new era was to throw the gates of
knowledge open to all men, and to set the
minds of men free from this clerical or scho- mental free-
lastic thraldom — to set both science and dom-
religion free, for freedom was as important to the one as
it was to the other. Without it there could be no real
progress in civilisation.

The universities were the great centres of The univer-
tJie learned world. skies.

UNIVERSITIES. TAose founded, lefore 140O underlined

There were thirty or forty of them scattered over
Europe, and they were in more or less close connexion
with each other. Most of them are marked on the map,
and those founded before 1400 are underlined. The
oldest and most celebrated were Oxford and Cambridge in
England, Paris and Orleans in France, Bologna and Padua
in Italy, and Salamanca in Spain, Prague in Bohemia,
and Cologne in Germany. These, at the beginning of the

14 State of Christendom. pt. i.

era of the Reformation, were all more than a hundred,
and some two hundred years old. The youngest uni-
versity in Europe was that of Wittenberg, founded in 1 502
by the Elector of Saxony.

Students were in the habit of passing from one uni-
versity to another. Oxford students would pass on to
Paris, and from Paris to Bologna, to take their
pass from one degrees. And wherever there happened to be
to another. a famous professor, thither students from all
other universities nocked.

Now the result of this was very important.

As one example, we may take the great movement in
the fourteenth century in the direction of reform.
**. Wiclif wrote books in Latin at Oxford. They were
copied and read all over Europe. Oxford students went
The result of to the newly-opened university at Prague.
daysofhe Wiclifs writings made as much noise, and
wiclif. were as well known in Bohemia as they were

in England. Huss and Jerome of Prague became
the Bohemian successors of the English Wiclif, and thus
the movement in favour of reform was transplanted
from one country to another. What was discussed among
the learned soon trickled down into the common talk of
the people. So there arose out of Wiclifs movement the
Lollard disturbances in England and the Hussite wars in
Bohemia.

What had thus happened before in the days when
books were multiplied only by the slow work of the pen
was still more likely to happen again in the days of the
printing press.

We shall see how in the new era these things were re-
peated— how the spirit of revival of learning and religious
reform spread, first among the learned from

Will be re- . r . . , ,

peatedinthe university to university by students passing
new era. from one to another, now in Italy, now into

ch. ii. The Scholastic System. 15

England, now into Germany, and how at last it trickled
down into the minds of the common people all over Europe.
The fact that both the ecclesiastical system and the
learned world were coextensive with Christendom, and so
closely united together, gave to Christendom a unity
which alone made the work of the era possible. It was
as though, in spite of distance and the diffi- The work of
culties of travelling, learned men were nearer the era-
together than even now, in these days of railroads and
steamboats and telegraphs. The work of the era was to
rend Christendom asunder. Rome was no longer to be her
capital. The Pope was no longer to be recognised every-
where as her spiritual head. The Latin language was no
longer to be the common tongue of literature and books
all over Europe. Young nations were to divide Europe
between them, to have their own churches and clergy,
their own languages, their own literature, their own
learned men and universities, and so to become more
independent of each other and of Rome. And this was
one of the stages through which Christian civilisation was
to pass in its onward course.

(^) The Feudal System, and the forces which were
breaking it up.

There was another system which was opposed to the
growth of modern nations — the feudal system. The feudal
It belonged to the old order of things, and system-
was fast decaying and going out.

The feudal system hindered the growth of free na-
tions, not by tending too much to keep up the Divided
unity of Christendom, but by dividing coun- coratries

J ' J ° into petty-

tries up into innumerable petty lordships. lordships.

Each feudal lord was a little sovereign both as re-
gards those below him — his vassals and serfs — and also

x6 State of Christendom. ft, r.

as regards his fellows, except so far as he and they were
controlled by higher feudal powers above them. He
waged what petty wars he chose with his neighbours,
and lorded it over his inferiors, whilst himself very
jealously resisting any unusual interference from powers
above him.
s- _ , The feudal system had already shown

Decay ot the . _ _ ... J . ... J

feudal signs of falling to pieces, and m some countries

system. had yery much died Qut

In some countries the petty lordships had fallen quite
under the power of the Crown.

By a long process, some of the feudal lords had grown
Subjection of *n Power> while the multitude of smaller ones
feudal lords had sunk into ever-increasing insignificance.

to the Crown. _, . ,, . , ° , ° ,

Especially in countries where by the rule
of inheritance lordships descended to a single heir,
there was a natural tendency for lordships to unite by
marriage and inheritance. The greater families inter-
married and grew richer, and the royal families thus
gradually and naturally rising in power and influence
kept swallowing up more and more into themselves.
We shall see that it was so notably in France. The process
went on more slowly in Germany, where the rule of inheri-
tance was division among the male heirs, and so the ten-
dency was towards more and more division, and an ever-
increasing host of petty lordships. In Germany the
feudal system was still in full force, and we shall see by-
and-by how it prevented her from growing into a compact
nation, and how much she had to suffer for want of the
nobles being subjected to a central authority able to

preserve the public peace and to curb their

Increasing , , , _, , .

power of the lawlessness and tyranny. But speaking gene-
Crown, rally, things were more and more working in
the new era towards the complete subjection of the feudal
nobility in each nation to the central power, i.e. towards
the supremacy of the Crown.

ch. ii. The Feudal System. ij

But commerce was breaking up the feudal system faster
than anything else, and commerce had its chief seat in the
towns. Trade, commerce, and manufactures were the life of
the towns. The little towns were the markets of the country
round, and their trade lay between the peasan- The gj.owth
try and the bigger towns. These, in their turn, of commerce,
lived upon the share they had in that wider commerce of the
world, of which, by the aid of Map No. 2 (at the beginning
of this volume), we must now try to grasp the main features.

The Crusades had done much to open up a commerce
between Asia and Europe. This commerce _ , ■

. , , ^ , . 1 , r -. Trade of the

with the East was mostly m the hands of the Mediten-a-
great cities on the Mediterranean Sea. The nean-
new way to the Indies was not yet open. The products
of the East, its spices and its silks, were carried overland
from the Persian Gulf and Red Sea to the Levant, and
then shipped to the ports of Italy. Silk manufactures
were also carried on in Italy, in Catalonia in Spain, and
at Lyons in France. These eastern products and silks
were the chief exports of the Mediterranean merchants.
The commerce of the North Sea was equally important
The woollen manufactures of the north were its chief
feature. Spain and some parts of Germany exported wool,
but England was the great wool-growing country. The
wool was woven into cloth in the looms of the eastern
counties of England, and in Flanders, on „_
the opposite shore of the North Sea. These facturing
were the chief manufacturing districts, though
other towns in England, up the Rhine, and in Germany,
had their weavers also. There were also considerable
linen manufactures in the north of France.

The North Sea was the great fishing ground, and
dried fish was a great article of commerce Thc
when during Lent and on every Friday all fisheries.
Christendom lived upon fish.
M. H. C

State of Christendom.

PT. 1.

There was also a trade in furs and skins with North
Russia, Norway, and Sweden.

This commerce of the North was carried on by the
Hanse towns — reaching from the shores of the Baltic
^ westward to the Netherlands, and inland in

Ine com-

merce of the Germany as far south as Cologne. There were
Hansetowns. eighty towns belonging to this league, and
they had stations or factories at Novgorod, Bergen,
London, and Bruges.

Bruges in Flanders had been, and now Antwerp was
the great central mart of the commerce of the world.
Bruges and Here the merchants of the North exchanged

c^tralmarts their g°ods with the merchants of the
of commerce. Mediterranean. Here their ships met and
divided the maritime commerce of the world be-
tween them. Here, too, the maritime met the inland
and overland trade — inland trade with the German
Lines of towns, overland trade up the Rhine,

maritime, through Germany, over the Alps, by the
overland Brenner and Julier passes into Italy. There

trade. was mucj1 trade between German and

Venetian merchants, and the contemporary historian,
Machiavelli, states that all Italy was in a manner supplied
with the commodities and manufactures of Germany.
Since the Netherlands had fallen into the hands of the
House of Austria, and Maximilian was Emperor of
Germany, there had also naturally sprung up a trade
between the Rhine and the Danube.

These were the great lines of trade, and in these lines
lay the chief commercial towns, living on their share in
the commerce of the world.

Under the feudal system the towns had once been
mostly subject to feudal lords, but they had

The towns . J , J , ,. ' . , , .. J .

had mostly early shown their independent spirit, and re-
got free. belled, or bargained for charters of freedom.

ch. ii. The Feudal System. *9

A free town was a little republic, organized for protection
from foes without and for peaceful trade withm. The
members of each trade were banded together into guilds
for mutual protection, and there was generally a sort of
representative government-an upper and lower council
of citizens, by whom the town was governed.

We can easily understand how likely the towns were
to hate the feudal lords, whose petty wars dis- my the
turbed the public peace and made commerce gwns^ed
hazardous. They had to fortify themselves
against these petty wars, and their cavalcades of mer-
chandize had to be protected by soldiers on the roads. So
there had grown up out of commerce an anti-feudal
power in Europe. In almost every country the and
towns banded themselves together against the favoured the
feudal system, and when the power of the
Crown began to rise, the towns were the stepping-stones by
which it rose to the top. Kings invited the towns to
send burgesses to the national Diets or Parliaments, and
they were a growing power in almost every State.

There was yet another most numerous and most im-
portant class affected by feudalism— the peasantry. The
labouring peasants had in some countries not The pea-
yet risen out of a condition of serfdom.

Let us understand what this was.. The tribes who
conquered Northern and Western Europe were a land-
folk-people living by the land. They settled
in villages, and all the land belonging to each Once more
village belonged to the community, as it does now.
now in Swiss valleys. The people were tenants _
only of their little allotments, with common rights over
the unallotted pasture, woods, forests, and rivers : i.e. they
had a common or joint use of them. .^

But the old rights of the communities had fallen
more and more into the hands of manorial lords.

20 State of Christendom. pt. i.

The peasantry became tenants of these lords, paying
rents sometimes in money, but chiefly in services of
labour on their lords' lands. The lords, moreover,
claimed more and more of the unallotted portion of
the common lands as their own. The serfs were not
allowed to leave their land, because it would rob the
lords of their services. So the lords held their peasantry
completely in their power. This was serfdom when in
full force. In some countries it was still in force, in
others it had almost disappeared.

In those countries where the lords were most sub-
jected to the Crown, as in France and England, the
Where the peasants were likely to be best off and farthest
central advanced on the road to freedom. In those

power was . .

weakest, m which the feudal lords were least sub-
lfngered dued, and the central power least formed,
longest. as }n Germany, we should expect to find
serfdom lingering on A.nd it was so.

As the towns were often enemies of the feudal nobility,
so they were often the friends of the peasantry. Com-
merce introduced everywhere money pay-
andcom-S ments instead of barter. Payment of rent in
merce fa- services of labour was an old-fashioned kind

voured free-
dom of the of barter. Commerce, therefore, helped to
peasantry. intr0(}uce money rents and money wages,
and where these were early introduced, as in France and
England, the condition of the peasant was much im-
proved. But more than this ; labour was often wanted
in the towns : the wages paid in the towns often tempted
the peasant to desert his land and his lord, and to
flee to a town. The towns favoured this immigration
into them of runaway serfs, and there grew up in some
countries a settled rule of law that after residence in a
town a year and a day they could not be reclaimed.

Thus by slow degrees the feudal system was breaking

ch. in. Italy. 21

up under the influence of commerce and the combined
power of the towns and the Crown.

The petty lordships were becoming united into the
larger unit of the nation, but we see on the other hand
what a danger there was of the nation becoming divided
into hostile classes. How were classes so contrarient as
the feudal lords, the townspeople, and the peasantry, to
be blended in one national life? This was the great
problem modern civilisation had to solve, and some
nations succeeded much better than others in solving it.

CHAPTER III.

THE MODERN NATIONS WHICH WERE RISING
INTO POWER.

(a) Italy.
No country had made less progress towards becoming a
compact and united nation than Italy, the Not a united
very country in which Rome, the capital of natlon'
Christendom, exercised most influence.

The contemporaiy historian, Machiavelli, shows how
Rome was the cause of Italy's ruin and dis- „

J Rome, ac-

Unity. cording to _

He says : ( Some are of opinion that the theCcauJe of
welfare of Italy depends upon the Church of her disunity.
Rome. I shall set down two unanswerable reasons to the
contrary : —

' (i) By the corrupt example of that court Italy has
lost its religion and become heathenish and irreligious.

' (2) We owe to Rome also that we are become divided

22 State of Christendom. pt. i.

and factious, which must of necessity be our ruin, for no
nation was ever happy or united unless under the rule of
one commonwealth or prince, as France and Spain are at
this time. And the reason is that the Pope, though he
claims temporal as well as spiritual jurisdiction, is not
strong enough to rule all Italy himself, and whenever he
sees any danger he calls in some foreign potentate to help
him against any other power growing strong enough to
be formidable. Therefore it is that, instead of getting
united under one rule, Italy is split up into several prin-
cipalities, and so disunited that it falls easily a prey to the
power not only of the barbarians, but of any one who
cares to invade it. This misfortune we Italians owe only
to the Church of Rome.'

That these words of Machiavelli were too strictly
true, we shall judge from the facts.

We have seen what was the power of Rome. If
exerted in favour of Christian civilisation how many
blessings might not the Church have earned !
centre of But it was notorious to everyone living at the
rottenness. tjme t^t Rome usec[ her power so ill, and
that her own character and that of her Popes were so
evil, that she had become both politically and spiri-
tually the centre of wickedness and rottenness in Europe
and especially in Italy.

And this was no new thing. Men had been complain-
ing of it for generations. The greatest poets of Italy
Dante on the nad long before immortalized the guilt of
Popes. Rome. Two centuries before, Dante had de-

scribed the Popes of his day as men

whose avarice
O'ercasts the world with mourning, under foot
Treading the good, and raising bad men up.
Of Shepherds like to you, the Evangelist
Was ware, when her who sits upon the waves
With kings in filthy whoredom he beheld !

CH. III.

Italy. 23

And soon after Dante, Petrarch had described petrarch on
Rome thus :— Rome-

Once Rome ! now false and guilty Babylon !

Hive of deceits ! Terrible prison,

Where the good doth die, the bad is fed and fattened !

Hell of the living ! . . . .

Sad world that dost endure it ! Cast her out !.

And in the days of these great poets, Reformers and
Councils too, had tried to reform Rome, but without
avail. A few more generations had passed and Rome
was now not only unreformed but in respect to morals
worse than ever. How much worse we know not only
from the censures of her poets, but from the* statements
of her contemporary historians.

The Popes of Rome had for long not only wielded
both political and spiritual power, but used Recent
them to enrich their own families ; and as a Popes bad
rule they had recently been notoriously bad men#
men.

Alexander VI. was the reigning Pope, and the worst
Rome ever had. His wicked reign lasted from 1492 to 1503.
His great aim was to bring Rome, and if he Alexander
could, all Italy, into the hands of his still cLa?d ■
more wicked son Cassar Borgia. The latter B°rsia-
caused his own brother to be stabbed and thrown
into the Tiber. He had his brother-in-law assassinated
on his palace-steps. He stabbed one of his father's
favourites who had taken shelter under the pontifical
robes, so that the blood spirted into the Pope's face.
Rich men were poisoned to get their wealth. Their
The reign of these Borgias was a reign of crimes.
terror in Rome. At last, in 1 503, the Pope fell, it is said,
into his own trap, and died of the poison he had prepared
for another.

Another great Italian historian of the time, Guic-

State of Christendom.

PT. I.

dardiniy records that the body of the Pope, black and
loathsome, was exposed to public view in St. Peter's.
And he goes on to say : —

' All Rome flocked to that sight, and could not suf-
ficiently satiate their eyes with gazing on the remains of
the extinct serpent, who by his immoderate ambition,
pestiferous perfidy, monstrous lust, and every sort of
horrible cruelty and unexampled avarice — selling without
distinction property sacred and profane — had compassed
the destruction of so many by poison, and was now
become its victim ! \

Machiavelli was right then, that the example of Rome

in Italy was an evil one. That it made the Italians hate

the Church, and drove thinking men, while

Effect of the . . ' , . . ° . ' , .

Pope's they remained superstitious, to doubt Chns-

wickedness. tianity, and to welcome even Pagan religions,
because they seemed so much purer than that which
Rome offered them, we shall see by-and-by. This is
what he meant when he spoke of the Italians becoming
' heathenish ' — it was exactly the fact.

And now as to his other statement, that Rome was
the cause of the divisions,
and therefore of the ruin
of Italy; this also, the facts,
of the recent history of
Italy will make clear.

The map shows how
Italy was in the main
divided — Venice, Milan,
.,'; ' and Florence

Mam divi-
sions of to the north ;

Italy- Naples to the

south ; the States of the

Church between.

(i) The States of the Church. Over these the Popes

had a shadowy kind of rule, but they were made up

ch. in. Italy. 25

of petty lordships and cities, claiming independence,
and even Rome was ruled by its Barons papal
rather than by the Popes ; or to speak more states.
correctly the Barons and the Pope were always quarrelling
which of the two should rule. The Pope lived in his
strong castle of St. Angelo, close by the city.

(2) Venice was a commercial city, 1,000 years old,
ruled by its nobles and possessing territory like ancient
Rome, ruled for the benefit of its citizens TT .

, . . . Venice.

rather than its subjects.

(3) Florence was also a commercial republic, but not
governed by its nobles. It was a democratic republic,
but one family of citizens — the Medici — had _,

1.11 -i 1 Florence.

grown by trade richer than the rest, and
usurped almost despotic power. It also possessed con-
siderable territory.

(4) Milan was a State to which there were many rival
claims. The King of France, as Duke of Orleans, claimed
it by inheritance from the Dukes of Milan.

The King of Naples (and Spain through him)
also had a claim, and the Emperor of Germany claimed it
as having reverted to the Empire. Meanwhile the Sforza
family had possession.

(5) Naples was also a State to which there were rival
claims. Its nobles had usurped almost uncontrolled
power. The right to feudal sovereignty over it was dis-
puted between the Counts of Anjou (France)

and the King of Arragon (Spain). The latter ap
had long had possession, and it had descended to a bas-
tard branch of that house.

That the Popes were continually fomenting quarrels
between these Italian States and bringing 'barbarian'
princes to fight their battles on Italian soil, a few facts
will show.

Alexander VI. and Csesar Borgia first stirred up
Venice, and Milan against Naples. Then the allies invited

26 State of Christendom. PT. i.

Charles VIII. of France, who in 1494 crossed the Alps,
overturned the Medici at Florence, and entered Naples
in 1495. Then in 1495 the Pope, Ve7iice, and Milan
joined with Ferdinand of Spain in turning the French
out of Naples again.

In 1500 Louis XII. of France took Milan, and then
he and Ferdinand of Spain jointly invaded Naples. But
they quarrelled, and Spain, under Gonsalvo de
fiStheriiin Cordova, defeated the French, and so Ferdi-
of Italy. nand became King of Naples, and (having

Sardinia and Sicily before) of the two Sicilies in 1505.

In 1503 Julius II. became Pope, and devoted his ten
years' reign to constant war. In 1509 he, France, Spain,
and Germany formed the League of Cambray against
Venice. But the robbers quarrelled on the eve of victory,
and so Venice was not ruined.

In 1511 Louis XII. of France tried to get Henry VIII.
of England to join him in deposing Julius II. But Julius
succeeded in getting England and Spain and Germany
to join his ' Holy League ' against France.

After driving Louis XII. of France out of Italy,
Julius II. died in 1513, and was succeeded by Leo X.

(b) Germany.

Next to Italy, Germany was furthest of all modern
nations from having attained national unity. The Ger-
Had not yet man, or, as it called itself, e the Holy Roman'
national Empire, was a power which belonged to the

unity. old order of things. Like the Pope of Rome,

the Emperor considered himself as the head of Christen-
dom. He called himself e Caesar,' and, as successor to
the Roman Empire, which the Germans had conquered,
claimed a vague sovereignty over other lands besides his
kingship in Germany. As the Pope of Rome was the

Germany

spiritual head, so the Emperor considered himself the
' temporal head of all Christian people.'

Switzerland had indeed severed herself from the Ger-
man Empire. England, Spain, and France had never
properly belonged to it. But the French king had never-
theless sometimes sworn fealty to the Empire ; and even
Henry VIII. of England, when it suited his purpose
{i.e. when he wanted to be Emperor !) took care to point
out to the Electors that, while his rival, Francis I. of
France, was a foreigner, in electing an Eng- His claim to
lish Emperor, they would not be departing univ.ersal
from the German tongue. On other occa- shadowy.
sions he took care to insist that England, however Saxon
in her speech, had never been subject to the Empire. So
the claim to universal sovereignty was very shadowy
indeed.

When a vacancy occurred, the new Emperor was
elected, under the l Golden
Bull '.of 1356, by
seven Prince
Electors, viz. : [On the
Rhine]. The three Arch-
bishops of Mayence, Treves,
and Cologne, and the Count
Palatine of the Rhine. [On
the Elbe]. The King of
Bohemia, the Elector of
Saxony, the Margrave of
Brandenburg.
The ceremony of coronation showed the peculiar
nature of the Empire. The Emperor when elected was
first crowned at Aix-la-Chapelle. He swore to maintain
the ! Catholic faith and the rights of the kingdom and
Empire. He swore also subjection to the Roman Pontiff
and the holy Roman Church. Next the people were

THE SEVEN PRINCE ELECTORS

How
elected.

2S State of Christendom. pt. i.

formally asked first in Latin and then in German whether
they were willing to be subject to him as their prince and
ruler. After their shout ' So be it/ he was anointed king
with consecrated oil in the presence of the electors and
people, and then by the three archbishops robed in the
robes, girt with the sword, crowned with the crown, and
lastly placed on the ancient stone throne of Charlemagne.
This was his coronation as German and Roman king.
Strictly speaking he was not fully entitled to be called
Emperor till after a further ceremony of coronation by
the Pope.

The Emperor had little real power in Germany ;
and, indeed, as time went on he seemed to have less and
less.

Once large domains had belonged to the Emperor :
some in Italy, some on the Rhine. But former emperors had
lost the Italian estates or ceded them to Italian
perial nobles and cities during struggles witli the

domams. Popes ; while those on the Rhine had been

handed over to the Archbishops of Mayence, Treves, and
Cologne, who were Electors, to secure votes and political
support. For some generations there had been no im-
perial domains at all ; not an inch of territory in Germany
or Italy came to the Emperor with his imperial crown.
The Empire was therefore reduced to a mere feudal head-
ship.

Nor had the Emperor, as feudal head, much power in

Germany. He found it very hard to get troops or money

from the German people. Maximilian, the
Small . . _ r r , ,

imperial reigning Emperor, was notoriously poor, and

power. declared that the Pope drew a hundred times

larger revenue out of Germany than he did. He was a

powerful sovereign in Europe because he was head of the

house of Hapsburg, and was rising into great power in

Europe by his alliances.

ch. in. Germany. 29

Already the heir of Austria, Maximilian had married
Mary of Burgundy and the Netherlands. His son Philip
thus was heir-apparent to those provinces The
as well as Austria. Philip married Joanna, Snp?r°f.
daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain ; of the
and so their son Charles became heir to Houseof
Spain also. Thus was the House of Hapsburg Hapsburg.
pushing itself into power and influence. The German
Empire was the crowning symbol of their power rather
than the reason of it. In the case of Maximilian, it was
the power of Austria that made the German Emperor
great. By-and-by, as we shall see when
Charles V.. of Austria, Spain, and the Nether- ares
lands rises to the Empire and becomes the most powerful
prince in Europe, it is by Spain, not Germany, that he
wields his still greater influence.

The power of the Emperor was far less in Germany
than in his own domains, for in Germany his power was
checked by the Diet or feudal parliament of
the Empire. The Diet was a feudal, not a re-
presentative parliament ; i.e. none but the Emperor's
feudal vassals had a claim to attend and vote in it.

The diet met and voted in three separate colleges :

1. The Electors (except the King of Bohemia, who

had no voice except in the election of an
Emperor).

2. The Princes, lay and ecclesiastical.

3. The Free Imperial Cities {i.e. those cities which

held direct of the Emperor).
The Electors and Princes had most power. Only what
was agreed upon by them was last of all submitted to the
College of Cities. To secure the carrying out
of the decrees of the Diets, there had also £°epf™eer
recently been some attempts at an organiza- their
tion of the Empire. It was divided in circles

30 State of Christendom. ft. i.

for the maintenance of order •, but this, though plausible
on paper, had little effect in reality, because the Diets
had no real power to enforce their decrees.

Germany was, in fact, still under the feudal system —
still divided up into petty lordships — more so

The feudal , , v \. J „_ " .. .

system still than perhaps any other country ; certainly

prevailed. m0re so than England, Spain, or France.

One reason for this was, as we have seen, that the

German law of inheritance divided the lordships between

Subdivision the sons of a feudal lord on his death ; so

of lordships there was constant subdivision, and in con-
by law ol '

inheritance, sequence an ever-increasing host of petty
sovereignties.

The mass of the feudal lords were petty and poor,
and yet proud and independent, resisting any attempts
Constant of the powers above them, whether Emperor,

petty feuds. or Diets, or Electors, to control them. They
claimed the right of waging war ; and, by their petty
feuds, the public peace was always being broken.

They too often lived a wild life in times of peace
{i.e. when not at feud with some neighbouring lord),
devoted to the chase, trampling over their tenants' crops,
scouring the woods with their retainers and their dogs.
In times of war and feuds, with helmets, breastplates, and
cross-bows they lay in ambush in the forests watching an
enemy, or fell upon a train of merchants on the roads
from some town or city with which they had a quarrel.
They became as wild and lawless as the wolves.

Gotz von Berlichingen (popularly known as ' Gotz with
the Iron Hand ;), and Franz von Sickingen were types of
this wild knighthood. They were champions
ofatheeSSneSS of fist-law (faust-recht). They called it private
kmghts. war^ kut -t was 0ften plunder and pillage by

which they lived. Gotz was indeed more like the head
of a band of robbers than anything else. He one day

CH. III.

Germany.

saw a pack of wolves fall upon a flock of sheep. e Good
luck, dear comrades/ said Gotz ; ' good luck to us all and
everywhere ! ' These lawless knights were indeed like
wolves, and, just as much as the wild animals they
hunted, belonged to the old order of things, which must
go out to make way for advancing civilisation.

The free towns of Germany were her real strength.
The. citizens were thrifty, earned much by their com-
merce, spent little, and so saved much. Each The towns
city was a little free state (for they had mostly of Germany,
thrown off their feudal lords), self-governed, like a little
republic, fortified, well stored with money in its treasury,
a year's provisions and firing often stored up against a
siege. The little towns were of course dependent in
part on the peasantry round, buying their corn, and in
return supplying them with manufactured goods. But
the bigger towns lived by a wider commerce, and held
their heads above the peasantry. Above all, they hated
the feudal lords, whose .feuds and petty wars and lawless
deeds put their commerce in peril. Two hun- Their
dred years ago, sixty towns on the Rhine had J^f^f for
leagued themselves together to protect their defence,
commerce. After that had come the league1 of the
Hanse Towns, chiefly in the -North of Germany, but
including Cologne and twenty-nine adjacent towns, and
aiming at defending commerce from robberies by land as
well as piracy by sea.

They had to form these leagues because Germany
was divided and without a real head — not yet a nation —
though all that was good and great in it was Want f
sighing for more national life, for a central central
government with power enough to main- maintain the
tain the public peace, but hitherto sighing in public Peace-

1 See the Map of Commerce.

32 State of Christendom. PT. i.

vain, finding in her Emperor little more help than Italy
found in her Pope.

No class in Germany had suffered more from want of
a central power than the peasantry. They still were in
The con- feudal serfdom. While in other countries,
peasantry*6 where there was a well-established central
hr°ding d government, the lot of the peasantry had im-
harder for proved and serfdom almost been got rid of,
central*" a here ^n Germany their lot had grown harder
power. and harder for want of it.

The German peasant, or 'Bauer] was still a servile
tenant. In many ways he was no doubt better off than a
labourer for wages. His house was no mere labourer's
cottage— it was a little farm. He had about him his land
and his live stock, his barn and his stack. Under the
same roof with his family his cows and pigs lay upon their
straw and he upon his bed. On the raised cooking hearth
the wood crackled under the great iron pot hung on its
rack from the chimney-hood above, while saucepans and
gridirons, pewter dishes and pitchers with their pewter lids
were hung upon the walls ; the oak table and coffer were
heirlooms with his house and his land. In mere outward
comforts many a free peasant, working for wages and
having no land to till for himself, would gladly have
changed places with him ; but behind all was his thraldom
to his lord.

He had traditions of old and better days, when he was
far more free, when his services were not so hard and the
exactions of his lord not so great. But in
th? German the fourteenth century the Black Death had
' Bauer.' thinned the population of Germany and made

labour scarce. In other countries, where the law of the
land had fixed the amount of the services, and where the
influence of commerce had substituted money-payments
for services, this scarcity of labour strengthened, the

ch. in. Germany. 33

peasant in his struggle for freedom. But in Germany,
where there was no law to step in, and where services
continued, the scarcity of labour was only likely to make
the lords insist all the more upon their performance. So
the lords had encroached more and more on the peasants"
rights, exacted more and more labour from them, in-
creased their burdens, robbed them more and more of
their common rights over the pastures, the wild game,
and the fish in the fivers, grown more and more insolent,
till the peasants in some places had sunk almost into
slavery. It was galling to them to have to work for their
lords in fine weather, and to have to steal in their own
little crops on rainy days. Small a thing as it might be,
perhaps it was still more galling to receive orders on
holidays to turn out and gather wild strawberries for the
folk at the Castle. Hard, too, it seemed to them when,
on the death of a peasant, the lord's agent came and
carried off from the widow's home the heriot or 'best
chattel/ according to ancient custom— perhaps the horse
or the cow on which the family was dependent.

But however bad a pass things might come to, there
was no remedy— no law of the land to appeal to against
the encroachments of their lords. The Roman
civil law had indeed been brought in by the Sfonly °
ecclesiastics, and the lords favoured it because remedy-
it tended to regard serfs as slaves. The serfs naturally
hated it because it hardened their lot. There was no
good in appealing to it. It was one of their grievances.
So the peasants of each place must fight it out with their
own lords. They must rebel or submit, waiting for better
days, if ever these should come I

M. H.

State of Christendom.

t Spain was destined to become the first power in

Europe. She rapidly grew into a united nation, and

Becoming during the era attained the highest point of

the first power and prosperity she ever reached ; but

power in r r r J ' ,

Europe. she fell soon after from the pinnacle on which

she then stood, and has never since risen again so high.

Ever since the conquest of Spain by the Goths and
Vandals, in the fifth century, the tendency had been
Power of the in Spain as in so many other countries, for
nobles. power to get into the hands of the feudal

lords or nobles. But Spain was singular in this, that
it had passed under a long period of Mohammedan
rule.

By the invasions of the Moors the Gothic chiefs of

Spain had been driven up into the mountains of the

north, while probably the peasantry mostly

Driven into • j • ' JL J i.; ^ J

the north by remained m the conquered country, subject to
the Moors. ^g M00rs# gy siow degrees the Gothic chiefs
reconquered the northern provinces, till the Moors retained
only the rich southern provinces ; and as bit after bit was
reconquered by the nobles, it became a little independent
state under the chief who reconquered it.

ch. in. Spain. 35

Gradually, however, there had grown up in Spain the
three kingdoms of Castile, Arragon, and Navarre, favoured
by the influence of the towns. Owing to the Reconquest
constant struggles going on, there had been of Spain from
for long no safety except in the towns. These except Gra-
had further grown in power and importance nada~
by trade and manufactures, and had become little states —
like little Venices — each with its independent government.

In Castile and Arragon the monarch was at first
scarcely more powerful than the Emperor in Germany.
His power was controlled by the Cortes or
parliament, at which met the nobles, depu- Cast1ie0and°
ties from the towns, and clergy. And to the Arras°n
Cortes belonged the right of levying taxes and enacting
laws. But the crown was growing in power.

Such was the state of things when, by the marriage of
Ferdinand of Arragon to Isabella of Castile (in 148 1), all
Spain, except Navarre and Granada, was
united under one monarchy, and from this Ferdinand**
time the tendency was for the throne to be- and Isabella-
come more and more absolute. It was one sPainbe-

r -1 r- , • ,- „ ,. comes more

01 the first objects of Ferdinand and Isabella and more
to extend the power of the monarchy. absolute.

Spain had found, as the Germans had found, that
without some central power it was hard to keep the
peace, to protect trade and commerce, and to put down
robbery and crime. The cities had united in a < Holy
Brotherhood ' for this purpose, and Ferdinand sided with
them in this object. But what more than anything else
counteracted the feudal tendency to separate into little
petty states, and to strengthen the national feeling and
make it rally round the common centre of the Conquest of
throne, was the war long waged by Ferdi- Granada.
nand, and at length successful, against the last strong-
hold of the Moors in Granada, In 1492 Granada was
d 2

36 State of Christendom. PT. i,

taken, the 700 years' struggle ended, and the Moors were
driven for ever out of Spain. Thus was all Spain (except
the little state of Navarre, under shelter of the Pyrenees)
united in one nation. The modern kingdom of Spain,
thus -formed, rose up at once to be one of the first powers
of Europe.

We have already seen how Charles VIII. of France
had been invited by the Pope and his allies to attack
Ferdinand's Naples. As a bribe to keep Ferdinand (who
policy to had a rjvai claim on Naples) quiet while he

complete . i / x

Spain. went on this raid on Naples, he had ceded to

Ferdinand the little state of Perfiignan, on the Spanish
side of the Pyrenees. Ferdinand was intent on the com-
pletion of the kingdom of Spain, and took the bribe. We
shall soon find him (in 15 12) obtaining possession of
Navarre. In the meantime the result of the Italian wars
was that he got hold of Naples ; and having the islands
of Sardinia and Sicily already, he became King of the
' Two Sicilies,' as well as of Spain.

Another fact added to the power of Spain. It was
under Spanish auspices that Columbus discovered Ame-
rica. This not only threw the gold of the mines of Peru
into the treasuries of Spain ; it added an-
0 um s' other great laurel to her fame. It was Spain
that had driven the Moors out of Western Europe ; it was
Spain that enlarged Christendom by the discovery of the
New World.

The foreign policy of princes in those

Foreign po- . V • n i" i i

licy. Mar- days was very much influenced by the mar-
riages, riages they planned and effected for their
children.

Ferdinand's first aim was to get all the Spanish Pen-
insula under the power of the Spanish Crown. So he
married his eldest daughter to the King of Portugal, in
hopes of some day uniting the two Crowns. This came

CH.'III.

Spain. 37

to pass in the person of Philip II., the husband of the
English Queen Mary.

His next policy was to ally himself with such foreign
powers as would best help him to secure his ends. There
were two reasons why he did not ally himself with
France. France was his rival in Italy. He had fought
with France for Naples, and meant to keep it. He also
wanted Navarre to complete the Spanish kingdom.
A French prince claimed it also. The aim of Spanish
foreign policy was, therefore, to work against France.

By the marriage of his daughter Catherine to the
King of England, and Joanna to the heir of the rising
House of Hapsburg, who held the Netherlands, and
whose head, Maximilian L, was Emperor, he connected
himself with the two powers who, like himself, were
jealous of France — England, because part of France had
so long been claimed as belonging to the English Crown
— the House of Hapsburg, because France had got hold
of part of Burgundy (which formerly belonged to the same
Burgundian inheritance as the Netherlands).

And on the whole, -though his schemes did not
prosper in his lifetime, they did succeed in

■ , . ~ • -i f -1- Success of

making Spam the first power m Europe these alli-
during the next reign. ances-

When Queen Isabella died, Joanna became Queen of
Castile. She, however, was insane, and her husband
Philip dying soon after, Ferdinand held the reins of Castile
in her name as Regent. On his death, in 15 16, Castile
and Arragon were again united, under Charles V., and
Spain became greater than ever.

The domestic policy of Ferdinand and Isabella had
also for its object the consolidation of Spain Domestic
under their throne. Their great minister was P°llcy-
Cardinal Ximenes, whose policy was to strengthen the
central power of the Crown bv engaging all Spain in a

State of Christendom.

pt. r.

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CH. III.

Spain. 39

national war against the Moors, and by strengthening the
towns (or loyal element) at the expense of the feudal
nobles (the disloyal element, in Spain as elsewhere). The
subjugation of the nobles to the Crown was Subjugation
in great measure effected, and the Crown be- of the nobles.
came more and more absolute.

Not content with driving out of Spain the last rem-
nant of the Mohammedan Moors, the Catholic The Tnquisi-
zeal of the king and queen and Ximenes turned tlon-
itself against the Jews and heretics. They founded the
'IngztisiUon ' in Spain, which in a generation Banishment
burned thousands of heretics. They expelled, of the Jews.
it is said, more than 100,000 Jews from their Spanish
homes. These first took refuge in Portugal, and soon after,
driven from thence, were scattered over Europe.

But notwithstanding this zeal for the Catholic faith,
by which Ferdinand and Isabella earned the title of e the
Catholic; there was no notion in the minds of Ximenes or
his royal master and mistress to sacrifice Spain to Rome.
They were as zealous in reforming the morals of the clergy
and monks as in rooting out heresy. They demanded
from the Pope bulls enabling them to visit and reform
the monasteries. They claimed the right in T ,

.. . . , . , . , Independent

many cases of appointing their own bishops, policy to-
And when the scandals of Alexander VI.'s ^dsRome.
wicked reign came to their knowledge, they threatened to
combine with other sovereigns in his ' correction?

One other thing we must notice. The discoveries of
Columbus, followed up by the conquest of Mexico and
Peru, gave to Spain suddenly a colonial em- colsnial po-
pire to govern. Her colonies in the New licy-
World were in one sense the gem in her Crown. Her
dreams of wealth in gold and silver were more than
realized. To have extended Christendom into a new world
seemed in itself a worthy exploit to the Catholic zeal of

State of Christendom.

PT. I,

Slavery.

Queen Isabella. Her royal anxiety to convert the heathen
inhabitants of the new-found lands to the Catholic faith
was no doubt as genuine as her anxiety to root heresy out
of Spain.

She sent out Catholic missionaries, but the selfishness of
her Spanish colonists introduced slavery instead of Chris-
tianity. In these first Spanish colonies was be-
gun that cruel policy by which the native races
were exterminated — worked to death — and then African
negroes introduced to supply their place. The introduction
of slavery, and its necessary feeder — the slave trade — was
a blot upon the colonial policy, not only of Spain but of
Christendom. It was essentially contrary to the genius
of modern civilization, and we know how great a struggle
has been needful in our own times to prevent its ruining
the greatest of the colonies of the New World.

id) France.

Machiavelli says, 'The kings of France aie at this
time more rich and powerful than ever.' So they were.

The dynasty of the
Capets, which began before
How all the time of the
gSTiS? Norman conquest
one nation. 0f England and
lasted down to the i Louis
Capet7 (Louis XVI.) who was
put to death during the
French Revolution, had now
ruled France for about five
hundred years. But the
France ruled by the first
Capet was only the portion marked dark on the map.
It was as though the King of England had ruled only

THE GROWTH OF FFIANCE

CH. III.

France.

FRANCE
IN THE ERA

France
0f claimed
Milan, and

Yorkshire. The rest of France was divided among the

great Barons.

These Baronies, or ' Duchies] had gradually been ab-
sorbed into the kingdom. The dates when they thus fell

in are marked on the map.

Now if we look at
France at the
beginning

the new era, we Naples also,
shall see, from compar-
ing the two maps, how
she had grown, and how
she claimed now not only
all France but Milan and
Naples also. She had, in
fact, become the second
great power in Europe,
and, by aiming to become

the first, made herself the great rival of Spain.

What were the secrets of her growing power ? As we

have seen, Machiavelli said that Italy was weaker than

either Spain or France, because the latter were each of

them united under one Crown.

We have now to mark some of the reasons

why the Duchies of France had become united

under the Crown.

(1) The Crown was not elective, as in Ger-
many, but hereditary in the royal family.

(2) The rule of inheritance in France was
not division among all the sons, but descent
to the eldest son only.

(3) The fact that the most powerful barons
were of the royal blood not only made them
loyal to the throne, but sometimes united their
Duchies to the Crown under one heir ; e.g.

This union
of all France
the result
of—

Crown here-
ditary ;

primo-
geniture ;

inter-
marriage
with the
royal family

42 State of Christendom. pt. t,

kings of France, as heirs of the Duchies of Anjou and
Orleans, claimed both those Duchies and also their rights
to Naples and Milan.

(4) The towns, as in Spain and elsewhere, had

favoured the growth of the central power as the best

means of freeing themselves from their old

The towns. ^^ ^^ MQst rf them ^ ^^ ag(>

obtained charters of freedom, and now held only of the
Crown.

The final struggle of the Crown with the great feudal
Barons had been concluded just before the era corn-
Final menced. It had been a hard struggle between
struggle Louis XI. and the Duke of Burgundy. The

of the Crown ° '

with Duchy was merged, and from that time the

Burgundy. unity q{ France was settled< She had be-
come powerful enough to hold her own against both
internal and foreign foes.

The kings of England had once claimed a great part

of France, but there was henceforth no real

conquests chance of their getting it back again. They

at an end. cou\d no longer find allies on French soil

against France.

It is true that we shall find Henry VIII. still dream-
ing sometimes of reversing the decision of the ' hundred
years' war' which had ended in the withdrawal of Eng-
land from all France except the town of Calais ; and we
shall find Spain and England combining during the era
more than once to crush France. But in reality the
object of these wars we shall find to be not so much the
dismemberment of France as opposition to the aggressive
policy of Louis XII. and Francis I., and their invasions
of Italy.

The hundred years' war with England had also
tended to consolidate the French nation. It was a

ch. in. France. 43

national and even popular struggle to turn out a foreign
foe. It necessitated the levying of national The English
armies and the payment of national taxes. JSped^
It did for France, to some extent, what the unite the
wars with the Moors did for Spain : it and increase
strengthened the central power of the Crown, 0fetfeower
and gave it a recognised place as natural Crown;
head and leader of the nation, in peace as well as in
war.

But the misfortune of France was that in outwardly
becoming a great nation by uniting all the Duchies
under the Crown, and so enlarging the size of but there
France on the map, sad mistakes were made, oTdfsun^5
which prevented her growth in internal unity, within,
which sowed the seeds of bitter feeling between
classes, and ended in producing her Great Revolution.

We cannot note too carefully these fatal mistakes.

(1) The king got the power of levying taxes — the
1 tattle' — without the consent of the people.

The ' Estates General/ or French Parliament, without cop-
which had hitherto had a voice in matters of sent ,of the

people,

taxation, hereafter had none ; the Crown be-
came absolute.

(2) The king, successful in his war against Ro al
England, henceforth out of these taxes kept standing
a large standing army. army"

These things, said Philip de Commines, the con-
temporary French historian of Louis XL, ' gave a wound
to his kingdom which will not soon be closed.'

He was right, for these two things kept classes apart
and broke up the internal unity of France. To see how
they did this, let us look at each class separately.

The nobility or noblesse of France were made into a
permanently separate caste. In old times they paid no
taille, because they gave their military services to the

44 Stale of Christendom, pr. i.

king in his wars. Now there was a standing army they
were less and less needed as soldiers, yet their freedom
The noblesse from taxation remained. They were a privi-
SntSedSed leSed class, and intermarried with one an-
caste. other. Their estates went down to their

eldest sons, but the younger sons, too, belonged to the
noblesse. So they became a very numerous class, poor,
but proud of their blood and freedom from taxes.

