Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated)

by Rudyard Kipling

and the monks, abbots, and friars more terrified still. These had long known what greedy eyes laymen cast on their vast wealth. Wyclif,

  said the great churchmen, was a “heretic,”

  and ought to be burned alive (he died in his bed all safe in 1384). In the reigns of Henry

  IV and Henry V the clergy persuaded Parliament to make laws saying that heretics should be burned alive, and many of Wyclif’sfollowers, during the next hundred and twenty years, were actually so burned. The Church nicknamed them “Lollards,” or babblers.

  The “State,” as represented by the King and Parliament, somewhat unwillingly supported the churchmen in this matter; yet on the whole the State considered that these

  Lollards were raising dreadful questions, and it would be better to crush them and not allow them the safety-valve of talking. The Church sat on the safety-valve as long as it could; but the steam of free thought was bubbling underneath, and, once it had gathered head enough,

  would blow those that sat on the safety-valve sky-high into little tiny pieces. When Lollardy bursts forth again in the reign of Henry

  VIII it will be called by the better name of

  4 4 Protestantism.’’

  Other changes, too, were not far away. For nearly a thousand years past the nations of

  Europe had been considered as one great family of which the Pope, and, since 800, some hazy

  German king who called himself “Roman

  Emperor,” were supposed to be the two heads;

  other kings were, or ought to be, vassals of these two. The Kings of England and France had never really admitted these large claims, and that was why England and France were ahead of other nations. But all these ideas wereout of date; the spirit of the Crusades was dead, the commercial rivalry of great nations had begun. Gunpowder was changing the face of war and was making the strongest and heaviest armour quite useless. The printing of books with movable type was discovered about

  1459, and, at Westminster, William Caxton was printing English and Latin books in the reign of Edward IV. In the same reign certain

  Bristol merchants were sailing far into the

  Atlantic, to discover half-mythical islands, of which dim stories, long forgotten, were now being revived and retold; they did not find any such islands till the reign of Henry VII

  had begun. Spaniards led by Columbus were the first to set foot in America in 1492; Portuguese were the first to round the Cape of Good

  Hope five years later. But the idea of new worlds to be discovered was in the air. Finally,

  the Turks had taken Constantinople in 1453,

  and its exiles, who still spoke a sort of Greek and possessed many manuscripts of the ancient

  Greek philosophers, came to Italy and began to spread the knowledge of Greek to Western

  Europe.

  Four things, then, were to change the face of the world — gunpowder, printing, geographical discovery, and Greek. They would lead men first to wonder, then to reflect, and

  lastly to question — to question whether all the tales which the Church had been telling the world for a thousand years were true or false. Could Becket’s bones really restore a dead man to life? Could a priest turn bread and wine into the actual body and blood of

  Christ? Was the world really flat and did the sun and moon go round it, as the Church said they did? Might there possibly be other worlds? You can understand, then, that the end of the fifteenth century left men rubbing their eyes, half awake and uneasy, but thinking — thinking hard.

  The Dawn Wind

  At two o’clock in the morning if you open your window and listen,

  You will hear the feet of the Wind that is going to call the sun.

  And the trees in the shadow rustle and the trees in the moonlight glisten,

  And though it is deep, dark night, you feel that the night is done.

  So do the cows in the field. They graze for an hour and lie down,

  Dozing and chewing the cud; or a bird in the ivy wakes,

  Chirrups one note and is still, and the restless

  Wind strays on,

  Fidgeting far down the road, till, softly,

  the darkness breaks.

  Back comes the Wind full strength with a blow like an angel’s wing,

  Gentle but waking the world, as he shouts:

  “The Sun! The Sun!”

  And the light floods over the fields and the birds begin to sing,

  And the Wind dies down in the grass. It is

  Day and his work is done.

  So when the world is asleep, and there seems no hope of her waking

  Out of some long, bad dream that makes her mutter and moan,

  Suddenly, all men arise to the noise of fetters breaking,

  And every one smiles at his neighbour and tells him his soul is his own!

  CHAPTER VII

  THE TUDORS AND THE AWAKENING OF ENGLAND, 1485 — 1603

  The King’s Job

  Once on a time was a King anxious to understand

  What was the wisest thing a man could do for his land.

  Most of his population hurried to answer the question,

  Each with a long oration, each with a new suggestion.

  They interrupted his meals, he wasn’t safe in his bed from ‘em.

  They hung round his neck and heels, and at last

  His Majesty fled from ‘em.

  He put on a leper’s cloak (people leave lepers alone),

  Out of the window he broke, and abdicated his throne.

  All that rapturous day, while his Court and his

  Ministers mourned him,

  He danced on his own highway till his own policemen warned him.

  Gay and cheerful he ran (lepers don’t cheer as a rule)

  Till he found a philosopher-man teaching an infant school.

