Tudor Lives: Success & Failure of an Age Read Online Free

mastery of the English tongue, and their virtues favourably compared with those of the ancient classics.
    Whatever the sudden triumphs of Tudor nationalism, perhaps the final account showed questionable gains. An ‘island race’, hedged by its exclusiveness, breeds pride, ignorance and contempt for others. The dangers were not apparent to Henry VIII. His purpose was to have the whole management of the country vested in his hands, so that an Englishman was the master of English fate. He succeeded and has had the applause of history for doing so, but it was not done without great pain. The despotic power of the sovereign was liable to have terrible consequences, and the Tudors were quite ruthless in furthering their policies. One of the first acts of Henry VII was to date his reign, by a legal fiction, from 21st August 1485 so that all those who fought against him at Bosworth could be attainted with high treason. The three chief Tudors practised a judicious cruelty for political ends which wouldhave done credit to any Italian follower of Machiavelli. Henry VIII was bloodthirsty even by the standard of his age; his use of the axe seemed the more terrible because of his remorseless, dispassionate pursuit of the victims; those of high rank or noble quality were the most certain to fall, as examples to lesser beings. Elizabeth has been rightly commended for the comparative leniency of her religious persecution. But the same grace was not extended to her political opponents. After the Catholic uprisings in the North, in 1569–70, by deliberate policy a few were taken from each village that had supported the rebels and were executed; 800 died in this way. Mary alone refrained from political terrorism. It is ironic that the fanatical persecutor of Protestants should have been so gentle with rebels. If Northumberland’s revolt, the most serious attack on the throne in the Tudor age, had happened in the reigns of Mary’s father or sister, streets would have run with blood.
    Nor did the safeguards of Parliament and the judiciary check the royal despotism. The Tudors used the legislature and the courts when they could gain something by doing so, but otherwise ignored or intimidated them. Elizabeth ruled by royal prerogative and only summoned Parliament with reluctance. The Tudors had the political wisdom to give their actions legal form, but they relied on a cowed and venal judiciary that did not dare to try the temper of the monarch. The probity of Sir Thomas More was exceptional; more typical was the man who accused him, the servile Rich, perjuring himself to please a king. Nor did the Tudor reforms of English life improve the justice and humanity of government. Tyrannical, unscrupulous sovereigns infected their officials. Cromwell, the ‘new man’ who carried out the policies of Henry VIII, was no less insolent and high-handed in office than his proud predecessor Cardinal Wolsey. Spies and informers had been a feature of life at least since the time of Edward IV, but the Tudors greatly increased the number and the scope of their operations. Cromwell relied on their information to impose Henry’s settlement in Church and State. It was said that Walsingham’s ‘secret service’ was so extensive, it consumed most of his large wealth. The common people were still oppressed by those in power. The dissolution of the monasteries put an end to many church abuses; but the corrupt dealings over the division of the spoils among the wealthy imposed as many more on the poor. Neither consciencenor justice checked the greed for riches. The peers who condemned the Duke of Buckingham to please the King, afterwards divided the Duke’s huge estates among themselves. A statesman, wrote a Tudor essayist, could hardly resist the temptations of vice, who ‘assaults with the weapons of power, self-love, ambition, corruption, revenge, and fear’.
    The worst aspect of the nationalistic policy of the Tudor despots was the way in which it pandered to