The peasantry, on the other hand, were the bur-
The peasan- dened class. In some respects they were much
try not serfs, better off than the German peasantry. Very
early in their history serfdom had practically ceased
in the north of France, especially in Normandy ; while
in most parts their services in labour had been long
ago changed into fixed rents, paid most often in corn,
wine, or fruits. But their young crops still suffered from
but paying tne lord's game. They still had tolls and
rents fees an(j dues to pay, and forced labour to

give on the roads. They still looked up to the feudal
lord as to a master, and the lord down upon them as
born for service. There was an impassable barrier of
blood between the two classes. The Church added her
claims — her tithes, as in other countries,
and the endless fees and money payments,
which made her so obnoxious. Bishops and abbots,
in France as in Germany, had large estates as well as
tithes, and so were landlords and princes as well as
priests, drawing, Machiavelli says, two-fifths of the
annual revenues of the kingdom into their ecclesiastical
coffers. Lastly came the extra burden of the taille,
growing with the military needs of kings who, having an
, .„ army, and not content with turning out the

and taille. „ ,f , -, . r ■ ■,

English and conquering refractory barons,
must needs lay claim to Milan and Naples, and invade
Italy.

CH. III.

France. 45

Here is a picture drawn by the peasants themselves -of
their hard lot, as they complained to the States General
on the accession of Charles VIII., and laid their grie-
vances before the new monarch, hoping for a remedy
which never came.

1 During the past thirty-four years troops have been
'ever passing through France and living on the poor
' people. When the poor man has managed Their grie-
'by the sale of the coat on his back, after vances.
1 hard toil, to pay his taille, and hopes he may live out
' the year on the little he has left, then come fresh troops
' to his cottage, eating him up. In Normandy multi-
' tudes have died of hunger. From want of beasts men
' and women have to yoke themselves to the carts, and
1 others, fearing that if seen in the daytime they will be
1 seized for not 'having paid their taille, are compelled to
f work at night. The king should have pity on his poor
' people, and relieve them from the said tailles and charges.'

Alas ! Charles VIII., instead of listening to their com-
plaints, took to invading Italy ! increasing their taille and
spilling more of their blood.

When to all this we add the consciousness that while
they, the much-enduring peasantry, were bearing these
increasing burthens, the noblesse were free from them,
can we wonder if the peasantry should learn to hate as
well as envy the nobles ?

The middle class in order to escape the incidents of
the rural taxation more and more left the rural districts to
live in the towns. Not sharing the blood or The middle
the freedom from taille of the nobles, there class leave
was no mixing or intermarrying with them, for th°eUntry
They were of different castes. Neither did towns*
the men of the towns sympathize with the peasantry.
They had their taille to pay like the peasantry, but under
their charters they enjoyed privileges which the peasant

46 State of Christendom.

PT. I.

did not. They were merchants rather than manufacturers.
Some linen manufactures were carried on in Brittany and
Normandy, but mostly France was supplied with goods
from the looms of Flanders in exchange for corn and wine.
The towns were the markets in which the products of the
peasant were exchanged, and the townsmen thus had the
chance of throwing a part of their burdens on their rural
customers in the shape of tolls and dues. While thus
the noblesse grew prouder and poorer, and the peasantry-
were more and more burdened, the middle classes in the
towns grew richer and more and more powerful. ^-~

Hence the gulf between different classes in France was
ever widening. The Crown was absolute and uncon-
trolled by any parliament, the noblesse a privileged caste,
the middle class settling in the towns, while the poor
peasantry were left to bear their burdens alone in the
Separation country. France had grown a big united
of classes the country on the map, but looking within the

mam vice in . -.."'-.- . . , .c

French nation, a state of things had begun which, 11

polity. unreformed, was sure in the end to produce

revolution, though it might not come yet.

In the meantime the first false steps of the absolute
kings of France were those attempts at aggrandizement
Love of which led them to invade Italy and prove their

theXf vYcSe strength in a long rivalship with Spain. To
in her policy, gratify a royal lust for empire and military
glory they were ready to sacrifice the welfare of the French
people.

(e) England.

England had politically advanced further on the path
of modern civilisation than any other country.
The English The English people had long ago become

already a comPact nation, with a strong central

formed. government, and with one law for all classes

within it.

ch. in. England. 47

England had passed under the feudal system, and, like
other countries, had her separate feudal elements, need-
ing to be blended into one compact whole. But happily
in England this work had in good measure been done.

Her feudal nobles, especially since the wars of the
Roses, had been thoroughly subdued under the central
power. Early in her history the petty feudal The nobility
lords had sunk into commoners. Unlike the not a caste-
noblesse of France, the nobility of England was not a
separate caste. The younger sons of nobles became
commoners, while their title to nobility, as well as their
estates, went to the eldest sons only.

England possessed a numerous and powerful middle
class, and it was not, as in France, con- Middle
fined to the towns. Landowners and yeomen classes.
in the country belonged to it, as well as the citizens and
merchants.

And whilst all classes, including the nobility, had been
subjected to the central government, they had none
of them been crushed and humbled. The _ _

r+ iii 11 • t- 1 he Crown

Crown had not become absolute, as m France, also subject
It, too, was subject to the laws of the land. t0 the laws>

The central power, or government, consisted of —
(1) The King, (2) the House of Lords, in which the
nobility had seats ; and (3) the House of Commons,
where the representatives of the free landholders, and of
the free citizens or burgesses, sat side by side. The govern-
No law could be passed without the con- j^tiS**
currence of the Crown and both Houses of monarchy.
Parliament. And the laws so passed were binding alike
on king, nobility, and commoners, i.e., on the whole na-
tion. Nor could the Crown levy taxes without the consent
of Parliament. The government of England was a con-
stitutional monarchy, and had long been so.

There was, however, still one class of people who were
not altogether blended into the nation — the ecclesiastics

48 State of Christendom. pt. i.

or clergy. Bishops and abbots, because they were great
landholders and peers of the realm, had seats in the
Theeccie- House of Lords, just as in Germany, there
siastics. were both ecclesiastical and lay princes

and Electors. In this sense they were Englishmen.
But the clergy in the main owed allegiance to Rome,
Ecclesiastics and in spite of the Constitutions of Clarendon,
getheHEng- were st^ ruled by ecclesiastical law and ec-
Hshmen. clesiastical courts, and resented civil inter-

ference. So they were subjects of the great Roman
ecclesiastical empire rather than of England. Their al-
legiance was at least divided between the Pope and
the king, and sometimes they were foreigners. The
The Pope Popeat the same time drew large revenues from
venuesefrom England as well as the king. The ecclesiastical
England. power was more under control, and had been
for long more restrained by law in England than in most
countries ; but still the fact was that Rome had ecclesiastical
sway over England. And in England, as elsewhere, the
clergy and monks had got a large part of the land into
their hands — and this was in addition to the tithes from
the whole.

The fact that there was one law of the land made by
King and Parliament, and ruling all classes in the realm
(except the clergy), had, more than anything
Slad^Jot" else> nelped tne peasantry to rise out of
free from servitude. There was no peasantry in Europe
(except the Swiss) which had already so com-
pletely got out of it as the English.

It early became the law of the land in England that
the services of the peasant could not be increased by the
lord. What they had been by long custom they must not
exceed. Then, by the influence of commerce, money
payments were early substituted for labour services. So
that people became used to money rents for land and

ch. in. England. 49

money wages for labour. The population of England had
increased very rapidly up to the fourteenth century. It
was then nearly twice what it was afterwards, because
the Black Death in 1349 had swept off half of it in a few
months. This of course made labour scarce. In spite
of all that the lords could do, and in spite even of Acts
of Parliament passed to prevent it, there was a great rise
in wages.

Under the feudal law the peasant tenants might not
leave their land. But now more and more they went to
the towns, where they could earn higher wages than by
tilling the land. There was of course a struggle to prevent
it, but, aided by the towns, the process went on. The
feudal lords tried to enforce the old services, which
had become so much more valuable since the Black
Death. The more they did so, the more their tenants
deserted the land and went to the towns. The peasantry
kept up a kind of strike, which came to a climax in the
rebellion under Wat Tyler in 1381. They were so far
successful that fixed money payments became general
instead of services, and by the time of Henry VII. ser-
vitude or villenage was practically at an end in England.
Quite a new state of things had grown up. Owing to the
growth of the woollen manufactures, and the demand for
wool, sheep-farming had very much increased. The present
Instead of a lot of little peasants' holdings, c^f™ of
the large farms of the wealthy sheep-owners santry.
often covered the country side. The masses of the
people in England were more and more becoming
a free people working for wages, while such tenants as
remained on the land paid fixed money rents instead of
services, and instead of being tied to the land were ejected
from their holdings if they could not pay their rents. No
doubt the masses of the people in England had their
hardships to endure. They had suffered during the civil

W.Ji. E

50 State of Christendom. pt. i.

wars of the Roses from anarchy and lawlessness and
the ravages of armies. Soldiers disbanded after foreign
wars disturbed the country. Small tenants found it hard
to compete with larger ones, and on failure to pay their
rents lost their farms very often. The number of ejections
from the land added of course to the idle vagrant popu-
lation. Robbery was thereby increased, and as both
Freedom did thieves and vagabonds were hung, some-
not neces- times twenty might be seen hanging from a

sarily make . ., . J .,,,., ■.-,-,

them better single gibbet. All this showed that there were
off- evils at work — many things needing reform

—but the English peasantry had earned by their past
They had no struggles this great advantage : instead of
share in the being servile tenants of feudal lords, they
but there ' were free subjects, protected by the law of
tTprne°vS?g the land> though freedom did not necessarily
their getting make them better off, but often the contrary.
They had indeed as yet no share in making the
laws, but there was nothing in their blood or in the law
of England to prevent their rising by industry and thrift
into owners of land, and as such claiming a voice in the
government of their country.

Such was England when, after the wars of the Roses,
Henry VII. conquered at the Battle of Bosworth, and
ascended the throne in 1485.

Henry VII. was born an orphan, a few months after
the death of his father, Edmund Tudor, Earl of Rich-
mond. He was an exile in Brittany while
enry ' the civil wars were raging in England. He
was twenty-six when the young princes were murdered,
and Richard III. usurped the throne. At once, under
the advice of Morton, Bishop of Ely, an attempt was
made to dethrone in his favour the tyrant
andlanded1' Richard III. He was only twenty-eight
in Wales. wnen, after landing at Milford Haven, and

ch. in. England. 5 1

winning at the Battle of Bosworth, he was proclaimed
king. His family (the Tudors) were Welsh, and so he
had wisely landed in Wales. Belonging himself through
his mother to the Lancastrian house, to conciliate the
Yorkists, he took an oath to marry, and afterwards mar-
ried Elizabeth of York, daughter of Edward IV., thereby
in a way uniting the blood of the two rival The throne
factions. He was received with acclamations precarious,
in London, and ascended a precarious throne. It is well to
note how precarious it was. The four previous kings had
all been violently dethroned — Henry VI. imprisoned and
murdered, Edward IV. deposed and exiled for a while,
Edward V. murdered, Richard III. slain in battle.

Henry VII. himself was a usurper, and, though he
was king by Act of Parliament, there were other
other claimants to the throne. Two of them, claimants,
generally thought to be impostors, invaded England, and
tried to seize upon his throne.

The first of these, Lambert Simnel, called Lambert
himself Edward Earl of Warwick, and was simnel-
supported by the Yorkist nobility, but defeated at the
battle of Stoke in 1487.

The other, Perkin Warbeck, professed to be the
Duke of York, who with his brother, Edward V., was
supposed to have been murdered by Richard perkin War-
III. He was supported by Edward IV.'s beck-
sister, the Duchess of Burgundy, by the Kings of France
and Scotland, who were continually plotting against
Henry VII., and every now and then, when it suited his
purpose, by Ferdinand of Spain. Perkin Warbeck was
taken prisoner in 1497, and beheaded in 1499.

Henry VII.'s foreign policy was peace and ,

alliance with Spain. We have seen that the foreign
foreign policy of Spain was alliance with Eng- P°lxcy-
land against France. Henry VII. wanted peace. This

5 2 State of Christendom. pt. u

alone could give him a chance of establishing himself
firmly on his precarious throne. To get peace he allied
himself with Spain. While both were infants the Prince
of Wales was betrothed to the Princess of Spain, Cathe-
rine of Arragon. Ferdinand was a treacherous ally. He-
dragged Henry VII. into the war with France which
ended in the annexation of Brittany to France. And when
Marriages it suited his purpose he threatened to dethrone
be of'ather" Henry, and even offered Catherine of Arragon
Arragon. to the King of Scotland. At length, as years

passed, the marriage of Prince Arthur to Catherine took
place ; but Prince Arthur soon after died. Then came
negotiations for Catherine's marriage with Prince Henry
(Henry VIII.), and on the death of his queen Henry
VII. offered to marry his late son's widow himself ! At
length, in 1503, the contract for the marriage with the
Prince Henry was signed, but as Henry was not yet of
age it could be set aside if any other alliance suited him
better.

It is well to mark how these royal marriages were
merely a part of the foreign policy of princes, and that
from the first there had been great lack of good faith as
regards this marriage, on which so much of England's
future history was to turn.

Henry VII.'s domestic policy was in the main wise.
King and usurper as he was, he yet took

Henry VII. s ° . r . -, ■, r ■<

domestic great pains to conform to the law of the

policy. land. Instead of trying to make the crown

absolute, he remembered he was a constitutional monarch,,
and could levy no taxes without consent of Parliament.

Still, though a constitutional monarchy, the government

of England in Tudor times was not conducted just as it is

now. Parliament did not sit every year as it

His position , __ . .

as regards does now. Nor were there as now a prime
Parliament. minister and a cabinet of ministers represent-

ch. in. England. 53

ing the majority in Parliament, responsible to Parliament
remaining in office only so long as they can command a
majority m Parliament, and giving place to another prime
minister and cabinet as soon as they find themselves in a
minority. The king had the reins of government much
more m his own hands than the crown has now. He chose
his own ministers, who were responsible to him alone
And as the regular annual revenues of the Crown were
sufficient to pay for the ordinary expenses of government
and did not need voting by Parliament every year as they
do now, it was only when he had a war on hand, or some-
thing extraordinary happened needing fresh taxes or laws
that it was needful for a Tudor king to call a Parliament '
The chief minister of Henry VII. was Cardinal
Morton, a true Englishman, though an ecclesiastic He
was a man of large experience. He was in
middle life when Henry was born. He was a cir<£ster'
privy councillor, and faithful adherent of M™t™
Henry VI. Edward IV. had made him his Lord Cham
cellor, and his executor. Richard III. had thrown him
into prison, but he had escaped in time to plan the enter-
prise which proved successful at Bosworth Field, and to
him Henry VII. owed his throne.

Under the influence of Morton Henry VII. on the
whole did what the weal of England required

With a strong hand he kept all classes subject to the
laws of the land, quelled rebellion, and maintained
internal peace and order. He was avaricious
but even in his most hard and unjust 2in5. main"
exactions he kept within the letter of the law.

In order to keep the nobility in check he favoured the
growth and power of the middle classes—
notably of the 'yeomen//.* small landholders, 2SK*?"
■and tenant farmers.

Thus he did much to conciliate the English nation

54 State of Christendom. ft. i.

after the long civil wars. He also paved the way for
Paved the *he uinon °f England and Scotland by the
way for the marriage of his daughter Margaret to the King
England and of Scots. Being himself a Welshman, he
Scotland. reconciled the Welsh to English rule. After
a struggle of 1,000 years they at length were satisfied
with union with England. Under the Tudor dynasty
they ceased to feel themselves a conquered

Finally con- . , ,, , . . , .

ciliated the people, and though retaining their separate
Welsh. language, ceased to rebel from what they na

longer considered a foreign yoke.

To these claims of Henry VII. to English respect
we must add that, though not sagacious enough to
And began patronise Columbus, he did the next best
co°omald'S thing in sending out afterwards Sebastian
empire. Cabot to discover and claim for England a

foothold across the ocean which proved the beginning of
those extensions of England in America in which half the
English people now dwell. Thus he was the founder of
England's colonial empire.

Of his later years we shall have to speak again. In
the meantime it may help to fix some of these facts on
the mind if we dwell a moment on his tomb.

' His corpse' (says the chronicler) 'was conveyed with
' funeral pomp to Westminster, and there buried by the
The tomb of ' good queen, his wife, in a sumptuous and
Henry VII. <■ solemn chapel, which he had not long
' before caused to be builded.' He was buried in a
vault just big enough for himself and his queen, under
the pavement in the centre of that beautiful chapel
which still bears his name, and in which, round this
central tomb, so many Tudor and Stuart princes were
afterwards laid. When Henry VII. 's vault was opened in
1 869 there were found to be three coffins instead of two !
The third was discovered to be that of James I. To

ch. iv. The Necessity for Reform. 5 5

make room for it the wood had been stripped off the
other two, leaving the inner lead coffins bare. The
workmen engaged in this strange work were found to
have quaintly scratched their names on the lead, with the
date 1625.

In that tomb of Henry VII. lie, therefore, not only
the heirs of the two English contending factions of York
and Lancaster, and of the traditions of Wales, but also the
Scotch monarch who, thanks to the policy of his great-
great-grandfather, Henry VII., ascended the English
throne and became the first king of Great Britain.

CHAPTER IV.

THE NEED OF REFORM AND DANGER OF REVOLUTION.

(a) The Necessity for Reform.

Now, after this review of the state of Christendom, it
will be easy to see in what points it fell short of the
demands of modern civilisation and wherein therefore
reform was needful.

We said that the first point towards which modern
civilisation specially tended was this, viz., the formation
of compact nations living peaceably side by side, respect-
ing one another's rights and freedom.

We have seen that the modern nations were fast
forming themselves — that England, France, itaiyand
and Spain were already formed, but that Italy Germany
and Germany were lagging far behind in this United

matter. nations.

56 State of Christendom. PT. i.

But none of the nations were living peaceably side by
side, and respecting one another's rights. They were at
The lack of constant war, sometimes under the leadership

pnetaece1andnal of the PoPe> like* a band of r°ta>ers, setting
justice. upon Venice, or Naples, or Milan ; then

quarrelling amongst themselves, and forming fresh leagues
to drive one another out. Their foreign policy was aggres-
sive and wofully wanting in good faith. This want of
public peace and international morality was a crying evil.
It disturbed commerce, and its worst result was that it
inflicted terrible hardships on the masses of the people.
The voice of the French peasantry was clear upon this
point. Here then was need for reform.

The second great point aimed at by modern civilisa-
tion was, that (looking within each nation) all classes of
the people were to be alike citizens, for whose common
weal the nation was to be governed, and who were
ultimately to govern themselves.

Not only as yet had the masses of the people no share
in the government of the nations of which they formed so
large a part, but also they were very far from being re-
garded as free citizens, except in England, where in
theory* they were so, though perhaps not much so in prac-
The serfdom tice- In Germany especially, the peasantry
of the Ger- remained still in serfdom, and felt their

man pea- -

santry still thraldom more keenly than ever. Here,
continued. again, was a necessity for reform.

We have already seen that there was a necessity for
reform in that ecclesiastical system of Rome
siastical and which opposed the free growth of the modern
systems10 nations, and m tne scholastic system so
needed intimately connected with it, which was op-

posed to free thought, science, and true
religion, and prevented the diffusion of the benefits of
knowledge and education among the masses of the people.

ch. iv. The Necessity for Reform. 57

Now the question for the new era was, whether the

onward course of modern civilisation was to

be by a gradual timely reform in these things, tivts, reform

or whether, reform being refused or thwarted, °.r revo1^-

11 •. • tl0n-

it was to be by revolution.

Recognising the necessity there was for reform, we

have now to see the danger there was of revolution ; how

far and wide, in fact, the train was already laid, waiting

only for the match to explode it.

(b) The Train laid for Revolution.

It will not seem strange, (1), that it was among the
oppressed peasantry of Germany that the Thetrain
train was most effectually laid for revolution ; was laid
or, (2), that when attempts had been made at German e
revolution, they were aimed at the redress of peasantry,
both religious and political grievances.

The ecclesiastical grievances of the peasantry were
as practical and real as those involved in their serfdom.
The peasant's bondage to the priests and Their eccle-
monks was often even harder than his bond- siastical as ,
age to his feudal lord. It was not only feudal3
that " he had tithes to pay, but after paying grievances,
tithes, he still had to pay for almost everything he got
from the church. That religion which should have been
his help and comfort had become a system of extortion
and fraud.

These are the words of a contemporary writer (Juan
de Valdez, the brother .of the secretary of the Emperor
Charles V.), himself a Gatfotftic, and well
acquainted with the condition of things in Ger- rary tes-
many : ' I see that we can scarcely get anything timony-
'from Christ's ministers but for money; at baptism money,
' at bishoping money, at marriage money, for confession

5 8 State of Christendom. pt. t

'money — no, not extreme unction without money! They
' will ring no bells without money, no burial in the church
' without money ; so that it seemeth that Paradise is shut
' up from them that have no money. The rich is buried in
( the church, the poor in the churchyard. The rich man
' may marry with his nearest kin, but the poor not so,
f albeit he be ready to die for love of her. The rich may
'eat flesh in Lent but the poor may not, albeit fish
1 perhaps be much dearer. The rich man may readily get
' large indulgences, but the poor none, because he wanteth
\ money to pay for them/

We must remember, too, how galling to the peasant
was the payment of the large and small tithes. These
words were written in England, but they will serve for all
Europe: —

' They have their tenth part of all the corn, meadows,
( pasture, grass, wood, colts, calves, lambs, pigs, geese, and
Another ' chickens. Over and besides the tenth part oi

testimony. « every servant's wages, wool, milk, honey, wax,
' cheese, and butter ; yea, and they look so narrowly after
* their profits that the poor wife must be countable to them
1 for every tenth egg, or else she getteth not her rights at
' Easter, and shall be taken as a heretic'

Can we wonder that the peasants should rebel against
this ? and that '. :i Germany, where both feudal and eccle-
siastical oppression was so galling, they should rebel
against both, and mix the two together in their minds,
demanding in one breath both religious and political
freedom ? Surely there was reason in it.

As early as the fourteenth century the Swiss peasants
in the Forest Cantons had rebelled and thrown off the
Successful yoke of their ancient feudal lords, and when
theeS\^ss°f tne latter joined in a common cause against
1315, them, the Swiss were victorious in the battle

of Morgarten, 1315.

ch. iv. The Train laid for Revolution. 59

They did not sever themselves from the Empire all
at once — indeed it was not till nearly two centuries after
that the Swiss formally seceded — but they formed a league
for purposes of mutual defence. They were soon joined
by other neighbouring cantons, and their flag, with its
white cross on a red ground, became the flag of a new
nation, the Swiss confederacy, with its motto ' Each for all,-
and all for each ' — a nation of free peasants and citizens
inured to hardship and war, letting out their sons as
soldiers to fight for pay, and, alas, not always on the side
of freedom !

Between 1424 and 147 1 the peasants of the Rhsetian
Alps did the same thing. Oppressed and insulted by their
lords they burned their castles and threw off andthepea-
their yoke, and thus was formed the Grau- g£$[*£
bund, in imitation of the Swiss confederacy, 1441-71-
but separate from it.

Referring to the map ' Serfdom and Rebellions against
it* we mark these two Swiss republics on it as tne region
where rebellion had met with success. It was no doubt
their mountains which helped the Swiss peasants to suc-
cess and independence. Their battles were little Mara«^
thons. At Morgarten 1,300 Swiss won the day against
10,000 Austrian troops. Their Alps were their protec on.
— . We mark next the region where the rebellion agai st
Rome and the Empire, which followed in Bohemia upon
the preaching of Wiclif and martyrdom of
Huss, had been, after a long reign of terror, ^rebellion
and the Hussite wars (141 5-1436), quelled in oftheLoi-
blood. Hussite doctrines were indeed still Hussite
held by the people, and by the treaty of ^ I4 s~
Basle in some sense tolerated ; but this, never-
theless, was the region where rebellion, springing out of
the last era of light and progress, had been crushed to rise
no more.

60 State of Christendom. ft. i.

Now we have to mark where, in connexion with the
new era, there were signs, as we have said, that a train
was laid for a coming revolution.

The first herald of the movement was Hans Boheim,
a drummer, who had appeared in 1476 in Franconia, on
Threats of the Tauber, a branch of the Main. He pro-
FranconPafo fessed to be a prophet, to have had visions
J476. of the Virgin Mary, and to be sent by her to

proclaim that the Kingdom of God was at hand, that
the yoke of bondage to lords spiritual and temporal was
coming to an end, that under the new kingdom there
were to be no taxes, tithes, or dues ; all were to be
brethren, and woods, and waters, and pastures were to be
free to all men. A crowd of 40,000 pilgrims nocked to
hear the prophet of the Tauber till the Bishops of Wiirz-
burg and Mayence interfered, dispersed the crowd and
burned the prophet. He was but a sign of the times — a
voice crying in the wilderness ! But his cry was one which
found a response in the hearts of the peasantry — freedom
from the yoke of their feudal and spiritual lords, and the
restoration of those rights which in ancient days had
belonged to the community. This was the cry of the
peasantry for many generations to come.

The next was a much more formidable movement,
The 'Bund- Ylz-> tnat named from the banner borne by the
schuh' peasantry, the Bundsckith, or peasant's clog.

While the peasants in the Rhastian Alps were gradually
throwing off the yoke of the nobles and forming the
in Kempten, Graubtmd, a struggle was going on between
i492- the neighbouring peasantry of Kempten (to

the east of Lake Constance) and their feudal lord, the
Abbot of Kempten. It began in 1423, and came to an
open rebellion in 1492. It was a rebellion against new
demands not sanctioned by ancient custom, and though
it was crushed, and ended in little good to the peasantry

ch. iv. The tram laid for Revolution. 6l

(many of whom fled into Switzerland), yet it is worthy
of note because in it for the first time appears the banner
of the Bundschuh.

The next rising was in Elsass (Alsace), in 1493, the
peasants finding allies in the burghers of the towns
along the Rhine, who had their own grie- In Eisass
vances. The Bttndschuh was again their 1493-
banner, and it was to Switzerland that their anxious eyes
were turned for help. This movement also was prema-
turely discovered and put down.

Then, in 1501, other peasants, close neighbours to
those of Kempten, caught the infection, and in 1502,
again in Elsass, but this time further north, in Both aga;n
the region about Speyer and the Neckar, in isoi-2-
lower down the Rhine, nearer Franconia, the Bund-
schuh was raised again. It numbered on its recruit
rolls many thousands of peasants from the country round,
along the Neckar and the Rhine. The wild notion was
to rise in arms, to make themselves free, like the Swiss,
by the sword, to acknowledge no superior but the Em-
peror, and all Germany was to join the League. They
were to pay no taxes or dues, and commons, forests, and
rivers were to be free to all. Here again they mixed up
religion with their demands, and ' Only what is just be-
fore God' was the motto on the banner of the Bundschuh*
They, too, were betrayed, and in savage triumph the Em-
peror Maximilian ordered their property to be confiscated,
their wives and children to be banished, and themselves
to be quartered alive. It would have been suicide on the
part of the nobles to fulfil orders so cruel on their own
tenants. They would have emptied their estates of
peasants, and so have lost their services, for the con-
spiracy was widely spread. Few, therefore, really fell
victims to this cruel order of the. Emperor. The ring-
leaders dispersed, fleeing some into Switzerland and some

62 State of Christendom. pt. i.

into the Black Forest. For ten years now there was
silence. The Bimdschuh banner was furled, but only for
.a while.

In 15 12 and 15 13, on the east side of the Rhine, in
the Black Forest and the neighbouring districts of Wiir-
Aboutthe temberg, the movement was again on foot
Black Forest on a still larger scale. It had found a leader
imde^joss in Joss Fritz. A soldier, with commanding
Fntz. presence, and great natural eloquence, used

•to battle, hardship, and above all, patience, he bided his
•time. He was one of the fugitives who had escaped being
* quartered.' He hid himself for years in places where
he was unknown, but never despaired. At length, in
1 5 1 2 he returned to his own land, settled near Freiburg,
and began to draw together again the broken threads of
the Peasants' league. He got himself appointed forester
under a neighbouring lord, talked to the peasants in the
fields, or at inns and fairs, and held secret meetings
.at a lonely place among the forests in the dusk of evening.
There he talked of the peasants' burdens, of the wealth of
-their ecclesiastical oppressors, of the injustice of their
blood being spilled in the quarrels of lords and princes,
how they were robbed of the wild game of the forest,
and the fish in the rivers, which in the sight of God were
free, like the air and the sun, to all men, how they ought
to have no masters but God, the Pope, and the Emperor.
Lastly, he talked to them of the Bundschuh. They went
to consult their priest, but Joss had talked over the
priest to his side, and he encouraged the movement.
Then they framed their articles, and Joss defended them
out of the Bible. They were first to seek the sanction
and aid of the Emperor, and if he refused to help them
then they would turn to the Swiss.

There was a company of licenced beggars who tramped
about the country with their wallets, beggingalms wherever

•ch. iv. The train laid for Revolution. 63

they went— a sort of guild, with elected captains. This
guild Joss took into his confidence. They were his spies,
and through them he knew what watches were kept at
city gates, and through them he kept the various ends of
the conspiracy going. His plans were now all laid. He
wanted nothing but the Bundschuh banner. He got some
silk and made a banner — blue, with a white cross upon it.
The white cross was the Swiss emblem. Some of his
followers would have preferred the eagle of the Empire.
But how was the Bundschuh to be added ? What painter
could be found who would keep the secret ? Twice he
tried and was disappointed, and all but betrayed. At
length, far away on the banks of the Neckar, he found a
painter, who painted upon it the Virgin Mary and St.
John, the Pope and the Emperor, a peasant kneeling
before the cross, a Bundschuh, and under it the motto
4 O Lord, help the righteous.' He returned with it under
his clothes, but ere he reached home the secret was out.
Again the League was betrayed. A few days more and
the banner would have been unfurled. Thousands oi
peasants were ready to march, but now all was over, the
whole thing was out, and Joss Fritz, with the banner
under his clothes, had to fly for his life to Switzerland.
Everything was lost but his own resolution. Those
conspirators who were seized were put to torture, hung,
beheaded, and some of them quartered alive.

But Joss Fritz was not disheartened. He returned
■after a while to the Black Forest, went about his secret
errands, and again bided his time.

In 15 14 the peasantry of the Duke Ulrich of Wiirtem-
berg rose to resist the tyranny of their lord, who had ground
them down with taxes to pay for his reckless In in
luxury and expensive court. The same year, Wurtemberg
in the valleys of the Austrian Alps, in Carin- Austrian
thia, Styria, and Carniola (Crain), similar Alps-

64 State of Christendom. PT. 1.

risings of the peasantry took place, all of them ending in
the triumph of the nobles.

To defend themselves against such risings a league
had been formed among the nobles of the whole district to
The Swabian the north of Switzerland, called the Swabian
agaSst the League, and a proclamation was issued that
peasants. 'Since in the land of Swabia, and all over the

' Empire, among the vassals and poor people disturb-
( ances and insurrections are taking place, with setting
' up of the standard of the Bundschuh and other ensigns
1 against the authority of their natural lords and rulers,,
'with a view to the destruction of the nobles and all
1 honourable persons, the noble and knightly orders have
' therefore agreed, whatever shall happen, to support each
'other against every such attempt on the part of the
' common man.'

This brings forcibly into view again the fatal vice in
the polity of feudal Germany — want of the consolidation
of the German people into a compact nation,
wide the For here were the peasantry of Germany

laidnforaS appealing helplessly to some higher power to*
future revo- protect them from the oppression of their
feudal lords, conspiring for a general rebellion
for lack of it, and debating whether on the flag of the
Bundschuh they should paint the eagle of the Empire or
the white cross of the Swiss republic. Here on the
other hand were the nobles and knightly orders con-
spiring by the sheer force of their combined swords to
crush these ' attempts on the part of the common man/
The ciying need of both was for a German nation — a
commonwealth — with a strong central power or govern-
ment to hold the sword of justice between them, settling
their disputes by the law of the land for their common
weal. For lack of this there was rebellion and bloodshed.
These risings of the peasantry were crushed for a while5

ch. iv. The train laid for Revolution. 65

but Joss Fritz was only biding his time, and meanwhile
let us bear in mind where, how far and wide over Central
Europe, the train was laid, waiting only for the match to
ignite it.

It is well to look once more on the map of serfdom,
to fix these revolutionary localities in our mind, and
before we pass away from them to mark how they lie,
not in the region of darkest shadow, where serfdom was
most complete — where a conquered Slavonian peasantry
were in bondage too complete for rebellion — nor in the
region of the crushed Hussite rebellions ; but in those
regions next to the countries where serfdom had obtained
least hold, and had passed away ; above all,
in those mountain regions where the traditions ia!d not"1
of ancient freedom had lived the longest, where serf-
. ,•.._, . , , dom was at

where the spirit of the people was least sub- ,ts worst,

dued, and where the close neighbourhood of freedom1 was
their fellow mountaineers of Switzerland kept nearest in
an example of successful rebellion ever before
their eyes. We may see in this way most clearly how
these peasants' rebellions were not isolated phenomena,
but parts of a great onward movement beginning centuries
back, which already had swept over England and France,
and freed the peasants there, and now, in this era, had
Germany to grapple with. Whether it was destined to be
at once successful or not we shall see in this history, but
we may be sure it was destined to conquer some day,
because we cannot fail to recognize in it one of the waves
of the advancing tide of modern civilisation.

M.H.

66 The Protestant Revolution.

FT. H.

PART II.
THE PROTESTANT REVOLUTION.

CHAPTER I.

REVIVAL OF LEARNING AND REFORM AT FLORENCE.

(a) The Revivers of Learning at Florence.

The story we have now to tell begins at Florence.
Florence, as we have already noted, was a republic, but
The Re- differing from other Italian republics in this :

public of that while in others the nobles held power,

here in Florence, for some generations, the
nobles had been dethroned. The people had got the rule
into their own hands ; and so far had they carried their
distrust of the nobles, that no noble could hold office
in the city unless he first enrolled himself as a simple
citizen. Florence had long been a great commercial city,
and the public spirit of her citizens had helped to make
her prosperous. Never had she been more prosperous
r than in the early days of her democracy. But every now
and then there were troubled times ; and in such times,
more than once or twice, a dictator had been chosen.
Power in the Sometimes even a foreign prince had been
bands of the made dictator for a stated number of years.

At length power had fallen into the hands of
the wealthier families of citizens, and the chief of these
was the family of the Medici.

ch. i. Revival and Reform at Florence. 6/

Cosmo de' Medici was for many years dictator. His
great wealth, gained by commerce, placed him in the
position of a merchant prince. His virtues, Cosmo
and patronage of learned men and the arts, 1389-1464.
made him popular; and his popularity paved the way
for the proud position held by his grandson, l Lorenzo
the Magnificent/

Lorenzo de' Medici (of whose times we are to speak)
had followed in Cosmo's footsteps, and had got into his
single hand the reins of the state. He had Lorenzo de-
set aside the double council of elected citizens, Medici,
and now ruled through a council of seventy I44 I4Q2
men chosen by himself. His court was the most brilliant
and polished of his time, but in the background of his
magnificence there was always this dark shadow — he
held his high place at the expense of the liberties of the
people of Florence.

There was, however, much in his rule to flatter the
pride of the Florentines.

Under the Medici, Florence had become the 'Modern
Athens.' Their genius and wealth had filled it with
pictures and statues, and made it the home of Fiorence ^e
artists and sculptors. At this very moment, in Modem
Lorenzo's palace and under his patronage, was
young Michael Angelo, ere long to be the greatest sculptor
and one of the greatest painters of Italy. Learning also,
as well as art, had found a home at Florence. Michael
The taking of Constantinople by the Turks Angelo.
having driven learned men into Italy, here at Flo-
rence, and elsewhere in Italy, the philosophy of Plato
was taught by men whose native tongue was Greek.
Cosmo de' Medici had founded the ' Platonic
Academy] and Ficino, who was now at the Academy,
head of it, had been trained up under his Ficino
patronage.

F 2

68 The Protestant Revolution. PT. n.

Politian (Poliziano), the most brilliant and polished
Latin poet of the day, was always at the palace, directing
the studies of Lorenzo's children, and ex-
1454-1494 ; changing Greek epigrams with learned ladies
deliaPMiran- °^ t^ie court- To this galaxy of distinguished
doia, men had recently been added the beautiful

14 3-1494. y0ung prince, Pico delta Mirandola, regarded
as the greatest linguist and most precocious genius of
the age. At twenty-three he had challenged all the
learned men of Europe to dispute with him at Rome ;
and some of the opinions he advanced being charged
with heresy, he had taken refuge at the court of Lorenzo,
who gave him a villa near his own and Politian's, on the
slope of the mountain overlooking the rich valley of the
Arno and the domes and towers of Florence. What
these three friends — Ficino the Platonist, Politian the
poet, and Pico, their young and brilliant companion —
were to each other, let this little letter picture to us.

Politian writes to Ficino, and asks him to come.

'My little villa is very secluded, it being embosomed among
woods, but in some directions it may be said to overlook all
Florence. Here Pico often steals in upon me unexpectedly from
his grove of oaks, and draws me away with him from my hiding-
place to partake of one of his pleasant suppers — temperate, as you
know well, and brief, but always seasoned with delightful talk and
wit. You will, perhaps, like better to come to me, where your fare
will not be worse and your wine better — for in that I may venture
to vie even with Pico.'

Add to this picture the brilliance of Lorenzo's court,
and what a fascinating picture it is !

This little knot of men at Florence, and others in
Italy, were at work at what is called the * Revival of
The Revival Learning.' These revivers of learning are
of Learning, often spoken of as 'the Humanists? They
were digging up again and publishing, by means of the
printing-press, the works of the old Greek and Latin

ch. i. Revival and Reform at Florence. 69

writers, and they found in them something to their taste
much more true and pure than the literature of the middle
ages. After reading the pure Latin of the classical
writers they were disgusted with the bad Latin of the
monks ; after studying Plato they were disgusted with
scholastic philosophy. Such was the rottenness of Rome
that they found in the high aspirations of Plato after
spiritual truth and immortality a religion which seemed
to them purer than the grotesque form of semi-pagan
Christianity which Rome held out to them, tendencies
They could natter the profligate Pope as all revival of
but divine in such words as ' Sing unto Sixtus learning>
a new song/ but in their hearts some of them scoffed, and
doubted whether Christianity be true and whether there
be a life after death for mankind.

(b) The great Florentine Reformer, Girolamo
Savonarola (1486-1498).

These were the revivers of learning. But suddenly
there arose amongst them quite another kind of man— a
religious Reformer. He came like a shell in G- l
the midst of tinder, and it burst in the midst Savonarola,
of the Platonic Academy. The name of this I4S2"1498'
Florentine Reformer was Girolamo Savonarola. He too
was learned — educated for the medical profession—
but being of a religious turn of mind he had chosen
to become a friar. Finding from study of the Scriptures
how much both the Church and the world Becomes,
needed reform, he became a Reformer. In religious
i486 he commenced preaching against the reformen
vices of popes, cardinals, priests and monks, the
tyranny of princes, and the bad morals of the people,
calling loudly for repentance and reformation. In 1487
he preached at Reggio. There young Pico heard him,

jo The Protestant Revolution. PT. n.

and, taken by his eloquence, invited him to Florence.
In 1490 he came to the convent of St. Mark, which was
under the patronage of the Medici. Crowds came to hear
him ; shopkeepers shut up their shops while he was
Made Prior preaching. He became the idol of the people.

atlb-Mark In I49I he was made Prior of San Marco,
rence. and when asked to do customary homage to

the patron for this high appointment he refused, saying
( he owed it to God, and not to Lorenzo de' Medici ! '

Innocent VIII. had now succeeded Sixtus IV. as
Pope, and his natural son had married Lorenzo's daughter.
The Pope in return had made Lorenzo's son John (after-
wards Leo X.), a boy of thirteen, a cardinal ! When
Savonarola thundered against ecclesiastical scandals and
the vices of the Pope, Lorenzo naturally did not like it.
He sent messages to the preacher, exhorting him to use
discretion. ' Entreat him/ replied the Reformer, ' in my
name, to repent of his errors, for calamities from on high
impend over him and his family.' The bold Reformer
went on with his preaching, denouncing judgments upon
Stirs up in Italy and Rome. A marked impression was
the people soon visible in the morals of the people of
reform and Florence. More and more he became their
freedom. natural leader. Lorenzo tried to keep him-

self popular by fetes and magnificent festivals. But gra-
dually influential citizens, who still longed for the old
republic and ancient liberty, attached themselves to
Death of Savonarola. In 1492 Lorenzo de' Medici died.

Lorenzo and The Reformer had been sent for, and was with
him at his death. It was rumoured that he. demanded
of the dying man, as a condition of absolution, that he
Innocent should restore to Florence her ancient liber-
viii. ties. This year Innocent VIII. too died ;

and in 1493 the wicked reign of Alexander VI. and
his son Csesar Borgia began. While they were plotting

ch. i. Revival and Reform at Florence. J 1

to bring over Charles VIII. of France to scourge Italy,
Savonarola mixed up with his denunciations against the
evils of the times prophecies of impending woes upon
Florence. Then came the armies of France ; The Frencn
friendly relations between the French and the invasion. _
Florentines ; the expulsion of the Medici, by expelled.
their aid, from Florence ; the formation of a ^public
republic, under the advice of Savonarola. He restored,
declined to hold any office, but his spirit ruled supreme.
Convents were reformed, and the study of the Bible in
the original language made a part of the duty Savonarola's
of the monks. Schools for the education of reforms,
the children of the people were founded ; and Savona-
rola went on with his preaching, denouncing the wicked-
ness of the Church and demanding reform.

In 1495 Pope Alexander VI. thought it was time to
stop so dangerous a preacher. He cited him to Rome,
but the people would not let him go. He offered to
make him a cardinal as the price of his loyalty to Rome,
but he publicly replied that the only red hat to which
he aspired was one red in the blood of his own mar-
tyrdom.

Had Savonarola died in 1495 his name would have
gone down to posterity as that of a reformer singularly
zealous, noble, patriotic, judicious, and practical in his
aims and conduct. But men are not per- He becomes
feet. The zealous brain is apt to take fire, fanatical,
and enthusiasm is apt to become fanatical. So it
was with Savonarola. Both he and the people gave
way to excitement. When the time of Carnival came,
they dragged their trinkets, pictures, immoral books,
vanities of all kinds, into the public square, and made a
great bonfire of them. The excitement of the people
reacted on the prophet who had raised it. In his later
years (he lived only to the age of forty- seven), he pro

72 The Protestant Revolution. PT. u.

phesied more wildly than ever, thought he saw visions,
and did fanatical things which marked a brain fevered
and unbalanced. Be it so; we are not therefore to
forget to pay homage to the man who, even in these later
years, was bold enough to put the Borgia Pope to well-
merited shame, and to denounce his vices, regardless
alike of his bribes or his threats. That the Pope was
powerful enough at length to put him to silence by
imprisonment, to make him confess his heresies by
torture, and on his return to them when the torture was
removed, to silence him for ever by a cruel death, did
but cast the halo of martyrdom around his heroism and
Ismar_ make his name immortal. He was strangled

tyred by anci burned at Florence by order of the Pope

Pope Alex- in 1 498— by order of that Pope who had him-
anderVl. sejf committed murder and sacrilege and
unheard-of crimes, and who five years after died of the
poison prepared as it was said for another !

Lorenzo had died in 1492, and Savonarola, as we
have said, was present at his death-bed. Pico, who
had invited him to Florence, became a devout dis-
His influence ciple of Savonarola, and after three years of
Po1it£n°and Pure and childlike piety, remarkably free from
Fidno. fanaticism, died in 1495. Just as Charles

VIII. was entering Florence, Pico was buried in the
robes of Savonarola's order and in the church of St.
Mark. Politian died in the same year ; he, too, desired
to be buried in the robes of Savonarola's order. Ficino
was carried away by the preaching of the Reformer for a
while, but was disgusted with the fanaticism of his later
years. He died a Platonist, hardly sure whether Chris-
tianity be true or not, and this characteristic story is told

ch. i. Revival and Reform at Florence. 73

about his death. He and a friend made a solemn bargain
with each other that whichever died first should if possible
appear to the other and tell him whether indeed there be
a life after death. Ficino died first, and is said to have
appeared to his friend exclaiming, ' Oh, Michael, Michael,
it is all true/ Whether the story be true or not, it shows
exactly the state of mind the Neo-Platonist philosophers

(d) Niccolo Machiavelli.

