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Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1

T >> Thomas Babington Macaulay >> Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1




Burleigh, like the old Marquess of Winchester, who preceded him
in the custody of the White Staff, was of the willow, and not of
the oak. He first rose into notice by defending the supremacy of
Henry the Eighth. He was subsequently favoured and promoted by
the Duke of Somerset. He not only contrived to escape unhurt when
his patron fell, but became an important member of the
administration of Northumberland. Dr. Nares assures us over and
over again that there could have been nothing base in Cecil's
conduct on this occasion; for, says he, Cecil continued to stand
well with Cranmer. This, we confess, hardly satisfies us. We are
much of the mind of Falstaff's tailor. We must have better
assurance for Sir John than Bardolph's. We like not the security.

Through the whole course of that miserable intrigue which was
carried on round the dying bed of Edward the Sixth, Cecil so
bemeaned himself as to avoid, first, the displeasure of
Northumberland, and afterwards the displeasure of Mary. He was
prudently unwilling to put his hand to the instrument which
changed the course of the succession. But the furious Dudley was
master of the palace. Cecil, therefore, according to his own
account, excused himself from signing as a party, but consented
to sign as a witness. It is not easy to describe his
dexterous conduct at this most perplexing crisis in language
more appropriate than that which is employed by old Fuller. "His
hand wrote it as secretary of state," says that quaint writer;
"but his heart consented not thereto. Yea, he openly opposed it;
though at last yielding to the greatness of Northumberland, in an
age when it was present drowning not to swim with the stream. But
as the philosopher tells us, that though the planets be whirled
about daily from east to west, by the motion of the primum
mobile, yet have they also a contrary proper motion of their own
from west to east, which they slowly, though surely, move, at
their leisure; so Cecil had secret counter-endeavours against the
strain of the court herein, and privately advanced his rightful
intentions, against the foresaid duke's ambition."

This was undoubtedly the most perilous conjuncture of Cecil's
life. Wherever there was a safe course, he was safe. But here
every course was full of danger. His situation rendered it
impossible for him to be neutral. If he acted on either side, if
he refused to act at all, he ran a fearful risk. He saw all the
difficulties of his position. He sent his money and plate out of
London, made over his estates to his son, and carried arms about
his person. His best arms, however, were his sagacity and his
self-command. The plot in which he had been an unwilling
accomplice ended, as it was natural that so odious and absurd a
plot should end, in the ruin of its contrivers. In the meantime,
Cecil quietly extricated himself and, having been successively
patronised by Henry, by Somerset, and by Northumberland,
continued to flourish under the protection of Mary.

He had no aspirations after the crown of martyrdom. He confessed
himself, therefore, with great decorum, heard mass in Wimbledon
Church at Easter, and, for the better ordering of his spiritual
concerns, took a priest into his house. Dr. Nares, whose
simplicity passes that of any casuist with whom we are
acquainted, vindicates his hero by assuring us that this was not
superstition, but pure unmixed hypocrisy. "That he did in some
manner conform, we shall not be able, in the face of existing
documents, to deny; while we feel in our own minds abundantly
satisfied, that, during this very trying reign, he never
abandoned the prospect of another revolution in favour of
Protestantism." In another place, the Doctor tells us, that Cecil
went to mass "with no idolatrous intention." Nobody, we believe,
ever accused him of idolatrous intentions. The very ground of the
charge against him is that he had no idolatrous intentions. We
never should have blamed him if he had really gone to Wimbledon
Church, with the feelings of a good Catholic, to worship the
host. Dr. Nares speaks in several places with just severity of
the sophistry of the Jesuits, and with just admiration of the
incomparable letters of Pascal. It is somewhat strange,
therefore, that he should adopt, to the full extent, the
jesuitical doctrine of the direction of intentions.

