Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 7.djvu/263

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HENRY


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HENRY


popular resentment, especially in Lincolnshire and the northern counties. Eventually, in the autumn of 1536, the people banded together in a very formid- able insurrection known as the Pilgrimage of Grace. The insurgents rallied under the device of the Five Wounds, and they were only induced to disperse by the deceitful promises of Henry's representative, the Duke of Norfolk. The suppression of the larger mon- asteries rapidly followed, and with these were swept away numberless shrines, statues, and objects of pious veneration, on the pretext that these were purely superstitious. It is easy to see that the lust of plun- der was the motive which prompted this wholesale confiscation.

Meanwhile, Henry, though taking advantage of the spirit of religious innovation now rife among the peo- ple whenever it suited his purpose, remained still at- tached to the sacramental .system in which he had been brought up. In 1539 the Statute of the Six Articles enforced, under the severest penalties, such doctrines as transubstantiation. Communion luidor one kind, auricular confession, and the celibacy of tlu' clergy. Under this act offenders were sent to the stake for their Protestantism just as ruthlessly as the aged Margaret, Countess of Salisbury, was attainted by Parliament and eventually lieheaded, simply be- cause Henry was irritated by the denunciations of her son Cardinal Pole. Neither was the king less cruel towards those who were nearest to him. Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, his second and fifth wives, perished on the scaffold, but their whilom lord only paraded his indifference regarding the fate to which he had condemned them. On 30 July, 1540, of six victims who were dragged to Smithfiekl, three were Reformers burnt for heretical doctrine, and the other three Catholics, hanged and c|uartered for denying the king's supremacy. Of all the numerous miserable beings whom Henry sent to execution. Cromwell, ]ier- haps, is the only one who fully deserved his fate. Looking at the last fifteen years of Henry's life, it is hard to find one single feature which does not evoke rejiulsion, and the attempts made by such writers as Froude, A. F. Pollard, and H. A. Fisher to whitewash liis misdeeds only give proof of the extraordinary prejudice with which they approach the subject. Henry's cruelties continued to the last, and so like- wise did his inconsistencies. One of the last measures of confiscation of his reign was an act for the suppres- sion of chantries, but Henry by his last will and testa- ment estaljlished what were practically chantries to have Masses said for his own soul.

A full bibliography would require a volume to itself and would include every history of England that ever was written. The estimate of Ling.\kd's still retains its value, though the last revision took place before the supremely important series of Calendar of Letters and Papers of the reign of Henry VIII began to be published by the Record Office. The prefaces by the Rev. .J. S. Brewer which accompanied the early volumes have been printed so .as to form a separate work, The Reign of Henry VIII to the fall of Wolsey, by far the most valu.ible discussion of the early portion of the reign. On the other hand Dr. J. Gairdner, Lollardy and the Refortnation, supplies the fullest and best account of the later years. Other works to be specially recommended are; —

Gairdner, History of the English Church in the li:th Century (London. 1902); Gasquet. Henry VIII and the English Monas- teries: Dixon, History of the English Church, especially I, II; Gairdner in Diet. Nat. Biogr., s. v. Henry VIII; Lingard in Duljlin Review, May, 1840, 334-61; Bridoett, Life of Blessed Thomas More; Idem, Life of Blessed John Fisher; Stone, Mary Tudor (London, 1904); Zimmermann, Kordinol Pole (Ratisbon, 1895); Gairdner, New Lights on the Divorce in Engl. Hisl. Re- mew, 1896-97; Thurston, The Canon Law of the Divorce in Engl. Hist. Review, 1904; Ehses, Romische Dokumente zur Geschichte der Eheacheidung (Paderbom, 1893); O'Donovan, Henry VIII's Defence of the Seven .'iacraments (New York, 1908); TAnNToN. Cardinal Wolsey (London, 1902) (cannot be unre- servedly recommended).

Other special works, such as that of DoM Hendriks, deal with the Carthusian and other martyrs. From a strongly anti- Rom.an point of view the monograph of Pollard, Henry VIII (London, 1905) and the fifth volume of Fisher. The Political History of England (1906), are of most authority. — For other works see the bibliography of England — Before the Reforma-

""'• Herbert Thurston.

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Henry IV, King of France and Navarre, son of Jeanne d'.41bret and Antoine de Bourbon; b. 14 De- cember, 1553, in the castle of Pau; d. 14 May, 1610. He began his military career under .\dmiral de Coligny and, from 1569, played a decisive part in the wars of religion as head of the Protestant party. By the death of the Duke of Anjou, in 15S4, Henry of Bour- bon became heir-presumptive to the crown "of France. The manifesto of Peronne (March, 1585) issued by the Catholic princes, gave proof of their uneasiness; Car- dinal de Pelleve and the Jesuit Claude Mathieu ex- pressed their anxiety at Rome. Although Sixtus V, a strong supporter of royal authority, was not in complete sympathy with the programme and the action of the League, yet relying on the pulilic right which in the Middle .\ges had been acknowledged in the whole of Christian Europe, he took decisive meas- ures against Henry of Bourbon. Wishing France to



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Henry IV, King of France Frans Pourbus, the Younger, Uffizi Gallerj-, Florence

have a king who was respected and hostile to heresy, he declared that Henry of Bourbon had forfeited his rights to the throne of France, deprived him of the crown of Navarre, and released his subjects from their oath of fidelity (9 September, 1585). The parlia- mentarians and the Cialliean lawyers protested; Hot- mann published his " Brutum fulmen Papae Sixti V" in answer to the papal Bull. Henry of Bourbon, appealed to France, through his letters to the clergy and the nobility (1 January, 1.586); he attempted to gain the support of the Protestant princes of Ger- many, and resolved to try the fortune of arms. For the account of the circumstances and the military events that assured the throne to Henry of Bourbon, see Guise, the House of. To establish himself on the throne his conversion was necessary, and the con- version of Henry IV is still an historical problem, which must be examined in detail. A legend attrib- utes to Henry IV the saying: "Paris is well worth a Mass"; his conversion, then, would only have been a piece of policy devoid of all conviction. No con- temporary document records this epigram, though the "Caquets de I'accouchee", a satirical collection of the year 1622, speaks of Sully saying to Henry IV "Sire, Sire, la couronne vaut bien une messe", and these words, themselves doubtful, are probably the