For some time after Savonarola's death Florence was
governed by a Council of Ten, by whom was chosen as
Secretary of State one of the most remark- „. , .

NlCCOlO I\l£/"

able men of the time, Niccolo Machiavelli, chiaveiii,
the historian from whose writings we have x&**&**
several times quoted. He was, perhaps, the keenest
diplomatist that ever lived. Schooled in the lying politics
of Italy, while Caesar Borgia and Alexander VI. were
plotting and counter-plotting with all the States of Italy
and Europe, he conducted the foreign diplomacy of the
Republic of Florence till 15 12, when under Julius II.
the French were driven out of Italy and the sons of
Lorenzo de' Medici re-established in power. The Flo-
rentines then lost their freedom of self-government
again, and Machiavelli found himself an exile. In the
retirement of a hidden country life he wrote his great
work, 'The Prince.' Its object was to win <Tlie
a way back for its author to political life Prince.'
by convincing the Medici that though he had served
under their enemies, he could do them service if they
employed him. It answered its purpose. Written in a
wicked, lying age, ' The Prince ' reflected its vices. Its
author made no pretence of a higher virtue than Borgias
and Medici would appreciate. He did not scruple to
advocate lying whenever it would pay ; force and fraud

74 The Protestant Revolution. pt. ii.

whenever they would succeed ; tyranny, if needful to keep
a tyrant on his throne ; murder and bloodshed as means
of obtaining an end. This was what professedly Chris-
tian popes had been doing of late. Machiavelli by putting
these maxims into a scientific form in ' The Prince ' did
but give them a sort of personality. He became, as it
were, the demon of politics, and the unchristian policy
of the times became known to after ages as ' Machia-
vellian.'

CHAPTER II.

THE OXFORD REFORMERS.

(a) The Spirit of Revival of Learning and Reform is
carried from Italy to Oxford (1485-1496).
There were, as we have seen, two distinct movements
at Florence in favour (1) of the Revival of Learning,
and (2) of Religious Reform. The distinction
and con-°n and also the connexion between these move-
nexion be- ments must be marked with care.

tween Ke-

vivai of The revival of the old classical Latin and

RXgiousand Greek authors, by making men prefer Plato
reform. t0 t^e schoolmen dealt a blow at the scho-

lastic system, and even tended towards a rejection of
Christianity.

The spirit of religious reform was, on the other hand,
a revival of earnest Christian feeling against the scandals
of the Church and the irreligion of the age. It was in
some sense caused by the revival of learning, for amongst
the ancient literature which was revived were the Scrip-

ch. ii. The Oxford Reformers. 75

tures and the works of the early Church fathers ; and

the study of these in their original languages

opened men's minds to the need of reform, the Schoias-

It also set them against the scholastic theo- tlc system-

logy, and so it came to pass that the spirit of religious

reform in its turn dealt a blow against the scholastic

system.

When the spirit which sought the revival of learning
joined itself with that of religious reform, it produced
reformers who aimed at. freeing men's minds from the
bonds of the scholastic system, at setting up Christ and
his apostles instead of the schoolmen as the exponents
of what Christianity really is, and lastly at making real
Christianity and its golden rule the guide for men and
nations, and so the basis of the civilisation of the future.

So to some extent it had been in Italy. The revival
0/ learning had produced, not only the Platonic Academy,
but also the great Florentine Reformer ; and Savonarola,
with his fiery religious zeal, had been more than a match
for the pagan tendencies of the Platonic Academy. Pico
especially, and in part Ficino, had united religious feel-
ings with ,a love of the Platonic philosophy. Savonarola
himself had united a love of letters and zeal for education
with his spirit of religious reform. But the
movement at Florence was now thoroughly ment crushed
crushed. We must look elsewhere for its at Florence-
further development till it becomes a power all over
Europe.

As in the fourteenth century the movement begun by
Wiclif in England was carried into Bohemia by the inter-
change of students between the Universities Revivers at
of Oxford and Prague, so this movement, 0xford-
begun in Italy, was soon carried by students from Flo-
rence to Oxford, and from thence it took a fresh start.

During the lifetime of Lorenzo de' Medici several

y6 The Protestant Revolution. pt. ii.

Oxford students, amongst whom were Grocyn and
Linacre, went to complete their studies in

Grocyn and _ , _ . , r ,,

Linacrego Italy. Lmacre was made tutor or fellow-
retumtoand student of Lorenzo's own children (one of
Oxford. whom was afterwards Pope Leo X.). They

returned to Oxford to revive there the study of the Greek
language and literature. Linacre afterwards became tutor
to Arthur Prince of Wales, and physician to Henry VII.
Another Oxford student — John Co let— went to Italy
after Lorenzo's death and the French invasion of Italy,
and while Savonarola was virtually head of the
d°e?thelet Republic at Florence, also while the scandals
same. of Rome's worst Pope, Alexander VI. , and

the spirit of Caesar Borgia, were in everyone's mouth. He
ihermiW and cauSnt tne spirit, aot only of the revival of
religious re- learning, but also of religious reform, and,
combining the two, became on his return to
Oxford the beginner of a movement at Oxford which was
to influence Europe.

(b) John Colet, Erasmus, and Thojnas More (1496- 1500).

John Colet was son of a lord mayor of London, and
likely to succeed to his father's fortune. His earnest
religious spirit made him wish to enter the Church. In
Italy he studied the writings of Pico and Ficino and
Plato, and above all the Bible, and returned to Oxford full
of zeal for the new learning and for reform.

He at once began to lecture at Oxford on St. Paul's
Epistles, trying to find out what they meant in the
same common sense way that men would use to under-
Lectureson stand letters written by a living man to his
St. Paul's friends : not asking what the learned school-

Epistles at ' ° ...

Oxford. men had decided that they meant, but giving

the schoolmen the go-by (quoting Plato and Pico and
Ficino more often than them), and so giving the Epistles

ch. ii. The Oxford Reformers. jj

a lifelike power, interest, and freshness quite new to his
hearers. By so doing he hoped to set men's minds free
from the scholastic system, to make them inquire into
facts for themselves, and drink in at first hand the teach-
ing of the Apostle.

For generations men had become monks and clergy-
men without even reading the New Testament. Colet
found theological students poring over the books of the
schoolmen. His lectures were the beginning of a work
which went on till it quite revolutionized the Attacks the
theological teaching of the University. Forty ' schoolmeu.
years after, people found the books of the schoolmen
set aside as useless, and their torn leaves strung up
%y the corner as waste paper.

Colet had seen in Italy how much the ecclesiastical as
well as the scholastic system needed reform ; and so in
his lectures at Oxford he zealously urged the He u
necessity of a reform in the morals of the also the need
clergy. He urged that it was ecclesiastical astSSre-
scandals and the wicked worldly living of the fonn'
clergy, the way they mixed themselves up with politics,
and strove after power and money and pleasure, which set
men against the Church. ' Whereas,' he said, 'if the clergy

* lived in the love of God and their neighbours, how soon

* would their true piety, religion, charity, goodness towards
4 men, simplicity, patience, tolerance of evil, conquer evil
•* with good ! How would it stir up the minds of men

* everywhere to think well of the Church of Christ.'

He had seen how wicked the Popes and cardinals of
Rome were ; and- so now, at Oxford, he burst out into
hot words, written, as he said, 'with grief and tears/
against ecclesiastical wickedness in high places. He
spoke of the Popes as ' wickedly distilling poison, to the

* destruction of the Church.' Unless there could be a
reform of the clergy, from the Pope at the head down to

7$ The Protestant Revolution. pt. ii.

the monks and the clergymen, he saw no chance of
saving the Church. l Oh, Jesu Christ, wash for us not
' our feet only, but also our hands and our head! Other-
' wise our disordered Church cannot be far from death.'

A man so earnest was sure to make disciples.
Students burdened by scholastic arguments came to
He attracts ^m> anc^ gladly accepted his advice to ' keep
disciples to the Bible and the Apostles' Creed, letting

divines, if they like, dispute about the rest.' They
followed him from his lectures to his chambers, and
imbibed his love for St. Paul ; and along with the new
learning, he stirred up in them that real religion which
consists in the love of God and one's neighbour, and
gives men a new power and ruling motive in life.

Two men especially so came within his influence as to
join themselves with him in fellow- work ; and it was by
and fellow- their means that it became, in a way in which
workers. Colet alone never could have made it, a power

all over Europe.

One of them was Thomas (afterwards Sir Thomas,
and Lord Chancellor) More, a young man, ten years
Thomas Colet's junior, but so earnest, so full of wit

More. and genius, and withal so good-natured and

fascinating, that those who knew him fell in love with
him. He had caught at Oxford the love of the new
learning which Grocyn and Linacre had brought from
Italy ; and, as we shall see by-and-by, became a hearty
fellow-worker with Colet. Rising by his talents to posts
of high influence in the state, he became one of the most
prominent figures in English history during this era.

The other fellow-worker was the afterwards famous
Erasmus. He was an orphan, and poor. Thrust, when a
youth, into a monastery by dishonest guar-
dians, who had tried to force him to become
a monk in order to get his little stock of money, he

ch. ii. The Oxford Reformers. 79

rebelled when he came of age, left the monastery, and, in
spite of poverty, earning his living by giving Ear]y life of
lessons to private pupils, worked his way Erasmus.
up to such learning as the University of Paris could
give. Wanting to master Greek, and too poor to go to
Italy, he came, at the invitation of an English nobleman,
to learn it at Oxford. He was just turned thirty (the same
age as Colet), but already hard study, bad lodging, and
the harassing life of a poor student, driven about and ill-
used as he had been, had ruined his health. His mental
energy rose, however, above bodily weakness,
and he came to Oxford, eager for work, and Oxford"655
perhaps for fame. He found the little circle Makes
of Oxford students zealous for the new learn- £1{;"ds wJth

Colet and

ing and those Greek studies on which his own Thomas
mind was bent. He became known at once
to Colet, Grocyn, and Linacre, and fell in love with More.
His own words will best describe what he thought of them.

'When' (he wrote in a letter) 'I listen to my friend
' Colet, it seems to me like listening to Plato himself. In
' Grocyn, who does not admire the wide range of his know-
ledge ? What could be more searching, deep, and refined
' than the judgment of Linacre ? Whenever did nature
' mould a character more gentle, endearing, and happy
'than Thomas Morels?'

During the time he spent at Oxford, he had many
talks and discussions with Colet. He had come to
Oxford full of the spirit of the revival of learn- Comes under
ing, but not yet hating the scholastic system Coiet's
as Colet did, nor ready at once to take to
Coiet's views on the need of reform. Pie had not yet got
the religious earnestness which made Colet what he was.
But Coiet's fervour was infectious ; and before Erasmus
left Oxford, he saw clearly what a great work Colet had
begun.

So The Protestant Revolution. yt. ii.

Colet urged him to stay at Oxford, and at once to join
him in his work ; but Erasmus said he was not ready —
he must first go to Italy to study Greek, as others had done.
But, he said, ' When I feel that I have the needful firm-
ness and strength, I will join you.' How effectually he did
aid him afterwards we shall presently see.

The three During the remainder of the reign of

friends Henry VII. (nine years or thereabouts), the

little band of Oxford students was scattered.

Erasmus left England in 1 500 for France, on his way
for Italy ; but .being robbed of his money by the custom-
house officers at Dover, he was obliged by poverty to stay
in France instead of going to Italy.

Colet went on with his work at Oxford as earnestly as
ever, till he was made Dean of St. Paul's, and removed
to London.

More worked his way up to the bar in London, became
popular in the City, and very early in life went into Par-
liament.

The last years of Henry VII. were marked by the

Exa tions of discontent occasioned by the king's avarice.

Empson and His two ministers, Empson and Dudley, tried

all kinds of schemes to exact money from the

people without breaking the laws.

' These two ravening wolves' (wrote Hall the chro-
nicler, who lived near enough to the time to feel some of
the exasperation he described) ' had such a guard of false
' perjured persons appertaining to them, which were by
' their commandment empanelled on every quest, that the
1 king was sure to win, whoever lost. Learned men in the
1 law, when they were required of their advice, would say,

gh. ii. The Oxford Reformers. 8 r

4 u To agree is the best counsel I can give you." By this
' undue means these covetous persons filled the king's
1 coffers and enriched themselves. At this unreasonable
'and extortionate doing noblemen grudged, mean men
' kicked, poor men lamented : preachers openly, at Paul's
' Cross and other places, exclaimed, rebuked, and de-
i tested ; but yet they would never amend.'

The robbing of Erasmus at the Dover custom-house
was an instance of one of these legal robberies. Thomas
More also suffered from the royal avarice. More
He was bold enough to speak and vote in offends
Parliament against a subsidy which he thought emy
was more than the king ought to claim. Whereupon his
father was fined on some legal but unjust excuse, and he
himself had to flee into retirement. He thought of going
into a cloister, and becoming a monk ; but, under the
influence of Colet, who about that time was made Dean
of St. Paul's, and came to live in London, he married, and
waited for better days. When Erasmus came The circle
to England again in 1505, he found Colet, of Oxford

i- t • 1 t mi i students

More, Grocyn, Lmacre, and Lilly (another formed again
Oxford student who had been to Italy), all in London-
living in London. They found him the necessary means
for his journey to Italy, and again he left them, promising
to return, and hoping then to join them in fellow-work.
In 1509, while Erasmus was in Italy, Henry VII. died.

{d) On the accession of Henry VIII. they commence
their fellow-work (1509).

The accession of Henry VIII. seemed to the Oxford
students like the beginning of an Augustan age. The
other sovereigns of Europe, Maximilian of TT

„ T . „TT r V. it- Hopesonthe

Germany, Louis XII. of France, and Fer- accession of
dinand of Spain, were old men, and, owing to HenryVIIL
M. //. G

82 The Protestant Revolution. PT. n.

their constant wars, poor. Henry VIII. was young and,
thanks to his father's peaceful foreign policy and unjust
exactions, rich. He was, as most young princes are,
popular ; every one hoped good things from him. The
imprisonment and execution of Empson and Dudley re-
lieved the people from fear of further exactions. He was
handsome, fond of athletic sports, and, in the early years
of his reign, it must be admitted, generous and open-
handed. A musician, a scholar, and (however fond of
pleasure) neglecting neither study nor business, of great
energy, having his eye everywhere and keeping the reins
of government well in his hands, he seemed likely to make
a great and popular king.

By the little band of Oxford students his accession
was hailed with the highest hopes. He was personally
known to some of them, and known to be a friend of
The Oxford the 'new learning ' Colet (already Dean of
CourtntSm St. Paul's) was soon made court preacher.
favour. Thomas More, to the delight of the citizens

of London, was made under-sheriff, and a few years
afterwards, such was the fondness of the king for him,
that, much against his will, he was drawn into the court.
Even the foreign scholar Erasmus was at once recalled
from Rome and settled at Cambridge as Greek professor.
There seemed now to be an open door for Revival and
Reform, and all in the sunshine of the young king's
favour.

(e) Erasmus writes Ms l Praise of Folly y (1511).

Erasmus, having been to Italy, was now ready to join
Colet heartily in fellow-work. On his way from Italy on
horseback, he planned in his mind, and on his arrival in
London, before going to Cambridge, he wrote in More's
house, his ' Praise of Folly,' a satire in Latin on the follies
of the age, which made his name famous among the
scholars of Europe.

ch. ii. The Oxford Reformers. 83

He dressed up Folly in her cap and bells, and made
her deliver an oration to her fellow-fools.

Prominent amongst the fellow-fools were the scho-
lastic theologians whom Colet had taught him to dislike.
' Folly ' described them as men who were so
proud that they could define everything, who scholastic
knew all about things of which St. Paul was theologians,
ignorant, could talk of science as though they had been
consulted when the. world was made, could give you
the dimensions of heaven as though they had been there
and measured it with plumb and line — men who professed
universal knowledge, and yet had not time to read the
Gospels or Epistles of St. Paul.

Monks were described as shut out of the kingdom of
heaven in spite of their cowls and their habits,
while waggoners and husbandmen were ad-
mitted.

* Folly ' claimed also among her votaries Popes who
(as Julius II. was then doing), instead of 'leaving all/ like
St. Peter, try to add to St. Peter's patrimony,
as they called it, fresh possessions by war, and F°vts-
turn law, religion, peace, and all human affairs upside
down.

This bold satire did much to open the eyes of men all
over Europe to the need of reform, turned the ridicule
of the world upon the scholastic theologians and monks,
and as a natural consequence, raised against Erasmus the
hatred of those whose follies he had so keenly satirized.

This little book written, he went to Cambridge to
labour as Greek professor, and also at another great work
of which we shall have to say more by-and-by — his edition
of the New Testament.

g 2

§4 The Protestant Revolution. PT. n.

(/) Colet founds St. PauTs School (1510).

Colet, meanwhile, went on preaching from his pulpit
at St Paul's. On his father's death he came into posses-
Colet founds sion of his fortune, and nobly devoted it to
theCnew °f the foundation of a public school by the
learning. cathedral — in which boys, instead of being

crammed with scholastic learning, were to be trained
in the new learning, and instead of being taught the
bad Latin of the monks, were to be taught the pure Latin
and Greek which the Oxford students had imported from
Italy; and lastly, instead of being flogged and driven,
were to be attracted and gently led into the paths of
learning.

Lilly was appointed schoolmaster. Erasmus and
Linacre were set to work to write school-books, and find-
ing that no one else seemed able to write a Latin Gram-
mar simple and easy enough for beginners, Colet wrote
one himself. In his preface he said he had aimed, for the
love and zeal he had for his new school, at making his
little book on the eight parts of speech as easy as he
could, 'judging that nothing may be too soft nor too familiar
for little children, specially learning a tongue unto them
all strange,' and asking them to 'lift up their little white
hands ' for him, in return for his prayers for them. Com-
pare with these gentle words the practice of the common
run of schoolmasters described by Erasmus, who, too
ignorant to teach their scholars properly, had to make up
for it by flogging and scolding, defending their cruelty
by the theory that it was the schoolmaster's business to
subdue the spirits of his boys !

When it was noised abroad that in this new school of
the Dean's, classical Latin and Greek were to be taught
instead of the bad Latin of the monks, and that under the

■ch. ii. The Oxford Reformers. 85

•
shadow of St. Paul's cathedral there was thus to be a
school of the new learning, men of the old school of
thought began to take alarm. More had Excites the
jokingly told Colet that it would be so, for £?nCof9tiie
he said the school was like the wooden horse old school.
filled with armed Greeks for the destruction of barbarian
Troy ; and so the men of the old school regarded it.
In spite of the inscription on the building —

Schola Catechizationis Puerorum in Christi
Opt. Max. fide et bonis Uteris,

- — one bishop denounced it openly as a ' temple of ido-
latry,' and the Bishop of London began to contrive how
to get Colet convicted of heresy, and so a stop put to his
work.

About this time there was a convocation, and the
Archbishop of Canterbury gave Colet the duty of preach-
ing to the assembled bishops and clergy the Colet's ser-
opening sermon. He took the opportunity of Ea°tical
urging, in the strongest and most earnest reform,
manner, the necessity of a radical reform in the morals
of the clergy. He told them to their face boldly that
the wicked worldly life of some of the bishops and
clergy was far worse heresy than that of poor Lollards,
twenty-three of whom the Bishop of London had just
been compelling to abjure, and two of whom he had
burned in Smithfield a few months before.

No wonder the Bishop's anger was kindled still more
against Colet. He and two other bishops of the old
school joined in laying a charge of heresy _

i- 1 r 1. -.,-, 1 -i Escapesfrom

against him before the Archbishop, but the a charge of
latter wisely would not listen to the charge. heresy.

So the cause of the new learning prospered during the
early years of Henry VIII.

The Protestant Revolution.

FT. II,

Calais

(g) The Continental Wars of Henry VIII. 1511-1512.

If we look back to the section on Italy, and the
summary there given of Papal and Continental politics,
we shall see that it was in 151 1 and 15 12 that Pope
The Holy Julius II. was bent upon uniting Spain,,
JS£t England, and Germany in a war against

France. France. Louis XII. had got possession of

Milan, and was becoming dangerous. The Pope's object
was to drive Louis out of Italy. Ferdinand of Spain
wanted not only to get rid of the rivalry of France in
Italy, but also to annex the kingdom of Navarre to Spain.
Henry VIII. was

tempted to revive the
claims of England on
the Duchy of Guienne,
which since the close
of the Hundred Years'
War had been annexed
to the French Crown.
The Emperor Maxi-
milian was always
anxious to enlarge his
borders at the expense
of France. So these
princes formed what
was called 'the Holy

FRENCH FRGV1NCES CLAIMED
3Y HENRY VIII.

League/ with the Pope at their head, against France,
Hen and in 15 12 the holy war began. The cam-

viii.'s first paign of that year ended in the crafty Ferdi-
campaign. nand getting and keeping Navarre, while
Henry the Eighth's invasion of Guienne miserably failed.
His troops mutinied, and returned to England in utter
disorder.

ch. ii. The Oxford Reformers. Sy

In the spring of 15 13 preparations were being made
for another campaign on a greater scale. It was in these
preparations that his great minister Wol-
sey's great talents came into play. Henry Wolsey-
VIII. had set his heart on a brilliant invasion of France
in order to wipe out the dishonour of the last campaign.
He watched the equipment of his fleet, and ordered
Admiral Howard to tell him ' how every ship did sail.'

Just as everything was ready Julius II. died, and the
Cardinal de' Medici, Linacre's fellow-student, whose ac-
quaintance Erasmus had made in Italy, was elected Pope
under the title of Leo X. The new Pope
cared for literature and art and building St. succeeded by
Peter's at Rome more than for war, and ex- Le0 x>
pressed his anxiety to bring about a peace. But Henry
VIII. had set his heart upon a glorious war, But Henry
and in spite of the death of the head of the gjjjgj ™
Holy League, and in spite also of his father- France.*
in-law Ferdinand's hanging back at the last moment,
he was determined to go on. Admiral Howard in his
first engagement with the French, lost his life in a
brilliant exploit, and his crew, disheartened, returned to
Plymouth. But still Henry VIII. set sail with the rest of
the ships for Calais, with * such a fleet as Neptune never
saw before,' and from Calais he marched his .
army a few leagues beyond the French fron- Battle of the
tier, took some towns of small importance, Spurs-
and turned the French army to flight at the Battle of the
Spurs.

He did little harm to France or good to England, but
got some sort of a victory, and so gratified his vanity.
There were of course great rejoicings, tourna-

j x? x. • * ■ .v -j <. r Scotch mva-

ments, and pageants, but just in the midst of sion of Eng-
them came the news that the Scotch, always land
troublesome neighbours in those days, before the union of

SS 77ie Protestant Revolution.

pr. ii.

the two kingdoms, had, incited by France, taken the
opportunity of Henry VIII.'s absence in France to in-
vade England, but that through the zeal and energy of
Queen Catherine they had been defeated, and the King
Battle of of Scots himself slain, with a host of the

Fiodden. Scotch nobility, at the Battle of Flodden.

Whereupon Henry VIII., finding nothing better to do,
amid great show of rejoicing returned to England, bent
upon preparing for another invasion by-and-by.

But his father-in-law, Ferdinand, had served him so
badly in these two campaigns — leaving him to bear the
Henry VIII. brunt of them, while he contented himself with
now joins taking and keeping Navarre — that the end of

France . ° r ,° __. _ , ,

against it was a strange shuffling of the cards. Henry

Spain. vnL made peace with Louis xiL, and Eng-

land and France combined to wrest back again from
Spain that very province of Navarre which Henry VIII.
had helped Ferdinand to wrest from France only a few
years before.

In January 15 15 this unholy alliance was broken by
Louis XII.'s death. He was succeeded by Francis I.,

. who, eager, like his young rival, Henry VIII.,

succeededby to win his spurs in a European war, at once
Francis I. declared his intention that ' the monarchy of
Francis I. Christendom should rest under the banner
Italy, and of France, as it was wont to do ! ' A few
M°iknrS months after, he started on the Italian cam-

paign, in which, after defeating the hired
Swiss soldiers of the Emperor and his allies at the battle
of Marignano, he recovered the Duchy of Milan.
Again Eng- Again both Ferdinand and Henry VIII.

land and were made friends by their common jealousy

bme^gainst of France. It would never do to let France
France. become the first power in Europe.

So during these years, instead of an Augustan age of

ch. ii. The Oxford Reformers. 89

peace, reform, and progress in the new learning and
civilisation, through the jealousy and lust of
military glory of her kings, stirred up by the of kfngIars
late warlike Pope and his Holy League, f^erests^f
Europe was harried with these barbarous wars ! Europe.

We have seen, in the chapter on France, how her
national wars tended to increase the power of the Crown,
and how the fact that the Crown was absolute The
and backed by its standing army, while it tended to
tended to keep France a united kingdom on absolute?^
the map, injured the nation. So it was also in The ex_
measure — happily only in measure — in Eng- ample of
land. These wars tended to make the king
absolute. To carry them on, not only were all the
hoarded treasures of Henry VII. dispersed, but fresh
taxes were needed ; and when all the taxes were spent
that could be got legally out of votes of Parliament,
Wolsey was driven to get more money by illegal means.
Had the war-fever gone on a little longer — Narrow
just so long as to establish the precedent of escape of
the king's levying taxes without consent of ngan
Parliament — then England might well have lost her
free constitution, just as France had already done. But,
happily, this was not so to be.

In the meantime, let us see how the Oxford Reformers
acted in this crisis of European affairs, how they used all
their influence to set the public opinion of the educated
world against this evil policy of European princes.

Colet preached against the wars to the Colet
people from his pulpit at St. Paul's, and to P^stthe
the king from the pulpit of the royal chapel ; wars.
and his enemies tried to get him into trouble with the
king for doing so. But Henry VIII., wild as he was for
military glory, was generous enough to respect the sin-
cerity and boldness of the dean ; and, though not wise
enough to follow his advice, refused to stop his preaching.

90 The Pi'otestant Revolution. pt. ii.

Erasmus made known to his learned friends all over
Europe this bold conduct of Colet and his hatred of war.
Erasmus **e a*so' *n n*s letters to tne Pope, princes,,

against cardinals, bishops, and influential men every-

where, protested against the false international
policy which sacrificed the good of the people to the am-
bition of kings.

and also More also made no secret to the king that

More- he was opposed to his conquering France?

and that he hated the wars.

(k) The kind of Reform aimed at by the Oxford
Reformers.

It so happened that just at this time Erasmus was
invited to the court of Prince Charles of the Netherlands
Erasmus (afterwards the Emperor Charles V.), and that

madea More was also being drawn by Henry VIII.

ofTrTnc? into his royal service. They both at length
Charles. yielded. Erasmus became a privy councillor

More drawn of Prince Charles, on condition that it should
vni.'senry not interfere with his literary work. More
service. became a courtier of Henry VIII. when peace

was made with France, on condition that in all things
he should ' first look to God, and after Him to the king.'

Both Erasmus and More, in thus entering royal
service, published pamphlets or books containing a state-
ment of their views on politics. Erasmus called his
' The Christian Prince ;' More called his a ' Description
of the Commonwealth of Utopia.'

Erasmus, in his 'Christian Prince,' urged that the
The Golden Rule ought to guide the actions of

'Christian princes — that they should never enter upon a
Erasmus. war that could possibly be avoided, that the
good of their people should be their sole object, that it

gh. ii. The Oxford Reformers. 91

was the people's choice which gave a king his title to his
throne, that a constitutional monarchy is much better
than an absolute one, that kings should aim at taxing
their people as little as possible ; that the necessaries
of life, things in common use among the lowest classes,
ought not to be taxed, but luxuries of the rich, and so
on : the key-note of the whole being that the object
of nations and governments is the common weal of the
whole people.

In the meanwhile, More, in his ' Utopia/ or descrip-
tion of the manners and customs of an ideal common-
wealth (' Utopia' meaning ' nowhere'), urged More>s
just the same points. The Utopians elected 'Utopia.'
their own king, as well as his council or parliament
They would not let him rule over another country as
well : they said he had enough to do to govern their
own island. The Utopians hated war as the worst of
evils; the Utopians aimed not at making the king and
a few nobles rich, but the whole people. All property
belonged to the nation, and so all the people were well
off. Nor was education confined to one class ; in Utopia
everyone was taught to read and write. All magistrates
and priests were elected by the people. Every family had
a vote, and the votes were taken by ballot. Thus the key-
note of More's ' Utopia ' as of the ' Christian Prince' of
Erasmus was that governments and nations exist for the
common weal of the whole people.

If we turn back to the description already given of
the two points which mark the spirit of modern civilisation,*
and judge these sentiments of Erasmus and They
More from that point of view, we cannot fail entered

, , , , -, . , thoroughly

to see how thoroughly they entered into the into the

spirit of the new era, and how correct and JJHem

far-reaching were the reforms which they civilisation,
urged upon the public opinion of Europe.

Q2 The Protestant Revolution. ft. ii.

We must not leave the Oxford Reformers without
trying to get a clear idea of the kind of religious reform
which they urged.

We have seen that Colet's object was to set the minds
The cha- °^ men ^ree ^vom tne bonds of the scholastic
racter of system, by leading men back from the school-

religious rnen to the teaching of Christ and His

reform. Apostles in the New Testament.

Erasmus had been all this while labouring hard in
fellow-work with him. He had for years been working
at, and now, in 1516, published at the printing-press at
Basle, a book which did more to prepare the way for the
The New religious reformation than any other book
Testament published during this era. This was his edition
of the New Testament, containing, in two
columns side by side, the original Greek and a new
Latin translation of his own. He thus realized a great
.object, which Colet had long had in view, viz., not only
to draw men away from scholastic theology, but to place
before them, in all the freshness of the original language
and a new translation, the i living picture' of Christ and
His Apostles contained in the New Testament. By so
doing he laid a firm foundation for another great religious
reform, viz., the translation of the New Testament into
what was called 'the vulgar tongue' of each country,
thus bringing it within reach of the people as well as of
the clergy.

'I wish' (Erasmus said in his preface to his New
Testament) 'that even the weakest woman should read
< the Gospels— should read the Epistles of Paul; and I wish
1 that they were translated into all languages, so that they
' might be read and understood not only by Scots and
1 Irishmen, but also by Turks and Saracens. I long that
* the husbandman should sing portions of them to himself
*as he follows the plough, that the weaver should hum

ch. ii. The Oxford Reformers. 93

1 them to the tune of his shuttle, that the traveller should
' beguile with their stories the tedium of his journey.'

Of course this great work of Erasmus excited the oppo-
sition and hatred of the men of the old school, and espe-
cially of the monks and scholastic divines, to whom the
old Vulgate version was sacred, and Greek a heretical
tongue. But the New Testament went through several
large editions, and when, a few years after, the learned
men of the Sorbonne at Paris complained of what they
called its heresies, Erasmus was able to reply triumphantly,
' You are too late in your objections. You should have
spoken sooner. It is now scattered over Europe by
thousands of copies !;

One other point we have to fix in our minds— the
attitude of the Oxford Reformers to the ecclesiastical
system. We have seen that their notion of
religion was that it was a thing of the heart — ecciesiasti-°
the love of God and man. They believed u^ediTThe
that it was intended to bind men together Oxford Re-
in a common brotherhood, not to divide them ormers-
into sects. They complained how rival orders of monks
and schools of theology hated one another. Christians
might differ about doctrines, but they ought to agree in
the worship of God and in their love of one They aimed
another. Hence More in his Utopia had ^JtSe^ni
described the Utopians as giving full tolera- Church.
tion to all varieties of doctrines and differences of creeds ;
and pictured all worshipping together in one united and!
simple mode of worship, expressly so arranged as to hurt
the feelings of no sect among them, so that they all might
join in it as an expression of their common brotherhood
in the sight of God.

It is clear that^ holding these views, they were likely
to urge, as theyj did earnestly urge, the reform of the
ecclesiastical system, but that if at any time a great

.94 The Protestant Revolution. pt. ii.

dissension were to arise in the Church, they would urge
that the Church should be reformed and widened so as
to give offence to neither party, and includ~
likely to op- both within it, and would oppose with all their
pose schism. might anything which should break up its unity
and cause a schism. Whether right or wrong, this would
be the course which their own deep convictions would be
likely to lead them to take, and this, we shall see, was the
line the survivors of them did take when the Protestant
struggle came on. We say ' the survivors,' because Colet
did not live to work much longer. Even now, driven into
retirement by the persecution of the old Bishop of London,
he could do little but work at his school. And he died in

1 5 19.

To the beginnings of the Protestant movement v/e
must now turn our attention.

CHAPTER III.

THE WITTENBERG REFORMERS.
(a) Martin Luther becomes a Reformer.

Martin Luther was born in 1483, and so was 15 years
younger than Erasmus and Colet, and three
0111143. years younger" even than their young friend
More.

His great-grandfather and grandfather were Saxon
peasants, but his father being a younger son had left
Sent to home and become a miner or slate-cutter at

ind°°to uni- Mansfeld in Thuringia. Both his parents were
verslty. rough and hot-tempered, but true and honest

at heart. Though working hard for a living, they sent

■ch. in. The Wittenberg Reformers. . 95

their sons to school, and wishing Martin to become a
lawyer, they found means to send him to the university
of Erfurt. There he took his degree of M.A.

In 1505, in fulfilment some say of a vow made in a
dreadful thunderstorm, when he thought his end was
near, Luther, contrary to his father's wishes, Becomes a
left his law studies and entered the Augus- monk-
tinian monastery at Erfurt. He inherited the supersti-
tious nature of the German peasantry. He traced every
harm that came to him through passion and temptation
all alike to the Devil. His conscience was often troubled.
His fasts and penances did not give him peace. He
passed through great mental struggles, sometimes shut
himself up in his cell for days, and once was found
senseless on the floor. At length he found peace of
mind in the doctrine of ' justification by faith/ i.e., that
forgiveness of sins, instead of being got by fasts and
penances and ceremonies, is given freely to those who
have faith in Christ. This doctrine he learned partly from
the pious vicar-general of the monastery, partly from
the works of St. Augustine, and under their guidance
from a study of the Bible. From this time he Adopts the
accepted also other parts of the theology of stflu^
St Augustine, and especially those which, tine.
because they were afterwards adopted by Calvin, are
now called ' Calvinistic,' such as that all things are fated
to happen according to the divine will, that man has
therefore no free will, and that only an elect number,
predestinated to receive the gift of faith, are saved.

It is well to mark here that these Augustinian doc-
trines were, in fact, a part of that scholastic theology
from which the Oxford Reformers were trying And in this
to set men free. In not accepting them they fhfoS^d"
differed from Luther. But they and Luther Reformers.
iiad one thing in common. They alike held that religion

g6 The Protestant Revolution. pt. iu

did not consist in ceremonies, but was a thing of the heart ;.
that true worship must be in spirit and in truth.

In 1508 Luther was removed from Erfurt to the Au-
gustinian monastery at Wittenberg, and soon
move^to6" after made preacher there at the University
Wittenberg, recently founded by the Elector of Saxony.

In 15 10 he was sent on an errand for his monastery

to Rome. There he found wicked priests performing

masses in the churches, ignorant worship-
Visits Rome. , . r r • r J:
pers buying forgiveness of sins from the

priests, and doing at their bidding all kinds of penances ;
and he came back zealous, like Colet, for reform, and
with the words ' the just shall live by faith ' more than
ever ringing in his ears.

He had been preaching and teaching the theology of
St. Augustine at Wittenberg several years with great ear-
Reads the nestness, when in 1 5 1 6 h e read the new edition
SnVofeSta" of the New Testament by Erasmus. The
Erasmus. works of Erasmus had an honourable place
on the shelves of the Elector of Saxony's library, and
his New Testament was the common talk of learned men
at the universities, even at this youngest of them all —
Wittenberg. Luther eagerly turned over its pages, re-
joicing in the new light it shed on old familiar passages ;.
but what a disappointment it was to him as by degrees
he discovered that there was a great difference between
Erasmus and himself— that Erasmus did not accept those
Augustinian doctrines on which his own faith was built !
He knew that Erasmus was doing a great work towards
the needed reform, and this made it all the more painful
to find that in these points they differed. He was ' moved'
Finds out by it, but, he wrote to a friend, ' I keep it to
Lee inYheir myself, lest I should play into the hands of
theoio^. his enemie3. May God give him under-
standing in his own good time! '

ch. in. The Wittenberg Reformers. 97

This is a fact that in justice to both should never be
forgotten. Luther was conscious of it from the first, and
it had this future significance, that if Protestantism (as it
afterwards did) should follow Luther and adopt the
Augustinian theology, Erasmus and the Oxford Reformers
never could become Protestants. Luther might wisely
try to keep it secret, but if matters of doctrine should
ever come to the front, the breach between them was sure
to come out.

(b) The Sale of Indulgences (15 17).

While Luther was preaching Augustinian doctrines at
Wittenberg, and Erasmus was hard at work at a second
edition of his New Testament, pressing M ore's ' Utopia'
and his own ' Christian Prince ' on the notice of princes
and their courtiers, expressing to his friends at Rome his
hopes that under Leo X. Rome might become the centre
of peace and religion, Europe was all at once brought by
the scandalous conduct of Princes and the Pope to the
brink of revolution.

Leo X. wanted money to help his nephew in a little war
he had on hand. To get this money he offered to' grant
indulgences or pardons at a certain price, LeoX.s
to those who would contribute money to the scheme to
building of St. Peter's at Rome. The people fy iSduig-
were still ignorant enough to believe in the ences-
Pope's power to grant pardons for sins, and there was no
doubt they would buy them, and so gold would flow into
the coffers of Rome. There was one obstacle. Princes
were growing jealous of their subjects' money being drawn
towards Rome. But Leo X. got over this ob-
stacle by giving them a share in the spoil . He cesllifare "
offered Henry VIII. one-fourth of what came in the s?oiL
from England, but Henry VIII. haggled and bargained
to get a third ! Kings had made themselves poor by their

M. H. H

98 The Protestant Revolution. PT. ii.

wars, and a share in the papal spoils on their own subjects
was a greater temptation than they could resist.

Erasmus in his ' Praise of Folly ' had described in-
dulgences as ' the crime of false pardons/ and

Erasmus . , . , , \ ,

writes bit- now in every letter and book he wrote he
teriy against bitterly complained of the Pope and Princes
for resorting to them again.
He wrote to Colet : —

' I have made up my mind to spend the remainder of my life
with you in retirement from a world which is everywhere rotten.
Ecclesiastical hypocrites rule in the courts of princes. The Court
of Rome clearly has lost all sense of shame ; for what could be
more shameless than these continued indulgences ! '

And in a letter to another friend, he said : —

' All sense of shame has vanished from human affairs. I see that
the very height of tyranny has been reached. The Pope and Kings
count the people not as men, but as cattle in the market /'

But though Erasmus numbered among his friends
Leo X., Henry VIII., Francis I., and Prince Charles, he
found them deaf to his satire, and unwilling
kings will to reform abuses which filled their treasuries,
not listen. They would not listen t0 Erasmus. It re-

mained to be proved whether they would listen to Luther !

Wittenberg was an old-fashioned town in Saxony, on
the Elbe. Its main street was parallel with the broad
river, and within its walls, at one end of it,
itten erg. ^^ ^e Ulster gate, lay the University,
founded by the good Elector — Frederic of Saxony — of
which Luther was a professor ; while at the other end of
it was the palace of the Elector and the palace church of
All Saints. The great parish church lifted its two towers
from the centre of the town, a little back from the main

ch. in. The Wittenberg Reformers. 99

street. This was the town in which Luther had been
preaching- for years, and towards which Tetzel,

* «••«..,, ■ Tetzel comes

the seller of indulgences, now came, just as near, selling
he did to other towns, vending his 'false indulsences-
pardons' — granting indulgences for sins to those who
could pay for them, and offering to release from purgatory
the souls of the dead, if any of their friends would pay for
their release. As soon as the money chinked in his
money-box, the souls of their friends would be let out of
purgatory. This was the gospel of Tetzel. It made
Luther's blood boil. He knew that what the Pope wanted
was people's money, and that the whole thing was a cheat.
This his Augustinian theology had taught him ; and he
was not a man to hold back when he saw what ought to
be done. He did see it. On the day before the festival
of All Saints, on which the relics of the Church were dis-
played to the crowds of country people who nocked into
the town, Luther passed down the long street with a copy
of ninety-five theses or statements against in- Luther's
dulgences in his hand, and nailed them upon against in-
the door of the palace church ready for the dulgences.
festival on the morrow. Also on All Saints day he read
them to the people in the great parish church.

It would not have mattered much to Tetzel or the Pope
that the friar of Wittenberg had nailed up his papers on
the palace church, had it not been that he He is backed
was backed by the Elector of Saxony. The Elector of
Elector was an honest man, and had the good Saxony.
of the German people at heart. Luther's theses laid
hold of his mind, and a few days after it is said that he
dreamed that he saw the friar writing on the door of
his church in letters so large that he could read them
eighteen miles off at his palace where he was, and tnat
the pen grew longer and longer, till at last it reached to
Rome touched the Pope's triple crown and made it totter.
h 2

100 The Protestant Revolution. PT. m

He was stretching out his arm to catch it when he awoke \
The Elector of Saxony, whether he dreamed this dream
awake or asleep, was at least wide awake enough to refuse
permission for Tetzel to enter his dominions.

Then came a year or two of controversy and angry
disputes ; and just at the right time came Philip
Phili Melanchthon, from the University of Tubin-

Meianch- gen, to strengthen the staff of the Elector's
to Witten-S new University at Wittenberg — a man deep in
berg- Hebrew and Greek, a half-disciple of Eras-

mus— already pointed out as likely to turn out ' Erasmus
II.,' of gentle, sensitive, and affectionate nature, the very
opposite of Luther, but yet just what was wanted in another
Wittenberg Reformer — to help in argument and width of
learning ; to be in fact to Luther, partly what Erasmus
had been to Colet. In the weary and hot disputes which
now came upon Luther, Melanchthon was always at his
elbow, and helped him in his arguments ; while the fame
of Luther's manly conduct and Melanchthon's learning
all helped to draw students to the University from far and
near, and so to spread the views of the Wittenberg
Reformers more and more widely.

(d) The Election of Charles V. to the Empire (15 19).

Suddenly, in 15 19, the noise of religious disputes was
drowned in the still greater noise of political excitement.
Death of Maximilian died, and a new Emperor had to
Maximilian, "be elected. Prince Charles, who was now
Candidates j£\ng 0f Spain also, wanted to be Emperor ;
Empire. so fcfi jrrancis I., though a Frenchman ; so

did Henry VIII., claiming that, though England was not
a subject of the Empire, the English language was a
German tongue, while French was not. The princes of
the Empire wanted the Elector of Saxony to be Emperor,

ch. in The Wittenberg Reformers. 101

but he was the one man who cared most for the interests
of Germany, and had least selfish ambition.

It was a question which of the three princes could
bribe a majority of the seven Electors. Henry VIII. did
not risk enough to give himself a chance. It was not
really likely that, however much they might
be bribed, the Electors, who were all German elected
princes, would choose a Frenchman. The ilXence'of
Elector of Saxony practically decided the the Elector
election in favour of Prince Charles. The
following letter of Erasmus, who was a councillor of
Prince Charles, will show what manner of man the good
Elector was.

' The Duke Frederic of Saxony has written twice to me in reply
to my letter. Luther is supported solely by his protection. He
says that he has acted thus for the sake rather of the cause than of
the person (of Luther). He adds, that he will not lend himself to
the oppression of innocence in his dominions by the malice of those
who seek their own, and not the things of Christ.' . . . ' When the
imperial crown was offered to Frederic of Saxony by all (the Elec-
tors), with great magnanimity he refused it, the very day before
Charles was elected. And Charles never would have worn the
imperial title had it not been declined by Frederic, whose glory in
refusing the honour was greater than if he had accepted it. When
he was asked who he thought should be elected, he said that no
one seemed to him able to bear the weight of so great a name but
Charles. In the same noble spirit he firmly refused the 30,000 florins
offered him by our people [i.e. the agents of Charles). When he was
urged that at least he would allow 10,000 florins to be given to his
servants, "They may take them " (he said) " if they like, but no one
shall remain my servant another day who accepts a single piece of
gold." The next day he took horse and departed, lest they should
continue to bother him. This was related to me as entirely credible
by the Bishop of Liege, who was present at the Imperial Diet.'