We do not blame Cecil for not choosing to be burned. The deep
stain upon his memory is that, for differences of opinion for
which he would risk nothing himself, he, in the day of his power,
took away without scruple the lives of others. One of the excuses
suggested in these Memoirs for his conforming, during the reign
of Mary to the Church of Rome, is that he may have been of the
same mind with those German Protestants who were called
Adiaphorists, and who considered the popish rites as matters
indifferent. Melanchthon was one of these moderate persons, and
"appears," says Dr. Nares, "to have gone greater lengths than
any imputed to Lord Burleigh." We should have thought this not
only an excuse, but a complete vindication, if Cecil had been an
Adiaphorist for the benefit of others as well as for his own. If
the popish rites were matters of so little moment that a good
Protestant might lawfully practise them for his safety, how could
it be just or humane that a Papist should be hanged, drawn, and
quartered, for practising them from a sense of duty? Unhappily
these non-essentials soon became matters of life and death just
at the very time at which Cecil attained the highest point of
power and favour, an Act of Parliament was passed by which the
penalties of high treason were denounced against persons who
should do in sincerity what he had done from cowardice.

Early in the reign of Mary, Cecil was employed in a mission
scarcely consistent with the character of a zealous Protestant.
He was sent to escort the Papal Legate, Cardinal Pole, from
Brussels to London. That great body of moderate persons who cared
more for the quiet of the realm than for the controverted points
which were in issue between the Churches seem to have placed
their chief hope in the wisdom and humanity of the gentle
Cardinal. Cecil, it is clear, cultivated the friendship of Pole
with great assiduity, and received great advantage from the
Legate's protection.

But the best protection of Cecil, during the gloomy and
disastrous reign of Mary, was that which he derived from his own
prudence and from his own temper, a prudence which could never be
lulled into carelessness, a temper which could never be irritated
into rashness. The Papists could find no occasion against him.
Yet he did not lose the esteem even of those sterner Protestants
who had preferred exile to recantation. He attached himself to
the persecuted heiress of the throne, and entitled himself to her
gratitude and confidence. Yet he continued to receive marks of
favour from the Queen. In the House of Commons, he put himself at
the head of the party opposed to the Court. Yet, so guarded was
his language that, even when some of those who acted with him
were imprisoned by the Privy Council, he escaped with impunity.

At length Mary died: Elizabeth succeeded; and Cecil rose at once
to greatness. He was sworn in Privy-councillor and Secretary of
State to the new sovereign before he left her prison of Hatfield;
and he continued to serve her during forty years, without
intermission, in the highest employments. His abilities were
precisely those which keep men long in power. He belonged to the
class of the Walpoles, the Pelhams, and the Liverpools, not to
that of the St. Johns, the Carterets, the Chathams, and the
Cannings. If he had been a man of original genius and of an
enterprising spirit, it would have been scarcely possible for him
to keep his power or even his head. There was not room in one
government for an Elizabeth and a Richelieu. What the haughty
daughter of Henry needed, was a moderate, cautious, flexible
minister, skilled in the details of business, competent to
advise, but not aspiring to command. And such a minister she
found in Burleigh. No arts could shake the confidence which she
reposed in her old and trusty servant. The courtly graces of
Leicester, the brilliant talents and accomplishments of Essex,
touched the fancy, perhaps the heart, of the woman; but no rival
could deprive the Treasurer of the place which he possessed in
the favour of the Queen. She sometimes chid him sharply; but he
was the man whom she delighted to honour. For Burleigh, she
forgot her usual parsimony both of wealth and of dignities. For
Burleigh, she relaxed that severe etiquette to which she was
unreasonably attached. Every other person to whom she addressed
her speech, or on whom the glance of her eagle eye fell,
instantly sank on his knee. For Burleigh alone, a chair was set
in her presence; and there the old minister, by birth only a
plain Lincolnshire esquire, took his ease, while the haughty
heirs of the Fitzalans and the De Veres humbled themselves to the
dust around him. At length, having, survived all his early
coadjutors and rivals, he died full of years and honours. His
royal mistress visited him on his deathbed, and cheered him with
assurances of her affection and esteem; and his power passed,
with little diminution, to a son who inherited his abilities, and
whose mind had been formed by his counsels.

The life of Burleigh was commensurate with one of the most
important periods in the history of the world. It exactly
measures the time during which the House of Austria held decided
superiority and aspired to universal dominion. In the year in
which Burleigh was born, Charles the Fifth obtained the imperial
crown. In the year in which Burleigh died, the vast designs which
had, during near a century, kept Europe in constant agitation,
were buried in the same grave with the proud and sullen Philip.

