6. Wolsey's Policy of Peace. 1514-1518.– In 1514 the king made Wolsey Archbishop of York. In 1515 the Pope made him a Cardinal. Before the end of the year he was Henry's Chancellor. The whole of the business of the government passed through his hands. The magnificence of his state was extraordinary. To all observers he seemed to be more a king than the king himself. Behind him was Henry, trusting him with all his power, but self-willed and uncontrollable, quite ready to sacrifice his dearest friend to satisfy his least desire. As yet the only conflict in Henry's mind was the conflict about peace or war with France. Henry's love of display and renown had led him to wish to rival the exploits of Edward III. and Henry V. Wolsey preferred the old policy of Richard II. and Henry VI., but he knew that he could only make it palatable to the king and the nation by connecting the idea of peace with the idea of national greatness. He aspired to be the peacemaker of Europe, and to make England's interest in peace the law of the world. In 1515 the new king of France, Francis I., needed peace with England because he was in pursuit of glory in Italy, where he won a brilliant victory at Marignano. In 1516 Ferdinand's death gave Spain to his grandson, Charles, the son of Philip and Juana (see p. 358), and from that time Francis and Charles stood forth as the rivals for supremacy on the Continent. Wolsey tried his best to maintain a balance between the two, and it was owing to his ability that England, thinly populated and without a standing army, was eagerly courted by the rulers of states far more powerful than herself. In 1518 a league was struck between England and France, in which Pope Leo X., the Emperor Maximilian, and Charles, king of Spain, agreed to join, thus converting it into a league of universal peace. Yet Wolsey was no cosmopolitan philanthropist. He believed that England would be more influential in peace than she could be in war.
7. Wolsey and the Renascence.– In scheming for the elevation of his own country by peace instead of by conquest, Wolsey reflected the higher aspirations of his time. No sooner had internal order been secured, than the best men began to crave for some object to which they could devote themselves, larger and nobler than that of their own preservation. Wolsey gave them the contemplation of the political importance of England on the Continent. The noblest minds, however, would not be content with this, and an outburst of intellectual vigour told that the times of internal strife had passed away. This intellectual movement was not of native growth. The Renascence, or new birth of letters, sprung up in Italy in the fourteenth century, and received a further impulse through the taking of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453, when the dispersal of Greek teachers from the East revived the study of the Greek language. It was not merely because new teachers landed in Italy that the literature of the ancient world was studied with avidity. Men were weary of the mediæval system, and craved for other ideals than those of the devotees of the Church. Whilst they learnt to admire the works of the Greek and Latin authors as models of literary form, they caught something of the spirit of the ancient world. They ceased to look on man as living only for God and a future world, and regarded him as devoting himself to the service of his fellow-men, or even – in lower minds the temptation lay perilously near – as living for himself alone. Great artists and poets arose who gave expression to the new feeling of admiration for human action and human beauty, whilst the prevailing revolt against the religion of the middle ages gave rise to a spirit of criticism which refused belief to popular legends.
8. The Renascence in England.– The spirit of the Renascence was slow in reaching England. In the days of Richard II. Chaucer visited Italy, and Italian influence is to be traced in his Canterbury Tales. In the days of Henry VI. the selfish politician, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, purchased books, and gave to Oxford a collection which was the foundation of what was afterwards known as the Bodleian Library. Even in the Wars of the Roses the brutal John Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester, and the gentle Earl Rivers, the brother of Elizabeth Woodville, were known as patrons of letters. The invention of printing brought literature within reach of those to whom it had hitherto been strange. Edward IV. patronised Caxton, the first English printer. In the peaceful reign of Henry VII. the seed thus sown sprang into a crop. There was, however, a great difference between the followers of the new learning in England and in Italy. In Italy, for the most part, scholars mocked at Christianity, or treated it with tacit contempt. In England there was no such breach with the religion of the past. Those who studied in England sought to permeate their old faith with the new thoughts.
9. The Oxford Reformers.– Especially was this the case with a group of Oxford Reformers, Grocyn, Linacre, and Colet, who were fighting hard to introduce the study of Greek into the University. Among these Colet specially addicted himself to the explanation of the epistles of St. Paul, insisting on following their plain meaning instead of the mystical interpretations then in vogue. In 1510 he founded St. Paul's School, that boys might be there taught without being subjected to the brutal flogging which was in those days the lot even of the most diligent of schoolboys. The most remarkable member of this group of scholars was Thomas More. Young More, who had hoped much from the accession of Henry VIII., had been disappointed to find him engaging in a war with France instead of cultivating the arts of peace. He meditated deeply over the miseries of his fellow-men, and longed for a time when governments would think it to be their highest duty to labour for those who are too weak to help themselves.
10. 'The Utopia.' 1515-1516.– In 1515 and 1516 More produced a book which he called Utopia, or Nowhere, intending it to serve as a satire on the defects of the government of England, by praising the results of a very different government in his imaginary country. The Utopians, he declared, fought against invaders of their own land or the land of their allies, or to deliver other peoples from tyranny, but they made no wars of aggression. In peace no one was allowed either to be idle or overworked. Everyone must work six hours a day, and then he might listen to lectures for the improvement of his mind. As for the religion of Utopia, no one was to be persecuted for his religious opinions, as long as he treated respectfully those who differed from him. If, however, he used scornful and angry words towards them, he was to be banished, not as a despiser of the established religion, but as a stirrer up of dissension. Men of all varieties of opinion met together in a common temple, the worship in which was so arranged that all could take part in it. Amongst their priests were women as well as men. More practical was the author's attack on the special abuses of the times. England swarmed with vagrants, who easily passed into robbers, or even murderers. The author of Utopia traced the evil to its roots. Soldiers, he said, were discharged on their return home, and, being used to roving and dissolute habits, naturally took to vagrancy. Robbery was their only resource, and the law tempted a robber to murder. Hanging was the penalty both for robbing and murder, and the robber, therefore, knowing that he would be hanged if he were detected, usually killed the victim whom he had plundered in order to silence evidence against himself; and More consequently argued that the best way of checking murder would be to abolish the penalty of death for robbery. Another great complaint of More's was against the ever-growing increase of inclosures for pasturage. "Sheep," he said, "be become so great devourers and so wild that they eat up and swallow down the very men themselves. They consume, destroy, and devour whole fields, houses, and cities." More saw the evil, but he did not see that the best remedy lay in the establishment of manufactures, to give employment in towns to those who lost it in the country. He wished to enforce by law the reversion of all the new pasturage into arable land.
11. More and Henry VIII.– Henry