Would that Charles V. had followed throughout his
reign the counsels of the good Elector to whom he owed
bis crown ! Charles's grandfather, Ferdinand, had died
only a few months before, and he was himself in Spain,

102

The Protestant Revolution.

settling the affairs of his new kingdom, when he was
elected. We have now to mark what power had fallen
into the hands of this prince of the House of Hapsburg.
Extent of ^n ^e maP are distinguished the Austrian,
Charles V.'s Burgundian, and Spanish provinces which
came under his rule. We must remember,
too, how the ambition of Spain was to increase its Italian
possessions, and that, as head of the ' Holy Roman Em-
pire/ he had great influence in Italy.

{e) Luther's Breach with Rome (1520).
While these political events had been absorbing atten-
tion, the religious disputes between Luther and the papal
party had been going on.

Luther finds They had this singular effect upon Luther :

himself a they drove him to see that his Augustinian

views were identical with those of Wiclif and

Huss. He was astonished, as he described it, to find

ch. in. The Wittenberg Reformers. 103

that 'he was a Hussite without knowing it; that St.
Paul and Augustine were Hussites ! '

The fact was that Wiclif and Huss, like Luther, had
in a great degree got their views from the works of St.
Augustine : they had so adopted many of the doctrines
which belong to what we have said is now called the
Calvinisiic theology.

This discovery hastened on his quarrel with the Pope.
The Pope and Councils had denounced Wiclif and Huss
as heretics ; therefore Popes and Councils were not
infallible. This was the conclusion to which
Luther came. Luther had declared himself a Pap^iBuii
Hussite, therefore the papal party contended IP*™ st
he must, like Huss, be a heretic ; and the
long continuance of the Hussite wars being taken into
account, he must be a dangerous heretic. So the Pope
made up his mind to issue a Papal Bull against Luther.

When rumours of this reached Luther, so far from
being fearful, he became defiant. He at once wrote two
pamphlets.

The first was addressed ' To the Nobility of the German
nation? It was published, in both Latin and German, in
1520, and 4,000 copies were at once sold. If Luther>s
we bear in mind what has already been said pamphlet to
in the section 'On the Ecclesiastical Sys- oftheGe?
tern,' the chief points of the pamphlet will man nation
be easily understood.

The gist of it was as follows : —

' To his Imperial Majesty and the Christian Nobility of the Ger-
man nation, Martin Luther wishes grace, &c. The Romanists have
raised round themselves walls to protect themselves from reform.
One is their doctrine, that there are two separate estates : the one
spiritual, viz. pope, bishops, priests, and monks ; the other secular,
viz. princes, nobles, artisans, and peasants. And they lay it down
that the secular power has no power over the spiritual, but that the

104 ^* Protestant Revolution. pt. ii.

spiritual is above the secular ; whereas, in truth, all Christians are
spiritual, and there is no difference between them. The secular
power is of God, to punish the wicked and protect the good, and so
has rule over the whole body of Christians, without exception, pope,
bishops, monks, nuns and all. For St. Paul says ' Let every soul
(and I reckon the Pope one) be subject to the higher powers.'
[Luther was writing this to the secular princes, and they were likely
to listen to this setting up of their authority above that of the clergy.
He was writing also to the German nation, and he knew well how
to catch their ear too.] 'Why should 300,000 florins be sent every
year from Germany to Rome ? Why do the Germans let themselves
be fleeced by cardinals who get hold of the best preferments and
spend the revenues at Rome ? Let us not give another farthing to the
Pope as subsidies against the Turks ; the whole thing is a snare to
drain us of more money. Let the secular authorities send no more
annates to Rome. Let the power of the Pope be reduced within
clear limits. Let there be fewer cardinals, and let them not keep
the best things to themselves. Let the national churches be more
independent of Rome. Let there be fewer pilgrimages to Italy.
Let there be fewer convents. Let priests marry. Let begging be
stopped by making each parish take charge of its own poor. Let
us inquire into the position of the Bohemians, and if Huss was in
the right, let us join with him in resisting Rome.'

And then, at the end, he threw these few words of
defiance at the Pope : —

' Enough for this time ! I know right well that I have sung in a
high strain. Well, I know another little song about Rome and her
people ! Do their ears itch? I will sing it also, and in the highest
notes ! Dost thou know well, my dear Rome, what I mean ? '

His other pamphlet — his 'other little song about
Rome' — was an attack upon her doctrines. It was
entitled ' On the Babylonish Captivity of the
pamphlet Church, and in it he repeated his condem-
°Babeionish nat;ion of indulgences, denied that the supre-
Captivityof macy of the Pope was of divine right, de-
clared the Pope a usurper, and the Papacy
the kingdom of Babylon ; and then, turning to matters of

ch. in. The Wittenberg Reformers. 105

doctrine, boldly reduced the sacraments of the Church,
by an appeal to Scripture, from seven to three — Baptism,
Penance, and the Lord's Supper. He ended this pamphlet
in as defiant a tone as the other. l He heard5 (he said)
' that Bulls and other terrible Papistical things were being
' prepared, by which he was to be urged to recant or be
' declared a heretic. Let this little book be taken as a part
' of his recantation, and as an earnest of what was to
( come ! ' •

While the printing-press was scattering thousands of t
copies of these pamphlets all over Germany, in Latin for
the learned, and in German for the common The Bull
people, the Bull arrived, and the Elector op arrives.
Saxony was ordered by the Pope to deliver up the heretic
Luther. The question now was, What would Luther do
with the Bull, and the Elector with Luther ?

(f) The Elector of Saxony consults Erasmus,
December 6, 1520.

Much at this moment depended on what the good
Elector of Saxony would do. Well was it that the fate of
Luther lay in the hands of so conscientious a prince. He
and his secretary Spalatin were at Cologne, where Charles
V., after his recent coronation, was holding his court.
Melanchthon and Luther were in constant correspondence
with Spalatin. Melanchthon wrote that all their hopes
rested with the prince, and urged Spalatin to do his best
to prevent Luther being crushed, — ' a man/ he said, ' who
seemed to him almost inspired, and whom he dared to
put not only above any other man of the age, but even
above all the Augustines and Jeromes of any age ! J So
enthusiastic a disciple of the bold Luther had the gentle
Melanchthon become ! Spalatin did his best.

Aleander, the Pope's nuncio, and supposed author of
the ' Bull/ was at Cologne, wild against Luther and doing

106 The Protestant Revolution, pt. ii.

all he could to get the Emperor to make common cause
with the Pope. He knew that the Elector of Saxony
A1 . stood in the way, and did his best to win him

Aleander, ," ■ r ■> -r-.

the Pope's over. Erasmus, being one of the Emperor's
toWoTCrS council, also was there, and Aleander knew
the Elector that he, too, was against the crushing of the
axony. ^00T monk, and if he could have bribed him
over with a bishopric, or secretly poisoned him, there is
evidence that it would most likely have been done. The
Elector was bent upon doing what was right and best for
Germany and for Christendom, and anxious to have the
advice of the best and the wisest men upon the course he
should take. Erasmus had written to the Wittenberg Re-
formers, praising their zeal, but advising more gentleness.
Melanchthon had sent the letter from Erasmus to the good
Elector, who now wanted to consult Erasmus confiden-
tially himself. Spalatin managed the interview. It was
in the Elector's rooms at the inn of l The Three Kings'
that they met, the Elector, Erasmus, and Spalatin. The
Elector asked of Erasmus through Spalatin, in Latin, as
they stood over the fire, 'What he really thought of
_ _, Luther ? ' and fixed his eye eagerly upon him

The Elector _ . , . J to_ J r . _

asks advice as he waited for an answer. Erasmus said,
of Erasmus. witJl a smiie; < Luther has committed two
crimes ! He has hit the Pope on the crown and the
monks on the belly.'

This was exactly the truth. The Elector's dream had
come true. Luther's great pen had reached to Rome and
touched the Pope's triple crown. Leo X. was a sort of
patron of Erasmus, but that did not hinder Erasmus from
condemning the Bull. The monks were his old enemies,
bitter against the new learning, haters of himself and
Colet as well as Luther, because they saw their craft was
in danger as men's eyes became more and more opened.
Therefore Erasmus could afford to smile a bitter sarcastic

ch. m. The Wittenberg Reformers. 107

smile at the expense of both Pope and monks. Before
he left he wrote down on paper a short statement of his
opinion that the monks' hatred of , the new d^

learning was at the bottom of their zeal
against Luther, whilst only two universities had con-
demned him ; that Luther's demand to be properly heard
was a fair one ; and that being a man void of ambition, he
was less likely to be a heretic. At all events the views of
Luther's opponents were worse than his ; all honest men
disapproved of the Bull ; and clemency was what ought
to be expected of the new Emperor. _

While thus he spoke in favour of fair dealing with
Luther he at the same time found much fault with Luther's
violent way of going to work and his_ abusive The Elector
language. The result of the interview was •

reported to Luther. Melanchthon and he were wed
satisfied with the advice given by Erasmus. They
considered that it had great weight in strengthening
the Elector in favour of Luther. At all events the Elector
followed it in two points-he remained firm in defence of
Luther, and at the same time he wrote and recommended
to Luther more of that gentleness the want of which had
displeased Erasmus.

'(g) Luther bums the Pope's Bull, December 10, 1520.
Perhaps the advice of the Elector to Luther came just
too late ! The meeting with Erasmus at the inn of the
'Three Kings' at Cologne was on December 5. In the
meantime Luther had been making up his mind what to
do, and on the 10th he did it, we may suppose before the
posts from Cologne had reached him.

Excited, and as Melanchthon said, seeming almost
inspired, conscious of right and also of power, Luther
wished all Europe to see that a German friar could dare
to defy the Pope. Had there been a mountain at Wit-

1 08 The Protestant Revolution. pt. ii.

tenberg he would have lit his bonfire on the top, and let

the world, far and near, see the Pope's Bull blaze in its

flames. But there was not even a hill in that

Luther . • ,

bums the flat country. So in solemn procession, at the
BulL head of his fellow doctors and the students of

the university, he marched through the Elster gate, and
there, outside the city walls, in presence of the great
German river Elbe, he burned the Bull, and a complete
set of the Canon law books. His burning the Bull
against himself was a personal act of defiance. His
burning the Canon law books was a public declaration
that the German nation ought not to be subject to the
jurisdiction of Rome. Amid the cheers of the crowd,
Luther returned to his rooms. That a man of hot temper,
fastening by this daring act the eyes of all Europe upon
himself, assuming as it were the leadership of a national
crusade against the Pope of Rome, should be for the
moment carried away by excitement into extravagance
was only natural. Luther was in fact greatly excited,
and on the next day, in his crowded lecture room, let him-
self utter wild words, declaring that those who did not
join in contending against the Pope could not be saved,
and that those who took delight in the Pope's religion must
be lost for ever. He then wrote an abusive reply to the
Bull, hurling all sorts of bad names against the Pope, and
pushing his Augustinian doctrines to so extreme a point as
to amount to fatalism.

Grand as is the figure of Luther on the page of history,

as, in December 1520, he dared to make himself the

mouth-piece of Germany, demanding reform, threatening

revolution if reform could not be had, it must be admitted

that he was playing with fire. Was not the

Erasmus . , . . " , ' „.

fears revolu- tram already laid for revolution? Will not
tlon" such wild words lead to still wilder acts of the

ignorant peasantry ? Sober-minded lookers on, like Eras-

ch. iv. The Wittenberg Reformers. 109

mus, feared this. He had feared from the first that Luther's
want of discretion might bring on a ' universal revolu-
tion/ and had therefore urged moderation. Instead of
moderation had come still wilder defiance. 'Now/ he
wrote, ' I see no end of it but the turning upside down of
' the whole world. . . . When I was at Cologne I made
' every effort that Luther might have the glory of obedience
1 and the Pope of clemency, and some of the sovereigns
1 approved this advice. But lo and behold, the burning of
'the Decretals, the "Babylonish captivity ;" those pro-
positions of Luther, so much stronger than they need be,
'have made the evil apparently incurable.'

CHAPTER IV.

THE CRISIS. — REFORM OR REVOLUTION. — REFORM
REFUSED BY THE RULING POWERS.

(a) Ulrich von Hutten and Franz von Sickingen.

The fears of Erasmus were well founded. There were
wilder spirits in Germany than Luther.

Not far north of Worms, where the first Diet of the
Emperor Charles V. was going to meet, was the castle
of Ebernburg, where the bold knight Franz von Sickingen
had gathered round him the chiefs of these wild spirits.
Franz himself was a wild lawless knight, living The Robin
upon private war, hiring out himself and his Hoods of
soldiers to fight out private quarrels, and, like sidewfcii
his relative Goetz von Berlichingen, popular Luther-
because of his bravery and rough justice. Goetz and
Franz might be said to be in many respects, the Robin
Hoods of Germany.

no The Protestant Revolution. pt. ii.

Such a man as Franz was sure to side with Luther
though he had already engaged himself and his soldiers
for hire to the Emperor Charles V. One of his guests at
Ulridivon t^ie cas^e was Ulrich von Hutten, a knight
Hutten. like himself, but there was this difference

between them, Hutten's pen was his lance. Placed
like Erasmus in his youth in a cloister, he too had
torn himself from it and taken to a literary life. Not so
learned, but with even keener wit than Erasmus, neglect,
poverty, and suffering had embittered more his wild war-
like spirit. His pen was ever ready to be dipped in gall,
and following the example set by Erasmus in his ' Praise
His satire °*" Folly,' he tried to mend the world by satire.
upon Rome. He had been to Rome, and in Latin rhyming
verses he held up her vices to scorn. He pointed out
in these rhymes how German gold flowed into the coffers
of the ' Simon of Rome.' He sneered at the blindness
and weakness of the German nation in letting them-
selves be the dupes of Rome. When Luther came upon
the scene, Hutten's heart was stirred. He made his re-
solve to rush into the fight against Rome. The fears and
tears of his family could not stop him. He was disin-
herited for doing it, but do it he must. Hitherto his
rhymes had been in Latin, and thus only read by the
learned. Henceforth he would write in German for the
Fatherland.

In Latin hitherto I've written,

HIS krrman A tonSue a11 did not understand :—

rhymes Now call I on the Fatherland,

against The German nation, in her mother tongue,

To avenge these things.

' Germany must abandon Rome. Liberty for ever !
The die is cast.' This was the cry of his popular German
rhymes.

ch. iv. The Crisis — Reform or Revolution. 1 1 1

To Luther he held out the hand of devoted friend-
ship : —

Servant of God, despair not !
Could I but give a helping hand,
Or in these matters counsel thee,
So would I spare nor goods
Nor my own blood !

And on the eve of the Diet of Worms he issued his
* Complaint and exhortatio7i against the extravagant and
unchristian power of the Pope,' in rhyme, in which he
exposed the tyranny, wealth, worldliness, and cost to Ger-
many of Rome, and tried to lash up the German people
into rebellion against it. Now was the time to free Ger-
many from the Roman yoke. He appealed to the Emperor
as the natural leader ~of the German nation.
It would redound to his honour. He alone freedom
should be the captain. All free Germans would from Rome-
serve with gladness the saviour of their country. ' Help,
' worthy king, unfurl the standard of the eagle, and we will
i lift it high. If warnings will not do, there are steeds and
' armour, halberts and swords, and we will use them ! ?

There was something pathetic in this cry of the Ger-
mans to their Emperor. The very peasants of the * Bund-
schtih' we saw would have made him their leader, had he
listened to their appeal against their feudal oppressors,
and now the German nation was beseeching him to head
their rebellion against Rome ! These were but outbursts
of a general yearning for unity among the German people.
They felt the necessity of a central power as the only cure
for the evils under which they suffered, and now when the
quarrel of Luther with the Pope had brought ecclesias-
tical grievances to the top, the question was whether
Charles V., in his first Diet, would side with the German
nation, or sell the German nation for his own selfish
•objects to the Pope !

1 1 2 The Protestant Revolution. PT. n.

Meanwhile appearances were ugly. Luther wrote to
Spalatin : e I expect you will return with the stale news
that there is no hope in the court of Charles/
chances of Erasmus wrote : ' There is no hope in Charles ;
reform. ^e is surrounded by sophists and Papists/ But

Hutten hoped against hope. Such men are sanguine. If
Charles would but do his duty to Germany in the Diet of
Worms, all might be well. If not, Hutten was ready for
revolution. Sickingen had soldiers ; with the pen and the
sword they would rise in rebellion.

{b) The Diet of W or 7ns meets iZth January 1521.

Let us, for a moment, leave these wilder spirits and
try to understand what it was that the more sober-
minded of the German people expected from the Diet of
Worms.

Happily there is among English State papers a copy
of c Agenda/ or as it is headed, ' A memory

•Agenda' at . ,. b ' . . , , I . J

the Diet of of divers matters to be provided in the present
Worms. Diet of Worms/

The following are the chief heads, and in these we
cannot fail to recognize what in former chapters we have
found to be the real grievances of the German nation.

(1) To make some ordinance that no man without
consent of the Emperor and Electors shall for any per-
To stop pri- sonal cause presume to declare war as in
vate war. times past. On this the cities and towns are
determined to stick fast.

(2) To settle certain disputes between various parties.
To settle (There be above thirty bishops at variance
disputes. with their temporal lords for their jurisdiction.)

centS^6 (3) The EmPeror t0 provide a vicar and

power in the council in his absence. If the Duke of Saxony
abTePnce.r S will not take the charge, there will be great

ch. iv. The Crisis — Reform or Revolution. 113

difficulty in finding one who will please the generality, for
enmities are so numerous.

(4) To take notice of the books and descriptions made
by Friar Martin Luther against the Court of Rome. The
which Friar Martin of the Elector of Saxony Martin
and other princes is much favoured. Luther.

We have here a list of the chief grievances before
noticed. (1) The evil of the constant private wars of the
nobles, especially to the commerce of the towns. (2) The
constant quarrels between the civil and ecclesiastical
powers. (3) The want of a central government. (4)
The Lutheran complaints against Rome. Only the
grievances of the poor peasants find no voice ! Perhaps
it was not likely they should. They had no friends at
court. They had tried to make their voice heard sword
in hand, and had not their rebellions been
quelled and their standard of the Bund- for the
schuh trodden in the dust? Had not even Peasantry-
Joss Fritz been lost sight of for years ? It was not their
silent grievances, but the more noisy ones which were to
be heard at the Diet.

The Diet was opened by Charles V. on the 28th
January 1521.

The first business was the appointment of a Council
of Regency to manage the affairs of the Empire during
the Emperor's projected absence in Spain. Then came
the establishment of an imperial chamber, and the
granting of an impost or tax to defray the expenses of the
government.

These political matters were proceeding, when one day
in February on which a tournament was to be held and
the Emperor's banner was hoisted ready for grief from
the lists, the princes were called together to Rome about
hear read a brief just arrived from Rome.
This brief exhorted the Emperor to add the force of law

M. H. I

1 14 The Protestant Revolution. pt. ii.

to the Pope's Bull against Luther by an imperial edict.
The Emperor had now an opportunity of showing that
the unity of the Church was as dear to him as to the Em-
perors of old. He wore the sword in vain if he did not
use it against heretics, who were far worse than infi-
dels. So urged the Pope. The Emperor had already
had Luther's books burned in the Netherlands, and he
now produced to the princes an edict commanding the
rigorous execution of the Bull in Germany. He was evi-
dently ready to yield to the wishes of the Pope, but it
was needful to consult the Electors. Some of the Elec-
tors were of course not prepared to accept the proposal
Th El tors °^ t^ie Emperor. In order to persuade them,
hesitate to Aleander, the papal nuncio, delivered at
SSagairfst another session of the Diet a speech nine
Luther. hours in length, in which he inveighed against

the heresies of Luther, urged that he should be condemned
unheard, and declared that * unless the heresy were
stopped, Germany would be reduced to that frightful state
of barbarism and desolation which the superstition of
Mahomet had brought upon Asia.' The Electors seemed
to be swayed by his eloquence. They cared little for
Luther's doctrinal heresies, nay, they were willing to
sacrifice the heretic if the grievances of the German
nation against Rome could but be remedied. But these
grievances were too real to be passed over so easily.

The Diet, after further delay, appointed a committee
to draw up a list of these grievances. Meanwhile the
speech of Aleander had been reported to Hutten, who
was staying, as we said, at the castle of Franz von
Hutten ad- Sickingen, a few miles from Worms. It
juresthe stirred his wrath to think of Luther's being

to™?eirdton0t condemned unheard. At once, on the spur of
Rome. tke moment? he dipped his pen in gall, and

wrote letters of violent invective against the papal nuncio

ch. iv. The Crisis — Reform or Revolution. 115

and the bishops assembled at Worms. One of them was
addressed to the Emperor, declaring that the hope of
Germany had been that he would free her from the
Romish yoke and put an end to the papal tyranny, and
contrasting with these high hopes l so great an Em-
peror, the king of so many peoples, cringing willingly to
slavery, without waiting even till he is forced.'

' What ! ' he exclaimed, ' has Germany so ill deserved of thee that
with thee, not fighting for thee, it must go to the ground ! Lead
us into danger ! Lead us into battle and fire ! Let all nations unite
against us, all peoples rush upon us, so that at least we may prove
our courage in danger ! Don't let us, cringing and unmanly, without
battle, lie down like women and become slaves ! '

Such was the shrill cry of scorn which the course
things were taking at Worms called forth from Hutten.

When the list of grievances was brought in at a
later sitting of the Diet, the debate was resumed. The
complaints against Rome were so strongly put that they
made a deep impression on the Diet. The Electors re-
covered from the effects of the nuncio's speech. The
Prince Electors who sided with Luther urged that ' it
' would be iniquitous to condemn a man without hearing
'him, and that the Emperor's dignity and piety were
'engaged that, should Luther retract his errors, those
c other matters should be recognised on which he had
' written so learnedly and Christianly, and that Germany
' should, by the authority of the Emperor, be freed from
' the burdens and tyrannies of Rome.' They urged also
the necessity of granting Luther a safe-conduct, and sum-
moning him to appear before the Diet to defend himself.

The Emperor gave way, and on March 6 the sum-
mons and safe-conduct were issued, and an Luther
imperial herald sent to bring Luther to summoned

,VrT ° to Worms.

Worms.

1 2

1 1 6 The Protestant Revolution.

The herald arrived at Wittenberg, and on April 2
Luther set off for Worms.

That he went with his mind fully made up not to give
way or patch up his quarrel with the Pope was shown by
Luther's ^s- -^e ^^ *n tne nands of Lucas Cranach,

Antithesis the great painter of Wittenberg, a series of

of Christ J * J x. r x. '.-u i

and Anti- woodcuts prepared by Cranach, with explana-
chnst. tions in German at the foot, added by him-

self, depicting the Antithesis, or Contrast between Christ
and the Pope. It was, in his own words, ' a good book
for the laity.'

He and Hutten, to widen the circle of their readers,
and make their appeals to the Fatherland heard by all
classes, had scattered their pamphlets in German all
over Germany. Luther now called in the aid of these
woodcuts to make his appeal still more popular and
telling on the multitude.

Luther had found himself, to his own surprise, following
in the track of the Hussites of Bohemia. He had openly
avowed it. Indeed, he seems to have been fond of copying
some of their acts, perhaps to mark the identity of his
object with theirs. They had commenced with burning
the Papal Bull, and so had Luther. It was recorded in
the Hussite chronicles that one of the things which
roused the people in Bohemia against the Pope was the
painting by two Englishmen on the walls of an inn at
Prague of two pictures, one representing Christ entering
Jerusalem, meek and lowly, on an ass ; the other the
Pope proudly mounted on horseback, glittering in purple
and gold. Luther and Cranach had improved upon this
example, and produced a series of woodcuts with a pre-
cisely similar intention.

ch. iv. The Crisis — Reform or Revolution. 117

Christ refusing a crown was contrasted with the Pope
in his tiara. Christ in the crown of thorns, being beaten and
mocked, was contrasted with the Pope on his throne, in all
his magnificence. Christ washing the disciples' feet was
contrasted with the Pope holding out his sacred toe to
be reverently kissed by his courtiers. Christ healing the
sick was contrasted with the Pope watching a tourna-
ment. Christ bending under the burden of his Cross
was contrasted with the Pope borne in state on men's
shoulders. Christ driving the money-changers out of the
temple was contrasted with the Pope selling his dispensa-
tions, and with piles of money before him. Christ's
humble entry into Jerusalem was contrasted with the
Pope and his retinue in all their glory, but the road they
are travelling is shown in the background of the picture
to lead to hell. Finally, the Ascension of Christ is con-
trasted with the descent of the Pope, in his triple crown
and papal robes, headlong under an escort of demons
and hobgoblins, into the flames of the bottomless pit.

That he left behind him this l good book for the laity,'
to be published in his absence, was a mark of the defiant
spirit in which he went to Worms. But underneath this
spirit of defiance, it must never be forgotten, was a deep
feeling that he was fighting in the cause of God. ' My
dear brother,' he said to Melanchthon, in parting, ' if I
do not come back, if my enemies put me to death, you
will go on teaching and standing fast in the truth ; if
you live, my death will matter little.'

Amidst the tears of his friends, he stepped into the
covered waggon and commenced his journey. Others,
too, thought he was going out to his death. Luther
At one place which he passed there was a off for
priest who kept, hanging up in his study, a Worms-
portrait of Savonarola. He took down the picture from
the wall and held it up in silence before Luther. Luther

1 1 8 The Protestant Revolution. pt. n.

was moved. c Stand firm/ said the priest, ' in the truth
thou hast proclaimed, and God will as firmly stand by
thee.' The journey took him twelve days,
lsjomney. ^ ^a(j t0 pass through Erfurt, the scene of
his mental struggles. He spent a night at the old con-
vent, and the next day, contrary to the terms of his safe-
conduct, fearlessly preached in the little church of the
convent to crowds of people. Earnest tender words
were his that day, setting forth that true religion is a
thing of the heart, and not of ceremonies or penances,
moving multitudes to tears, and making converts. In
the midst of it a portion of the crowded building gave
way, and people were terrified by the crash. In his wild
imagination he set it down to Satan trying to hinder him.
All through his journey he seemed to meet with the
Devil at every step. If he was fatigued and ill, it was
Satan who brought him low ; but, he wrote from Frank-
fort to Spalatin, l. Christ lives, and we will enter Worms
in spite of all the gates of Hell and the powers of the
air!'

These things did but prove his sense of the import-
ance of the work in which he was engaged. His wild
enthusiasm grew out of what was true heroism. The
noise, the worship of the crowd, the danger and excite-
ment, would have turned the head of any mere enthusiast.
When men are excited they must needs do strange
things ; and of course on this journey to Worms strange
things were done. At one place a parody on the Litany
was produced, like the parodies made by modern revolu-
tionary agents : — ' Have mercy upon the Germans.
1 From the tyranny of the Roman Pontiff deliver the Ger-
1 mans. From the insatiable avarice of the Romans deliver
' the Germans. That Martin Luther, that upright pillar of
'the Christian faith, may soon arrive at Worms, we be-
' seech Thee to hear us. That the zealous German Knight,

ch. iv. The Crisis — Reform or Revolution, 119

1 Ulrich Hutten, the defender of Martin Luther, may per-
' severe in upholding Luther, we beseech Thee to hear
'us/ and so on. Of course, wherever the procession
stopped at night the inns were full ; there were crowds,
vulgar merry-making, and music. Luther popular
himself played upon his flute, and doubtless, excitement
as his enemies reported, there was no lack of jollity over
the beer. All this was in the very nature of things. The
point to mark is this — it did not turn the head of Luther.

When news of the enthusiasm occasioned by Luther's
progress to Worms arrived at the city, the papal party
became alarmed. Charles V. sent his private confessor
with messages of compromise, but Luther refused to
listen till he reached Worms. It was well he did, for the
safe-conduct was nearly expired, and there was danger of
treachery. Luther's friends, too, became alarmed. Even
Spalatin was afraid of his life if he entered Worms, and
reminded him of the fate of Huss, whose safe-conduct
availed him little. Luther's noble reply was, ' Huss was
burned, but not the truth with .him.' He afterwards told
the Elector of Saxony, when recalling to
mind his own marvellous courage, ' The heroic firm-
* Devil saw in my heart that even had I known ness#
'that there would be as many devils at Worms as tiles
' upon the house-roofs, still I should joyfully have plunged
' in among them ! J

As he drew near the city, six knights and a troop of
horsemen of the princes' retinues went out to meet him ;
and under their escort, the Emperor's herald He enters
leading the way, and a great crowd draggling Worms.
through the streets beside him, in his covered waggon and
friar's gown, Luther entered Worms.

120 The Protestant Revolution. ft. ii.

id) Litther before the Diet (1521).

The next day, towards evening, he was brought before
the Diet. The Emperor presided. Six Electors were
Luther's present, and a large number of archbishops,

fostap- bishops, and nobility — about two hundred

before the in all. There was a pile of Luther's books on
Diet- the table.

The official then formally put to Luther two ques-
tions : c Do you acknowledge these books to be yours ?'
' Do you retract the heretical doctrines they contain ? '

Luther replied, ' I think the books are mine ; ' and,
He asks for after the titles had been read over, ' Yes, the
siTeVhis0011" books are mine.' As to the second question,
answer. he said it would be rash for him to reply

before he had had time for reflection,

The papal party, who had expected to find Luther
raging like a lion, began to think he was going to give
way. His deportment had been meek and modest. The
The 've young Emperor turned to one of his courtiers
him till the and said, ' This man will never make a heretic
of me.' Luther's request for time was allowed
till the next day, and on condition that he gave his reply
vivd voce.

He was taken back to his inn. People did not know
what to make of it. Some thought he would retract.
But, in the din and bustle around him, Luther wrote
a letter to one of his friends. ' I write to you from the
' midst of the tumult. ... I confessed myself the author
' of my books, and said I would reply to-morrow touching
1 my recantation. With Christ's help, I shall never retract
1 one tittle I '

That night there was excitement and noise in the
Excitement streets ; quarrels between opposing parties in
in Worms. ^Q crowd, and soldiers rushing about.

ch. iv. The Crisis — Reform or Revolution. 121

The next day Luther prepared himself. He was heard
to pray earnestly, and had his Bible open before him. In
the afternoon the herald came to bring him before the Diet.
The streets were full of people, and spectators looked
down from the tops of the houses as the herald led him
through passages and private ways to escape the crowd. It
was dark before they reached the hall, and torches were
lit. As Luther walked up the hall several noblemen met
him with encouraging words, amongst whom was the old
General Frundsberg, of whom we shall hear more hereafter.

The hall was crowded, and some time was lost before
the Princes and Electors were settled in their places.

The official at length — two hours after Luther's

time — Opened the proceedings. second ap-

pearance
' Martin Luther, yesterday you acknowledged the before the
books published in your name. Do you retract those
books or not ? . . . Will you defend all your writings or disavow
some of them ? '

Luther replied, in a speech which seemed to his
enemies long and rambling ; but according to his own
and Spalatin's version of it, the pith of what he said was
this :—

' Most serene Emperor ! Illustrious Princes, &c, — At the time
fixed for me yesterday evening I am here, as in duty bound, and I
pray God that your Imperial Majesty will be pleased
to listen, as I hope graciously, to these matters of ■Luth^rs
justice and truth. And should I from inexperience
omit to give to any one his proper titles, or offend against the
etiquette of courts, I trust you will pardon me, as one not used to
them.

' I beseech you to consider that my books are not all of the same
kind.

' (1) There are some in which I have so treated of faith and
morals that even my opponents admit that they are worthy to be
read by Christian people. If I were to retract these, what should I
do but — I alone, among all men — condemn what friends and foes
alike hold to be truth !

122 The Protestant Revolution. ft.il

' (2) Others of my books are against the papacy and popish
proceedings — against those whose doctrine and example have wasted
and ruined Christendom, body and soul. This no one can gainsay,
for the experience of all men, and the complaints of all, bear
witness that through the laws of the Pope and the teaching of men
the consciences of the faithful have been vexed and wronged, and the
goods and possessions q£ this great German nation by faithless
tyranny devoured and drained — yes, and will without end be
devoured again ! . . . . Now if I were to retract these, I should
do nothing but strengthen this tyranny. To its vast unchristian
influence I should not only open the windows but the door also,
so that it would rage and spoil more widely and freely than it has
ever yet dared to do. Under cover of this my recantation, the
yoke of its shameless wickedness would become utterly unbearable
to the poor miserable people, and it would be thereby established
and confirmed all the more if men could say that this had come
about by the power and direction of your Imperial Majesty, and of
the whole Roman Empire. Good heavens I what a great clo'ak of
wickedness and tyranny should I be !

' (3) The third kind are those books which I have written against
some private persons, as, for instance, against those who have
undertaken to defend the Roman tyranny, and to oppose what I
thought to be the service of God, against whom I know I have been
more vehement than is consistent with the character and position of
a Christian. For I do not set myself up as holy. I do not, however,
dispute for my own life, but the doctrine of Christ. I cannot
retract even these books, but I am ready to listen to anyone who
can show me wherein in these books I have erred.'

Here Luther paused. He had spoken in German
with, as he thought, modesty, but with great fervour and
determination. The perspiration stood on his brow, he
was exhausted with the effort of speaking : but when the
Emperor, who hardly understood German, ordered him
to repeat what he had said in Latin, after whispering to a
privy counsellor of the Elector of Saxony, who
speech L 1S stood by him, he obeyed, and repeated his
Latm. words in the language which not only Charles

but the papal nuncio could understand.

ch. iv. The Crisis — Reform or Revolution. 123

And now, as they understood more fully what he said,
the anger of the papal party was naturally more kindled.
When he had done, the orator of the Court, betraying his
hostility by his manner, declared that Luther's answer
was not a fair one. They were not there to dispute about
things that had long ago been settled by Councils. He
demanded a plain, ungarnished answer. Would he recant
or not ?

Luther replied : —

' Well, then, if your Imperial Majesty requires a plain answer,
I will give one without horns or teeth ! It is this ; that I must
be convinced either by the testimony of the Scrip-
tures or clear arguments. For I believe things r^^
contrary to the Pope and Councils, because it is as
clear as day that they have often erred and said things incon-
sistent with themselves. I am bound by the Scriptures which I
have quoted ; my conscience is submissive to the word oi God ;
therefore I may not, and will not, recant, because to act against
conscience is unholy and unsafe. So help me God ! Amen.'

One other attempt was made to get him to yield, but in
vain, and night coming on, the Diet was adjourned to the
following morning, to hear the decision of the Emperor.
The princes retired through the dark streets to their
several inns ; Luther to his. Frederic of Saxony sent for
Spalatin and expressed his approval of Luther's conduct,
except that perhaps he had spoken too boldly.

Next morning, the 19th April, the Emperor sent to the
princes a message written by his own hand, in French,
declaring his intention to proceed against The Empe-
Luther as an avowed heretic, and calling a^anSt^
upon the princes to do the same. An attempt Luther.
was then made by the papal party to induce the Em-
peror to rescind the safe-conduct of Luther. The pre-
cedent of Huss was cited. ' Why should not Luther, like
Huss, be burned, and the Rhine receive the ashes of the

124 The Protestant Revolution. pt. h.

one as it had those of the other.5 This proposal met with
strong opposition from the princes, and was negatived.

But while these discussions were going on in the Diet,
murmurs were heard out of doors. The proposal to
withdraw the safe-conduct roused the righteous indigna-
Threats of tion of men like Hutten to the point almost of
revolution. frenzv# a placard was found posted on the
walls of the Town Hall, stating that 400 knights and
8,000 foot were ready to defend Luther against the Ro-
manists. It had no signature, but underneath were written
the ominous words l Bunds chuh, Bunds chuh, Bundschuk?
Rumours came of murmurs and movements of the people
in distant parts of Germany. Franz von Sickingen, a few
miles off the city, was said to be prepared to take to the
sword, and the rumours of this inspired terror in the
minds of the papal party, as it gave some colour of likeli-
hood to the threats of Hutten and the placard.

Under the influence of the fears thus excited, the
The Electors Electors prevailed upon the Emperor to give
urge delay. a few days more for a further attempt to shake
Luther's firmness.

All was done that could be done to shake it, but without
avail. Luther's mind was made up. Let the Pope and
the Emperor do their worst, he would stand by his
conscience and the Scriptures. At last, on the 26th of
„ , April, he received orders from the Emperor to

Luther -, ■, r -n t r^

leaves depart on the following day. Twenty-one

orms" days were given him for his return to Witten-

berg, and on the morrow, escorted as before by the
imperial herald, Luther left the crowded streets of Worms
and commenced his journey homewards.

He left Worms the hero of the German

What

Luther had nation. He single-handed had fought the
WoJuSfor battle of Germany against the Pope. He
Germany had hazarded his life for the sake of the

ch. iv. The Crisis — Reform or Revolution. 125

Fatherland. It was this which made Luther's name a
household word with the Germans for ages to come,
There is no name in the roll of German historic heroes
so German, national, and typical as Luther's.

But Luther fought a battle at Worms not only for
Germany but Christendom — not only against the Pope,
but against all powers, religious or secular,

1 ii- -1 -i • i and f°r

who seek to lay chains upon the human mind Christen-
and to enthrall the free belief of the people. dom'
Against the Emperor as well as the Pope, against all
powers that be, he asserted the right of freedom of
conscience.

(<?) Edict against Luther (1521).

No sooner had Luther left Worms than the papal
nuncio set himself to work to perfect his triumph. Luther
had not recanted, therefore the Emperor must issue an
edict against him.

The threatenings of Hutten had at first made the
papal party nervous. They thought that he and Sick-
ingen had really ready a force of soldiers to Fears of the
make good their threats. Everywhere the papal Party-
feeling of the German nation in favour of Luther and
against the Pope was apparent, and nowhere more so
than at Worms. They felt themselves on dangerous
ground.

Luther, a few days after leaving the city, wrote an
address to the German princes, containing an account of
the proceedings at the Diet. This was soon scattered
over Germany by the printers, and, just as the minds of
the Germans were thus excited in favour of Luther, the
rumour spread from city to city, that in spite of his safe-
conduct, Luther was captured and had been
cruelly treated. Popular indignation was thus Luther's
roused ; murmurs arose against the Emperor caPturc-
among the princes as well as the common people. Again

126 The Protestant Revolution. pt. n.

the papal party feared nothing less than a general riot
against the Emperor and his ecclesiastical advisers,
headed by Hutten and his friends.

But at length news came that Luther was safe in
friendly hands, having been secretly carried off to the
castle of the Wartburg, in Thuringia, and kept there in
safety by his own friends. As the days went by, the
papal party gathering courage, began to laugh at Hutten's
threats as bluster, and strained every nerve to hasten on
the issue of the imperial edict against Luther.

The Elector of Saxony saw the turn things were taking.
He saw that Charles was won over by the Pope. He
The Elector wrote to his brother that it was not only
kalS0ny 'Annas and Caiaphas, but Pilate and Herod
Worms. also ' that had combined against Luther, and

not caring to remain where he could do no good, he left
Worms.

In fact Aleander, the papal nuncio, had triumphed.
On May 8 a treaty was signed between Charles V. and
Treaty be- *-h.e P°Pe> in which they mutually promised to
tween have the same friends and the same enemies,

and the ' the Pope agreeing to side with the Emperor,
Pope. an(j t0 exer|- an hjs powers to drive the French

out of Milan and Genoa, and the Emperor, as the price for
the Pope's alliance, promising to employ all his powers
against Luther and his party.

Aleander had triumphed, and accordingly prepared an
edict against Luther. It required some cleverness to get
The Edict the sanction of the Electors. The edict was
a^inst Lu- produced and read unexpectedly in the Em-
ther. peror's own apartments to such of the Electors

as remained in Worms, and received their hasty approval
without discussion. The next morning, Sunday, as Charles
V. was in church, Aleander brought the official copies,
and then and there obtained the imperial signature. He

ch. iv. The Crisis — Reform or Revolution. 127

took care to date the edict on May 8, 1521, i.e. on the day
when the treaty with the Pope was signed, though it was
not really signed till some days after, and in the meantime
the Elector of Saxony had left.

The secretary of Charles V., Valdez, a friend of Eras-
mus, writing from Worms on May 13, 1521, to a Spanish
correspondent, concludes his letter with these remarkable
words :

' Here you have, as some imagine, the end of this tragedy, but I

am persuaded it is not the end but the beginning of it. For I

perceive the minds of the Germans are greatly exas- T

, • , t-» • ■, o. 11, Letter from

perated against the Romish See, and they do not seem Valdez, the

to attach much importance to the Emperor's edicts ; Emperor's

for since their publication, Luther's books are sold with

impunity at every step and corner of the streets and market-places.

From this you will easily guess what will happen when the Emperor

leaves.

' This evil might have been cured with the greatest advantage to
the Christian Republic, had not the Pontiff refused a general
council, had he preferred the public weal to his own private in-
terests. But while he insists that Luther shall be condemned and
burned, I see the whole Christian Republic hurried to destruction
unless God himself help us. Farewell.'

The secretary of Charles V. naturally laid all the
blame on the Pope. He little knew how much his master
also was to blame. The Elector of Saxony was not far
wrong when he hinted that if the Pope and his nuncios
were acting the part of Annas and Caiaphas, Charles V.
was acting the part of Pilate and Herod.

Let us try to unravel the entangled skein of political
motives which influenced his conduct and his treaty with
the Pope.

(/) Political reasons j 'or the decision at Worms.

We have seen how the great continental struggle had
long been between France and Spain, and how Italy was

128 The Protestant Revolution. ft. n.

the battle-field ; how both claimed Naples and Milan ;
how France had been the first to invade Italy ; how
Rivaiship France and Spain at one time agreed to share
{Tain and Naples between them ; how France got Milan,
France. and then, after the two had quarrelled over the

prey, Spain got Naples ; how then they had joined again
with the Pope and Germany in the league of Cambray
against Venice ; and how, lastly, the robbers quarrelling
again over the spoil, the Pope united Spain, Germany,
and England with himself in a holy league to drive France
out of Italy, and so France again lost Milan. Then
came the succession of young Francis I. to the throne
of France, his boast that he would make France the
first power in Europe, as she was wont to be, his brilliant
campaign of 15 15 in which he gained the battle of
Marignano, and recovered Milan. Then came the struggle
for the Empire, and the beginning of the ascendancy of
Spain in Europe by Charles V.'s accession to the German
throne.

In the political combinations which followed, it was
the fate of Francis to be left out in the cold. Leo X.
intri es of was anxi°us to league himself in close al-
princes. liance with Charles V., and by his aid to drive

France the the French out of Italy. Henry VIII. was

common • ' r i i

enemy of the also exceedingly anxious to form a close al-
an°deEnl-in' liance with Charles V. His marriage with
land. Charles's aunt, Catherine of Arragon, was

already a link between England and Spain. Henry
wanted to bring about another by a contract of marriage
between Charles V. and the young Princess (afterwards
queen) Mary, although she was already engaged to the
Dauphin of France. Charles V., in his turn, was equally
anxious to form such alliances as would strengthen his
position against France. He was jealous of the conquests
of Francis I. in Italy, and as Emperor of Germany con-

ch. iv. The Crisis — Reform or Revolution 129

sidered himself entitled to Milan, which Francis had con-
quered. An alliance, therefore, with the Pope and Eng-
land against France was most to his purpose, but it did
not suit his purpose that Henry VIII. should know it.

