HALL'S 'HENRY *
WE congratulate Messrs. Jack on their new enterprise of publishing, in a handsome modern form, the old. Chronicles of the Kings of England. The series is certain to be popular, especially if the introductions to future volumes are as good, informing, and large-minded as Mr. Whibley's intro- duction to The Triumphant Reigns of Syng Henry the VIII. As the series is under Mr. Whibley's editorship, we may safely trust that this will be the case ; and the name of Mr. Henry Newbolt in connection with Camden's Queen Elizabeth, the next of these chronicles to appear, inspires every confidence. Some of the future volumes promise to be most curious and interesting, and the works of those writers who are not chroniclers of their own day, like the excellent Edward Hall, and who, therefore, did not write in the constant fear of losing their heads, may have a better chance of being "accurate statements of fact" as well as "literary masterpieces."
It must be remembered, for the joy of all lovers of romantic history, that these books are not to be criticised as trust- worthy sources of information ; their beautiful pages are not disfigured by notes; there is no attempt to modernise their ancient, picturesque spelling, or to give any glossary of words unfamiliar to the modern English. We must take them as they are, with the help of their scholarly introductions. In Hall's gorgeous pages we have a picture of the early sixteenth. century unequalled for brilliancy and interest. He represents the traditions of the time, the talk and opinions of at least a part of England in his own days—by no means of the whole— and the vivid impressions of an eyewitness for whom the King, through that extraordinary glamour of unreasonable popularity to which the English are subject, never lost the beauty and splendour of his youth, but even as the cruel, selfish tyrant of his later days—horrible to look upon, if Cornelius Matsys is to be trusted—remained the high, noble, and triumphant Prince, the centre of wisdom and charity, "whom God hath appoynted his Vicare, and high mynyster here." These, by the by, are Henry's own words about himself, spoken in the famous discourse to Parliament not long before his death, in which he scolds his subjects roundly, clergy and laity alike, for their want of charity and concord, their disputing and jangling,—" some be to styff in their old Mumpsimus, other be to busy and curious, in their newe Sumpsimus." All very good advice, mixed with moral pre- cepts for the conduct of their lives, but coming strangely from a tyrant as cruel and immoral as the worst of the Popes.
So far as appears from Hall's writings, nothing the King ever did came amiss to him. His marriage with Catherine of Arragon being " detestable," the tenderness of his conscience being affirmed and accepted with the same breath that acknowledges his love for Anne Boleyn, no after changes of Queens, no number of robberies and burnings, of innocent heads that fell for the King's personal reasons, shocked his chronicler in the least. For him, indeed, the King could do no wrong. Even his Protestantism, strongly expressed at times, was not consistent when the King made a turn backwards in his policy of reform. Hall spoke in favour of the Six Articles, and certainly gave the Church of England away in a cynical fashion. " To be short,' said he, in chronicles it may be found that the most part of ceremonies now used in the Church of England were by princes either first invented, or at the least established ; and, as we see, the same do till this day continue." Thus he expressed his loyalty to Hemy as " God's Vicar," and, one would think, put himself in the wrong with all good people of either side. In a reign of terror, however, he saved his head and his fortune, and was rewarded for his faithfulness by a grant of Abbey lands. Luckily for himself, he died before Queen Mary came to the throne. He had justly earned her vengeance by his treatment of her mother, and it is not surprising that his book was burnt by her command. The first edition, of 1550, is therefore very rare.
Thus it does not seem that Edward Hall, the famous chronicler of a wonderful time of change and transition, was much to be respected as a man. As a writer, of course, he is vivid and interesting to the last degree. There has seldom lived. such a painter of pageants, processions, ceremonies. As * Henry VIII. By Edward Hall. With an Introduction by Charles Whibley. "The Lives of the Mugs." London : T. C. and E. C. Jack. 2 vols. [lee. net each.]
Mr. Whibley points out, Hall's style in the present book is far superior to that of his former writings which led up to this. Readers may need reminding that The Triumphant Reigns of Syng Henry the VIII. did not stand alone, but was the con- cluding volume and climax of the " Chronicle of England," which, beginning with Henry IV., the first King of the house of Lancaster, brought English history down through the fifteenth century to " the Union of the two noble and illustrate femelies of Lancastre and Yorke," so leading on to the " high and prudent prince, King Henry the Eight, the indubitate flower, and very heirs of both the sayd linages."
The earlier part of this " Chronicle " is a compilation from various sources, and was severely criticised by Roger Ascham :— " Halle's Chronicle, where moch good matter is quite marde with Indenture Englishe where many sentences, of one meaning, be so clowted up together as though M. Hall had bane, not writing the stork of England, but varying a sentence in Hitching schole." The criticism was in great part justified. " Restless to contribute something of himself," says Mr. Whibley, "he tricked out the facts of others in strange terms and bombastic periods." But all his " inkhorne tearmes " vanished when he reached his own time, and came to describe what his own eyes and ears taught him. This present book disarms critics, so far as concerns Hall's gift of seeing things, and of using a dignified old English which now and then, in specially inspired moments of enthusiasm for Henry and his magnificence, rises to something like splendour.
To some of us, wars and pageantry, and personal detail concerning the King and all his ways, will be almost less interesting than the glimpses Hall gives of a few of the really great men of the time. He hated Wolsey with a hatred which later and fairer historians have proved unjust. Mr. Whibley reminds us that " from Hall, through Shakespeare, it has gone to the ends of the earth that Wolsey, in documents addressed to the Pope and foreign princes, was wont to write ' Ego et Mena Rex.' With this arrogance he was never charged, the worst hinted against him being that he added his own name to his master's—' my King and I. " Shakespeare, in his Henry VIII., is much indebted to Hall, of whom he must have been a careful student, though the very treatment of Wolsey shows the gulf between these minds.
One turns with special curiosity to Hall's account of Sir Thomas More, as a test of the moral insight of Henry's chronicler. If we depended on Hall for our knowledge of Sir Thomas More, this is the beat that can be said of him Henry was in search of "a mete manne to bee his Chauncellour"
"And so after long debate the Kyng resoluted him selfe upon sir Thomas More knyght, Chauncellour of the Duthie of Lancastre, a mature well learned in the toungues, and also in the Common Lawe, whose wytte was fine, and full of imagination, by reason wherof, he was to muche geven to mockinge, whyche was to his gravitie a great blemishe."
These are some of Hall's later remarks on Sir Thomas More:—
" I cannot tell whether I shoulde call him a foolishe wyseman, or a wise foolishman, for undoubtedly he beside his learnyng, had a great witte, but it was so myngled with tauntyng and mockyng, that it semed to them that best knew him, that he thought nothing to be wel spoken except he had ministred some mocke in the communicacion."
And here is the last among a few instances of More's love
of " mockery "
" Also even when he shoulde lay donne his head on the block, he havyng a great gray beard, striked out his beard and sayd to the hangman, I pray you let me lay my beard over the block least ye should cut it, thus wyth a mocke he ended hys life."
With this kind of farewell from the English history of their own day passed, as Mr. Whibley says, "the wisest spirits of the time."
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