The life of Burleigh was commensurate also with the period during
which a great moral revolution was effected, a revolution the
consequences of which were felt, not only in the cabinets of
princes, but at half the firesides in Christendom. He was born
when the great religious schism was just commencing. He lived to
see that schism complete, and to see a line of demarcation,
which, since his death, has been very little altered, strongly
drawn between Protestant and Catholic Europe.

The only event of modern times which can be properly compared
with the Reformation is the French Revolution, or, to speak more
accurately, that great revolution of political feeling which took
place in almost every part of the civilised world during the
eighteenth century, and which obtained in France its most
terrible and signal triumph. Each of these memorable events may
be described as a rising up of the human reason against a Caste.
The one was a struggle of the laity against the clergy for
intellectual liberty; the other was a struggle of the people
against princes and nobles for political liberty. In both cases,
the spirit of innovation was at first encouraged by the class to
which it was likely to be most prejudicial. It was under the
patronage of Frederic, of Catherine, of Joseph, and of the
grandees of France, that the philosophy which afterwards
threatened all the thrones and aristocracies of Europe with
destruction first became formidable. The ardour with which men
betook themselves to liberal studies, at the close of the
fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century, was
zealously encouraged by the heads of that very church to which
liberal studies were destined to be fatal. In both cases, when
the explosion came, it came with a violence which appalled and
disgusted many of those who had previously been distinguished by
the freedom of their opinions. The violence of the democratic
party in France made Burke a Tory and Alfieri a courtier. The
violence of the chiefs of the German schism made Erasmus a
defender of abuses, and turned the author of Utopia into a
persecutor. In both cases, the convulsion which had overthrown
deeply seated errors, shook all the principles on which society
rests to their very foundations. The minds of men were unsettled.
It seemed for a time that all order and morality were about to
perish with the prejudices with which they had been long and
intimately associated. Frightful cruelties were committed.
Immense masses of property were confiscated. Every part of Europe
swarmed with exiles. In moody and turbulent spirits zeal soured
into malignity, or foamed into madness. From the political
agitation of the eighteenth century sprang the Jacobins. From the
religious agitation of the sixteenth century sprang the
Anabaptists. The partisans of Robespierre robbed and murdered in
the name of fraternity and equality. The followers of
Kniperdoling robbed and murdered in the name of Christian
liberty. The feeling of patriotism was in many parts of Europe,
almost wholly extinguished. All the old maxims of foreign policy
were changed. Physical boundaries were superseded by moral
boundaries. Nations made war on each other with new arms, with
arms which no fortifications, however strong by nature or, by
art, could resist, with arms before which rivers parted like the
Jordan, and ramparts fell down like the walls of Jericho. The
great masters of fleets and armies were often reduced to confess,
like Milton's warlike angel, how hard they found it

"--To exclude
Spiritual substance with corporeal bar."

Europe was divided, as Greece had been divided during the period
concerning which Thucydides wrote. The conflict was not, as it is
in ordinary times, between state and state, but between two
omnipresent factions, each of which was in some places dominant
and in other places oppressed, but which, openly or covertly,
carried on their strife in the bosom of every society. No man
asked whether another belonged to the same country with himself,
but whether he belonged to the same sect. Party-spirit seemed to
justify and consecrate acts which, in any other times, would have
been considered as the foulest of treasons. The French emigrant
saw nothing disgraceful in bringing Austrian and Prussian hussars
to Paris. The Irish or Italian democrat saw no impropriety in
serving the French Directory against his own native government.
So, in the sixteenth century, the fury of theological factions
suspended all national animosities and jealousies. The Spaniards
were invited into France by the League; the English were invited
into France by the Huguenots.