All the princes were playing a double game and
trying to outwit one another. Henry coquetted with
Francis in order to make Charles fall in with his wishes
out of jealousy. Charles was coquetting both with France
and England, proposing marriage with a French princess
while he was negotiating with Henry respecting the
Princess Mary, and worst of all, while he really intended
to marry the Infanta of Portugal. He cared far more for
Spain than he did for Germany, and by this match he
hoped to unite some day Portugal and Spain. Henry
VIII. devised an interview with Francis. Charles was
jealous and came over to England. After this meeting
with Charles Henry embarked for France, and met Francis
on what, from the grandeur of the preparations, was
called the 'Field of the Cloth of Gold.' Immediately
afterwards he again met Charles at Gravelines, and did
his best to secure his object with Chailes while he kept
Francis in the dark. But Charles chose a little longer to
play fast and loose.

In the meantime the Pope also was playing a double
game. Whether to ally himself with Francis, who was
preparing his army for another descent upon Italy, or with
Charles V. and Henry VIII. against Francis, he kept an
open question, though his preference was for the latter
plan, if only he could bring Charles V. to his terms ; the
chief of them being that Charles should help him to put
down the heretic Luther.

The course which things took at the Diet of Worms
was ruled by these political intrigues.

The papal party triumphed. The Emperor, as we

M. H. K

£30 The Protestant Revolution. pt. n.

have seen, concluded an alliance on May 8 with the Pope
against France and against Luther.

The consequence was that Europe was to be given
over once more to the ambitions and wars of its rival
princes. All chances of reform, for the pre-
fixed by sent, were gone. The Diet of Worms came
powrasffom t0 an en(* witnout having accomplished the
political work which Germany expected from it. Worst
of all, the Emperor, instead of siding with
Germany against the Pope, had chosen for his private
purposes to side with the Pope against Germany.

It is true a council of regency had been established,
with the Elector of Saxony at its head, to manage the
affairs of the Empire while the Emperor was busied with
quelling a rebellion in Spain, and with his wars in Italy.
But no decisive steps had been taken to stop those private
wars which were the curse of Germany, and of which the
cities so bitterly complained. No decisive steps had been
taken to remedy the ecclesiastical grievances of which the
princes complained. The grievances of the much endur-
ing peasantry had not even been talked of. And as the
worst sign of the times, Luther had been condemned by
both Pope and Emperor.

The fears of Erasmus were fulfilled, and his bitter
words justified by the result. ' Ecclesiastical hypocrites
reign in the courts of princes . . . The Pope and Princes
treat the people as cattle in the market.'

The reform, both of the Oxford and of the Wittenberg
Reformers, had been refused by the ruling powers. There
was nothing left but revolution.

Revolution.

CHAPTER V.

REVOLUTION,

131

(a) The Prophets of Revolution (1522).

The edict of the Emperor issued at the Diet of Worms
was published all over Germany. But the papal party
were astonished to find how very little people
thought of it. The Germans thought a great in^agaiSf"
deal more of the bold conduct of Luther. the E&dict-
So that the end of it was that the edict was treated with
very much the same neglect as the Pope's Bull. Luther's
books were burned in some places under the eye of the
Emperor. Everywhere else they were read all the more.

And another thing happened which the papal party
had not foreseen. They had for the moment silenced
Luther. He was safe in the castle of the
Wartburg, and silent, too, albeit he was hard ^wLE
at work at what would do more to spread the hm's-
spirit of reform than anything else, viz. translating the
Bible into the mother tongue of the Fatherland.

Meanwhile the absence of Luther from his wonted
place at Wittenberg did not take away the firebrand as
they thought it would, but put it in the hands
of the mob. In Luther's absence wilder Inhisab-

... , _ sence wilder

spirits came to the top. Monks left the con- spirits take
vents and went to trades. Under the leader- the lead"
ship of Carlstadt, the form of public worship was changed.
Excited and half-crazy men, carried away by their zeal,
set themselves up as prophets and preached strange doc-
trines.

At Zwickau, under the range of the Erzgebirge, south
of Wittenberg, near Bohemia, lived a weaver of the
k 2

132 The Protestant Revolution. pt. n.

name of Claus Storch. He and some of his comrades
fancied that they were inspired. They mistook their own
excited imaginations for messages from
phet? of" heaven. They wanted no priests, for they
Zwickau. were themselves prophets, no Bible, for they
were themselves inspired, and they went about preaching
violent changes, and exciting the crowds who listened to
them to violent deeds.

Driven away from Zwickau by the authorities, some of
them came to Wittenberg, where the people were already
making great changes under the leadership of Carlstadt.
Carlstadt'was carried away by their zeal, and so were the
people. Riots were raised. People went about smashing
the images in the churches, and even Melanchthon, in
Luther's absence, was half inclined to believe in the pro-
phets, though they preached the uselessness of learning
and universities,

These things came to the ear of Luther in his retreat at
the Wartburg. He at once saw how all this delusion and
Luther madness would injure the cause of the Refor-

comes ; back mati0n. At the risk of his life he left his

to Witten-
berg, place of concealment. He suddenly appeared

at Wittenberg in his old pulpit. He entreated his old

flock to calm their excitement; and not without avail.

After ten months' absence, the familiar sound of his

voice soothed their passions. They recognized him once

more as their leader.

The prophets came to visit him— and this is a proof

of their sincerity — expecting him at once to admit their

, claims. Luther did not doubt that they were

and con- . m '

fronts the inspired, but warned them lest their inspira-
prophets. ^^ ^^^ come from Spirits of Evil. One
of them, with the voice and tones of an enthusiast, stamp-
ing his feet, and striking his hands on the table, gave
vent to his horror at the suggestion ; and then, gathering

ch. v. Revolution. 133

up his dignity, in a tone which almost shook the common
sense of Luther, said, solemnly, ' That thou mayst know,
O Luther, that I am inspired by the Spirit of God, I will
tell thee what is passing in thy mind.' And then- as
Luther, really for the moment half carried away by his
impressive manner, was beginning to waver, ^ It is J (he
added), ' that thou art ready to think that my doctrine is
true.' To which Luther, suddenly recovering His com.
himself, replied, 'The Lord rebuke thee, mon sense
Satan ! The God whom I worship will soon prevai s'
put a stop to your Spirits.' And with these parting
words he dismissed the prophets of Zwickau.

Order was restored at Wittenberg. The Scriptures
were again acknowledged as the rule of faith, and before
the end of the year the New Testament xheprophets
was published in the German tongue. The ^.lven from
Lutheran Reformation was severed for ever
from the wilder reforms of Carlstadt and the prophets of
Zwickau ; and the latter were soon driven from Witten-
berg, to spread their doctrines in other places where there
was no Luther to withstand them.

One of the disciples of Storch at Zwickau was
Miinzer, but instead of going to Wittenberg, M{inzer
he went first into Bohemia, and then all over becomes the
that part of Germany where Joss Fritz had J the
been. He became very soon the prophet of Peasantry-
the peasantry.

We must look even upon Miinzer as honest and
sincere, though wild. He thought himself inspired, and
preached like a prophet. Along with many reforms which
Luther also urged, he claimed for the people the right of
having divine worship performed in their own language
instead of in the Latin of the priests. He preached a
crusade against all who opposed the gospel, and urged a
resort to the sword if preaching would not do. Driven

134 The Protestant Revolution. PT. n,

from city to city, he went more and more among the
peasants ; and who shall blame him if he took up their
grievances ? Was it not natural ? His own father, it is
said, had fallen a victim to a quarrel with his feudal lord.
He began to think himself the chosen messenger of
heaven to avenge their wrongs ; and as he preached
from place to place amongst the peasantry, and others
like him followed in his track, it was not strange if it
stirred up again in the minds of the disciples of Joss
Fritz recollections of the days of the Bundschuh.

(b) The end of Sickingen and Hutten (1523).

The council of regency appointed at the Diet of
Worms to represent the Empire during the Emperor's
absence in Spain (whither he had gone to quell a rebellion
of his subjects) was made up of princes who had more or
less sympathy with Luther.

Frederic of Saxony was at the head of it. It was the
nearest approach to a central government which had
m r, ., been formed. It was thoroughly German

The Council _ . .. .... , ....

of Regency and national m spirit, and aimed at thoroughly
Eiertorof national objects. It aimed not at carrying
Saxony 0ut the edict against Luther, but at obtaining

avert the from future diets those reforms which had
storm, been refused at Worms. It aimed at putting

down private wars and the establishment of public peace.

But it had no power at its back to carry out its in-
tentions. Its efforts to obtain something like union
among the powers of Germany in the work of reform
were fruitless ; and so were its efforts to put down pri-
vate wars.

Knights like Franz von Sickingen saw in it an attempt
of the princes to put down the influence of their order.
Its attempt to obtain the means to pay for national ob-

ch. v. Revolution. 135

jects by a system of customs — duties on luxuries imported
into Germany from abroad — was taken by
the merchants of the towns to be an in- withoppo-
vasion of their rights. So it was unpopular Sltl0n-
and powerless, though its intentions were good.

Its powerlessness to preserve the public peace was
soon shown in a great private war which was waged by
Franz von Sickingen in 1522-3 against the Franz von
Archbishop of Treves. The knight besieged f^J1*6^
Treves with his army of 5,000 foot-soldiers sword,
and 1,500 horse, and declared that he came to bring
the people freedom from the Pope and priests, and to
punish the archbishop for his sins against God and the
Emperor.

What could be a stronger example to the peasantry
to take to the sword than such an act of the popular
knight !

He counted upon the people of the town aiding him
from within the walls, but was disappointed. The city
held out till some neighbouring princes came to its rescue
with an army of 30,000 men. On their approach Franz
retired to his castle of Landshut, there not being time to
reach that of Ebernburg. There he was himself besieged.
The cannon of the princes were powerful enough to batter
down the solid walls, which before the use of artillery
would have been impregnable. He held out
for months, till at last a solid tower fell into fjated and
a heap of ruins, and a breach was made in kllled>
the walls. Franz himself was wounded and dying when
his conquerors entered the castle. They upbraided him
for disturbing the peace of the Empire. ' I am going,' he
said, as he lay upon the floor, dying, ' to render Hutten>s
an account to a greater than the Emperor ; ' death.
and soon after he expired. His friend Hutten died in
the same year, while trying to urge other knights to aid

136 7 lie Protestant Revolution. pt. 11.

Sickingen, and this was the end of the knights of Ebern-
burg Castle.

They had threatened to reform the Empire by the
sword. The peasantry had looked to them as their best
knightly friends. They had done much by their pens
and swords, their voice and example, to stir up warlike
The ea- feeling among the peasantry, but their end
santrygot came before the peasants had got any help
from^he from them. In the meantime it was also clear
kmghts. tjia1; j-ijg council of regency was unable to pre-
serve the public peace, as well as to bring about the
needed reform.

If help was to come neither from the Emperor and
the council of regency, nor from the knights, where
were the peasantry to turn next ? Was not the time ripe
for rebellion ?

We must turn again to the map on which are marked
the districts where lay the smouldering embers of the
Bundschuh, waiting only for the match to light them up
again. On the opposite map are marked the districts in
which, one after another, the explosions came. The con-
nexion between the two maps will be seen at a glance.
Joss Fritz had kept the embers alive by his secret work in
Swabia. The expulsion of Carlstadt from Wittenberg
had sent him into the towns on the Rhine and in Franconia
to stir up discontent and a spirit of rebellion, not only
against Rome, the priests and monks, but also against
Carlstadt Luther, through whose influence he had been
and Munzer expelled. Miinzer had been driven from

stir up r

rebellion. city to city, and thence into southern Ger-

many, to carry on the work of stirring up rebellion.

The train was indeed laid, and in November 1524
the match was put to it in the very places where it

ch. v. Revolution. 137

was laid the deepest. The match was a little thing. The
much-enduring peasantry of Swabia, and most of all,
those about the Boden See (Lake Constance) needed but
the last straw to break the back of their endurance. It
was a holiday, and the peasants on the estates of the
Count von Liipfen were resting at home or taking the day
for work on their own land. Orders came from the
Count that they should turn out and gather insurrection
snail-shells for the folk at the Castle. It was gantry 'in
the very littleness of the thing which made it Swabia.
so unbearable. They rose up in arms, and so did their
neighbours in the valleys round. Soon all Swabia was in
insurrection.

The council of regency sent ambassadors to mediate
between the peasants and their lords of the Swabian
League. But it was of no use. They had not power to
keep the public peace. Neither party listened to them.
The peasants put forth twelve articles in which they
stated their demands. Here, in brief, is a list of them. A
mere glance will show that they were the old demands of
the days of the Bunds chuh, with a few additions.

1. The right to choose their own pastors.

2. They would pay tithe of corn, out of which the pastors

should be paid, the rest going to the use of the
parish. — But small tithes, i.e., of the Their twelve
produce of animals, every tenth calf, or articles,
pig, or egg, and so on, they would not pay.

3. They would be free, and no longer serfs and bondmen.

4. Wild game and fish to be free to all.

5. Woods and forests to belong to all for fuel.

6. No services of labour to be more than were required

of their forefathers.

7. If more service required, wages must be paid for it.

8. Rent, when above the value of the land, to be properly

valued and lowered.

x^S The Protestant Revolution. pt. ii.

9. Punishments for crimes to be fixed.

10. Common land to be again given up to common use.

11. Death gifts {i.e., the right of the lord to take the best

chattel of the deceased tenant) to be done away
with.

12. Any of these articles proved to be contrary to the

Scriptures or God's justice, to be null and void.

From this list of most substantial grievances we may

well gather what the peasants were aiming at. We see

Not likely to how they aimed, like simple men, at the re-

be granted by moval of the practical grievances and hard-

either Pope, , . _,.,.. ^ ° - .

nobles, or ships of their life. But their demands were
Luther. nQt at a^ jjjggjy t0 ^e granted. For instance,

if they had the choice of pastors they would choose men
like Miinzer, and Carlstadt, and Storch, and perhaps
even wilder spirits than these, so that neither the Pope
nor Luther would be likely to concede that demand.
Nor, of course, would the proud feudal lords like to lose
their game and the forced labour of their serfs, and to
meet their peasants on equal terms as free men, any more
than the slave-holders of America liked to have slavery
abolished. We may guess, too, how the ecclesiastics
would tremble to hear of their small tithes being taken
away, and other pastors being chosen instead of
themselves.

Had the feudal lords granted proper and fair reforms
'ong ago, they would never have heard of these twelve
articles. But they had refused reform, and they now had
to meet revolution. And they knew of but one way of
meeting it, namely, by the sword.

The lords of the Swabian League sent their army of
Swabian foot and horsemen under their captain, George

peasants Truchsess. The poor peasants could not hold

crushed in . , , t. _

April 1525. out against trained soldiers and cavalry. Two
battles on the Danube, in which thousands of peasants

ch. v. Revolution. 139

were slain, or drowned in the river, and a third equally
bloody one in Algau, near the Boden See, crushed this
rebellion in Swabia, as former rebellions had so often
been crushed before. This was early in April 1525.

But in the meantime the revolution had spread further
north. In the valley of the Neckar a body of 6,000
peasants had come together, enraged by the news of the
slaughter of their fellow peasants in the south of Swabia.
The young Count von Helfenstein, a friend of the Arch-
duke Ferdinand, who had married a natural daughter of
the late Emperor Maximilian, lived at the castle in the
town of Weinsberg, in this district. He seems to have so
far lost his head in these days of terror as to have cut the
throats of some peasants who met him on the road. This
enraged them the more. The town and castle were
stormed and taken by the peasants, under their insurrection
leaders, Florian Geyer, Wendel Hipler, and on the
Little Jack Rohrbach. The Count offered a April ar'
large sum of money for a ransom, but the IS2S-
stern reply of the peasants was, ' he must die though he
were made of gold.'

While the peasants were plundering the castle, the
monastery, and the houses of the priests, the leaders held
a council. Hipler advised moderation. He hoped that
the smaller lords would, after all, side with the peasants.
But Little Jack was a man of another kind. In the dead
of night he held a council of his own, and doomed every
knight and noble in Weinsberg to immediate death. As
day was breaking the Count and other noble prisoners were
led forth, surrounded by a circle of pikes with their steel
points inward. The tears and pleadings of the Countess,
with her babe in her arms, availed nothing. The peasants
stood in two opposite ranks, with a passage between the
points of their pikes. A piper of the Count mockingly
led the way, inviting his late master to follow on a dance

140 The Protestant Revolution. PT. n.

of death. The Count and nobles were compelled to
follow. The ranks closed upon them, and they were soon
pierced to death. A wild peasant woman stuck her knife
into the Count's body, and smeared herself with blood.
And so, unknown to the other leaders and to the masses
The of the peasantry, ' Little Jack/ on that terrible

peasants' morning, had revenged the thousands of his
seJab£n °r comrades slain by the Swabian lords, blood

slaughters. for blood>

A yell of horror was raised through Germany at the
news of the peasants' revenge. No yell had risen when
the Count cut peasants' throats, or the Swabian lords slew
thousands of peasant rebels. Europe had not yet learned
to mete out the same measure of justice to noble and
common blood. But the eye of history cannot so be
blinded. It records that about a month after, Truchsess,
Theretalia- the captain of the Swabian League, came
nobles! lMay northwards, and fell upon this band of pea-
1525- ' sants with his more disciplined soldiers and

horsemen. One night, after a bloody battle, in which
several thousand peasants were slain, the piper of
Weinsberg was recognized amongst the prisoners — he
who had piped to the dance of death at the murder of the
Count von Helfenstein. Truchsess and the new Count
von Helfenstein, who was with him, had him fastened
with an iron chain about two feet long to an apple tree.
With their own hands they and other nobles helped to
build up a circular pile of wood round their victim, and
then they set fire to the pile. It was night ; and amid
the groans of wounded and dying peasants on the battle-
field around them, and the drunken revelry of the camp,
was heard the laughter of these nobles as they watched
their victim springing shrieking from point to point of the
fiery circle within which he was slowly roasted to death.
Such was the revenge of nobles upon peasants.

ch. v. Revolution. 141

But the revolution spread, and the reign of terror

spread with it. North and east of the valley of the

Neckar, among the little towns of Franconia,

and in the valleys of the Maine, other bands in Fran-

of peasants, mustering by thousands, destroyed conia"

alike cloisters and castles. Two hundred of these lighted

the night with their flames during the few weeks of their

temporary triumph. And here another feature of the

revolution became prominent. The little towns were

already, under the preaching of Carlstadt and such as

he, passing through an internal revolution. The artisans

were rising against the wealthier burghers, Revolution

overturning the town councils, and electing in. S,he towns

° ' ° of Fran-

committees of artisans in their place, making conia.

sudden changes in religion, putting down the Mass, un-
frocking priests and monks, and in fact, in the interests
of what they thought to be the gospel, turning all things
upside down.

A few extracts from the diary of a citizen of the free
imperial fortified town of Rothenburg, on the Tauber,
may serve to fix on the mind a clear impression of the
Peasants' War, as it seemed to a citizen of a Franconian
town during the course of the events which he noted in
his log-book in this terrible year 1525.

March 19. — The Carlstadt sect being favoured by Diary 0f a
the magistrates, Carlstadt himself came to Rothen- citizen of
burg, preached here, and wanted to become a citizen. Rothenburg.

March 21. — Thirty or forty peasants bought a kettle-drum
and went about proudly, insolently, and mischievously, up and
down the city.

March 23. — About 400 peasants assembled.

March 24. — All citizens were called to the Rathhaus and enjoined
to stand by the honourable council. Only twenty-six do so ! The
rest elect a committee of thirty-six. Messengers are sent to the
peasants to inquire their plans. The peasants replied that they were
not all collected yet. Letters come from Markgraf Casimir, and

142 The Protestant Revolution. pf. 11.

are read to the people, offering help, and to come in person to make
peace. Some of the people treated the message with scorn and
laughter.

This evening, between five and six, the head of the image of
Christ on the Cross is struck off, the arms broken and the pieces
knocked about the churchyard.

March 25. — The committee of thirty-six frighten the council
into submission.

March 26, Smiday. — The priest driven from the altar and his
mass book thrown down. The peasants deploy themselves before
the Galgen-thor.

March 27. — The priest insulted and his book thrown down
whilst performing mass.

March 28. — 700 peasants assembled, and force other peasants to
join them.

March 31. — The peasants have increased to 2,000. Lorenz
Knobloch having promised to be a captain, has gone out to them.
Messengers from the Imperial Council came to make peace, but
without result.

April 4. — The oil lamps thrown down during the sermon. The
peasants go about plundering cupboards and cellars.

April 8, Good Friday. — The sendee done away. No one sang
or read. But Dr. Drechsel preached against emperor, king, princes
and lords, spiritual and temporal, for hindering the word of God.

April 10, Easter Day. — Hans Rothfuchs called the sacrament
idolatry. No service.

April it. — Dr. Carlstadt preached against the sacrament. At
night the Kupferzell (monastery) sacked by some millers, and
tables and pictures thrown into the Tauber.

April 12. — Declarations made that priests may marry.

April 13. — Dr. Carlstadt preached again against the sacraments
and ceremonies.

April 14. — Some women run up and down the streets with forks,
pikes, and sticks, making a row and declaring that they will plunder
all priests' houses.

April 15. — Priests are obliged to become citizens for safety.
Every citizen to give a gulden towards the watch, also take his turn
at working at the fortifications?.

April 18. — The peasants demand 200 men and 100 long spears,
a culverin, heavy field-pieces, and two tents. They are refused. The

CH. v. Revolution. 143

peasants reply that some citizens had promised help ; therefore they
now demand it.

April 23. — The peasants are told they shall have a reply in
writing.

April 28. — Corn given out, but only some take it. Knobloch
torn to pieces by the peasants, and they pelted one another with the
pieces. The peasants have been heard to say that they would soon
see what the Rothenburgers were going to do !

May 1. — In the night they burned the cloister of E., plundered
another, and burned the castle of C.

May 8. — The people called together by the great bell in the
parish church to hear a proposal of the Markgraf Casimir to come
with his lady and jewels to Rothenburg ; and on the other hand to
consider whether to send to the peasantry or not.

May 10. — Three neighbouring cities have gone over to the pea-
sants. They want Rothenburg to join them, too. At 6 o'clock
people are called together again, and the majority decide to send
artillery and spears to the peasants.

May 12. — More monasteries are sacked. Twelve kilderkins of
wine plundered by the people and drunk.

May 15. — Florian Geyer (one of the peasants' leaders) in the
parish church proposes articles of alliance with the peasants for 101
years. Demanded that the committee and people should by oath
and vow league themselves with the peasants. Which was done,
although against the grain to some. Thus to-day Rothenburg has
gone over from the Empire to the peasants ! A gallows was erected
in the market-place in token of this brotherhood, and as a terror to
evil-doers. About 5 o'clock tents, waggons, powder. are got ready
and taken to the camp of the peasants, with intent to storm the castle
of Wiirtzburg.

300 peasants who went up on May 9 to storm the castle of
Wiirtzburg were all killed, part by the stones, part shot, part slain
— taken like birds ! (So the castle still held out.)

Casimir of Brandenburg is marching with forces to chastise the
peasants.

May 19. — He burns four towns. Four peasants at L. are
beheaded and seven have their fingers cut off. At N. eighteen
citizens beheaded.

May 27. — 4,000 peasants are slain in the valley of the Tauber by
the allied powers. (The combined forces of the nobles were.now

144 Tike Protestant Revolution. PT. n.

joined by Truchsess, who had been victorious over the Swabian pea-
sants.)

'May 29. — 8,000 more peasants slain by the allies. Three mes-
sengers are sent from Rothenburg to Markgraf Casimir, carrying a
red cross and fervently begging for mercy. No surrender would be
accepted but on 'mercy or no mercy.' All citizens, clergy and
laity, to pay seven florins for Blood and Fire Money, or to be
banished thirty miles out of the city. The city to provide some tons
of powder.

Jztne 2. — Wiirtzburg retaken by the Bund.

June 24. — Mass said again, after thirteen weeks' interruption.

June 29. — Markgraf Casimir came to Rothenburg with 800
horse, 1,000 foot, 200 waggons well equipped with the best artillery,
which are placed in the market-place.

June 30. — All citizens called by herald and ordered to assemble
in the market-place, and form a circle under guard of soldiers with
spears. It was announced that the Rothenburgers had revolted
from the Empire and joined the peasants, and had forfeited life,
honour, and goods. The Markgraf and many nobles were present.
Twelve citizens were called out by name, and beheaded on the spot.
Their bodies were left all day in the market-place. Several had
fled who otherwise would have been beheaded.
July.i. — Eight more beheaded.

It was during the Franconian rebellion that the pea-
sants chose the robber knight Goetz von Berlichingen as
their leader. It did them no good. More than a robber
chief was needed to cope with soldiers used to war. The
failure of the Franconian rebel peasants was inevitable,
and the wild vigour with which they acted in the moments
of their brief power did but add to the cruelty with which
they were crushed and punished when the tide of victory
turned against them.

insurrection While all this was going on in the valleys

inEisassand of the Maine, the revolution had crossed the
down^May Rhine into Elsass and Lothringen, and the
1525* Palatinate about Spires and Worms, and in

ch. v. Revolution. 145

the month of May had been crushed in blood, as in Swabia
and Franconia. South and east, in Bavaria, and in Ba-
in the Tyrol, and in Carinthia also, castles and ^?"jjj ^d
monasteries went up in flames, and then, when Carinthia.
the tide of victory turned, the burning houses and farms of
the peasants lit up the night and their blood flowed freely.
Meanwhile Miinzer, who had done so much to stir up
the peasantry in the south to rebel, had gone north into
Thuringia, and headed a revolution in the Miinzer
town of Miihlhausen and become a sort of guSectionTn
Savonarola of a madder kind, believing him- Thuringia.
self inspired, talking of his visions, uttering prophecies,
denouncing vengeance on all who opposed what he be-
lieved to be the gospel. He exercised over the citizens
something of the influence that Savonarola had done in
Florence. His intense earnestness carried them away.
They could not help believing in him and regarding him
with awe. For a while the rich fed the poor, and under
his eye there was almost a community of goods. But
Miinzer, not content with visions and his prophetic office,
madly appealed to the sword. When he heard of the re-
volution in Swabia he seemed to sniff the breeze like a
war-horse. He issued a proclamation to the peasantry
round about.

Arise ! fight the battle of the Lord ! On ! on ! on ! Now is the
time ; the wicked tremble when they hear of you. Be pitiless !
Heed not the groans of the impious ! Rouse up the HJs mad
towns and villages ; above all, rouse up the miners of proclama-
the mountains ! On ! on ! on ! while the fire is burn- tl0n-
ing ; on while the hot sword is yet reeking with the slaughter !
Give the fire no time to go out, the sword no time to cool ! Kill all
the proud ones : while one of them lives you will not be free from
the fear of man ! While they reign over you it is no use to talk of
God ! . . . Amen.

Given at Miihlhausen, 1525. Thomas Miinzer, servant of God

against the wicked.
M. H. L

146 The Protestant Revolution.

PT. II.

These were some of the words which were meant to
wake up echoes in the hearts of the neighbouring miners
of Mansfeld, among whom the kindred of Luther
dwelt !

This was what had come of the prophets of Zwickau
giving up their common sense and following visions and
inspirations !

But the end was coming. The princes, with their
disciplined troops, came nearer and nearer. What could
Miinzer do with his 8,000 peasants ? He pointed to a
rainbow and expected a miracle, but no miracle came.
The battle, of course, was lost. 5,000 peasants lay dead
upon the field near the little town of Frankenhausen,
where it was fought.

Miinzer fled and concealed himself in a bed, but was
Death of found and taken before the princes, thrust
Miinzer. jnt0 a dungeon, and afterwards beheaded.

So ended the wild career of this misguided, fanatical,
self-deceived, but yet, as we must think, earnest and in
many ways heroic spirit. We may well believe that he
was maddened by the wrongs of the peasantry into what
Luther called a ' spirit of confusion.'

The princes and nobles now everywhere prevailed
over the insurgent peasants.

Luther, writing on June 21, 1525, says : —

' It is a certain fact, that in Franconia 11,000 peasants have been
slain. Markgraf Casimir is cruelly severe upon his peasants, who
have twice broken faith with him. In the Duchy of Wurtemberg,
6,000 have been killed ; in different places in Swabia, io.ooo. It is
said that in Alsace the Duke of Lorraine has slain 20,000. Thus
everywhere the wretched peasants are cut down.'

The struggle extended into Styria and Carinthia,
where there had been risings before, and lingered on
longest in the Tyrol. It was not till Truchsess was aided
by the General George Frundsberg, the old general who

CH>V> Revolution. H7

had shaken hands with Luther in the Diet of Worms,
that victory was secured to the higher powers.

Before the Peasants' War was ended at least 100,000
perished, or twenty times as many as were put to death
in Paris during the Reign of Terror in 1793.

So ended the peasants' revolution. For two or three
centuries more the poor German peasantry must bear
the yoke of their serfdom. They must wait till, in
the beginning of the nineteenth century, German states-
men, awakened by the French Revolution, saw the neces-
sity 'of preventing another Peasants' War by granting a
timely reform.

Luther, throughout the Peasants' War, sided with the
ruling powers. He was firm as a rock in opposing the
use of the sword against the civil power. The The attitude
reform he sought was by means of the civil fur^htehre
power ; and in order to clear himself and his Peases'
cause from all participation in the wild doings
of the peasantry, he publicly exhorted the princes to crush
their rebellion. The peasants thought that in Luther
(himself a peasant) they should have found a friend, but
they were bitterly disappointed. He hounded on the
princes in their work of blood.

That Luther should be bitter against Miinzer and the
wild prophets of revolution was but natural. He had
seen the end from the beginning ; he had left his retreat
in the Wartburg four years before to quell the tumults at
Wittenberg. Driven out of Wittenberg the prophets had
become madder still. No doubt Europe owed much to
the right-mindedness of Luther in setting his face against
a resort to the sword in the cause of religious reform.
Yet one cannot sympathize with Luther's harsh treatment
of the peasantry and their misguided leaders. It cannot
be denied that to some extent this revolution had grown
up from the dragon's teeth that he himself had sown.

L 2

148 The Protestant Revolution. pt. ii.

There was a time when he himself had used wild lan-
guage and done wild deeds. Erasmus had predicted that
all Europe would be turned upside down in a universal
revolution ; and had it not come to pass ? The monks
blamed Erasmus and the new learning ; Erasmus blamed
the wildness of Luther ; Luther blamed the
really to wilder prophets. Who was to blame ? History

blamed w-]j not jay tke biame on Erasmus or Luther,

or on the wilder prophets, or on the misguided peasantry,
but. on the higher powers whose place it was to have
averted revolution by timely reforms. It was their re-
fusal of reform which was the real cause of revolution.
It was the conspiracy of the higher powers at the Diet
of Worms to sacrifice the common weal to their own
ambitious objects on which history will lay the blame of
the Peasants' War.

In the meantime let us not forget that there was
one at least of the higher powers who had no share
in the blame — one of them who had shown himself
able to sacrifice his own ambition to the common weal,
Death of the who had worked silently and hard for reform
Elector of — t^e ^ood Elector Frederic of Saxony. As

Saxony, » J

May 1525. the peasant rebellion under Miinzer was going
on in Thuringia, on the threshold of Saxony, he lay dying.
He had no revengeful feelings. He did not urge on the
slaughter of the peasantry like Luther. He wrote to his
brother, Duke John, who succeeded him as Elector, and
who was gone with the army, to act prudently and leni-
ently. If the peasants' turn had really come to rule, God's
will be done ! Only his servants were with him. ' Dear
children,' he said to them, ' if I have offended any of you,
forgive me, for the love of God ; we princes do many
things to the poor people that we ought not to do ! '
Soon after he received the sacrament, and died.

ch. v. Revolution. 149

(d) The Sack of Rome (1527).

Now let us see what was the result to the higher powers
themselves of the secret treaty of Worms, Alliance of
May 8, 1521, by which the Pope and Em- ^d^heEm-
peror were to join their forces against France, peror against
and to secure which the interests of the Ger-
man people were deliberately sacrificed.

Henry VIII. of England soon joined the alliance
against France. He had secret reasons to be mentioned
hereafter for keeping on good terms with Henry vni.
Charles V. and the Pope, and so had his joins "•
minister Cardinal Wolsey. Henry was tempted also with
the prospect of winning back the English provinces in
France, while Wolsey was flattered by the promises of
Charles V. to do all he could to get him elected Pope on
the next vacancy.

The first skirmishes took place between Charles V.
and Francis I. in the north, but with no decisive results.
Meanwhile the allied army in Italy was strengthened and
that of France weakened by the Swiss soldiers under the
pay of France being withdrawn, and Swiss recruits ac-
cepting imperial pay. The armies were soon in motion,
and on Nov. 25, 1521, Leo X. received tidings that the
allied army had triumphantly entered the city pope Leo x.
of Milan, but while the rejoicings at Rome in dies> zs21-
celebration of their triumph were still going on, the Pope
suddenly died, on December 1, not without suspicion of
poison.

To the surprise of everyone the Emperor's old tutor
was now elected Pope under the title of
Adrian VI. Charles V. had not used his in-
fluence to promote the success of Wolsey. Adrian was a
safer man, nominal governor in Spain while Ximenes
really governed, and more likely to serve Spanish in-

1 50 The Protestant Revolution. pt. n.

terests than the wily English minister. Adrian was a
sternly virtuous, well-meaning pope. He would have made
peace if he could. He would have reconciled the German
nation by reforms if he could, but with the wish he had
not the power. Everything was against him ; he was
Clement °^ > ^is reign was short, and he died in 1523,

vii. Pope, to make way, not for Wolsey, for again

Charles V. played his own game, but for
another of the Medici, Clement VII. He was not a
Spaniard, but the most powerful ally of Spain that Italy
could produce among her cardinals.

In the meantime the Duke of Bourbon (one of the
most powerful of the vassals of the French Crown) re-
Duke de belled from Francis I. and joined the impe-
Bourbon rial league against France. Henry VIII. also
ieaeue16 was once more tempted by a vague prospect
against of again annexing French provinces to the

English crown, to help in the invasion of
France.

The result of this invasion was to rouse the national
feeling, and therefore the power of France. It was un-
Francis I. successful, and ended in Francis I. assuming
orossesthe the 0ffensive an(j cr0Ssing the Alps. Then
Made came the battle of Pavia in 1525, in which the

prisoner at , imperial armies with the Duke of Bourbon

the battle of c

Pavia. and the old German general Frundsberg

gained the victory, and Francis I. was taken prisoner.

Henry VIII. began now to dream not only of getting
back the lost English provinces, but even of being king of
France. But Charles V. had little confidence in him and
Wolsey. He was playing his own game, not that of
Henry VIII.

Pope Clement VI I. meanwhile had expected Francis I.
to win at the battle of Pavia, and, to make himself safe,
had come to secret terms of alliance with him. Before

ch. v. Revolution. 151

the battle of Pavia he had gone so far as almost to
break with the Emperor. After the battle, all R ture
Italy began to be afraid that Spanish influence between

, ? • --s. s. , Charles V.

would become omnipotent ; so a rupture and the
between the Pope and Spain was imminent. Pope-
In the meantime the Emperor removed his royal prisoner
to Spain, so taking him out of the hands of his allies.
Then came the breach between Charles V. and Henry
VIII., the marriage of Charles — so long intended but
kept secret— to the Infanta of Portugal, instead of to the
English Princess Mary ; the secret peace of Henry with
France. In 1526, followed the release of Francis on his
oath to observe conditions from which the Pope at once
formally absolved him. This produced a final breach
between the Emperor and the Pope, and an alliance
between the Pope and Francis against the Emperor.

It was at this moment that the Diet of Spires was
sitting. The Emperor had ordered that stringent measures
should be taken against the Lutheran heresy,
and that the Edict of Worms should be the Diet of
carried out. This was impossible. The new sPires-
Elector of Saxony, and those who sided with him, were
too strongly supported for such a course to be taken.
Now the breach between the Pope and the Emperor came
to their aid. The Emperor no longer cared to back up
the interests of a Pope who had quarrelled with him, and
the result of the Diet was a decree signed by Ferdinand,
the brother of Charles V., in the Emperor's stead, con-
taining the memorable clause, that ' Each state should,
as regards the Edict of Worms, so live, rule, and bear
itself as it thought it could answer it to God and the
Emperor.'

This . left the Catholic princes to do as they liked on
the one hand, and the princes who favoured Luther to do
as they liked on the other. From this decree of the Diet

152 The Protestant Revolution. pt. 11.

of Spires came the division of Germany into Catholic and
Protestant states.

This came out of the quarrel between the Pope and
Emperor. The next thing was the gathering of a Ger-
March of a man army under George Frundsberg, an army
German composed almost entirely of Lutherans, under

Rome. a Lutheran general, a host of discontented,

reckless men, who having survived the horrors of the
Peasants' War, were inspired by hope of plunder, and
inflamed by tne zeal of Frundsberg, who declared, ' When
I make my way to Rome, I will hang the Pope ! '

They crossed the Alps by a dangerous unguarded pass,
descended into the plains of Lombardy, and then joined
the Spanish army under the Duke of Bourbon. This was
in January 1527. A few weeks more, and the combined
army, 20,000 strong, was marching on Rome. Then came
delays, rumours of a truce, and the mutiny of the Spanish
soldiers for their long-withheld pay. Lastly, the German
soldiers also mutinied, in vexation at which the old vete-
ran general Frundsberg fell powerless under a shock of
paralysis. The army advanced under Bourbon, and then
followed the commencement of the siege of Rome ; the
death of Bourbon, shot as he was mounting a ladder ;
and — the rest shall be told in the graphic words, which
the brother of the Emperor's secretary Valdez put into the
mouth of an eye-witness in his ' Dialogue on the Sack
of Rome.'

1 The Emperor's army was so desirous to enter Rome,
The sack some to rob and spoil, others for the extreme
of Rome. hatred they bore to the Court of Rome, and
some both for the one and the other cause, that the Spani-
ards and the Italians on the one side by scale, and the
Germans on the other side by pickaxes breaking down the
wall, entered by the Borgo,on which side stands the Church
of St. Peter and the Holy Palace. Though those within

ch. v. Revolution. 153

had artillery and those without none, yet they entered with-
out the slaughter of a hundred of themselves. Of those
within were slain, some say 6,000, but in truth there died
not upon the entry above 4,000, for they immediately re-
tired into the city. The Pope in his own palace was so
careless that it was a wonder he was not taken, but seeing
how matters stood, he retired himself into the castle of
St. Angelo, with thirteen cardinals and other bishops and
principal persons who stayed with him. And presently
the enemies entered, and spoiled and sacked all that was
in the palace, and the like did they to the cardinals'
houses and all other houses within the Borgo, not sparing
any, no not the Church of the Prince of the Apostles !
This day they had enough to do without entering Rome,
whither our people, hoisting up the drawbridge, had re-
tired and fortified themselves. The poor Roman people,
seeing their manifest destruction, would have sent am-
bassadors to the army of the Emperor to have agreed
with him, and to have avoided the sack ; but the Pope
would by no means consent to it.

' The captains of the Emperor presently determined
to assault the city, and the very same night, fighting with
their enemies, they entered, and the sack continued more
than eight days, in which time they had no regard of
nation, quality, or kind of men. The captains did what
they could to stop it, but the soldiers, being so fleshed in
their robberies as they were, you should behold troops
of soldiers passing the streets with cries ; one carried
prisoners, another plate, another household stuff. The
sighs, groans, and outcries of women and children in all
places were so piteous that my bones yet shake to make
report of them. They carried no respect to bishops or
cardinals, churches or monasteries ; all was fish that
came into their net ; there was never seen more cruelty,
less humanity nor fear of God.

154 The Protestant Revolution. pt. n.

' They had no respect even to Spaniards and Ger-
mans, and other nations that were vassals and servants
to the Emperor. They left neither house, nor church, nor
man that was in Rome unsacked or ransomed, not even
the secretary Perez himself, who was resident at Rome
on behalf of the Emperor. Those cardinals who could
not escape with the Pope into the castle of St. Angelo
were taken and ransomed, and their persons full ill—
favouredly handled, being drawn through the streets of
Rome bare-legged. To make mocking of them, a Ger-
man, clothing himself like a cardinal, went riding about
Rome in his " pontificalibus," and a bottle of wine on the
pommel of his saddle, and then a Spaniard in the same
manner, with a courtezan behind him. The Germans
led a bishop of their own nation (who stood upon election
to have been a cardinal) to the market-place to be sold,
with a bough in his forehead, as they do when they sell
beasts.

' It is said that the sack of Rome amounted unto, by
ransoms and compositions, above 15 millions of ducats.
Churches were turned into stables. The Church of St.
Peter, both on the one side and the other, was all full of
horses ! Soldiers carried along the streets nuns from
monasteries and virgins from their father's houses, and
from the time that the Emperor's army entered Rome
till the time that I departed — the 12th June — there was
not a mass said in Rome, nor all that time heard we a
bell ring nor a clock. Not a priest or friar dared walk
in the streets except in garments of a soldier, else the
Germans would cry out, " A pope, a pope, kill, kill ! " '

This was what had corne to the Pope from the con-
spiracy of his predecessor with the Emperor at Worms,
— an imperial edict at the Diet of Spires, in 1526, leaving
the states of Germany virtually free to adhere to or sever
themselves from the ecclesiastical empire of Rome as

CH# v. Revolution. 1 55

they severally pleased ; —Rome sacked by a German
army in the Emperor's name, and more pitilessly pillaged
than it had been iooo years before by the Vandals ; —
the Pope a prisoner of the Emperor in the castle of St.
Angelo, and henceforth destined to act as the tool of his
imperial master, and to yield an enforced submission to
the supremacy of Spain !

We may take this result as marking an Resultofthe
epoch. Rome had for ever ceased to be the Papal
capital of Christendom. The old Roman form pollcy-
of civilisation radiating from Rome had finally given
place to a new form of civilisation, which would go on its
way independently of Rome, and which Rome was no
longer able either to inspire or to control.

156 Results of the Protestant Revolution, pt. hi.

PART III.

RESULTS OF THE PROTESTANT
REVOLUTION.

CHAPTER I.
revolts from rome.

In Switzerland and Germany.
(a) Meaning of Revolt from Rome.

We have now to trace how the Protestant Revolution re-
sulted in several national revolts from the ecclesiastical
empire of Rome.

But first, what did a national revolt from Rome mean?

It was the claiming by the civil power in each nation of

those rights which the Pope had hitherto

Meaning of ,. , . , . , nri J ,

Revolt from claimed within it as head of the great eccle-
Rome- siastical empire. The clergy and monks had

hitherto been regarded more or less as foreigners — i.e. as
subjects of the Pope's ecclesiastical empire. Where
there was revolt from Rome the allegiance of these
persons to the Pope was annulled, and the civil power
claimed as full a sovereignty over them as it had over its
lay subjects. Matters relating to marriages and wills still
for the most part remained under ecclesiastical jurisdic-
tion as before, but then, as the ecclesiastical courts them-

ch. i. Revolts from Rome. 157

158 Results of the Protestant Revolution, pt. hi.

selves became national courts and ceased to be Roman
or Papal, all these matters came under the control of the
civil power. Even in matters of religious doctrine and
practice and public worship, the civil power often claimed
the £nal authority hitherto exercised by the Pope.

Such being the meaning of revolt from Rome, it will
be clear at once that it was apolitical quite as much as and
A political sometimes more than a religious matter — an
change. assertion by the civil power in each nation of

that free independent national life which we noticed as
characteristic of the new order of things.

A study of the map showing ' the extent of the revolt
from Rome ' will illustrate this by another fact — viz. that
it was those nations which in the main are of
tonic nations Teutonic or German origin — Germany, Swit-
The^Ro- zerland, Denmark, Sweden, England, Scot-

manic na- land, and the Netherlands — which finally made
mained good their revolt from Rome. As the Ger-

underRome. mans uncier their great leader ' Hermann ' had,
1500 years before, been the first to make good their inde-
pendence from the old Roman Empire, so it was in the
nations which were of Germanic speech and origin that
revolt was made from papal Rome. On the other hand
those nations — Spain, France, and Italy — which had
long formed a part of the old Roman Empire, and were
Romanic in their languages and instincts, remained in
allegiance to the Pope.

There were no doubt many people in Spain, France,
and Italy who sympathised with the doctrines of the
Reformers, but there was no revolt, because these nations,
or the civil powers representing them, chose to remain
politically connected with Rome.