  The windows were open wide, the King sat down on the grass,

  And heard the children inside reciting “Our

  King is an ass.”

  The King popped in his head, “Some people would call this treason,

  But I think you are right,” he said; “will you kindly give me your reason?”

  Lepers in school are rare as kings with a leper’s dress on,

  But the class didn’t stop or stare; it calmly went on with the lesson:

  “ The wisest thing, we suppose, that a man can do for his land,

  Is the work that lies under his nose, with the tools that lie under his hand.”

  The King whipped off his cloak and stood in his crown before ‘em.

  He said: “ My dear little folk, Ex ore parvulorum

  (Which is Latin for ‘ Children know more than grown-ups would credit’).

  You have shown me the road to go, and I

  propose to tread il.”

  Back to his Kingdom he ran, and issued a

  Proclamation,

  “Let every living man return to his occupation!”

  Then he explained to the mob that cheered in

  his palace and round it,

  “I’ve been to look for a job, and Heaven be praised I’ve found it!”

  Now we come to a very different part of history, the period when our own modern world began to be born. It was a dreadful stretch of years because the breaking up of the old ideas of religion, of geography and of trade was accompanied by great suffering to many classes and by the loss of many noble lives of those who clung to the old ideas. Yet it was a splendid period because of the close union and understanding between the new

  Tudor kings and their people; because England armed herself to face dangers from foreign foes so resolutely that, at the end of it, she was the first sea-power in the world. And it was a time in which England produced a series of really great men in every walk of life. Men’s minds were stirred up to think, and so the men with the greatest minds came to the front;

  The old order changeth, giving place to new,

  And God fulfils Himself in many ways.

  Wyclif h
ad done little more than prepare the bed in which the seed was to be sowed,

  the seed of knowledge and of the “Spirit which giveth life.” England was, as she is still, a deeply conservative country; our people were slow at taking up new ideas, and too much in love with money. They wanted kings who would give them peace and order, knock down the great nobles, restrict or even abolish the

  Pope’s power. But they did not at first want

  “heresy” or wish to break with the Catholic

  Church of their fathers.

  Henry VII was a King admirably suited to carry out some of these wishes. If you gave him a name you would call him “Henry the

  Prudent.” He did not do as did the king in the poem on page 129, nor did any real king of whom I ever heard; but Henry tried hard to find out what a king’s real “job” should be,

  and he set to work to do it; moreover, he did his best to make Englishmen stop talking and fighting among themselves, and set them to work each at his own job. His claim to the throne was not a very good one, and his aim therefore was to “let sleeping dogs lie.” “Mind your own businesses, my dear subjects, and let me mind mine,” was what he said to himself. His main task was to heal the wounds left by the civil war; and, in a reign of twenty-four years, he had almost completely healed them. There were at first some small insurrections, after-swells of the late storm, but they were put down with ease. Henry called few parliaments and asked for little money,

  but heaped up treasure by other ways. He taxed rich people, though he had no legal right to do so; he carefully nursed trade and manufacture; and he imposed enormous fines on all big men who broke his laws, especially his laws which forbade them to keep large bands of retainers who would fight their quarrels.

  His ministers and privy councillors were either bishops or middle-class laymen; and the Privy

  Council became almost more important than

  Parliament. He cut off few heads, but chose them wisely, for those he did cut off were the most dangerous. A great monarchy was growing up in Spain as well as in France; even

  Germany was trying hard to be a united country. Henry watched them all, and made numerous treaties with them, but refused to be led into expense or adventures; above all he avoided wars. With Scotland he kept firm peace, the first real peace since 1290, and he married his daughter Margaret to King James

  IV; it was the great-grandson of this marriage,

  who, as James I, finally united the two countries in 1603. As for the Church, it also seemed

  134 HENRY VIII

  to be wrapped in profound peace; the mutter-

  ings against it were all under the surface.

  Yet before Henry died the “New Learning,”

  which was to lead to the Reformation, was in full swing in England. Great scholars like

  John Colet and Thomas More were reading the Scriptures in their original Greek, and finding out how very much the Roman Church differed from the earliest forms of Christianity.

  The study of Greek had begun at both universities, and English scholars were continually travelling to Germany and Italy.

  In 1509 Henry died, and was succeeded by his son Henry VIII, aged eighteen, a most splendid young man, of great natural cleverness and devoted to the New Learning, but devoted also to every sort of game, pleasure and extravagance. For the business of the State he at first cared nothing. “Oh, go and talk to my

  Chancellor about that,” he would say. His

  Chancellor was the cunning Thomas Wolsey,

  afterward Cardinal, Archbishop of York and

  Legate (i. e. special agent) of the Pope. Wolsey got all power into his own hands and managed things badly. He allowed his master to waste the treasures heaped up by Henry

  VII, and, when the King called Parliaments,

  they growled at this extravagance, and refused to vote the huge sums for which he asked them.