We by no means intend to underrate or to palliate the crimes and
excesses which, during the last generation, were produced by the
spirit of democracy. But, when we hear men zealous for the
Protestant religion, constantly represent the French Revolution
as radically and essentially evil on account of those crimes and
excesses, we cannot but remember that the deliverance of our
ancestors from the house of their spiritual bondage was effected
"by plagues and by signs, by wonders and by war." We cannot but
remember that, as in the case of the French Revolution, so also
in the case of the Reformation, those who rose up against tyranny
were themselves deeply tainted with the vices which tyranny
engenders. We cannot but remember that libels scarcely less
scandalous than those of Hebert, mummeries scarcely less absurd
than those of Clootz, and crimes scarcely less atrocious than
those of Marat, disgrace the early history of Protestantism. The
Reformation is an event long past. That volcano has spent its
rage. The wide waste produced by its outbreak is forgotten. The
landmarks which were swept away have been replaced. The ruined
edifices have been repaired. The lava has covered with a rich
incrustation the fields which it once devastated, and, after
having turned a beautiful and fruitful garden into a desert, has
again turned the desert into a still more beautiful and fruitful
garden. The second great eruption is not yet over. The marks of
its ravages are still all around us. The ashes are still hot
beneath our feet. In some directions the deluge of fire still
continues to spread. Yet experience surely entitles us to believe
that this explosion, like that which preceded it, will fertilise
the soil which it has devastated. Already, in those parts which
have suffered most severely, rich cultivation and secure
dwellings have begun to appear amidst the waste. The more we
read of the history of past ages, the more we observe the signs
of our own times, the more do we feel our hearts filled and
swelled up by a good hope for the future destinies of the human
race.

The history of the Reformation in England is full of strange
problems. The most prominent and extraordinary phaenomenon
which it presents to us is the gigantic strength of the
government contrasted with the feebleness of the religious
parties. During the twelve or thirteen years which followed the
death of Henry the Eighth, the religion of the state was thrice
changed. Protestantism was established by Edward; the Catholic
Church was restored by Mary; Protestantism was again established
by Elizabeth. The faith of the nation seemed to depend on the
personal inclinations of the sovereign. Nor was this all. An
established church was then, as a matter of course, a persecuting
church. Edward persecuted Catholics. Mary persecuted Protestants.
Elizabeth persecuted Catholics again. The father of those three
sovereigns had enjoyed the pleasure of persecuting both sects at
once, and had sent to death, on the same hurdle, the heretic who
denied the real presence, and the traitor who denied the royal
supremacy. There was nothing in England like that fierce and
bloody opposition which, in France, each of the religious
factions in its turn offered to the government. We had neither a
Coligny nor a Mayenne, neither a Moncontour nor an Ivry. No
English city braved sword and famine for the reformed doctrines
with the spirit of Rochelle, or for the Catholic doctrines with
the spirit of Paris. Neither sect in England formed a League.
Neither sect extorted a recantation from the sovereign. Neither
sect could obtain from an adverse sovereign even a toleration.
The English Protestants, after several years of domination, sank
down with scarcely a struggle under the tyranny of Mary. The
Catholics, after having regained and abused their old ascendency
submitted patiently to the severe rule of Elizabeth. Neither
Protestants nor Catholics engaged in any great and well-organized
scheme of resistance. A few wild and tumultuous risings,
suppressed as soon as they appeared, a few dark conspiracies in
which only a small number of desperate men engaged, such were the
utmost efforts made by these two parties to assert the most
sacred of human rights, attacked by the most odious tyranny.

The explanation of these circumstances which has generally been
given is very simple but by no means satisfactory. The power of
the crown, it is said, was then at its height, and was in fact
despotic. This solution, we own, seems to us to be no solution at
all. It has long been the fashion, a fashion introduced by Mr.
Hume, to describe the English monarchy in the sixteenth century
as an absolute monarchy. And such undoubtedly it appears to a
superficial observer. Elizabeth, it is true, often spoke to her
parliaments in language as haughty and imperious as that which
the Great Turk would use to his divan. She punished with great
severity members of the House of Commons who, in her opinion,
carried the freedom of debate too far. She assumed the power of
legislating by means of proclamations. She imprisoned her
subjects without bringing them to a legal trial. Torture was
often employed, in defiance of the laws of England, for the
purpose of extorting confessions from those who were shut up in
her dungeons. The authority of the Star-Chamber and of the
Ecclesiastical Commission was at its highest point. Severe
restraints were imposed on political and religious discussion.
The number of presses was at one time limited. No man could print
without a licence; and every work had to undergo the scrutiny of
the Primate, or the Bishop of London. Persons whose writings were
displeasing to the Court, were cruelly mutilated, like Stubbs, or
put to death, like Penry. Nonconformity was severely punished.
The Queen prescribed the exact rule of religious faith and
discipline; and whoever departed from that rule, either to the
right or to the left, was in danger of severe penalties.