It is well to observe also how the turn the revolt took
in the revolting nations was in a great degree the result
of their political condition.

Thus in England, Denmark, Sweden, in which the

CH. I.

Revolts from Rome — Switzerland. 159

In some
nations there
was a na-
tional revolt.
In some di-
vided action
and civil
wars.

central power was strong enough to act for the nation

and to carry the nation with it, there was a

decisive national revolt from Rome ; while in

Switzerland and Germany, where practically

there was no central power capable of acting

for the nation as a whole, there were divisions

and civil wars within the nation, some of its

petty states at length revolting from Rome, and others

remaining under the ecclesiastical empire.

We will first take the case of these divided nations —
Switzerland and Germany — and then pass on to the
others.

ip) Th e Revolt in Switzerland ( 1 5 24- 1 5 3 1 ) .

Cantons enclosed, by Hack lines.

Districts jwt yeACairloiis enclosed 2/ cf.olitJ. lines.

The five "Forest | Cantons enclosed uy a strong line.

No nation was so absolutely without a central autho-
rity as the Swiss. Each canton was as independent of
the others for most purposes as the petty e . , .

r 1 t r r* „., - , , . bwitzerland

feudal states of Germany. When Machia- divided into
■velli complained of the divisions of Italy Cantons-

160 Results of the Protestant Revolution, ft. hi,

preventing its becoming a nation, he warned the Italians
of the danger of a country being i cantonized ' like Switzer-
land. But there was this difference between a Swiss
canton and a petty feudal state. In the Swiss canton
there was no feudal lord ; the people governed themselves.
It was not a feudal lordship, but a little republic of com-
munes and towns of the primitive Teutonic type, in which
the civil power was vested in the community.

If therefore in a Swiss canton the civil power took to

Civil power itself the ecclesiastical power hitherto held

vested in by the Pope, that power became vested in

the people, not, as in other countries, in the

prince or king.

Bearing this in mind, the history of the revolt from
Rome in Switzerland will be easily comprehended.

The Swiss reformer, Ulrich Zwingle, was born in
Ulrich 1484? and was the son of the chief man of his

iwissgre-the village. Well educated at Basle and Berne,
former. and after having taken his degree at the

university at Vienna, he became a curate in Canton
Glarus. The new learning had spread into Switzerland,
and Zwingle was one of its disciples. He studied Plato
and the New Testament in Greek, like Colet and Eras-
mus. Being sent into Italy twice as army preacher, he
saw the Swiss troops conquered at Marignano, and re-
turned home full of patriotic hatred of the system of hiring
out troops to fight other nations' battles. Then he settled
Settles at m Zurich and became a reformer ; preaching
Zurich. against indulgences, celibacy in the clergy r

and whatever else he thought could not be justified by the
New Testament.

Zurich as- ^s own canton> Zurich, under his in-

sumes to fluence, threw off the episcopal yoke of the

itself eccle-

siastical Bishop of Constance and assumed the ecclesi-

powers. astical authority to itself. The Zurich govern-

ch. i. Revolts from Rome — Switzerland. 161

ment authorised the use of their mother tongue instead of
Latin in public worship, burned the relics from the shrines
and altered the mode of administering the Bernedid
sacraments. So Zurich revolted from Rome the same
in 1524. Berne followed soon after; while soonater- •
the Forest Cantons — Lucerne, Zug, Schwitz, Uri, and Un-
terwalden — followed by Fribourg and the Valais, which
was not yet a Swiss canton, held to the old order of
things.

Some cantons going one way and some another, the
result was division and civil war, the Catholic cantons
calling in the aid of their ancient enemies
the House of Hapsburg. The civil war
lasted, off and on, for two or three years till, in 1531,
after Zwingle himself had fallen in battle, it was ended by
the peace of Cappel, at which it was decided peace 0f
that each canton should do as it liked, while Cappel, 1531.
in the districts which were dependent on the Swiss Con-
federation, and not to any particular canton, the majority
in each congregation should manage its own ecclesiastical
affairs. The map will show which cantons revolted from
Rome, and how the districts were divided in their action.

Zwingle was a true patriot. He wished to see the
Swiss a united nation ; and with that object he proposed
political as well as religious reforms which character
are now being carried out. He was rather a Zwingle.
disciple of Erasmus than of Luther He did not adopt the
strong Augustinian views of Luther. He also took freer
views respecting the sacraments. Luther, a slave in this
respect to the mere letter of Scripture, held by the words
' This is my body ' so strongly as to uphold
the doctrine of ' the real presence ' almost as reis withUai
fully as the Catholic party. Zwingle took Zwinsle-
wider views, treating the sacrament as a symbol. The
violent dogmatic intolerant spirit of Luther was never

M, H. M

162 Restdts of the Protestant Revolution, pt. in.

more painfully shown than in the dispute with Zwingle
on this subject. The bitter hatred he showed of Zwingle
and Erasmus was all of a piece with his violent feelings
against the poor peasants of Germany. Whilst doing
justice to the noble and heroic character of the great
German reformer, these things remind us that there
lingered in his mind much of the dogmatism and intole-
rance of the scholastic theologian.

We have seen how the German people suffered at the
commencement of the era because they had not yet become
a united nation ; and also how deep and widely spread
were their yearnings after national life and unity — peasants
crying out to the higher powers for protection from feudal
oppression — Luther and Hutten appealing to them to free
the German nation from the tyranny of the great ecclesi-
astical empire of Rome. Had Charles V. cared more for
Germany than his own selfish ambitions, and put himself
at the head of the strong national feeling, as Frederick of
Saxony wanted him to do at Worms, there was at least a
good chance of uniting Germany into a powerful and
prosperous nation. But he threw away the chance. We
have seen how the course taken by Charles V. and the
higher powers in the Diet of Worms produced a re-
volution which cost a hundred thousand lives. We have
The freedom now to see ^ow ^ divided Germany into two
of the Ger- hostile camps, brought upon her the horrors

man peasan- _ , _, . ^T , ,TT , - . ,

try post- of the Thirty Years' War, postponed for eight

venerations11 or ten generations the freedom of her peasan-
try, and left to our own times the realisation
Spires,1i526, of the yearnings of the German people after
l?\ e^ 1 ' national unity.

state to take J

its own The decision of the Diet of Spires in 1526

Luther.1 ° had already settled that each state of the Em-

en. i. Revolts from Rome — Germany. 163

pire should do as it thought best in the matter of the
edict against Luther.

As might be expected, those princes who sided with
Luther, and followed the lead of Saxony, at once took
reform into their own hands. Monasteries Hence arose
were reformed or suppressed, and their reve- Protestant

rr 7 states, with

nues turned to good account, either for edu- national
cational purposes, for supporting the preach- fromVome!e
ing of the gospel, or for the poor. Monks remained^
and nuns were allowed to marry, Luther him- Catholic.
self setting the example of marrying a nun. Divine
service was in part carried on in German, though Latin
was not entirely excluded. The youth were taught to
read in common schools and in the language of the Father-
land. Luther's German Bible and German hymns came
into popular use. In a word, in what were called the
* Evangelical States ' a severance was made from the
Church of Rome ; and national churches sprang up, rest-
ing on the civil power of each state for their authority
and adopting Lutheran doctrines. This was the result of
the decree of the first Diet of Spires and the Emperor's
quarrel with the Pope.

Meanwhile the Emperor, having settled his quarrel
with the Pope, returned to his loyalty to Rome, The second
and, taking advantage of this, the Papal party Diet of
succeeded, in the second Diet of Spires, in reversedthe
1529, in passing a decree re-enacting the J^}^
Edict of Worms, and forbidding all -further standing the
reform till a regular council was summoned. Se Protest-
The Lutheran princes protested against the ant PrInfces-
decree, and so earned the name of ' Protestants.'

Civil war would very likely have at once resulted from
this had not the Turks very opportunely made an attempt
to extend their empire westward by besieging Vienna.
The old dread which filled the minds of Christians at the

1 64 Results of the Protestant Revolution, pt. in,

beginning of the era came upon them again. Melanchthon^
who, with all his wisdom, still believed in astrology,,
watched the movements of the stars, and
averted by augured disastrous results from the approach
attacK?' °f a comet. Luther showed how thorough a
Vienna. German he was by counselling unity in the

moment of common danger. For a time Germany was
united again, but only till the Turks had retreated from
Vienna.

Charles V. had now reached the summit of his power.
He had conquered France, he had conquered the Pope,.
The Turks ne ^a<^ been crowned Emperor at Bologna.
driven back. He was now again reconciled with the Pope,
turns again and lastly, he had driven back the Turks. He
man here- ^ad only to conquer the heretics of Germany
tics. to complete the list of his triumphs. So he

came in person to the Diet of Augsburg in 1530 to ensure
by his presence the enforcement of the Edict of Worms.
Every effort was made to induce the Protestant princes
Diet of t0 submit I but, headed by John of Saxony and

Augsburg. Philip of Hesse, they maintained their ground.
burgCorf-S" Luther and Melanchthon were at Coburg,
fession.' near at hand, and drew up a statement of

Lutheran doctrines which was known henceforth as the
' Augsburg Confession.'

The Emperor at length gave them a few months to
consider whether they would submit ; if not, the decree
of the Diet was, that the Lutheran heresy
princes form should be crushed by the imperial power.
ofeschrnai ^he Protestant princes at once formed the
kaid for mu- < league of Schmalkalden ' for mutual defence.

tual defence. And ^.^ jn ^^ Qf Luther>s protest against

opposition to the civil power, would have at once led to
civil war, had not another Turkish invasion in 1532 again
diverted the attention of Charles V. and of Germany
from religious disputes.

ch. i. Revolts from Rome — Germany. ibi

During the life of Luther, the inevitable civil war was
postponed. Melanchthon used the delay for an attempt,
by argument and persuasion, to bring about a reconcili-
ation between Catholic and Protestant theologians. At
the council of Ratisbon, as we shall see by-and-by, a
theological peace was almost concluded ; but the schism
was too wide and deep to be healed so easily.

_ r / Civil war

Meanwhile, state after state went over to the postponed
Protestant side, and civil war became more LutifS's
and more imminent. The death of Luther in life>
1546 was the signal for its commencement. The Emperor
and Catholic princes, by means of Spanish soldiers, now
tried to reduce to obedience the princes of . .
the Schmalkald league. They conquered the soon after
Elector John Frederic of Saxony and the ^isd^th.
Landgrave of Hesse, leaders of the Lutheran party, and
proceeded to enforce by the sword a return to Catholic
faith and practice all over Germany.

Charles V. now appeared to the Lutheran party as
the Spanish conqueror of Germany. John Frederick of
Saxony and Philip of Hesse, the most beloved 0 . ,

- A - -, . Spanish

and truly German of German princes, were conquest of
sentenced to death, kept in prison, and bru- Germany-
tally treated. Germany, which Charles V. had sacrificed
at the Diet of Worms to secure his Spanish policy, was
now kept down by his soldiers, and humbled almost into
a Spanish province.

This was not the national unity which the German
people yearned after; it was subjugation to a foreign
yoke.

A few years of Spanish rule produced its natural
effect — revolt of the German princes, alliance even with
France ! and then came, with strange suddenness, the
defeat and flight of Charles V. He made an attempt to
regain part of the ground which the French had taken,

1 66 Results of the Protestant Revolution, pt. hi,

and then abdicated, leaving the empire to his brother
Ferdinand, Spain and the Netherlands to his son Philip
■ ' , II. Then followed his cloister life, his strange

Revolt of . : \ b

the Protes- remorse m consideration that he had not
Defeat'^ eS° averted all these evils by the timely destruction
Charles v.; 0f the heretic Luther at the Diet of Worms ;
tion and" and then at last the end of his strange, brilliant,
death- but misguided life in 1558.

The struggle of Charles V. with Germany ended in
the Peace of Augsburg (1555), with its legal recognition
m of the Protestant states and its wretched rule

The Peace - . .. . . ,. .

of Augsburg of mock toleration — cujus regio, ejus religio
te ri?ie of* — toleration to princes, with power to compel
mock toiera- their subjects to be of the same religion as
themselves ! It was a peace so rotten in its
foundation that out of it came by inevitable necessity
that most terrible chapter of German history, and perhaps
of any history — the Thirty Years' War — which cost Ger-
many, some say, half her population, robbed her citizens
of the last vestige of their political freedom, confirmed the
serfdom of her peasantry for two centuries more, and
left upon some of her provinces scars which may be
traced to-day.

Such terrible paths had the German people to tread
towards national freedom and unity. Ten generations
of Germans had to bear the curse brought
brought upon them, not by the Reformation, but by

ma°nybyr" those who opposed it — not by Luther, nor
Charles V. even by Miinzer and his wild associates, but
by the Emperor Charles V. and others of the higher
powers who sided with him when he sold the interests of
Germany and signed the treaty with the Pope on that
fatal 8th of May, 1 521, at the Diet of Worms.

ch. ii. Revolt of England from Rome. 167
CHAPTER II,

REVOLT OF ENGLAND FROM ROME.

(a) Its Political Character.
There were two points in which the revolt of England
from Rome differed from the revolt in Switzerland and
Germany.

(1) England was a compact nation with a strong-
central government; and so, instead of splitting into
parties and ending in civil war, revolted in England
altogether, the king and parliament acting; *he re^olt

T, , r • • , from Rome

together, and transferring to the crown the was national,
ecclesiastical jurisdiction hitherto exercised by the Pope
in England.

(2) In the Protestant states of Germany and cantons
of Switzerland, a religious movement had preceded and
caused the political change ; but in England and came at
the political change came first and the ^tfrom

, . , . ° . , political

change m doctrine and mode of worship long causes,
afterwards. The severance of England from Rome was
not the result of a religious movement, but of political
causes, which we must now trace.

ib) Reasons for Henry VI Ws Loyalty to Rome (1521).

Up to a certain point in his reign Henry VIII. held by
the Pope and opposed Luther. At the time of HenryVin.
the Diet of Worms he joined the league of the defends the

■t) j -,-, , ° divine autho-

fope and Emperor, not only against France, rityofthe

but also against Luther. Whilst the Diet of writes 7*

Worms was sitting, he wrote his celebrated book against

book against Luther and in defence of the ism."™

divine authority of the Pope — for doing which the

1 63 Results of the Protestant Revolution, pt. hi.

Pope rewarded him with the title of c Defender of the
Faith.'

His zeal in this matter was so eager as to surprise Sir
Thomas More, who, was now in Henry VIII.'s service.
When the king showed him the book, and he saw the
passages in defence of the divine authority of the Pope,
He tells Sir More (who himself doubted it, and had hinted
Thomas his doubts in his Utopia by making the

More of a se- TT . 1iri . A _. ' r . . .

cret reason Utopians talk of electing a Pope of their own)
for it. questioned with the king whether it was wise

to write so strongly on that point. ' Whereunto (More
says) his Highness answered me that he would in no wise
anything minish of that matter ; of which thing his High-
ness showed me a secret cause whereof I never had any-
thing heard before.'

Thereupon More studied the matter afresh, altered
his opinion, came to the conclusion that the Papacy was
of divine authority, and held that view so strongly ever
after, that at last he died rather than deny it. The reasons
which made Henry VIII. uphold the divine authority of
the Pope, are the clue to the history of the severance of
England from Rome afterwards.

What were they ?

We saw how the ruling idea of Henry VII. was to
establish himself and his heirs firmly on" the throne.
English kings had of late had such precarious thrones
that they lived in constant fear of rebellions and pretenders.
We saw how much Henry VII. relied on his foreign policy
and alliances to make his throne secure, and that the chief
Henry waY of making these alliances firm, in an age

viii.'s mar- of bad faith and Machiavellian policy, was by
CafheSne of royal marriages. Henry VII. knew Ferdi-
Arragon. nand of Spain would tell lies or break his oath

without remorse, but he also knew that if he could marry
his son and probable successor to Ferdinand's daughter,

ch. ii. Revolt of England from Rome. 1 69

Ferdinand would stick by him in close alliance in order
to secure that his daughter might some day be queen of
England. So Henry VII. had married his eldest son
Arthur, Prince of Wales, to Catherine of Arragon, and
when Arthur died, had strained a point to get Catherine
betrothed to his next son, Henry VIII.

Now there was a difficulty about this marriage. If the
marriage with Arthur was a merely formal marriage, then
it was only an ecclesiastical matter, and the Pope's con-
sent to Catherine's marriage with Henry might make all
right. But if it was a real marriage, then the
second marriage with Henry was held to be doubts about
contrary to the divine law, contained in the ltsvalldlty-
Book of Leviticus, by which such a marriage was sup-
posed to be forbidden : and so, in that case, the question
would be whether the Pope could set aside the divine law,
and make lawful what it forbad. To do this must cer-
tainly be a great stretch of the papal power, and it only
could be justified on the very high ground of the divine
authority of the Pope.

The betrothal of Henry to Catherine was from the
beginning a miserable affair. Its object was political. It
was his father Henry VI I. 's doing while he
was a boy ; and so doubtful, to say the least, factory be-
was. its validity to those who knew all about £inmn&-
it, that to Henry VII.'s superstitious mind the death of
his queen seemed a divine judgment upon it. He even
then, as we have seen, proposed to marry Catherine him-
self, but Ferdinand of Spain would not hear of it. A
bull was obtained from Pope Julius II., treating the ques-
tion of the reality of the former marriage as doubtful,
but, notwithstanding the doubts, sanctioning Catherine's
marriage with Henry. The betrothal was completed, but
the wary monarch made his son sign a secret protest
against it as soon as he was of age, so that he might at any

170 Results of the Protestant Revolution, pt. hi.

time set it aside if the turn of political events made it
expedient to do so. We must remember, however, that
some of these matters were court secrets, and would
never have been publicly known had not future events
brought them to light.

Upon the accession of Henry VIII. it was needful for
him to make up his mind about his marriage. The doubts
and difficulties remained the same as ever to those who
knew all about it, and it was not possible to dispel them.
But the alliance with Spain was still considered important.
And so the marriage with Catherine was concluded. The
public were told that the former marriage had never been
consummated, and that Henry VIII. was acting under
the sanction of a Papal bull. This silenced talk out of
doors, and the King smothered any secret doubts of his
own, relying on the divine authority of the Pope. So
the matter was concluded, and now for years had not
been questioned again. When, therefore, Luther's attack
upon the divine authority of the Pope was attracting at-
Its validity tention everywhere, we see that Henry VIII.
rested on the had serious reasons of his own for defending
authority of it. He knew in fact that the validity of his
the Pope. marriage, and the legitimacy of his children's
rights to succeed to the throne, depended upon it.

He had naturally been very anxious for "an heir, so
that his throne might be secure. Unless he had an heir,
Henry people must be thinking who willlje king next,

Inxiety and plotting to succeed to the throne. Henry

about it, and anc[ Catherine had had several children, but
sbn. Sl1 all had died except one — the Princess Mary —

And anxiety who, at the time of the Diet of Worms, was a
gookd terms child of four years old. On her alone the suc-
withthe cession depended, and Henry was anxious to

Pope and - \ t_ 1 n-

Charles V. secure it, as we have seen, by a close alliance
with the Pope and Spain, cemented by the marriage of

ch. n. Revolt of England from Rome. 171

the Princess Mary to Charles V. Henry VIII. knew that
the succession to the throne might at any time be made
very precarious indeed if he should ever quarrel with the
Papal and Spanish courts.

An event which happened about this time showed how
keenly alive Henry VIII. was to these anxieties about the
succession of the Princess Mary. He startled _

-1 1 1 11 1 1 ■ r 1 .Execution of

the world all at once by the execution of the the Duke of
Duke of Buckingham for treason ; for having ^Kj"1
his eye on the succession to the throne. The his eye upon
Duke, it was said, amongst other things, had sionSto the
been heard to speak of the death of the royal throne-
children as judgments on Henry and Catherine for their
marriage. This was enough to rouse royal suspicions,
and so, after a formal trial, he was found guilty of treason
and beheaded as a warning to others.

Probably the secret which Henry VIII. confided to
Sir Thomas More had something to do with the doubts
about the validity of the marriage, and opened Effect of
his eyes to the fact how the succession to the knowledge of
throne and the safety of the kingdom was in- viii.'s se-
volved in the question of the divine authority Thomas^
of the Pope. It set him, as we have said, More's
studying the fathers until he came to the con-
clusion that an authority which had so long been recog-
nized, and on which so much depended, must have divine
sanction. Having come to this conclusion,he was not likely
to be made more favourable to Luther than he otherwise
would have been. We have seen that the Oxford Re-
formers had from the first taken high ground on the neces-
sity of unity in the Christian Church. They had also

172 Results of the Protestant Revolution, ft. hi.

always been opposed to the Augustinian views which
Luther had adopted. They had agreed with Luther in
little but in the demand for a religious and ecclesiastical
reform.

Erasmus had refused to identify himself with Luther,
and while defending him up to a certain point against the
Papal party had urged upon him moderation. This ad-
vice Luther had not followed, and now Erasmus held
aioof from the Protestant struggle, urging moderation on
both sides, preaching unity; and going on quietly with his
own works, amongst which were fresh editions of his New
Testament.

It is not surprising, then, that when Luther wrote his
violent reply to Henry VIII.'s book, More should be
ready to defend it. He did so, and as time went on his
zeal against Luther grew by degrees almost into hatred.
As news of the wild doings of the prophets of Zwickau
and the horrors of the Peasants' War were reported in
England, More laid the blame on Luther. He regarded
him as a dangerous fanatic, scattering everywhere the
seeds of rebellion against the powers that be, whether
civil or religious.

He also urged his friend Erasmus to write against
Luther. In 1524, on the eve of the Peasants' War,
Reaction in Erasmus did write a book against Luther's
the minds of strong Au^ustinian views, in which he urged

Erasmus and , -j n c

More against that they were sure to lead to all sorts of
Luther. abuses in wilder hands. In the year of the

Peasants' War Sir Thomas More wrote an earnest letter
to one of Luther's supporters in Wittenberg, charging the
Lutheran movement with having lit the flame of sedition
and set Germany on fire.

It is sad to see good and noble men like More, blinded
by prejudice, unable to see the good and noble points
in a man like Luther, as well as his violence and errors.

ch. ii. Revolt of England from Rome. 173

But it was not unnatural. He dreaded lest the heresies
which had led in Germany to the Peasants' War, might
spread into England, and lest heresy and treason should
again be joined as in the days of the Lollards. His judg-
ment was no doubt to some extent carried away by his fears.
But we must recognise the sincerity of mental recoils
such as these in the lives of good men. Each class of
Reformers we have' seen to be suspicious of those who
went further and faster than they did themselves. Ho-
nest men of the old school blamed Erasmus for all that
happened. Erasmus, they said, had laid the egg, and
Luther had hatched it. Erasmus, in his turn, blamed
Luther's violent conduct and language. Luther again
denounced Miinzer and the wild prophets of revolution,
as well as the poor deluded peasants. If this was na-
tural, so was the recoil in the mind of Sir Thomas
More. We need not, however, regret it any the less on
that account.

(d) Reasons for Henry VI Ws change of 'Policy (1527).

Having thus seen that Henry VIII. from policy, and
More from conviction, were at this time strongly in favour
of the Pope and his divine authority, the next thing is to
mark how long Henry VIII. continued of this mind. The
answer is, just so loitg as his alliance with Spain con-
tinued.

During the wars of the Emperor, the Pope, and Henry
VIII. with France, Wolsey (now cardinal and legate, and
Archbishop of York, and soon after lord chancellor also)
was the war minister. It was he who knew Wolsey, the
the mind of Henry VIII. and carried on £™f
his secret negotiations with Charles V. and Henry yiu.
the Pope. It was he who managed the perfidy with
Francis I., and made what preparation was needful for

1 74 Results of the Protestant Revolution, pt. hi.

royal meetings, embassies, and wars. It was Wolsey,
too, who had to manage parliaments, and urge them to
grant subsidies to pay for the wars, and when he could get
no more money from Parliament it was Wolsey who
proceeded to get it by illegal means, such as forced con-
tributions from private persons called ' benevolences.'
More More was a novice on the privy council,

the wars with anc^ holding Utopian views, often in a minority
France. against Wolsey's measures. Once he was

alone in disapproval of the great minister's plans. Wolsey
hinted that he must be a fool. ' God be thanked,' replied
More, ' that the king has but one fool in his council ! '

It mattered little to the king or Wolsey what he
thought, but More took care to let the king know that
England's joining in the wars with France was against his
judgment.

Wolsey's and Henry's confidence in Charles V. was
shattered by degrees. First came the perfidy of Charles
Charles v.'s V. in not helping to secure the election of
perfidy. Wolsey as Pope on the death of Leo X. and

afterwards of Adrian VI. Then came the continuance of
the war against France, under the Duke of Bourbon, who
flattered Henry with hopes of regaining in case of victory
And the *h-e ^ost English provinces in France. Next

Pope's. came Pope Clement VII.'s fast and loose

game with the allied sovereigns ; and lastly, the battle of
Pavia. Of these events we have spoken in a previous
chapter.

On hearing the news of the capture of Francis I. at
the battle of Pavia, Henry VIII. proposed that he himself
should be king of France and Charles V. marry the
Princess Mary, so that in her right Charles V. might
some day become lord of all Christendom. Up to this
moment he had clearly not changed his mind. He still
wished to continue the Spanish alliance, and was true to

ch. ii. Revolt of England from Rome. 175

Catherine and the Princess Mary. But just as his hopes
were at their highest point they vanished for ever.
Charles V. let Francis I. resume his throne on conditions
which the Pope declared to be null and void. Charles V.,
instead of marrying the Princess Mary, married the
Infanta of Portugal, and Henry found himself Henry
betrayed. Charles V. and the Pope, on whose yn.i.'s

foreign.

alliance so much depended, had now both policy all at
escaped from his control. When, by the con- sea again>
quest of Rome, the Pope himself soon after became
Charles V.'s prisoner and tool, Henry VIII.'s foreign
politics were indeed all at sea.

(e) The Crisis — Henry VIII. determines upon the Divorce
from Catherine of Arragoh (1527-15 29).

Now look at Henry VIII.'s position. Mary was still
his only child. There had never yet been a queen on the
throne of England. He could no longer rely Results f
on Charles V. and the Pope. They at any breach with
time, and for political purposes, and in spite of pam'
Henry, could dispute the legitimacy of his only daughter.
Once more the succession to the throne was uncertain,
and in its nature the uncertainty could not be cured.
What was he to do ?

He resolved to take the bull by the horns, to divorce
himself from Catherine of Arragon, to disinherit Mary, to
marry a young maid of honour, named Anne -poYaacaX
Boleym and to hope for other heirs to the reasons for

- , , , .,. r • the divorce

crown. It was a bold policy, for marriage from
was a matter which belonged to the ecclesias- Cathenne-
tical empire, and so the divorce required the Pope's con-
sent. Wolsey set his wits to work to secure the Pope's
sanction to the divorce. He got his own ecclesiastical
power as legate increased by the Pope, ar>4 Cardinal

iy6 Results of the Protestant Revolution, pt. hi.

Campeggio over from Rome to join him in deciding on

the validity of the marriage. He tried every means to

secure the divorce required by Henry. He

Wolsey tries T1 . -, ..TT , ., -

to get the had no notion of destroying in Henry's mind
grant a° ^e PaPa* authority which as legate he wielded

divorce, but in part, and as pope still hoped some day to
wield entirely. Had he succeeded in ob-
taining the papal sanction, there would have been no
breach with Rome. But he failed. The Pope, at the
Henry VIII. bidding of his Spanish conqueror, made end-
takes the less delays ; and Campeggio returned without

matter into , . , , . . , . . ,

his own having settled anything. At last, in spite ot

hands- all that Wolsey could do, Henry VIII. de-

termined to marry Anne Boleyn, and took the matter
into his own hands. "

This involved a deliberate breach with Rome and the
fall of Wolsey. Henry VIII. made up his mind to face
both.

(/) Fait of Wolsey (1529-1530).

Cardinal Wolsey had been the very type of an over-
grown ecclesiastical potentate. Second to none but the
Fall of king, he had assumed to himself a vice-

Woisey. regal magnificence and state. And now

/ that ecclesiastical grievances had come to the top, and,
above all, the king himself was quarrelling with the Pope,
Wolsey became a sort of scapegoat for both ecclesiastical
and papal sins. He was condemned formally for having
used his legatine and ecclesiastical authority contrary to
the law of the land. But the king had so far connived
at and sanctioned the very things for which he was now
condemned, and used them for his own purposes, that he
could hardly deal very harshly with his old minister. He
left him his archbishopric of York, to which he returned
in 1530. There he resumed some of his old state, but by

ch. ii. Revolt of England from Rome. 177

his attempts to obtain popularity amongst the Northern
nobles again excited the fears of the court. Messengers
were sent down to arrest him for treason, and he was
on his journey to London to answer the charge, when,
seized by a fever, he died at Leicester Abbey, having first
given utterance to the famous words, ' Had I served my
God as I have served my king, he would not have given
me over in my gray hairs !' Henry VIII. was not con-
spicuous for gratitude to his ministers !

(g) The Parliament of 15 29- 1536. Revolt of England
from Rome.

Wolsey was dismissed in 1529. Hitherto the chief
ministers and lord chancellors of kings of England had
been ecclesiastics. This rule was now broken
through. The Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk More lord
were made chief ministers and Sir Thomas chancellor-
More lord chancellor. Lastly, a parliament was called.

A crisis had come in English history. The parliament
of 1529-36 was to England what the Diet of Worms might
have been to Germany. The English Com- Parliament
mons made use of this parliament, as the AcnsSln
Germans did of the Diet of Worms, to make English his-
complaints against the clergy and the ecclesi- Diet \i
astical courts. For a long time the people of J£™snin
England, like the Germans, had resisted the history.
power of the ecclesiastical empire. The freedom of the
clergy from the jurisdiction of the secular courts on the
one hand, the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical Compiajn
courts on the other hand over laymen in such against the
matters as marriages, probates of wills, and ecdesiastical
the distribution of property amongst the next abuses-
of kin on the death of the owner, were real and longstand-
ing grievances. The clergy, by their ecclesiastical courts,

M. H. N

178 Results of the Protestant Revolution, pt. in.

harassed and taxed the people beyond endurance. The
character of the clergy and monks was also grievously
Wolsey's complained of. Wolsey had sought, as Cardi-

attempts at naj Morton had done before him, to reform

ecclesiastical . _ '

reform under theseabuses. Himself a cardinal and legate, he
papa aut o- -^^ sought powers from the Pope to repress the
„. n . evils ; to visit and even suppress some of the

The king ' • j , ■,

and parlia- worst of the monasteries and correct the clergy ;
Ske'iipThe and his scheme, partly carried out, was to
matter. found new sees and colleges at the universities

out of the proceeds. This was all very well, but it never
went far enough to be of much use, and now the time of
reformation under papal authority was passed. Both
king and parliament were in a mind to undertake them-
selves the needed ecclesiastical reforms.

Before parliament was prorogued in 1529 acts were
passed fixing at reasonable sums the amounts to be de-
manded for probate of wills and funeral fees, prohibiting
the clergy from engaging in secular business, or holding
too many benefices, and obliging them to reside in their
parishes.

These were matters of practical reform, such as Colet
had urged in his sermon to convocation in 15 11. He
Practical had urged that the clergy in convocation

reforms. should take up these reforms, and reform them-

selves. They had let eighteen years slip by without doing
it, and now the bolder power of Parliament was over-
ruling their feeble opposition.

Meanwhile the divorce question went into another
phase. Cranmer now came on to the scene. He was
The divorce soon to be the chief ecclesiastical adviser of
question laid Henry VIII. He consulted the chief univer-

before the . . _ _ , r _ T , .

Universities sities of Europe on the power of Pope J uhus to
by Cranmer. dispense ^yfth ^q divine law, and so upon the
validity of the marriage with Catherine. The Universi-

ch. ii. Revolt of England from Rome. 179

ties gave their opinions very much according to the in-
fluence brought upon them. The English and French
were most in favour of Henry VII I.'s views. The opinions
were laid before parliament in 1531, but nothing further
was done that year.

Further complaints against ecclesiastical grievances
were now made by the Commons to the king. The king
submitted them to the bishops, at the same
time requiring that henceforth no new law
should be passed by the clergy in convoca-
tion, any more than in parliament, without his
royal consent.

In successive sessions this celebrated
proceeded step by step with ecclesiastical
reforms. The greatest of all legislative
scandals, benefit of clergy, was curtailed. Payment of
annates to Rome was forbidden. Appeals
to Rome were abolished. Heretics were still
to be burned, but speaking against the Pope
was declared no longer to be heresy. The
king's assent was made necessary to ecclesi-
astical ordinances. The Pope's jurisdiction
in England was abolished and transferred to the king.
Lastly he assumed the title of supreme head on earth of
the Church of England, which was finally confirmed by
Parliament in 1534.

The king meanwhile determined to deal with his own
marriage. In defiance of the Pope, he married The king
AnneBoleyn in January 1532-3. The marriage
with Catherine was declared null and void by
Cranmer, now Archbishop of Canterbury, and
by act of parliament. Thus the breach with
Rome was complete. England had, in fact,
revolted from the ecclesiastical empire, by the joint action

Petition

of the

Commons

against

ecclesiastical

grievances.

parliament

Further
reforms.

The king
declared
supreme
head of the
Church of
England
instead of
the Pope.

marries
Anne
Boleyn.
The revolt
of England
from Rome
is now com-
pleted.

I So Results of the Protestant Revolution, pt. in.

of king and parliament, and with the assent, however re- -
luctant, even of the clergy.

(h) Heresy still punished in England.

Now it will be observed that all this came to pass ± ,
without any change of religious creed, without England ,Wv%
becoming Lutheran or Protestant. All the while heresy
was a crime against which king and parliament and
There had clergy were equally severe. The breach with
cSre°of Rome made no difference on this point, ex-
religious cept that speaking against the Pope was no
^ee '. .„ longer heresy. There was as stern a deter-

Heretics still . . ■ , ,

persecuted, mination as ever to prevent the spread of
ThemTS/, heres7 in England. Wolsey's dying advice
the transk- to Henry VIII. in November 1530 was not to

tor of the - , / . . _ "\r T ,

New Testa- let the new pernicious sect of the Lutherans
ment. spread in England. Tindal, the noble single-

minded man to whom we owe the first printed transla-
tion of the New Testament into English, was all this while
watched and tracked and persecuted from place to place
as a dangerous foe. Fired with zeal by reading the New
Testament of Erasmus, to give the English people access
to its truths in the ' vulgar tongue/ he pursued his ob-
ject with a heroism and patriotism which should make his
name dear to Englishmen. Strange was it that one of
his persecutors was Sir Thomas More, who, in his ' Uto-
pia,' had expressed views in favour of religious toleration.
It was just after the sack of Rome that More pub-
lished his opinion that heresy, being dangerous to the
Sir Thomas state, ought to be punished in England, lest
against 2eal ^ should lead to similar results to those it had
heresy. fe(j t0 on the Continent. It was only a few

months after, that when, on the fall of Wolsey in 1529, he
was made lord chancellor, he had to swear by his oath of
office, amongst other things, to carry out the laws against

ch. ii. Revolt of England from Rome. 181

heresy. He became now, by virtue of his office, the public
prosecutor of heretics. The bishops were his most active
police, and ever and anon poor men were handed over to
him for examination and legal punishment. The times
were barbarous. Torture was used in the examination
of criminals and of heretics also, and, it can hardly be
doubted, even in the presence of Sir Thomas More. Yet,
in a certain way, More's gentleness showed itself even in
persecution. By the law of the land, heretics must abjure
or be burned. More tried hard to save both their bodies
and souls. He used every means in his power to induce
them to abjure. During the first two years of his chan-
cellorship he staved off the evil day. Every single heretic
abjured; no single fire had yet been lit in Smithfield
during his rule ; but, in the last six months of it, three
abjured heretics relapsing into heresy were burned under
his authority, the dying martyrs' prayers rising from the
stake, 'May the Lord forgive Sir Thomas MoreP 'May
the Lord open the eyes of Sir Thomas More ! '

Strange was it that during these sad months, while
More was persecuting others for conscience sake, he him-
self had to choose between his own conscience and
death.

(z) Execution of Sir Tho77ias More (1535).
We have seen that he had come to the conviction that
the Pope was head of the Church by divine authority.
He had held his post of Lord Chancellor so More him_
long as the action of Parliament involved self has to
only the much needed reform of ecclesias- Conscience
tical abuses — till 1532. But so soon as, in sake-
1532, he saw the breach with Rome was inevitable, and
that Henry VIII. would delay no longer, he resigned the
seals and retired into the bosom of his home at Chelsea
■ — that home which Erasmus had made known all over

1 82 Results of the Protestant Revolution, PT. in.

Europe as a pattern in respect of domestic virtue, culture^
and happiness.

More had firmly told the king that he disapproved of
the divorce, both before and after he was lord chancellor.
He declined to be present at Anne Boleyn's coronation ;
and when warned and threatened by order of the king?
his brave reply was that threats were arguments for
children, not for him. When the oath acknowledging
Anne Boleyn as the lawful wife of Henry VIII. was ad-
ministered to him, he refused to take it. Bishop Fisher
alone among the whole bench of bishops did
Fisher sent the same. More and Fisher were therefore

tothe Tower. sent tQ the Tower>

Himself in prison for conscience sake, More's thoughts
turned to the heretics against whom he had been so
zealous ; and he left a paper for his friends warning them
if ever, by reason of their office, they had to punish others,
not to let their zeal outrun their charity. It was, per-
haps, a confession that it had been so with him. He pon-
dered also on the divisions in the Church, and expressed
his hopes that after all there might be a reconciliation
between Catholics and Protestants.

His wife visited him in prison, and reminded him of
his home and his peril in not taking the oath. < Good
Mistress Alice,' he replied to her, c tell me one thing : Is
not this house as nigh heaven as mine own ? '

His beloved daughter Margaret Roper visited him
often, and the story of his love for her and her daughterly
affection for him, has become a favourite theme of his-
torians, painters, and poets.

His trial, like that of the Duke of Buckingham, was a
typical Tudor trial. It was not a question of guilt or
innocence, but of state necessity. Anne Boleyn's star
being in the ascendant, Sir Thomas More and Bishop
Fisher must die.

This is Mr. Froude's account of More's death :

ch. ii. Revolt of 'England from Rome. 183

' The four days which remained to him he spent in
1 prayer, and in severe bodily discipline. On the night of

* the 5th of July, although he did not know Executicn of
' the time which had been fixed for his exe- Sir Thomas

' cution, yet, with an instinctive feeling that
' it was near, he sent his daughter Margaret his hair-
( shirt and whip, as having no more need of them, with a
' parting blessing of affection.

1 He then lay down and slept quietly. At daybreak
' he was awoke by the entrance of Sir Thomas Pope, who
' had come to confirm his anticipations, and to tell him
' that it was the king's pleasure that he should suffer at
'9 o'clock that morning. He received the news with
'utter composure. "I am much bounden to the king,"
1 he said, " for the benefits and honours he has bestowed
' " upon me ; and, so help me God, most of all am I
' "bounden to him that it pleaseth his Majesty to rid
'. " me shortly out of the miseries of this present world."

' Pope told him the king desired he would not use

* many words on the scaffold. " Mr. Pope," he answered,
' " you do well to give me warning ; for, otherwise, I had
1 " purposed somewhat to have spoken, but no matter
1 " wherewith his grace should have cause to be offended.
' " Howbeit, whatever I intended, I shall obey his High-
' " ness' command."

' He afterwards discussed the arrangements for his
1 funeral, at which he begged that his family might be
' present ; and when all was settled, Pope rose to leave
1 him. He was an old friend. He took More's hand
' and wrung it, and, quite overcome, burst into tears.

' " Quiet yourself, Mr. Pope," More said, " and be not
1 " discomfited, for I trust we shall once see each other
1 " full merrily, when we shall live and love together in
1 " eternal bliss."

' So about 9 of the clock he was brought by the

184 Results of the Protestant Revolution, et. 111.

lieutenant out of the Tower, his beard being long,
which fashion he had never before used — his face pale
and lean, carrying in his hands a red cross, casting his
eyes often toward heaven. He had been unpopular as
a judge^ and one or two persons in the crowd were in-
solent to him ; but the distance was short, and soon
over, as all else was nearly over now.

' The scaffold had been awkwardly erected, and shook
as he placed his foot upon the ladder. " See me safe
11 up," he said to Kingston ; " for my coming down I
" can shift for myself." He began to speak to the
people, but the sheriff begged him not to proceed ; and
he contented himself with asking for their prayers, and
desiring them to bear witness for him that he died in
the faith of the holy Catholic Church, and a faithful
servant of God and the king. He then repeated the
Miserere Psalm on his knees ; and when he had ended
and had risen, the executioner, with an emotion which
promised ill for the manner in which his part would be
accomplished, begged his forgiveness. More kissed
him. " Thou art to do me the greatest benefit that I
" can receive," he said ; " pluck up thy spirit, man, and
" be not afraid to do thine office. My neck is very
" short ; take heed, therefore, that thou strike not awry
" for saving of thine honesty." The executioner offered
to tie his eyes. " I will cover them myself," he said ;
and, binding them in a cloth which he had brought
with him, he knelt and laid his head upon the block.
The fatal stroke was about to fall, when he signed for a
moment's delay, while he moved aside his beard.

{ " Pity that should be cut," he murmured, " that has
" not committed treason." With which strange words —
the strangest, perhaps, ever uttered at such a time — the
lips famous through Europe for eloquence and wisdom
closed for ever.'

ch. ii. Revolt of England from Rome. 185

ik) Death of Erasmus (.1536).

The news of the death of Sir Thomas More in 1535
reached Erasmus in old age and suffering from illness,
but labouring still with his pen to the last.

tt •• ii -!•-!->• r 1 Erasmus

He was writing a book on the ' runty of the dies soon
Church/ and in the preface he described his after*
friend as i a soul purer than snow.' He lived only a few
months longer, died in 1536, and was buried in the
cathedral at Basle with every token of respect.

Not forty years had passed since Erasmus had first
met Colet at Oxford, and since the three Oxford students,
whom for the sake of distinction we have
called the Oxford Reformers, joined heart the Oxford
and soul in that fellow-work which had caught faedfo™!rs
its inspiration from Florence. How much duced great
had come out of their fellow-work ! Colet,
the one who brought the inspiration from Florence, had
died in 15 19, before the crisis came. But even then the
work of the Oxford Reformers was already in one sense
done. They had sown their seed. The New Testament
of Erasmus was already given to the world, and nothing
had so paved the way for the Protestant Reformation as
that great work had done. Since Colet's death, Erasmus
and More had never met. Each had taken his own
line. More had recoiled in fear far more than Erasmus.
After the Peasants' War and the sack of Rome, Erasmus
still preached tolerance on the one hand, and satirized
the monks and schoolmen on the other hand. And his
satire was just as bitter in these later writings as it had
been in the ' Praise of Folly.' But he too, like More,
held on to their old hatred of schism, preached concord
to the Church, and 1c
the contending parties.

1 86 Results of the Protestant Revolution, pt. in.

(/) Dissolution of the Monasteries, and Reform of the

U7iiversities (1536).

The bitter satire of Erasmus upon the monks bore fruit

sooner than he himself expected, and especially in Eng-

The work set lan^« The necessity of a thorough reform in

a going by the monasteries was now everywhere acknow-

the Oxford . 1 .. , . . ..

Reformers ledged, and there was no longer any reason to
goes on. wa^t £or jjuijg fr0m Rome before beginning the

work. The king was in a mood to humble the monks.
The bishops and secular clergy had bowed their heads to
the royal supremacy. The time now of the monks and
abbots had come.

Within a few months of More's death, a commission

was issued by Thomas Cromwell (the minister

Cromwell, ^ was now vicegerent of the new royal

now ecclesi- ° ■*

astical minis- ecclesiastical authority), for a general visitation

ter of Henry _ , .

viiL, en- of the monasteries.