  He plunged into foreign politics, and made a foolish war with France, which at once broke the long peace with Scotland; for James IV

  invaded England with a huge army, which was defeated by Henry’s general, the Earl of

  Surrey, at Flodden Field (1513). Wolsey realized that the Church was in danger, both from the New Learning and from the growing outcry against its riches, and he was most anxious to put off any open attack on it; but as for reform he had no plans.

  The storm broke first in Germany, where,

  in 1517, the simple monk, Martin Luther,

  began by attacking some of the more scandalous abuses of the Church, and ended, a year or two later, by declaring the Pope to be “Antichrist.” Henry VIII professed himself to be deeply shocked at this, wrote a book in defence of the Catholic doctrines, and forbade

  Englishmen to read Luther’s books. But these books, and many others upon the same side,

  could not be kept out of England, and nothing could prevent eager young men from reading them. By the year 1527 there was a small but vigorous body of scholars in England who were prepared to attack the teaching of the old

  Church as well as its riches. They called themselves 4”Protestants”; their enemies called them “heretics.” Their main cry was for th^.

  Bible as the ground of all Christian teaching;

  “away with everything that cannot be found in the Bible.”

  Until 1527 the Government sternly repressed every movement against the Pope. Then a purely political event caused it to turn round.

  King Henry wanted to divorce his wife Katharine, a Spanish princess, who had been the wife of his brother Arthur. Arthur had died in 1501.

  The Pope had allowed Henry to marry Katharine, although many people had doubted whether such a marriage could possibly be lawful. Only one child of this marriage,

  Princess Mary, born 1516, had survived, and

  Henry thought, or professed to think, that this was a “judgment of God” on him. Also he wanted to marry some one else, the Lady

  Anne Boleyn, one of Queen Katharine’s court ladies. He applied to the Pope for a divorce.

  Popes were in the bad habit of doing these little jobs to please kings; but Pope Clement

  VII would not do this. King Charles of Spain and Germany, called the “Emperor,” was the nephew of Queen Katharine; he was much the most powerful monarch in Europe, and Clement dared not offend him. So the Pope, and Wolsey for him, shifted and twisted and turned and promised, but could not give the King of England his wishes.

  Suddenly, to the surprise of all his courtiers,

  of all England, of all Europe, Henry roared out,

  “Pope! What do I care for the Pope? Call my Parliament!”

  It was the year 1529. The King was thirtyeight years old, and quite unknown to his people, except from the rumours of his extravagance. Suddenly he appeared before them as their leader and friend, prepared to do all,

  and more than all, on which their hearts were set. The nation had hardly dared to whisper its desire to curb the Pope and the Church;

  here was a King who shouted it aloud!

  Do not think that I praise Henry VIII. It was a selfish and wicked motive that started the idea in his mind. What I say is that,

  once the idea was started, he would have all the Kings of Europe against him, and no friend but his own people; and so King and people now became one as they had never been before.

  Very few Englishmen were as yet prepared to accept any new sort of Church; most of them hated the idea of “heresy.” Henry hated it also, and continued to the end of his life to burn a few extreme heretics. King and people wished no more than to abolish the power of the Pope in England, to strip the Church of its enormous wealth, and yetto remain “good Catholics.” Was this possible? History was to prove that it was not;

  once the Pope was pulled down in England a

  “Reformation” of all the Church in England must follow, in spite of any effort to prevent it. Henry just managed to stave off this reformation while he lived.

  The Parliament of 1529
sat for seven years and when it rose a new England had begun.

  How the new laws against the Church were forced through the House of Lords no one knows;

  one fears it was by terror and threats, for nearly all the bishops and certainly all the abbots would be against them; and of the fortyfive lay peers, a strong minority must have hated serious changes. But the House of

  Commons, almost to a man, welcomed these changes; and that House then represented the sober country gentlemen and the sober merchants of England.

  One by one all the powers of the Pope were shorn away, the power of making laws for themselves was taken from the clergy, the Church was declared to be independent of any foreign influence, but wholly dependent on the Crown.

  Every one was obliged to swear that the King was the “Head of the Church.” The new

  Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer,

  pronounced the divorce from Katharine, andmarried his King to Anne Boleyn; the Princess

  Mary was set aside, and when Anne’s daughter,

  the Princess Elizabeth, was born, she was declared heir to the throne. All the smaller monasteries were dissolved and their lands handed over to the Crown; Henry gave most of them to his courtiers and to important country gentlemen, and so a new set of nobles,

  newly enriched from Church lands and entirely dependent on the King, rapidly came to the front.

  Many of the best men in England were deeply shocked at these changes, even some who had been prepared to go a long way in reforming the abuses of the Church. But Henry and his savage minister, Thomas Cromwell,

  struck down every one who stood in their path. The Courtenays and Poles, descended from Edward IV, were imprisoned, or driven into exile, or had their heads cut off. Sir