Such was this government. Yet we know that it was loved by the
great body of those who lived under it. We know that, during the
fierce contests of the seventeenth century, both the hostile
parties spoke of the time of Elizabeth as of a golden age. That
great Queen has now been lying two hundred and thirty years in
Henry the Seventh's chapel. Yet her memory is still dear to the
hearts of a free people.

The truth seems to be that the government of the Tudors was, with
a few occasional deviations, a popular government, under the
forms of despotism. At first sight, it may seem that the
prerogatives of Elizabeth were not less ample than those of Lewis
the Fourteenth, and her parliaments were as obsequious as his
parliaments, that her warrant had as much authority as his
lettre de cachet. The extravagance with which her courtiers
eulogized her personal and mental charms went beyond the
adulation of Boileau and Moliere. Lewis would have blushed to
receive from those who composed the gorgeous circles of Marli and
Versailles such outward marks of servitude as the haughty
Britoness exacted of all who approached her. But the authority of
Lewis rested on the support of his army. The authority of
Elizabeth rested solely on the support of her people. Those who
say that her power was absolute do not sufficiently consider in
what her power consisted. Her power consisted in the willing
obedience of her subjects, in their attachment to her person and
to her office, in their respect for the old line from which she
sprang, in their sense of the general security which they enjoyed
under her government. These were the means, and the only means,
which she had at her command for carrying her decrees into
execution, for resisting foreign enemies, and for crushing
domestic treason. There was not a ward in the city, there was not
a hundred in any shire in England, which could not have
overpowered the handful of armed men who composed her household.
If a hostile sovereign threatened invasion, if an ambitious noble
raised the standard of revolt, she could have recourse only to
the trainbands of her capital and the array of her counties, to
the citizens and yeomen of England, commanded by the merchants
and esquires of England.

Thus, when intelligence arrived of the vast preparations which
Philip was making for the subjugation of the realm, the first
person to whom the government thought of applying for assistance
was the Lord Mayor of London. They sent to ask him what force the
city would engage to furnish for the defence of the kingdom
against the Spaniards. The Mayor and Common Council, in return
desired to know what force the Queen's Highness wished them to
furnish. The answer was, fifteen ships, and five thousand men.
The Londoners deliberated on the matter, and, two days after,
"humbly intreated the council, in sign of their perfect love and
loyalty to prince and country, to accept ten thousand men, and
thirty ships amply furnished."

People who could give such signs as these of their loyalty were
by no means to be misgoverned with impunity. The English in the
sixteenth century were, beyond all doubt, a free people. They had
not, indeed, the outward show of freedom; but they had the
reality. They had not as good a constitution as we have; but they
had that without which the best constitution is as useless as the
king's proclamation against vice and immorality, that which,
without any constitution, keeps rulers in awe, force, and the
spirit to use it. Parliaments, it is true, were rarely held, and
were not very respectfully treated. The great charter was often
violated. But the people had a security against gross and
systematic misgovernment, far stronger than all the parchment
that was ever marked with the sign-manual, and than all the wax
that was ever pressed by the great seal.

It is a common error in politics to confound means with ends.
Constitutions, charters, petitions of right, declarations of
right, representative assemblies, electoral colleges, are not
good government; nor do they, even when most elaborately
constructed, necessarily produce good government. Laws exist in
vain for those who have not the courage and the means to defend
them. Electors meet in vain where want makes them the slaves of
the landlord, or where superstition makes them the slaves of the
priest. Representative assemblies sit in vain unless they have at
their command, in the last resort the physical power which is
necessary to make their deliberations free, and their votes
effectual.

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