T^tate'of ^e P°Pular complaints against them were

the monas- not found to be baseless. Scandal had long
been busy about the morals of the monks.
The commissioners found them on enquiry worse even
than scandal had whispered, and reported to Parliament
that two-thirds of the monks were leading vicious lives
under cover of their cowls and hoods.

Erasmus, in his 'Colloquies/ had spread all over
Europe his suspicions that the relics by which the monks
attracted so many pilgrims, and so much wealth in offer-
ings to their shrines, were false and their miracles pre-
. , - „ tended. He had visited and described both

And into .

shrines and the two great English shrmes of ' St. Thomas
rehcs' a Becket ' and ' Our Lady of Walsingham/

and had dared to hint that the congealed milk of the
Virgin exhibited at the one was a mixture of chalk and
white of egg, and that the immense wealth of the other
would be of more use if given to the poor. The result of

ch. ii. Revolt of England from Rome. 1S7

the royal enquiry convinced Henry VIII. that the 'milk of
our Lady5 was ' chalk or white lead/ and that Thomas
a Becket was no saint at all, but a rebel against the royal
authority of Henry II.

The result of the visitation was the dissolution at once
of the smaller, and a few years afterwards of Dissolution
the larger monasteries, the monks being ofthemonas-
pensioned off, and the remainder of their vast destruction
estates being vested in the king. of shrines.

The universities as well as the monasteries were visited
by the Commissioners, and that reform was carried out
at the universities which Colet, forty years be- Reform of
fore, had begun at Oxford; a reform which theUniver-
converted them from schools of the old into
schools of the new learning. ' The learning of the whole-
some doctrines of Almighty God and the three tongues,
Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, which be requisite for the
understanding of Scripture/ were specially enjoined, while
the old scholastic text-books became waste paper and
were treated as such.

These were the final labours of the memorable Parlia-
ment which began in 1529, accomplished the „ ,.

n . ^a , y} r .. , , Parliament

revolt from Rome, and was now dissolved 0f 1529-36

in 1536. dissolved.

One step further the Reformation went under Cran-
mer and Cromwell. In 1536 the Scriptures Tindai's
themselves, in the English translation of Sable11 °f
Tindal, revised and completed by Coverdale, sanctioned.
were ordered to be placed in every church, and the clergy
were instructed to exhort all men to read them. Thus
England owes the basis of her noble translation of the
Bible to William Tindal. He lived to see it Martyrdom
thus published by royal authority, but soon of Tindal.
after fell a victim to persecution in Flanders, and ended-
his heroic life in a martyr's death.

1 88 Results of the Protestant Revolution, pt. hi.

(//*) Later Years of Henry VIII. (1536-1547).
In 1536 Queen Catherine died, and in the same year
the still more miserable Anne Boleyn was
of Anne divorced, and, with the partners of her alleged

Boleyn. g^ beheaded.

The sole offspring of this ill-fated marriage was the
Princess Elizabeth, and she now, like the Princess Mary,
was declared illegitimate, and thus the succession was
again uncertain.

Henry viii. To meet this difficulty the king married

TanTse - ^is tmrd queen, Jane Seymour, and parlia-
mour. ment settled the succession upon her offspring,

and in default of a direct heir, upon such person as Henry
VI I L should name in his will.

Meanwhile, this time of renewed unsettlement was
chosen by the papal party for a general rebellion, known
A Catholic as ' The Pilgrimage of Grace.' Reforms had
rebellion gone too fast for many. It was not to be

inetheS °U expected that so great a change should meet
North, wtih no opposition. It would have been

strange if Sir Thomas More and Bishop Fisher had been
the only martyrs on the papal side. The rebellion was
chiefly in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire. It was headed by
some of the old aristocracy, and no' doubt was fomented
by the issue just before of a papal bull of excommunication
fomented by against Henry VIII., and by expectations of
Sd rS- foreign aid. Reginald Pole, a relation of the
naidPote. king's, and afterwards legate and Cardinal
Archbishop of Canterbury under Queen Mary, did his
best, under papal encouragement, to bring about a holy
war against England, and thereby enforce obedience to
the papal power. But these schemes of war
is que e . from ^^0^ came to nought, and the insur-
rection within was promptly met and quelled. The royal

ch. ii. Revolt of England from Rome. 1 89

supremacy was vindicated by the execution of the chief
rebels, and the Catholic reaction thus postponed till the
days of Queen Mary.

Probably the birth at this moment of a long-desired
prince (afterwards Edward VI.), did as much as the
execution of the rebels to assure the stability Birth of
of Henry's throne. But it cost the life of the ^^f^ 0/
queen-mother, and made another marriage a the Queen,
state necessity. While Cromwell was pursuing his
policy, dissolving the remaining monasteries, Henry vni.
demolishing the shrines of Walsingham and ^nneof
Canterbury, and transferring their wealth to the Cleves,
royal exchequer, he had once more to arrange a match for
Henry. His choice fell upon Anne of Cleves, a connexion
of the Elector of Saxony. It fell in with Cromwell's
policy to use the opportunity to bring about a Protestant
alliance, and Henry married in 1539 Anne of Cleves.

But how was it likely that he should fall in love with
a fourth wife who was plain-looking and spoke not a word
of English ? He soon was weary of his new but does
match, and as Wolsey was sacrificed to secure like her.
the divorce of Catherine, so Cromwell was now sacri-
ficed to secure a divorce from Anne of Cleves. Cromwell
Another Tudor trial, with less show of justice t^rfdof t0
even than those of the Duke of Buckingham her.
and Sir Thomas More, paved the way for the state ne-
cessity. Cromwell, like Cranmer, had been all along half
a Protestant at heart. Unless he had been, he could
hardly have carried through as he did for the king, the
successful revolt of England from the ecclesiastical empire
01 Rome. The king had profited by that, but he now
(meant to profit by Cromwell's fall. So Cromwell died
upon the scaffold as a traitor.

Henry was soon rid of Anne of Cleves. The Pro-
testant alliance fell through. A sort of reconciliation was

190 Results of the Protestant Revolution, pt. in.

made with Charles V., who naturally hated Cromwell
more even than he had distrusted Wolsey. And a sort
Reconcilia- °^ c°l°ur °- religion was given to the whole
tion with proceeding by the more stringent repression
of those heresies towards which the fallen
minister was said to have been unduly lenient. This
was in 1540.

The king now married the guilty and unfortunate
Catherine Howard, whose turn to die on the scaffold
Henry came (so soon !) in 1 542 ; and then at last

viii. 's last came the final marriage with Catherine Parr,

two mar- _ ° '

riages. a virtuous widow, who proved an honourable

and efficient royal nurse during the king's few remaining
years.

These years of his decaying health were marked by
the renewal of the alliance with Charles V. and breaches
Alliance of peace with Francis I. Henry's foreign

with Spam, p0iiCy ended as it had begun under the

and wars f J _ to

with France, shadow of Spanish ascendancy, threatened
English invasion of France, French retaliative invasions
of England, and financial difficulties which always fol-
lowed in the wake of war. The treasures of Henry VII.
sufficed not to supply the means for Henry VIII.'s
Want of early wars with France. So again, in spite of

money. the wealth which came to the Crown from the

dissolution of monasteries and the destruction of the
shrines, the king in his last years found himself with an
empty exchequer, and obliged to debase the coinage to
Death of obtain the supplies he wanted. He died in
Henry viii. Jan. 1 547 — the year after the death of Luther,
just as civil war broke out in Germany, and
Charles V. set about conquering Germany with his
Spanish soldiers.

While Germany was passing through this struggle,
England was becoming more and more Protestant, under

ch. ii. Revolt of England from Rome. 191

the guidance of Cranmer, who managed the Reform goes
ecclesiastical affairs of England in the short {£. reigrfof
reign of Edward VI. Edward VI;

But a reaction was to follow. On Edward VI. 's
death in 1553 the Princess Mary became Catholic
queen. A Catholic herself, and the wife of reacti°n

x 7 under Queen

Philip II. of Spain, she restored the Papal Mary.
faith in England, and tried to quench the English

Protestant spirit in blood. But she died in 1558 — the
same year as Charles V. — and under her

successor, the Protestant Queen Elizabeth, becomes

the revolt of England from Rome became fjotestant

once for all an established fact. Thence- under Queen

forth, both in politics and in doctrine, Eng- lza et '
land was a Protestant state.

(n) Influence of Henry VIIIJs reign on the English
Constitution.

It has been sometimes said that Henry VIII.'s reign
was the reign of a tyrant, and that during his reign the
English parliament was subservient and cring-

. &^ ^ , S How far the

mg to the monarch. constitution

To judge of this matter rightly we must J^j*}3"1"
remember that England was passing through
a great crisis in her history which we have likened to that
which was marked by the Diet of Worms in German
history. How different the English from the German
result ! At the Diet of Worms the Emperor The revolt
and princes acted in opposition to the Ger- from Rome

. accom-

man people ; the necessary reforms were not plishedby
made, and so there came revolution. In the tionaitU*
parliament of 1529-36 the king and House means,
of Commons acted together, and made the necessary
reforms ; the clergy submitted to them when they saw
they must, the dissolution of the monasteries removed

tg2 Results of the Protestant Revolution, pt. m.

the abbots from the House of Lords and placed the lay
lords in a majority, and so in the end England was freed
from the yoke of the ecclesiastical empire of Rome by
constitutional means, without the revolutions and civil
wars whicn followed in Germany.

That such a revolution was peaceably wrought by
The owerof Parnament under the guidance of the king's
parliament ministers, Cromwell and Cranmer, was a fact
maintained. ^fcjj sustained by most important precedents
the power of parliament in the constitution.

During his wars, Henry VIII.'s ministers, especially
Wolsey, resorted to benevolences and forced loans to
It preserved obtain supplies. But the fall of Wolsey,

its control j j t occasions the sanction of par-

over taxa- m c

tion. liament obtained afterwards by way of indem-

nity for acts admitted to be illegal, kept up the con-
stitutional principle that the king could levy no taxes
without the consent of parliament. The real struggle on
this matter came in the days of the Stuarts.

The new ecclesiastical powers of the king as supreme
head of the Church gave rise to new branches of juris-
. . , diction, some of which were of a dangerous

And over the . ' °

making of kind. Parliament also, by statute, gave to the
new aws. king's proclamation, within a very restricted
range, the force of statutes, but this was repealed in
the next reign. And on the whole, the second great
constitutional principle on which English freedom is
based was well maintained ; viz., that the king could
make no new laws without consent of parliament.

Bearing these things in mind it would be hard to
On the deny that the parliaments of Henry VIII.

whole the deserve tolerably well of Englishmen, con-

parhaments J -.,-'..;•

of Henry sidermg the greatness of the crisis through
serve" well of which the bark of the state had to be steered

Englishmen. }n t}ie}r t}me.

ch. in. Denmark and Sweden. 193

The greatest blots upon the reign of Henry VIII. were
the unjust trials for treason by which the most faithful
of ministers were sacrificed to clear away Unjust _
obstacles to royal policy, and the way in t?echiefals
which justice was sacrificed to the personal bl?fc on _the
wishes or even passions of the king in con- Henry vin.
nexion with his unhappy matrimonial caprices.

These things will always stain the memory of Henry
VIII., but regarding his reign as a whole it would be
unfair to forget that in it a great crisis was England
passed through without civil war, which left fared much
England freed from the ecclesiastical empire France and
of Rome, and under a constitutional monarchy, sPain-
while France and Spain were left to struggle for centuries
more under the double tyranny of the ecclesiastical em-
pire and their own absolute kings.

CHAPTER III.

REVOLT OF DENMARK AND SWEDEN AND (LATER) OF
THE NETHERLANDS.

(a) Denmark and Sweden (1525-15 60) .

Denmark and Sweden both revolted from Rome, but
under peculiar circumstances. From 1520 to 1525 they
had both been governed by one king — a
wretched tyrant— Christian II., who legally mark and"
had little power, but following the royal ^^fjff
fashion of the day, tried to make himself an the yoke of
absolute monarch. Denmark and Sweden Sd^S 1L
both rebelled, dethroned Christian II., and «**»*
then went their several ways.

In Sweden the people, i.e. the citizens and the

M. H, O

194 Results of the Protestant Revolution, pt. hi.

peasantry, were sick of the tyranny of their nobles and
The Swedes clergy, as well as their king, and sighed for a
tavus Vasa S00^ king strong enough to curb them. It
their king. was the old story, what the citizens and pea-
santry of Germany had long sighed for in vain. But in
Sweden they got what they wanted. They elected as king
Gustavus Vasa, a noble who had taken the popular side
against their former tyrant ; and having elected him, they
backed him in carrying out in Sweden very much the
Sweden same sort of reforms as Henry VIII. had

under him, carried out in England. The clergy were
ProtStant humbled, their property seized by the crown,
nation. ' an(^ Sweden, roused to a sense of national
life under Gustavus Vasa, took its place among modern
nations. It was soon to play a prominent part in the
great struggle between Catholic and Protestant powers.
The Swedish king, Gustavus Adolphus, was the greatest
of the Protestant leaders in the Thirty Years' War.

In Denmark also (and Norway was under the same
crown) a new monarchy succeeded to that of the expelled
Denmark tyrant. The nobles joined the crown in crush-
also, under ing the power of the clergy. The Danish
becomes . monarchy became established on the ruins of
Protestant. ^e Church. Lutheranism was encouraged.
Denmark became a Protestant state, and took part, like
Sweden, on the Protestant side in the Thirty Years' War.

(b) The Revolt of the Netherlands (1581).

The last of the revolts from Rome was that of the
Netherlands. It was a revolt not only from Rome but
also from Spain. It does not fall altogether within the
limits of the era, and so requires only brief notice here.

Philip II., king of Spain and husband of the English
queen Mary, tried to enforce the double yoke of Spain

ch. in. - The Genevan Reformers. 195

and Rome upon the Netherlanders. The Netherlands,
it will be remembered, belonged to the Burgundian in-
heritance which came to the Spanish crown by p0HCy of
the marriage alliance of the mother of Charles phlllP n-

0 to subject

V. He was a Netherlander, and as such the Nether-
popular ; but his son, Philip II., was a Span- spainlnd
iard, and felt to be a foreign tyrant. He had t0 Rome.
entered into close alliance with Rome. If he could, he
would have conquered all countries which had revolted
from Rome ; and in restoring them to Rome, he would
have liked to have made them into Spanish provinces.
It was in pursuance of these ideas that he encouraged
Queen Mary's restoration of Roman Catholicism in Eng-
land, and sent his ' Spanish Armada ' to conquer the-
i^rofcesiaB^ Queen Elizabeth. In the same spirit he sent
his cruel minister, the Duke of Alva, to force into sub-
mission his rebellious subjects in the Netherlands, and to
fasten on their necks the double yoke of Spain and Rome.
The result was the revolt of the Netherlands They revolt,
under the Prince of Orange. After a terrible *unJeed
struggle, it was at last successful, and ended Provinces'
in the complete escape of the northern pro- Protestant
vmces from both the Spanish and Papal yoke. nation-
This was in 1581. From that date the ' United Provinces'
took their place, like Sweden and Denmark, among the
Protestant nations of Europe.

CHAPTER IV.

THE GENEVAN REFORMERS.

(a) Rise of a new School of Reform (1536- 1 541).

The force of the Protestant Revolution was not wholly
spent in these national revolts from Rome.

1 96 Results of the Protestant Revolution, pt. nr.

Altogether apart from them there was a Protestant
A Protestant movement going on in the minds of the
movement people, both in those nations which revolted

which was tr . tr ■ J

not national, from Rome and in those which did not.

We must now turn our attention to the rise of a new
school of reform, which led to remarkable results. Luther
was too national — too German — a reformer, to admit of
but which *"s becoming the universal prophet of Pro-
influenced testantism all over the world. Denmark,
testante of Sweden, and Norway, coming under German
France influence, did indeed become Lutheran ; but

England, ' '

Scotland, # the Protestants of France, England, Scotland,
morethanCa and America are not and never have been
Luther did. Lutherans. They came more under the in-
fluence of the Genevan reformers, of whom we must now
speak.

(b) John Calvin (1 509-1 564).

The chief of these was John Calvin. He was a
Frenchman, born in 1509, and so was twenty-five years
John Calvin, younger than Luther. He was educated at the
bom 1509. universities of Paris and Orleans, adopted
the Augustinian theology, as Wiclif, Huss, and Luther
had done before him, and became a Protestant. In
France heretics were burned, so he left his home to-
travel in Italy and Germany. In 1536, just as Erasmus
was passing to his rest, he came to Basle, and began his
His « in- public work as a Protestant reformer by pub-

stitutes,' lishing his ' Institutes of the Christian Re-

which gave ° ' .. .

logical form ligion.' It was these ' Institutes of Calvm
•CaWinistic' which gave rigid logical scholastic form to
doctrines. those Augustinian doctrines which, as we
have said, were held in common by most Protestant
reformers from Wiclif to Luther, but which have been
since called ' Calvinistic.' He differed from Luther both

ch. iv. The Genevan Reformers. 197

in theory and practice, on those points about which
Zwingle and Luther had quarrelled. He rejected tran-
substantiation, which Luther did not altogether ; and he
founded his Church, like Zwingle, on the republican basis
of the congregation rather than, as Luther did, on the
civil power of the prince. He thus was in a sense more
Protestant than Luther, though at that time only the
Lutherans were called Protestants.

Geneva soon became the sphere of his actions. It
was in a state of anarchy, having rebelled from its bishop,
who had been practically both ecclesiastical cahdn
and civil ruler in one. Other French re- settles at
formers had settled at Geneva before Calvin,
and these shared his stern Protestant doctrines. But
Calvin soon proved the most powerful preacher. Like
Savonarola, he rebuked the vices of the people Becomes a
from the pulpit. At first this made him un- kindofdic-

, , i , . , tator of the

popular, and he was driven away ; but m Genevan
1 541 he wras recalled by the people, and made state*
practically both civil and religious dictator of the little
state.

He was in a sense Protestant Pope of Geneva, but de-
riving his power from the congregation. He and his consis-
tory held it their duty to force men to lead moral His severe
lives, go to church, give up dice, dancing, andm™6
swearing, and so forth ; and the council of the tolerance,
city supported this severe exercise of ecclesiastical power
by their civil authority. Thus for twenty years Geneva
was under the rule of Calvin and his fellow ' saints ; ' and
an intolerant despotic rule it was. Men were excom-
municated for insulting Calvin, and sent to prison for
mocking at his sermons. To dare to impugn his doc-
trine was banishment. Hired spies watched people's con-
duct, and every unseemly word dropped in the street
came to the ear of the elders. Children were liable to

198 Results of the Protestant Revolution, pt. in.

public punishment for insulting their parents, and men
and women were drowned in the Rhone for sensual sins.
Witchcraft and heresy were capital crimes ; and one
heretic, Servetus, was burned, with his books hung to his
girdle, for honest difference of opinion from Calvin on a
single point of divinity.

The same view of the functions of the Church which
led him to exercise this severe discipline, led him also to
He founds control education. He founded academies
schools. an(j school . anc[ when his system was ap-

plied to Scotland, as it afterwards was under John Knoxr
a school as well as a church was planted in every parish.

Whatever Calvin did at Geneva would have mattered
little to the world if it had stopped there ; but it did
His in- not# ^e historical importance of Calvin

fluence on lies in the fact that he impressed upon
Protestant- Western Protestantism his rigid scholastic
lsm- creed and his views of ecclesiastical discipline.

The Protestants of France, called Huguenots, were
and are mainly the offspring of Calvinism. John Knox,
The French ^e reformer of Scotland, and the Scotch
Huguenots, Covenanters, were also disciples of Calvin j
Covenan- and so Scotch Protestantism received its im-
EnVsh6 press from Geneva. The Puritans of Eng-

Puritans,^ land were also Calvinists. Cromwell was a
Father*' oi Calvinist, and the rule of his ' saints ' was on
land" ah of ^e Geneva model. The Pilgrim Fathers took
the Genevan with them from England to the New England
across the Atlantic the Calvinistic creed, and,
alas ! its intolerance too. So engrained was it in their
theological mind that, even though themselves fleeing

ch. v. Reform within the Catholic Church. 199

from persecution, they themselves persecuted in the land
of their refuge. Under the rule of the Boston saints there
was as little religious liberty as under the rule of Calvin
at Geneva.

Nevertheless, the offspring of the Geneva school of
reform deserve well of history. However narrow and
hard in their creed and Puritanic in their man- TheIr hIs.
ners, they were men of a sturdy Spartan type, torical im-
ready to bear any amount of persecution and and in-
to push through any difficulties, democratic fatkJnal°n
in their spirit and aggressive in their zeal, character.
The banishment of the Huguenots from France took
away the backbone of her religious life. Scotland would
not be what she is but for Knox and his parish schools.
England could not afford to lose the Puritan blood which
mixes in her veins. New England owes a rich inheritance
of stern virtues to her ' Pilgrim Fathers.'

CHAPTER V.

REFORM WITHIN THE ROMAN CHURCH.

(a) The Italian Reformers (to 1541).

One of the results of the Protestant revolution was the
reform of the Roman Church itself.

We ought never to forget that the Roman Catholic
Church of our own times is, in fact, a reformed Church
as well as the Protestant Churches. And we must now
have patience. enough to trace how and by whom its re-
form was effected.

Good men of all parties had for long seen the neces-
sity of a practical reform in the morals of the pope,

200 Results of the Protestant Revolution, ft. hi.

clergy, and monks. And we have seen that the neces-
sity was recognised in high quarters. Ferdinand and
Isabella's great minister, Cardinal Ximenes, and the
Efforts at English ministers, Cardinal Morton and Cardi-
reform with- naj Wolsey — three cardinals all of great power
Church. and undoubted loyalty to Rome — even went so

far as to get bulls from the Pope, authorising them to
visit and reform the monasteries. All good men cried
out against the crimes of such a pope as Alexander VI.
And it is not right to charge the Catholic Church whole-
sale with these crimes any more than it would be to
charge the English nation with the matrimonial sins of
Henry VIII.

There was so strong a feeling all through the Church
against these scandals that, after what had happened,
Improve- they were not likely to occur again. The
Saaer^f popes who came after Alexander VI. were
popes. not angels, but they were outwardly more

decent than he, at all events. Julius II., as we have seen,
was the fighting pope. The scandal in his case was his lust
of war and the extension of the Papal territory. Leo X.
cared more for art and literature than for war, but he,
too, had his faults, and the scandal in his case was a
doubt whether, after all, he really believed in Chris-
tianity. Adrian VI. was an earnest and stern moral re-
former— too stern for the times — and his reign was too
short to produce much result. Clement VII. was a better
man than many, though of blundering politics, letting
down the Papal power, and becoming at last the prisoner
and the tool of his Spanish conqueror, Charles V.

All this while there were men in Italy of earnest
Christian feeling who, like the Oxford reformers, were
men of the new school on the one hand, and opposed to
the semi-pagan scepticism of the mere ' humanists' of
Italy on the other hand. These men longed for reform,

ch. v. Reform within the Roman Church. 201

not only in morals but also in doctrine. They wanted

religion to be made a thing of the heart, that The media-

the gross superstition connected with indul- tins re£or-

-, n , ,',■■,-, . , mers of

gences and other abuses should be set aside, Italy.

and some of them held the Augustinian doctrine of justi-
fication by faith. This gave them a sort of sympathy
even with Luther, and they wanted such a reform of
the Church as they hoped would win back the Protes-
tants into her fold, yuan de Valdez, brother
of Charles "VYs secretary (from whose writ- Pole, Con-
ings we have more than once quoted), was tanm-
one of them. Reginald Pole (who opposed Henry VIII.;3
revolt from Rome so strongly) and Gaspar Contarini (a
Venetian nobleman of the highest character and influence
in court circles) were of their number. They had among
them eloquent preachers and ladies of rank, fortune, and
beauty. They held together and exerted much influence,
and there was a time when they seemed to be not without
chance of success as mediators between the extreme
Catholic and Protestant parties.

Paul III. became pope in 1534, and the hopes of the
reform party were raised by his making Pole and Con-
tarini and some others of their friends car- pauiiii.
dinals. These men were on the most friendly "lalp some

-*-, . of them

terms with Erasmus, who in his old age was cardinals.
urging concord on religious parties and purity on the
Church. It was rumoured that Erasmus himself was to
be made a cardinal, and it was said that a red hat was
on the way to Bishop Fisher when he was executed by
Henry VIII.

It was some of these and other signs of the times
which cheered Sir Thomas More in his prison with the
belief that better days were coming, that there was at
least some chance of a reconciliation with the Protestants,
and a healing of the schism by which the Church was

202 Results of the Protestant Revolution, pt. hi.

rent. The prospect was for the moment promising. Paul
III. wrote to Erasmus, telling him that he intended to

call a council (as Erasmus had urged his
reconciiia- predecessors to do) and asking for his in-
ProteltSits fluence and help both before and in the
under Paul council. But things moved slowly. Cardinal

Contarini was more zealous for a council than
the Pope, who was only half-inclined to it, fearing lest
it might abridge his power. At length in 1541 — five years
after the death of Erasmus — the Pope deputed Contarini

to meet the Protestants at the Diet of Ratis-
and Meianch- bon, and to try whether a reconciliation could
make^ea^e be arranged with them. He was met by the
at the Diet gentle Melanchthon (Luther distrusting the

whole thing and keeping away), and they
agreed upon the doctrine of justification by faith as the
basis of reunion. For a moment a peace seemed within
reach. But alas ! other motives came in on the Pope's
But the Pope side. Francis I. urged upon him that concord
draws back. anc[ unity in Germany would make the Em-
peror— their common enemy — dangerously strong ; and
so Paul III. drew back.

On the other side, Luther scented mischief in any
And Luther peace with Rome. It was too good to be
also. true . anc[ hg even hinted that the devil was

somewhere and somehow at work in it.
Everything So everything was left over for settlement

tie Council at tne council which now at length the Pope
of Trent. was to convene — the famous Council of Trent.

But meanwhile another power came upon the stage
which was destined to take the reins out of the hands of
the Italian mediating reformers, to close the door for re-
conciliation for ever, and to reform what was left of the
Catholic Church on the narrow basis of reaction.

ch. v. Reform within the Roman Church. 203

(d) The New Order of the Society of Jesus (1540).

Ignatius Loyola, a young Spanish knight of noble
family, was born in 1491, and so was eight years younger
than Luther. He was a soldier in the army Ignatius
of Spain— that land in which the national sjan&h*
wars against the Moors had kept up chivalry knight.
and the spirit of the old crusaders, in which knights
still fought for the Cross against the ( Infidel/ and
whose citizens more than any others felt the romance of
the connexion with the New World.

Loyola was thirty years old, fighting in the Spanish
army against an insurrection in Navarre secretly aided
by the French, just after the Diet of Worms, H .
when his leg was shattered by a cannon ball, wounded in
The one hope of the young knight was such a I521'
recovery as would let him return to his soldier's life and
pursue his knightly career. He submitted to two cruel
operations in this hope, but alas, in vain. After racking
torture and fever, which brought him near to the grave,
he survived to find his contracted limb still a bar to his
hopes. As he lay upon his couch in pain and fever, he
changed the scheme of his life. He resolved Resoives to
to become a soldier — a general — in another become a
army, under a higher king, fighting for the an army of
cross. Legends of the saints inspired his steadof"
imagination with dreams still more romantic soldiers.
than the tales of knight-errantry. In his delirium his
fevered eye saw visions of the Virgin, and thus he thought
he received divine commission to pursue his plan. He
would be a true son of the Church, the sworn enemy of
her enemies, be they heretics, Jews, or infidels. His
creed should be the soldier's creed — obedience to supe-
riors, hard endurance, and dauntless courage. The holy
saints of the legends were his patterns. He prepared

204 Results of the Protestant Revolution, pt. hi.

himself for his work, as they did, by fastings and the
severest austerities. His food was bread and water and
His austeri- herbs, his girdle sometimes an iron chain, some-
ties< times prickly briars, his work humble service

of the lowest kind, such as dressing the foulest wounds in
the hospitals. Then he dwelt for a while in a cavern in
solitude, and fasted till he saw visions again, and fancied
he had communications with heaven. And now he had
perfected his plan — a soldier's plan — to found a religious
Resolves to army, perfect in discipline, in every soldier of
^Order^f which should be absolute devotion to one end,
Jesus,' absolute obedience to his superior, with no

human ties to hinder and no objects to divert him from
the service required. It was in fact to be a new monastic
order, and to be called the Society of Jesus.

He must first prepare himself for his generalship by
To re are years of study. He began at a common
himself school, and then went to the university of Paris.

the Univer- The next thing was to get round him a

sity of Paris. few 0^QXS like himself, and so to form the
nucleus of his army. They must be men of power and
mettle, and all the better if of noble blood and high
position.

There was a young Spanish noble at the university of
Paris named Francis Xavier. While Loyola was study -
p . ing at the university he came in contact with

meets Fran- him. He watched him, read his mind and
cis Xavier. character, and then set himself to work to
make him his own. Xavier sought fame and applause,
and just as he got it Loyola would come in his way with
the solemn question, ' What shall it profit if a man
gain the whole world and lose his own soul ? ' Loyola*
would help him to new triumphs, but as often as they
came would come to him again from Loyola the solemn
question, < What shall it profit ? \ At last the proud spirit

ch. v. Reform within the Roman Church. 205

of the Spanish noble yielded to the spell. Xavier be-
came a disciple of Loyola; rivalled him in Xavier be-

, , . ... comes a

austerities, and ere long became the mission- disciple.
ary of the Society, carrying his cross, breviary and
wallet to India and the Indian Isles, and
even to Japan and China, till at last he laid great Jesuit
down his life after eleven long years of heroic gffSg*?0
labour, stretched on the sand of the sea-shore China, and
of a lonely island in the Chinese seas, with his
cross in his hand, tears of holy joy in his eyes, and utter-
ing the words, l In Thee have I put my trust, let me never
be confounded.'

Of such stuff were the first Jesuits made — a type of
human nature which, rising up as it did just then,
was of immense import to the future of the Roman
Church. It was in truth a reaction from the looseness
both of morals and creed which had marked the recent
condition of the Church. These men were character of
pious, earnest, and devoted to the Church, the Jesuits.
because their minds were cast in a mould which al-
lowed them still to believe in her pretensions. They
had all the piety, fervour, energy, and boldness of the
Protestant Reformers, but their reform took another
direction. Instead of going back to St. Augustine as
their exponent of the Bible, they took St. Francis and the
mediaeval saints as their models, and rested with abso-
lute faith on the authority of the mediaeval Church. To
reform the Roman Church to mediaeval standards by the
formation of a new monastic order, having for its corner-
stone the absolute surrender of free enquiry and free
thought, and absolute obedience to supreme ecclesiastical
authority — this was the project of Loyola. It Their suc_
was not abortive. Before its founder died he cess and

t i • r t i t influence.

had succeeded in founding more than a hun-
dred Jesuit colleges or houses for training Jesuits, and aD

206 Results of the Protestant Revolution. PT. in.

immense number of educational establishments under
their influence. He had many thousands of Jesuits
in the rank and file of his order. He had divided
Europe, India, Africa, and Brazil into twelve Jesuit pro-
vinces, in each of which he had his Jesuit officer, whilst
he, their general, residing at Rome, wielded an influence
over the world rivaling, if it did not exceed in power,
that of popes and kings. Its very success was the cause
of its ultimate doom. The nations of Europe, after the
Causes of its experience of some generations, found it to
unpopu- interfere with their national freedom, as they

larity. had done the old ecclesiastical empire of

Rome. They ultimately banished the Jesuits because
of their power and because their presence and their
plots endangered the safety of the state. But as
yet the Society of Jesus was young, and had its work
before it. The Order received Papal sanction in 1540.

The Council of Trent was opened in 1545. Cardinal
Contarini, who had been the Pope's confidant in matters
relating to the Council, died before it assem-
Trent'meets bled. But Cardinal Pole, Contarini the
m 1545- younger, and others of the mediating party,

were members of the Council. They took the same line
as at Ratisbon, and urged the doctrine of justification by
faith as common Christian ground. But the Jesuits in
Th Tesuits ^e Council, under the instructions of Loyola.,
prevail over opposed it with all their might. The dispute
ingRefor?" was long and hot, and even led to personal
mers. violence. One holy father was so angry that

he seized another by the beard ! The Jesuits prevailed,
and carried the decision of the Council their own way.
Pole, on the plea of ill health, had left the Council, and

■Ch. v. Reform within the Roman Church. 207

the younger Contarini followed his example. It was
clear there was to be no reconciliation. The Romanising
party had gained the day.

No sooner had the Romanising party taken the lead
than Cardinal Caraffa (afterwards Pope Paul IV.) obtained
powers to introduce into Rome the In- inquisition
quisition — that terrible tribunal of persecution introduced

. . . intoRomeby

which--' m Spam had slam and banished so Cardinal Ca-
many Moors, Jews, and heretics under the waIdsapope
sanction of the zeal of Queen Isabella. Per- Pauiiv.
secution began, and some of the members of the mediating
party were among its first victims.

This was the work of the Council of Trent at its early
sessions. Then, owing to a disagreement between the
Pope and Charles V., it was adjourned for council ad-
some years. Paul III. died, and two succeed- joumedtiii

J JSSS. under

ing popes, before it really got to work again Paul IV.
to any purpose under Paul IV. This was in 1555,
the year in which, after the long struggle between
Charles V. and Germany, the peace of Augsburg was V
come to, by which the revolt of the Protestant princes
from Rome was first legally recognised as a thing which
must be.

The Council of Trent had now in its later sessions
to reorganise what was left to Rome of the Church. It
could not, and did not try to undo the revolts. _

' ,•'-,. _. . The Roman

The Jesuits were the ruling power. Reaction Catholic
was the order of the day. Clerical abuses SJEJ [J"
were corrected, and some sort of decency morals, but

7 much more

enforced. Provisions were made for the rigid than
education of priests and for their devotion in evermcreed-
future to active duties. But in points of doctrine there was
reaction instead of concession. The divine authority of
the Pope was confirmed. The creed of the Church was
laid down once for all in rigid statements, which hence-

2cS Results of the Protestant Revolution, ft. hi.

forth must be' swallowed by the faithful. Finally, the
Inquisition, imported from Spain, was extended to other
countries, and charged with the suppression of heretical
doctrines. In a word, the rule of the ecclesiastical
empire was strengthened, and the bonds of the scholastic
system tightened ; but not for Christendom — only for
those nations who still acknowledged the ecclesiastical
supremacy of Rome.

The Roman Church was thus both reformed and nar-
rowed by the decrees of the Council of Trent. Henceforth
it tolerated within its fold neither the old diversity of
doctrine on the one hand, nor the old laxity of morals
on the other hand, and henceforth it was by no means
coextensive with Western Christendom, as it once had
been. It is now generally called the ' Roman Catholic
Church/ to distinguish it from the ' Catholic Qhurch >
of the Middle Ages, from which it and so-4»any- other
Churches have sprung.

CHAPTER VI.

THE FUTURE OF SPAIN AND FRANCE.

(a) The future of Spain.

Charles V. had inherited the absolute monarchy
prepared for him by Ferdinand and Isabella.

The strengthening of the central power was needful to
create a modern nation. But the history of England has
taught us that the central power may be strong without
being an absolute monarchy.

Growth of The vice in the Spanish system was the

monarchy in attempt to seek national power by subjecting
Spain. all classes within the nation to the absolute

will of the monarch.

ch. vi. The Future of Spain. 209

This vice was the worm at the root of the greatness of
Spain, and silently wrought the ruin in which she finds
herself to-day.

Philip II., the son and successor of Charles, „, .,. TT

.., . . , , . . Philip II.

was, like his predecessor, an absolute king.

It was during the period of Spanish supremacy in
Europe that the Council of Trent decreed
the absolute ecclesiastical supremacy of the league with
Pope. It was the Spanish Jesuits who had the PaPacir-
brought this about. It was by adopting the Spanish
Inquisition that the ecclesiastical triumph was to be
enforced upon the people. And now Philip

tt ; t_ i_v 1 Seeks to

II. s aim, as we have seen, was to establish establish
both the absolute power of the Spanish throne l^aSuprl
and the papal supremacy, wherever his rule macy to-
extended, by the sword and the Inquisition. ge

England felt this influence in the days of Queen
Mary, but happily Philip II.'s Spanish Armada failed to
conquer England under Elizabeth. He tried Fatal results
his fatal policy in the Netherlands. The of his policy.
northern provinces revolted, made good their revolt from
both Spain and Rome, and became a free Protestant
nation. He tried the same fatal policy in Spain, and
with what result ? The Spaniard of to-day points to the
civil and ecclesiastical despotism of the reign of Philip II.
(from which, unhappily, Spain could not shake herself
free, as the Netherlands did) as the point in her history
when her national life was strangled, her literature began
to lose its power, her commerce to languish. To fatten
an absolute monarchy, and armies of officials, soldiers,
and priests, in course of generations the nation was
ruined. Spain for a while was big on the map. For a
while she maintained her supremacy in Europe, but her
greatness was not the result of her advance on the path
of modern civilisation. It was not the result ' of true

M. H. P

210 Results of the Protestant Revolution, pt. hi.

national life — the welding together of all classes into a
compact nation. It rather belonged to the old order of
things, and so was doomed to decay.

(b) The future of France.

Absolute monarchy answered no better for France
than for Spain.

France was a prey during the era to the evils caused
by the constant wars of Francis I. While the two abso-
Ev hi lute monarchs strove for supremacy in Italy,

sacrificed to their subjects alike suffered. The reckless-
ambition of ness °f the ambition of Francis I. showed
the absolute itself in the way in which, while persecuting
under# heresy in France, he was ready to ally him-

• rancis . self with the Protestants of Germany, or even
the Turks, if need be, to gain his military ends. He
bequeathed his ambition for military glory and supremacy
to his successors.

France, though a 6ia*holi€ power, fought on the Pro-
testant side in the Thirty Years' War, and one result of
it was that the supremacy of Spain ended and that of
France began. But French, no less than Spanish su-
premacy, was the growth of absolute monarchy, contrary
to the true interests of the French nation. It was gradu-
ally ripening the seeds which were already sown, and
which bore fruit in the great Revolution of 1789, and in
the alternate republics and despotisms under
whkhher which France has since suffered so much.
absolute The want of common feeling and interest

monarchy °

was to between the citizens of the towns and peasants

of the rural districts which began so early in
French history still continues to perplex her rulers, and
so does the lust for military glory and supremacy in
Europe which also is an old inheritance of the French
people.

ch. vi. The Future of Prance. 211

The way in which the Protestant revolution was met
in France also left scars upon the nation which may be
traced to-day. Under Francis I. Calvinism spread in
France among the nobility, whose power had been
humbled to make way for the absolute men- Struggle
archy. This gave rise in the next era to with l^e
religious wars, in which some- of the Protes- in'SKS?
tant nobility headed rebellion against the Catholic throne.
These civil wars lasted forty years, and cost the lives, it
is said, of more than a million Frenchmen.

In France the persecution of heresy was political as
well as religious. Political ambition and intrigue, as well
as religious bigotry, prompted it, and stained the pages of
French history with crimes unique in their blackness.

The massacre of St. Bartholomew in 1^72 was the
diabolical work of the queen, Catherine de'~ Massacre of
Medici, to maintain her political power. She St- Bartho-
had coquetted with the Huguenots when it £§£**
served her purpose. She tried to exterminate them by
the massacre of 20,000— some say 100,000— in one fatal
night. The Edict of Nantes in 1598 ended Toler .
the civil wars and granted a respite from per- forTtlme11
secution, but its revocation in 1685 resulted Edict $e
in the banishment of the Huguenots from Nai«es.
France. Some of them came to ProtC3tarrt ^"f^S"
England, and brought with them their silk and aSS tLVba?'
their looms. Thus France by her intolerance Sh? °f
lost one arm of her national industry and an fuenots> who
important element from her national character. E^land.
The want of cohesion and unity of interest between vari-
ous classes in France was increased by the banishment ot
the Huguenots. There is even now a middle term want-
ing—a missing link— between her religious and her politi-
cal elements. The Puritans— the religious republicans-
were that middle term in England.

212 Results of the Protestant Revolution.

CHAPTER VII.

GENERAL RESULTS OF THE ERA OF THE PROTESTANT
REVOLUTION.

(a) On the Growth of National Life.
We have now traced the course of the Protestant re-
Influenceof volution, and marked both its direct results
the Protest- ijpon those nations which revolted from Rome.

ant revolu- , . . . . . _, _

tion on na- and also its indirect results upon Rome her-
tionaihfe. se^ an(j tjj0se nations which remained in
allegiance to her ecclesiastical empire.

The revolution was obviously only partially successful.
Where it sue- Where it succeeded it produced reform — the
ceeded. Protestant nations had gained one substantial

step towards independent national life and towards the
blending of all classes within them into one community.

Where it failed, it produced, as every unsuccessful
Where It revolution does, reaction. The Catholic na-

faiied. tions seemed to gain in the outward signs of

strength by the alliance which resulted between the civil
and ecclesiastical powers within them. But it was an
alliance intended to strengthen the absolute power of the
Crown and of the ecclesiastical empire, and thereby all the
more to enthrall the people. Henceforth, both in France and
in Spain, the nation was more than ever enthralled under
the double despotism of Crown and Church. The Inquisi-
tion may be taken as the symbol of the one kind of des-
potism, and the French Bastille of the other. The two
despotisms acting together tended, as we have seen, to
destroy national life, to increase the separation of classes
and prevent their being welded together by common in-
terests into one community. It postponed their progress
on the path of modern civilisation and ended in a series

ch. vii. Results of the Era. 213

of alternate revolutions and reactions, out of which it is
hard to see a final escape. So hard is it for nations to
cast off the fruit, however bitter, of seeds sown even
centuries ago !

Where it partially failed and partially succeeded, as in
Switzerland and Germany, we have seen that it resulted
in civil wars and in the postponement of the where it
growth of their national life almost to our own v^y fa1iled

0 and partly

times. In Switzerland the people were already succeeded.
free, but in Germany, where serfdom still prevailed, the
emancipation of the peasantry was postponed till the be-
ginning of the nineteenth century.

(b) On the Relations of Nations to each other \

The Protestant struggle apparently did little or nothing
to secure progress in civilisation in the dealings between
nations. The events of the era show that the Smaiiim-
notion of universal empire which had marked provementin
the old order of things was not yet fully between nl-
given up. The aim after extension of empire tlons*
which went along with it we have noticed throughout.
The struggle between the two absolute monarchies of
Spain and France for supremacy in Christendom, the
efforts of the princes of the House of Hapsburg to unite as
many countries as they could under their rule, the designs
that both France and Spain had upon Italy, the revived
claims of Henry VIII. to the old English possessions in
France — in all this there was little sign of progress from
the old to the new order of things. Although the Oxford
reformers were faithful in enjoining upon princes an inter-
national policy based upon the golden rule, The Oxford
and having for its object not the aggrandise- reformers

r x. ■ *_ 1 1 e 1 • not listened

ment of the prince but the weal of the nation, to fo'this.
the popes and princes still preferred to follow the maxims
of ' the Prince ' of Machiavelli, rather than those of the

214 Results of the Protestant Revolution, pt. iii.

' Christian Prince ' of Erasmus. They still, as Erasmus
said, treated the people too much as 'cattle in the
market.'

Nor was the immediate result of the Protestant revo-
lution any cessation from international strife. For the
next hundred years there was almost incessant strife
between Catholic and Protestant powers.

Though, however, Henry VIII. himself hankered
But Henry again and again after the realisation of the
th^tesT8* empty title of King of France ; yet practically
English king we may say that Henry VIII.'s dreams were
recovering tne ^ast ^n which English monarchs have in-
France. dulged on that subject.

And though the attempts to urge sounder views on
international matters did not succeed in this era, yet they
ksAHwro were not maa^e wholly in vain. Before the
Grothts was century was out was born Hugo Grotius, the
the century father of the present system of international
was out. jaw^ wh0.was weji acquainted with the works

of Erasmus, and like him rejected Machiavellian prin-
ciples and sought to base the law of nations upon the

In no point was the effect of the Protestant struggle
more clearly marked than in the stride it gave, as it were
all at once, to the growth of national languages and litera-
ture.

In Germany we noticed how Luther and Hutten ap-
pealed to the people as well as to the learned ; how, first
writing in Latin for scholars, they soon found it needful
to write in German for the people ; how Luther intro-
duced woodcuts to make his appeals to the popular ear '

ch. vii. Results of the Era. 215

still more vivid and telling. All this promoted the growth
of a national popular literature. This turning from
Latin to German was in fact throwing off in Luther's
one point the yoke of the scholastic system, Kble and
and was in itself a great step in advance for thecharacter
the nation to have taken. The crowning gift ma^fa?*"
of Luther to the German people was in fact guage.
his German Bible and his German hymns. The earnest
vigorous German in which they are written fixed the future
style of the language. The German spoken to-day is the
German of Luther's Bible and hymns.

French literature also received a like impulse in the
era. The French of Calvin's New Testament and ' In-
stitutes' became the classical language of Rise of
religious and philosophical thought : while at French
the same time the mocking reckless wit of his cardiTand
contemporary Rabelais (another great satirist Rabelais-
sprung like Erasmus and Hutten from the convent) laid
the lines of a lighter literature as representative of one
side of the French national character as Calvin's severe
logic was of the other. '

In England, too, the same thing is to be marked. The
fact that the religious controversies of the times were
carried on by books and pamphlets, not in , „

,-.,., . J -r, , . , • r . , Influence of

Latin but m English, gave a stimulus to Tindai's
English literature, and prepared the way for JJjJJ JJSK
the succeeding generations which were to give English ver-
England her Shakespeare and her Milton. Bible, andsp
Nor can it be forgotten that the noble Eng- EngHshkn-
lish version of the Bible has done as much guage.
as other versions in other countries to fix the character of
modern English. The simplicity, terseness, and power of
the English version, to which the taste of England, after
frequent wanderings, again and again returns as to its
best classical model, we owe, and this should not be

2 1 6 Results of the Protestant Revolution. PT. in.

forgotten, to the poor persecuted but noble-minded Eng-
lish reformer, William Tindal, who in his English New
Testament set a type which others in completing the
translation of the whole Bible loyally followed.

(d) Effect in Stimulating National Education.

The same movement which promoted so much the
growth of national language and literature, also did much
to throw open the gates of knowledge to the people by
fostering education and schools.

Savonarola founded schools in Florence. Colet set a
noble example in England, and the next generation fol-
Schools lowed it by establishing the grammar-schools

founded by which so often bear the name of King Edward
Colet, and ' VI. Luther and the Protestant German states
Luther established common schools. Calvin did the

Calvin, same thing in Geneva, and Calvin's disciple,

the°Pi'igrini John Knox, in Scotland. Finally, the Pilgrim
Fathers, Fathers carried the same zeal for education to

and the

Jesuits. their colonies in New England. Even the

Jesuits made a great point of education, • and became
noted wherever they went for their educational establish-
ments. So that both in Catholic and Protestant countries
a great stimulus was given to popular education during
the era, while the fact that at least some of the property
of the dissolved monasteries was diverted to educational
purposes in connexion with the Universities and other-
wise, gave a somewhat similar stimulus also to higher
education.

(e) Influence on Domestic Life.

There are few things, if any, more important to the
steady growth of a free nation than the maintenance of
domestic virtues and the sanctities of family life.

•ch. vii. Results of the Era. 217

The domestic instincts, more than any others, were the
first germs of national life. In Teutonic nations espe-
cially the powerful ties of family life, widening political im-
in their sphere extended from the family to the J^S °f
tribe, from the tribe to the nation, introducing life,
law and order and peaceful relations within the sphere
embraced by them.

Now the domestic virtues of nations had Danger to it
been in great danger of decay, and no doubt fr°m th? ex-
had suffered enormously through the influence country of
of so large a body of clergy, monks, and nuns J^6 ceh"
in a forced state of celibacy. classes.

This system sapped the foundations of domestic life
by holding up the married state as lower in virtue than
that of celibacy, by cutting off so large a number of
people from the natural influences of home life, and still
further by promoting in a terrible degree immorality and
crime.

The dissolution of the monasteries and Dissolution

r , . r , , ... of monaste-

permission of the marriage of the parochial ries and per-
clergy were in themselves steps gained in §Jf cSgy t»
civilisation of great importance in a moral marry a step

, ,. . , ,-. . -,. . . . in civihsa-

and political, as well as m a religious point of tion.
view.

{/) Influence on Popular Religion.

In yet another way did the Protestant revolution suc-
ceed in promoting national life and the aims of Christian
civilisation.

It made religion less a thing of the clergy and more a
thing of the people. It gave the people religious services
in their own languages instead of in an un- The Protes.
known tongue. By placing within their reach tant move-
the Christian Scriptures in their own language jarisedre""
st led them to think for themselves, and to be li&on>

2 1 8 Results of the Protestant Revolution, ft. iil

directly influenced by Christianity as taught by its founder
and apostles. It tended to strengthen individual convic-
tion and conscience, and so ultimately it led, though with
many drawbacks, to further steps being gained towards
freedom of thought.

It is well to mark also that this bringing of religion
nearer home to the individual conscience of the masses of
and brought t^ie PeoP^ej an^ cultivation of individual re-
it into har- sponsibility rather than reliance on a priest-

mony with . . . ., 1 .

true Chris- hood or a church, tended to bring it more
modernand *nt0 harmony, not only with the tendencies of
civilisation. modern civilisation but also with the essential
character of Christianity itself, as described by its founder
andjhis apostles, and so to make it once more the great
civilising influence which from the first it was intended
to be.

Christianity was without doubt the power which more
than anything else produced the great movement of the
era, and turned the civilisation of the future
civilisation into the course we have described. The mere
chief charac- humanists had not succeeded in impressing
teristic to the semi-pagan stamp of their philosophy
ns iam y. up0n fa j^a(j ^gy done s0 the principle of

the old Roman civilisation— the good of the few at the
expense of the many — might have marked the civilisation
of the future as it had done that of the past. But we
have seen it was the men of deepest Christian convictions
— the religious reformers — who succeeded in giving their
impress to the era. It is thus to Christianity more than to
anything else that we owe the direction given in the era
to modern civilisation, its characteristic aim to attain the
highest good for the whole community.

ch. vii. Results of the Era. 219

(g) Want of Progress in Toleration.

There was one thing especially in which there seemed
to be, at first sight, small progress during the era, viz. in
toleration.

We said that one great work of the era was to set
men's minds free from ecclesiastical and scholastic thral-
dom— to set both science and religion free, for without
this freedom there could be no real progress in civilisa-
tion.

In fact, an immense number of minds had got free
from that particular ecclesiastical and scholastic thraldom
against which they had rebelled in becoming
Protestant. And this in itself was no small Catholic to
result. But what has already been said must 5eedswS
have made it clear that the Protestant refor- change from
mers, in adopting the theology of St. Augus- schoKc
tine, and insisting upon their followers adopt- ^e0et|^
ing the new Protestant creeds, did but appeal equally
from the scholastic standards of their day to ngl '
others just as rigid !

The Oxford reformers had aimed at leaving people
open to form their own honest judgment on various
points of theology and practice, according to
their own consciences, and urged that people nexion be-
with different opinions and practice might be [^freedom*
members of the same Christian Church, have of thought
charity one towards another, and agree to ingitto°e
differ without quarrelling. But how hard a others-
thing it was to get people to do this we see from the case
of Sir Thomas More himself, who, though he had
advocated toleration in his ' Utopia,' yet afterwards, seeing
the anarchy Protestantism had led to on the Continent,,
and fearing its spreading to England, became himself a

220 Results of the Protestant Revolution, pt. hi.

persecutor. We must not be surprised afcer this that the
Protestant reformers failed also in the same respect. It
is strange to see how little connexion there seems to be
between claiming freedom of thought and conceding it to
others.

Lutherans persecuted Catholics as well as Catholics
Protestants; and, worse still, they persecuted' their
fellow-Protestants who followed Zwingle and Calvin
rather than Luther. So Calvin put Servetus to death, and
So persecu- exercised a thoroughly intolerant rule in
tion did not Geneva. So the English Government, after
persecuted the revolt from Rome, persecuted Protestants,
tolerant. an(j soon after ordered by statute practices

which a few years before they had condemned. So the
Catholic Government of Queen Mary shed the blood of
Protestants again. So the English Pfe-fccstairl Church of
after generations persecuted the Puritans. So finally, the
Puritans, fleeing from persecution to New England, put
people to death for no other crime than that they honestly
preached doctrines differing from their own ! Looking at
these facts, one would certainly say that the Protestant
struggle had not made men more tolerant !

And yet, in spite of this temporary failure, toleration
was a distant fruit of the great movement we have traced.
In this era its first seeds were sown. Sir
tion waf" Thomas M ore's 'Utopia' was perhaps the
of ?neauitime first clear statement of the doctrine of tolera-
mate results tion. The works of Erasmus did something,
testant re-" probably more than is known, to prepare the
volution. minds of men for its ultimate adoption. The

strength of conscientious conviction which Pi otestantism
created made men claim freedom as a right, and after all,
the men who were fighting the battle of toleration with
most effect, were the men whose strength of conscientious
conviction made them endure persecution rather than

ch. vii. Results of the Era. 221

surrender their freedom of conscience, even though they
themselves, under other circumstances, might have been
persecutors.

ill) The Causes why the Success of the Era was so partial.

We might, in view simply of its immediate results—
the wars and bloodshed, and anarchy, persecutions, and
heartburnings which came out of it— be inclined to regard
the failures of the era of the Protestant revolution as
greater than the good we owe to it.

This would be false. It would be to forget that
progress in civilisation is of necessity like
that of the advancing tide, made up of ebbs SStb?
and flows. It is well also to note clearly the gradual.
cause of the failures, and especially of those of which
we have just been speaking.

Let us ask ourselves why did not the human mind in
this era free itself from its trammels, claim its true
freedom, and concede it to everyone ? The Limited by
answer is, that it was impossible. The range the ,ranse of
of knowledge was too narrow. Men's minds Edge.
could not take a broader view of things than the horizon
of their knowledge and their philosophy let them.

Let us try to realise what were the bounds of their
knowledge in some directions.

They knew that the earth is a globe, and in their own
day Magellan, for the first time, had sailed round it.
But they thought the earth was in the centre
of the universe, and that all the heavenly SS*
bodies move round it every twenty-four hours. verse-
The notion that it was the earth that moved they thought
to be absurd. We should see the motion, they The earth
said. At the rate it would have to move, it stiu th°ught
would leave the clouds behind it as it went, cemre* the

222 Results of the Protestant Revolution, pt. in.

and towers and church steeples would be thrown down by
the violence of so rapid a motion !

So the earth stands still, they maintained, in the
centre of the universe. The heavenly bodies were sup-
The crystal- posed to rotate on what were called crystalline
line spheres, spheres. The first was the sphere of the
moon — all things confined within it were called sublunary
things. They were supposed by some to be under such
pressure as made the heaviest things all tend towards the
centre, while the lightest things tended upwards. It was
sometimes said that it was in the nature of fire and air to
rise, while it was the nature of water and earth to fall
towards the centre. In rough ways like these they tried
to account for the facts which are now attributed to the
force of gravitation. The spheres beyond the moon were
called celestial spheres. First, they thought, came those
of Mercury, Venus, and the Sun, then in order those of
Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn ; then that of the fixed stars,
and, outside all, a ninth sphere, called firimum mobile,
which gave motion to all the others. They believed
Heaven further, in a vague way, that heaven came

beyond. beyond. Theologians speculated upon what

sort of a sphere that of heaven must be, and Erasmus, in
his ( Praise of Folly/ laughed at their i creating new
spheres at pleasure, this the largest and most beautiful
being added that, forsooth, happy spirits might have room
enough to take a walk, to spread their feasts, or play at
ball.'

Such was the universe of spheres, one within the
other, which they thought all moved round the earth in
The motions the centre every twenty-four hours. It was a
re'arded6^5 sma^ thing altogether, compared with the
with awe, vastly wider and grander universe, a little bit
of which modern science has revealea to us, but it was a
marvellous universe still, and its mysteries filled them with
awe when they thought of it.

-ch. vii. Results of the Era. 223

When asked questions about it, some wise men like
Erasmus answered, ' God only knows.' But more supersti-
tious minds gave far different answers. Luther, and in p0pU.
who saw the action of the Devil in every ac- larsupersti-

J tion referred.

cident which befell him, stood aghast at the to angels,
magic motions of the celestial spheres, as e no doubt done
t>y some angel.' Many wise men still believed
in astrology. They could not bring themselves
to believe that the stars and planets, looking down upon
our world, had not some magic meaning. When comets
came, they saw in them ominous presages of coming
events. Pico and Ficino, Colet, Erasmus, Laughed at
and More had all tried to laugh people out ^u^J>ut
■of belief in astrology. Luther, too, laughed by others,
at it, but Melanchthon still held on to the old belief in
spite of Luther's arguments and jests. How can there be
anything in astrology, Luther used to say to him, since
Jacob and Esau were born under the same star !

The same kind of superstition which attributed the
motions of the planets to angels, and magic influence on
the affairs of men to the stars, made men the

,.,,,. . . . , . . Belief in

more readily believe m visions and mspira- visions and
tions, such as we have seen in the case of the insPiratlons»
wilder reformers from Savonarola down to Miinzer and
Loyola. Luther himself was remarkably free from these
things — he never claimed either visions or inspirations,
as the wilder prophets did ; but, as an instance of how
superstitious even he was, it may be mentioned that he
and Melanchthon devoutly believed that a and in rodi_
monster had been found in the Tiber, with gies.
the head of an ass, the body of a man, and the claws of a
bird. After searching their Bibles to find out what the
prodigy meant, they concluded that it was one of the signs
and wonders which were to precede the fall of the papacy
and published a pamphlet about it.

224 Results of the Protestant Revolution, pt. hi.

Luther again, and probably everybody else, believed
in witchcraft. Hundreds and thousands of poor wretches
Universal were ^urne(^ f°r tne supposed crime of having
belief in sold themselves to the powers of evil, and

witc crat. laying held communion with evil spirits.
And stranger still is it that the number of witches burned
Witches as was rapidly on the increase. There were
well as more witches burned in the 16th century

heretics . . /

burned. than in any previous one, and more still m

the next.

Heresy and witchcraft were looked upon as nearly
allied, and probably the zeal against both grew together.
Nor was the cruel death allotted to these supposed crimes
out of proportion to that of others. Thousands and
thousands of people were hung in England for no other
crime but that of vagrancy and < sturdy begging.' The
system of criminal law was everywhere brutal,
criminal law Soon after the Peasants' War, the Prince
everywhere. B}snop 0f Bamberg published a popular crimi-
nal law book for the benefit of his subjects — his poor
crushed peasantry amongst others — in which were in-
serted woodcuts of thumb-screws, the rack, the gallows,
the stake, pincers for pulling out the tongue, men with
their eyes put out or their heads cut off, or mangled on
the wheel, or suspended by the arms with weights hung
on their feet, and so on; and then, to add the terrors of
another world (as if these humanly inflicted tortures were
not enough), there was a blasphemous picture represent-
ing the day of judgment, and the hobgoblins carrying off
their victims to hell. The Prince Bishop, we may sup-
pose, had learned a lesson from Luther, and produced, as
he thought, a good book for the laity, meant, not like
Luther's, to dispel men's fears of the Pope, but to frighten
his poor subjects into submission to his episcopal and
princely authority. This may be taken as an example

en. vni. Economic Results of the Era.

227

CHAPTER VIII.

ECONOMIC RESULTS OF THE ERA.

the era on
what re-
mained of
serfdom.

Amongst the things which belonged to the old order,
and which were going out, the feudal system Results of
and serfdom were mentioned as silently giving
way under the combined influence of the
growth of the central power in the modern
nations and of commerce.

The results of the era on the economic condition of
the peasantry require a few words of further explanation.
In Germany, we have seen, serfdom— the essential ol
which it will be remembered was services of forced
personal labour in return for occupation of
land — remained unchanged, except for the
worse, after the Peasants' War, and lasted on
till the beginning of the present century.

In France serfdom was a thing of the past
there remained numberless feudal rents and
payments made chiefly in kind {i.e. in pro-
duce of the land) which the peasantry
went on paying till the French Revolution of
1789.

In England serfdom was gone, but had left behind it
fixed rents in money instead of the ancient
payments in service or in kind. These rents
were originally nearly equal to the annual
value of the land. But an economic cause
'came into play during the era which, while
it did not help the German peasant nor the French

In Germany
personal
services con-
tinued.

but

In France
feudal rents
and pay-
ments chiefly
hi kind con-
tinued till
1789.

In England
the rents
were chiefly
in fixed
money pay-
ments.

i2S Results of the Protestant Revolution.

PT. III.

peasant who paid his rent in kind, lessened the burden
Effect of the °f the English peasant's rent so much as to
discovery of change his position gradually into that of an
mines in the absolute owner.

New World. ^--l • • ^.-l j • r

This economic cause was the discovery of
the silver and gold mines in the New World.

It made silver more plentiful, and therefore cheaper in
proportion to other things such as corn and land. In
The fall in other words it increased the price in pence
the value of and shillings of almost everything. A penny

moneycaused « .,«. -, -, . , ■ ,

a great rise in or a shilling would not buy so much corn
prices. after as before the new mines were discovered;

and as in England Tudor monarchs at the same time;
for their own purposes, lessened the weight of silver in
the penny and shilling by about one-third, the effect of
the increased plenty of silver was made all the greater.
6s. would buy a quarter of wheat at the beginning of the
century; it took 38^. 6d. to buy a quarter of wheat at
the end of it. The annual value of land was about
£$. per acre at the beginning of the century, 30^. at the
end of it.

The German peasant was not helped by this, for
he had to work just as many days or weeks for his
This did not landlord at the end as at the beginning of the

German^ Century.

peasant's The French peasant, so far as he paid in

services. produce, was not helped by it, because the

French6 price of his produce had increased as fast as

KKfs the value of ttie land> and his rent remained

produce. the same burden as before.

But the English peasant, who in the year 1500
might pay 4£?. an acre fixed rent for land which was
But it re- tnen worth about 4d. an acre in the market,

duced the found himself in 1600, if he still held on to

burden of „ . , , .,, . , 7 t .-,

the English . his land, still paying only 4a. an acre, wnne

ch. viii. Economic Results of the Era.

peasant s
rents in
money to
£th or Jth of
the value of
their land,
This would
have made
them

peasant pro-
prietors had
they held on
to their land.
But their
tendency
was to leave
their land
and become
labourers
for wages.

his land was worth in the market six, seven,
or eight times as much as that. His burden
of rent was reduced to |th or £th of what it
used to be.

Had the English peasantry held on to
their land as the German and French pea-
sants did, they would thus, have grown into
peasant proprietors paying very small nomi-
nal rents for their land. But other economic
causes were at work, tending to loosen them
from their little holdings and make them
labourers for wages. The growth of com-
merce and manufactures attracted them to
the towns, the large farms of men with capital more and
more took the place of the little peasant holdings, and
thus began the present state of things in which England
differs so much from other countries.

There were perhaps, in the year 1500, about half a
million families in England living by the land, and most
were, or had been, farming some little bit of change from
land for themselves. Perhaps there were not
so many as a quarter of a million families
earning their living by trade or manufactures
in the towns, and most of them owning their
own workshops or looms.

The half million agricultural families have now grown
into about a million. These no longer are occupiers of land,
but are mostly working for wages for a few hundred thou-
sand farmers. But in the meantime the two or three
hundred thousand families living by trade and manufac-
tures have increased to 3,000,000, and these again, as a
general rule, like their agricultural brethren, have become
workers for wages, and no longer are owners of their own
workshops and looms.

We probably owe this to the growth of capital and

peasant pro-
prietorship
of land or of
looms to
labour for
wages,

2 3<3 Results of the Protestant Revolution, pt. hi.

commercial enterprise, stimulated by the increased profit
!_• a *. which comes from division of labour, and

chiefly the _. , . . , . '

result of the doing things on a large scale by machinery
commerce rather than on a small scale as of old by hand
and capital, labour. But what we have to mark here is

and the use

ofmachi- that the beginnings of these great cnanges
were already at work in the era of which we
have been speaking.

The old order of things was already breaking up
in England. We see in England still traces of the
mediseval system in the deer forests and
changes had game preserves, and antiquated forms and
lefhc'e^ury? customs still clinging to the laws of land
and they tenure. These things are survivals of a

theaient system which once had life, but which be-
fh°eWfeuadal0f longed to the old order of things. In the 16th
system in century it was already fast dying out to make
way for commercial enterprise and all that
belongs to the new order of things — an order of things
which has multiplied by six or seven the population of
England, and peopled with about an equal additional
number of Englishmen those great colonies for which
the maritime enterprise of the 16th century first opened
the way.

CONCLUSION.

In the introductory chapter we said that the passage
from the old decaying form of civilisation to the new,
better, and stronger one, involved a change which must
needs take place slowly and by degrees ; but that in
the era under review was to be the crisis of the change —
the final struggle between the two forces.

We have now traced the main lines of the history of

Conclusion.

231

The Protes-
tant revolu-
tion was the
beginning of
a great revo-
lutionary
wave which
broke in the
French _
Revolution
of 1789.

this crisis, and tried to point out its connection with the

future as well as with the past. We have seen that

the Protestant revolution was but one wave

of the advancing tide of modern civilisation.

It was a great revolutionary wave, the onward

swell of which, beginning with the refusal of

reform at the Diet of Worms, produced the

Peasants' War and the Sack of Rome, swept

on through the revolt of the Netherlands, the

Thirty Years' War, the Puritan Revolution in

England under Oliver Cromwell, the formation of the

great independent American republic, until it came to a

head and broke in all the terrors of the French Revolution.

It is impossible not to see in the course of the events
of this remarkable period an onward movement as
irresistible and certain in its ultimate progress
as that of the geological changes which have
passed over the physical world.

It is in vain to speculate upon what might
have been the result of the concession of
broad measures of reform everywhere (as in
England) whilst yet there was time ; but in
view of the bloodshed and misery which, humanly
speaking, might have been spared, who can fail to be
impressed with the terrible responsibility, in But the
the eye of history, resting upon those by
whom in the 1 6th century, at the time of the
crisis, the reform was refused ? They were
utterly powerless, indeed, to stop the ultimate
flow of the tide, but they had the terrible
power to turn, what might otherwise have
been a steady and peaceful stream, into a turbulent and
devastating flood. They had the terrible power, and they
used it, to involve their own and ten succeeding genera-
tions in the turmoils of revolution.

The move-
ment was
inevitable,
and might
have been
peacefully-
met and
aided by-
timely re-
forms.

refusal of
reform at the
time of the
crisis in-
volved ten
generations
in the
turmoils of
revolution.

233

INDEX.

ADR

ADRIAN VI., 149, 150, 174, 200
Aleander, Papal nuncio, 105,

106, 114, 126
Alexander VI., 23, 25, 36, 70-3, 200
Alsace, see Elsass
Alva, Duke of, 195
America, discovery of, 4
Anne of Cleves, 189
Armada, the Spanish, 195, 209
Arthur, Prince of Wales, 52, 169
Astrology, 223
Augsburg confession, 164
Augsburg, peace of, 166
Augustine, St., theology of, 95, 96, 103,

196, 219

BAMBERG, bishop of, 224
Bavaria, rising of peasants in, 145
Berlichingen, see Gotz v.
Berne revolts from Rome, ?6i
Bible, English version of, 180, 187, 215 ;

German, 131, 215 ; French, 215
Boheim, Hans, 60
Boleyn, Anne, 175, 182 ; marriage of,

179 ; beheaded, 188
Borgia, Caesar, 23, 25, 70, 73
Bosworth, battle of, 51
Bourbon, Duke of, 151, 152, 174
Buckingham, execution of, 171
Bundschuh, the, 60, in, 113, 124, 134-

137

CABOT, Sebastian, 4, 54
Calvin, John, 196-199 ; influence
of writings of, 215
Cambray, league of, 127

DEN

Campeggio, 176

Capets, dynasty of the, 40

Cappel, peace of, 161

Caraffa, cardinal, 207

Carinthia, rising of the peasantry in,

145, 146
Carlstadt, 131, 133, 136, 138, 141, 142
Casimir, Markgraf, 144, 146
Catherine of Arragon, 52, 88, 128, 169-

171, 175, 176, i79_ ; death of. 188
Catherine de' Medici, 211
Celibacy of the clergy, influence of, 217
Charles V., 29, 37, 100, 109-130, 149-

155, 162-166, 171, 174, 175, 190, 191,

195, 208
Charles VIII. of France, 26, 36, 45, 72
Christian II., 193

' Christian Prince ' of Erasmus, 90, 97
Civilisation, character of modern, 5
Clement VII., 150-156, 174, 179, 200
Colet, John, 76-94, 98, 178, 185, 216,

223
Columbus, 4, 36, 39, 54
Commerce, 3, 17, 20, 227-230
Contarini, Gasper, 201, 202
Contarini, the younger, 206
Copernicus, Nicolas, ?26
Cranach, Lucas, 116, 117
Crammer, 179, 187, 192
Criminal law, cruelty of, 224
Cromwell, Oliver, 198
Cromwell, Thomas, 186-192
Crusades, the influence of, 3, 17

ANTE, 22
Denmark, revolt of, from Rome,
193-194

234

Index.

DIE

LUT

Diets, German, 29 (see Worms, Spires,

Ratisbon)
Dudley (minister of Henry VII.), 80-

EDWARD VI., 189
Elizabeth, princess (afterwards

queen), 188
Elsass, rising of peasants in, 61, 144
Empson (minister of Henry VI I. ), 80-82
England under Henry VII., 46-55,

74-81 ; under Henry VIII., 81-90,

128-9, ^o-1* 167-193
Erasmus, 78-80, 90, 97, 98, 101, 106-

110, 130, 148, 172-173, 185, 201, 202,

220, 223

FERDINAND and Isabella, 4, 26,
35, 36, 86-88, 101, 168
Ferdinand I. of Austria, 166
Feudal system, 15, 19, 28, 30, 227-230

(see Serfdom)
Ficino, 67-8, 72, 75, 223
Field of the cloth of gold, 129
Fisher, Bishop, sent to the Tower, 182,

201
Flodden, battle of, 88
Florence, 25, 66-74
Forest cantons of Switzerland, 161
France, 40-46, 86-89, 127-130, 149-151,

165-190, 210-211
Francis I., 27, 88, 98, 100, 128, 129, 149-

151, 202-210, 211
Franconia, rebellion of peasants in,

60, 141
Franz von Sickingen, 30, 109-112, 114,

124, 125, 134-136
Frederic of Saxony, 98, 99-130, 134,

148
Frundsberg, General, 121, 146, 150,

152

GALILEO, 226
Genevan reformers, the, 195-199

Germany, 26-33, 57-65, 94-148, 162-
166, 215

Geyer, Florian, 139, 143

Gold mines of new world, effect of dis-
covery of, 228

Gonsalvo de Cordova, 26

Gotz von Berlichingen 30, 109, 144

Granada, conquest of, 4, 35

Graubund, the, 59

Grocyn, 76

Grotius, Hugo, 214
Guicciardini, 24
Gustavus Adolphus, 194
Gustavus Vasa, 194

HANSE Towns, 18, 31
Helfenstein, Count von, i39>

140
Henry VII., 50-55, 80-81, 168, 169
Henry VIII., 26, 27, 42, 81-90, 97-ici,

128-129, I5o, 167-193, 214
Heresy, 180-181, 219
Hermann, 158
Hesse, Philip of, 164, 165
Hipler, Wendel, 139
Holy Alliance, the, 86
Howard, Admiral, 87
Howard, Catherine, 190
Huguenots, the, 198-199, 211
Humanists, 68, 74, 200
Huss, John, 14, 59, 103, 116, 119, 123
Hutten, Ulrich von, 109-112, 114- 119,

124-126, 134-136

INDULGENCES, sale of, 97-100

JL Infanta of Portugal, 129, 151, 175

Innocent VIII., 70

' Inquisition,' the, 39, 207, 209

Italian reformers, 199-202

Italy, 21-26 (see Rome and Popes)

JEROME of Prague, 14
Jesuits, order of, 203-206, 216
Johanna of Castile, 37
Joss Fritz, 62-63, 113, 133-136
Julius II., 26, 86-7, 169, 173, 200

T^" EMPTEN, peasants' rebellion in,

Kepler, 226

Knox, John, 198-199, 216

LAMBERT SIMNEL, 51
Leo X., 26, 87, 97-149, 174, 200
Lilly, 81, 84
Linacre, 76
Lollards, 14, 85, 173
Louis XI. of France, 42
Louis XII., 26, 86, 8S
Loyola, Ignatius, 203-206
Luther, Martin, 94-134, 147, 161, 162-
165, 172, 202, 215, 223, 224

Index.

235

MAC

SWI

MACHIAVELLI, 18, 21, 24, 40,
44, 73, iS9, 160
Magellan, 221

Marignano, battle of, 88, 128
Mary, princess, afterwards queen, 12S,

151, 170-171, 174, !75, I91* *95
Maximilian, emperor, 18, 28, 37, 61,

86, 100
Medici, Cosmo de', 66, 67
Medici, Lorenzo de', 66-7, 70, 150
Medici, Catherine de', 211
Melanchthon, Philip, 100, 105-107,

117, 132, 164-65, 202, 223
Michael Angelo, 67
Milan, 25, 41, 128, 149
Mohammedan power, the, 2, 4, 34, 163,

164
Monasteries, dissolution of, 186-187
Moors, in Spain, 2, 4, 34
More, Sir Thomas, 78-94, 168, 172-174,

177, 180-184, 2I9> 223
Morgarten, battle of, 58
Morton, Cardinal, 53, 178, 200
Miinzer, 133, 136, 138, 145

NANTES, edict of, 211
Naples, 25, 41, 128
Netherlands, revolt of from Rome, 194-

i95
New Testament of Erasmus, 92, 180,
185 ; of Tindal, see Tindal

OXFORD Reformers, 74-94, 171-
172, 185, 219 (j^ Colet, Erasmus,
More)

PARR, Queen Catherine, 190
Pavia, battle of, 150, 174

Paul III., 201, 202, 207

Paul IV.; 207

Peasants' war, 136-148, 172

Peasantry, condition of in England,
48, 227-230 ; in France, 44 and 227-
230 ; in Germany, see Serfdom

Perkin Warbeck, 51

Petrarch, 23

Philip de Commines, 43

Philip II. of Spain, 37, 166, 191-195,
209

Pico della Mirandola, 68-9, 72, 223

Pilgrimage of Grace, 188

Pilgrim fathers, 216, 198-199

Pole, Reginald, 188, 201, 206

Politian, 68

Popes of Rome, 23-26, 200, and see
Innocent VIII., Alexander VI.,
Julius II., Leo X., Adrian VI.,
Paul III., Paul IV.

' Praise of Folly ' of Erasmus, 82, 98,
no, 185

'Prince, The,' of Machiavelli, 73

Printing, invention of, 4

Protestants, origin of name of, 163

Puritans, the, 198, 211, 220

RATISBON, Diet of, 165, 202
Revival of learning, 3, 66, 74
Revolts from Rome — in England, 167 -

— in Germany, 162-166

— in Switzerland, 159-162

— in Denmark and Sweden, 193

— in the Netherlands, 194
Richard III., 50, 53
Rohrbach, little Jack, 139
Roman Catholic Church, 8
Roman civilisation, 6

Rome, 8, 21-26, 96 ; sack of, 152-155

Roper, Margaret, 182

Rothenburg, peasants' war at, 141-144

SICKINGEN, see Franz
St. Bartholomew, massacre of,

211
St. Paul's school, founded by Colet, 84
Savonarola, Girolamo, 69-72, 75, 117,

216
Saxony, John of, 164, 165
Schmalkalden, league of, 164, 165
Scientific enquiry, beginnings of, 225
Scientific knowledge. 221
Scholastic system, the, n-15, 74
Serfdom in Germany, 20, 32-3, 57-65,

136-148, 227
Serfdom in France, 20, 44-6, 227
Serfdom in England, 20, 48, 227-229
Servetus, 198, 220
Slavery and slave trade, 40
Spain, 34-40, 208-210, and see Charles

Spalatin, 105, 106, 112, 119, 121

Spires, Diets of, 151, 154, 162-163

Spurs, battle of the, 87

Storch, Claus, 132, 133, 138

Swabia, insurrection of peasants in,

„ 137-138

Swabian league, the, 64, 137-138

Sweden, revolt from Rome of, 193-194

Switzerland, 58, 159

236

Index.

TET

TETZEL, 99
Thirty Years' War, 162, 166,

194, 210
Thuringia, insurrection of peasants in,

I4S
Tindal, William, 180, 187, 216
Trent, Council of, 202, 206-209
Truchsess, George, 138, 140, 146
Tycho Brahe, 226
Tyrol, rising of peasants in the, 145-146

ULRICH VON HUTTEN, see
Hutten
Ulrich, D., of Wurtemberg, 63
United Provinces, the, 195
Universe, ideas of the, 221
Universities, 13
Universities of England visited and

reformed, 187
Utopia, More's, 91, 93, 97, 168, 180,

219, 220

VALDEZ, JUAN DE, 57, 152, 201
Valdez, Alphonse de, secretary
of Charles V., 127

ZWI

Vasco de Gama, 4
/enice, 25
Vienna besieged by the Turks, 163

T 1 7ARTBURG, castle of the, 126,

Weinsburg, the piper of, 139-140
Wiclif, 14, 59, 103
I Witchcraft, belief in, 224
I Wittenberg Reformers (see Luther and

Melanchthon)
j Wolsey, 87, 89, 149, 150, 173-178, 192,
200
Worms, Diet of, 112-130, 151, 16a,
163, 166, 167

XAVIER, FRANCIS, 204-203
Ximenes, cardinal, 37, 149, 200

ZURICH revolts from Rome, 160-
161
Zwickau, prophets of, 132-133
Zwingle, Ulrich, 160-162, 197

LONDON : PRINTED BY

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[MODERN HISTORICAL!. HANDBOOKS.

In course of ' ptblication, each volume in fcp. %vo.
complete in itself.

Epochs of Modern History

A SERIES OF BOOKS NARRATING THE

HISTORY OF ENGLAND AND EUROPE

At Successive Epochs subsequent to the
Christian Era.

EDITED BY

EDWARD E. MORRIS, M.A.

Of Lincoln College, Oxford ; Head Master of the Melbour
Grammar School, Australia;

J. STJRTEES PHILLPOTTS, J3.C.L.

Late Fellow of New College, Oxford ; Head Master of the Bedford
Grammar School ;

O. OOLBECK, M.A.

Fellow Of Trinity College, Cambridge' ; Assistant-Master on the Modern
Side at Harrow School.

THE SERIES intitled ' Epochs of Modern History' had its
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complete picture of any one fmportant.period of the World's history, carefully
prepared and in an inexpensive form, is of more value than a mere outline
of the History of a Nation.

Epochs of Modern History.

The difficulty in applying this idea to books of history is the risk of
spoiling the interest by diminishing the detail. But it is generally allowed
that the complete picture of any short period is of more value, in an educa-
tional point of view, than a mere outline of the history of a nation ; and the
practice dictated by the course of many public examinations, of reading
periods of history, seems to suggest a way in which it may be possible to
secure in handy and cheap volumes that fulness without which history is
unprofitable.

For schools the study of elaborate history is, and must remain, an im-
possibility ; and generally, it may be safely said that in school routine time
cannot be found for going through the complete continuous history of more
than one or two countries at most. But it is not possible to understand
thoroughly the history of even one country, if it be studied alone. A
knowledge of the condition of surrounding countries is of at least equal
importance with its own previous history. This is, so to speak, a horizontal
rather than a vertical study of history.

It is hoped, therefore, that this series of books relating to definite periods
of history, may meet a want which cannot be met by continuous histories of
any one country. The series is by no means confined to the history of
England, but deals also with European history : and where the course of
events in England gives to the epoch its name and character, care has been
and will be taken to trace the connexion of English history with that of the
Continental nations, and with the progress of ideas at work among them.

Great as the improvement has been in the histories prepared of late years
for the use of schools, manuals thoroughly adapted for boys and girls are still
required. The memories of the young cannot retain mere names, or retain them
only at the cost of efforts which weaken their powers in other directions. In
school histories no reference should be made to events of which some clear idea
cannot be laid before the reader, and no names mentioned of actors in the
history unless enough can be said to exhibit them as living men. To this
rule the contributors to the present series will, so far as practicable, strictly
adhere.

In short, it is their object, not to recount all the events of any given
epoch, but to bring out in the clearest light those incidents and features on
which the mind of the young most readily fastens.

Special attention is paid to those characteristics which exhibit the life of
a people as well as the policy of their rulers.

With each volume is given a Map or Maps, illustrative of the period of
which it treats ; a Chronological Analysis, showing the relation of English
and foreign events ; and an Index for reference. Foot-notes are avoided as
tending to interrupt the reader's interest in the narrative. To bring out the
sequence of events a full Marginal Analysis is supplied throughout.

ch. vii. Results of the Era. 225

both of the way in which civil and ecclesiastical power
were sometimes blended together, and of the brutality of
the times.

Such an age was not ready for wider views. Further
knowledge of the laws of nature must
come before popular superstitions could be prepared for
removed, and until this was done it would toleratlon-
be in vain to look for much progress in toleration and free-
dom of thought.

(z) Beginning of Progress in Scientific Enquiry.
Nevertheless the era of which we have spoken was
the beginning of the era of freedom. From it dated a
great awaking of human thought. Its great „ . . ,

& *> & Beginning of

geographical discoverers had opened new scientific
fields for scientific enquiry. Not only had enqmry-
navigators been round the world, but they had seen as it
were the rest of the sky. They had seen the south pole-
star and the Southern Cross in their voyages round the
Cape of Good Hope. Thus was not only their geogra-
phical but also their astronomical knowledge widened.

A. beginning of truer and wider views of the universe
was almost a natural consequence, but to attain to it
scholastic and even ecclesiastical bonds had to be
loosened. A scientific Luther was wanted to burst
through them, but the age did not produce such a man.
Nevertheless it did produce one who silently lived and
worked timidly to demonstrate that the motions of the
planets and the moon can only be fully accounted for on
the hypothesis that the sun and not the earth is the
centre of the solar system, that the moon is a satellite
of the earth, and that the sphere of the fixed stars is at an
immense distance from the farthest of the planetary
spheres. Our present theory of the solar system is still

M. H. Q

226 Results of the Protestant Revolution. PT. in.

sometimes called after his name, Copemican, though it
is far more truly called after Newton.

Nicolas Copernicus died two years before Luther.
His story is that of a brave life, and one which may
Nicolas well be set by the side of that of other great

Copernicus. men 0f the era> Educated at the University
of Cracow, in Poland, he afterwards proceeded to Rome,
and studied under the best astronomer of the day.
Then he spent a long life in working out his grand
scientific problem from careful observations and accord-
ing to the best lights he could get. He was loyal to the
Church. He did not want to be a heretic, and yet the
great truth he had to tell was contrary to the teaching of
the Church. For thirty-six years — all the time the Pro-
testant struggle was raging — he was working at the
immortal book in which his observations and discoveries
were embodied, but he did not venture to publish it till
under Paul I'll, there was a lull in the ecclesiastical
storm. He was then an old man, in broken health ; his
book was in the printer's hands when he was
woriSof on his death-bed. All he cared for now was
published t0 see it safe -m prjnt before he died. He

till he was on r

his death- waited at death's door day after day. At last
the printer's messenger "came with the printed
book. He received it with tears in his eyes, composed
himself and died. This was in 1543, and he was seventy
years old. He was followed by other scientific dis-
coverers—Tycho Brahe, Kepler, and Galileo. Thus the
brave life of Copernicus maybe taken as marking the
epoch when scientific thought and enquiry began to free
itself from theological trammels and to seek to discover
the laws of nature by a. simple, childlike, and careful
observation of facts. But necessarily many generations
must pass away before men became used to scientific
modes of research and of thought.

Epochs of Modern History.

Ten Volumes now published :—

The ERA of the PROTESTANT REVO-
LUTION. By F. Seebohm, Author of the ' Oxford Reformers—
Colet, Erasmus, More.' With 4 Coloured Maps and 12 Diagrams
on Wood. Price 2s. 6d.

The CRUSADES. By the Rev. G. W. Cox, M.A.

late [Scholar of i Trinity College, Oxford; Author of the ' Aryan
Mythology ' &c. With a Coloured Map. Price 2s. 6d.

The THIRTY TEARS' WAR, 1618-1648.

By Samuel Rawson Gardiner, late Student of Ch. Ch. Author
of ' History of England from the Accession of James I. to the
Disgrace of Chief Justice Coke &c. With a Coloured Map.
Price 2S. 6d

The HOUSES of LANCASTER and YORK;

with the CONQUEST and LOSS of FRANCE. By James
Gairdner, of the Public Record Office, Editor °of 'The Paston
Letters ' &c. With 5 Coloured Maps. Price 2s. 6d.

EDWARD the THIRD. By the Rev. W. War-
burton M.A. late Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford ; Her
Majesty's Senior Inspector of Schools. With 3 Coloured Maps and
2 Genealogical Tables. Price 2s. 6d.

The AGE of ELIZABETH. By the Rev. M.

Creighton, M.A. late Fellow and Tutor of Merton College, Oxford.
With s Maps and 4 Genealogical Tables. Price 2s. 6d.

The FALL of the STUARTS; andWEST-

ERN EUROPE from 1678 to 1697. By the Rev. Edward
Hale, M.A. Assistant Master at Eton. With 11 Maps and Plans.
Price 2S. 6d.

The FIRST TWO STUARTS and the

PURITAN REVOLUTION, 1603-1660. By Samuel Rawson
Gardiner, late^ Student of Ch. Ch., Author of 'The Thirty Years.
War, 1618-1648,'in the same Series. With 4 Coloured Maps. 2s. 6d.

London, LONGMANS & CO.

Epochs of Modern History.

The WAR of AMERICAN INDEPEN-
DENCE, 1 775-1783. By J. M. Ludlow, Author of 'A Sketch
of the History of the United States from Independence to Seces-
sion ' &c With 4 Coloured Maps. Price is. 6d.

The EARLY PLANTAGENETS. By the Rev.

W. Stubbs, M.A. &c. Professor of Modern History in the University
of Oxford. With 2 Maps. Price is. 6d.

1 More than once we have expressed
approval of the root idea of this
series. It is essentially a good one.
No doubt it might suffer much if the
books themselves, or any one of them,
were not carefully done. That, how-
ever, has not happened yet. Great
care has been exercised by the Edi-
tors, who have manifestly known
where to go to get their work properly
done. A careful examination of
each of these three volumes has led
to the conclusion that they are trust-
worthy, and written with more care

and power than those who look upon
the series merely as a set of school

books would be likely to expect

It is scarcely too much to say that
any young man who should take up
these three little books would be led
by them to understand with more
completeness and accuracy the means
by which Great Britain has become
what she is, than by the use of any
other books extant. All the little
books are fully indexed, and wel
illustrated with maps and plans.'
Scotsman.

Volumes; in continuation of the Series, in various stages
of preparation ;—

The NORMANS in EUROPE. By Rev. A. H.

Johnson, M.A. Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford.

FREDERICK the GREAT and the SEVEN

YEARS' WAR. By F. W. Longman, of Balliol College, Oxford.

The AGE of ANNE. By E. E. Morris, M.A.

original Editor of the Series.

The FRENCH REVOLUTION to the

BATTLE of WATERLOO, 1789-1815. By B. Mekiton Cordery
Author of ' King and Commonwealth.'

The BEGINNING of the MIDDLE AGES;

Charles the Great and Alfred ; the History of England in its con-
nexion with that of Europe in the Ninth Century. By the Very
Rev. R. W. Church, M.A. Dean of St. Paul's.

London, LONGMANS & CO.

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