A Metrical History of England Or, Recollections, in Rhyme, Of some of the most prominent Features in our National Chronology, from the Landing of Julius Caesar to the Commencement of the Regency, in 1812. In Two Volumes ... By Thomas Dibdin |
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HENRY THE EIGHTH. |
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 | A Metrical History of England |  |
HENRY THE EIGHTH.
Insatiable licentiousness and guilt,
So share this monarch, we can ne'er decide
On what one vice his ruling wish was built.
The treasure of those minions doomed to die,
Who found, as sings the bard we most admire,
“It is but squeezing sponges and they dry”
At Guisnes, where France and England met
In dazzling panoply of gold,
Three days of pleasure cost whole years of debt.
Two made good women, losing each a head;
One happier, tho' unhappy wife,
Died, giving our sixth Edward life.
And Harry meant, no doubt, his last
Should share the fate of consorts past;
But that the arrogantly cruel elf,
Met with a little accident between
His plan and execution,—for I ween—
He died himself.
Fool, like myself, his highness wrote a book;
And when Pope Leo read it, no one knew
Which most was to be pitied of the two.
Leo, who for a critic, was quite tender,
Dubb'd Henry, for his work, the “faith's defender;”
Hal in return, which was not quite so civil,
Defied alike the Popedom and the Devil.
(Who, that knows aught of genius, knows him not?)
Feel ye not yet the exquisite delight,
With which ye read his tale of Flodden fight?
Where Surrey triumph'd in bluff Harry's reign,
Then who shall dare attempt the theme again?
“Like the flowers of the forest wou'd wither away.”
What sounds of merriment assail the ear?
What glitt'ring mass of mingled church and state?
And see, the master of the feast appear,—
'Tis Wolsey, thoughtless of his future fate!
Like a red meteor we behold him soar,
Extinguish'd now he falls to rise no more.
Of Dunstan, Becket, Wolsey, having read,
I think it may with safety thus be said:—
Their masters and the people have misled;
The first in monkish cruelty surpast,
The next in arrogance, in both the last;
To make a third she joined the other two.
Foe to idolatry, religion's friend;
By your command the cloister'd coffers drain'd;
With ingrate bitterness you turn your back,
And leave poor Cromwell to his foes attack.
How more than fleeting, popular acclaim;
The nation's idol and the King's delight,
A felon's death resigns to endless night.
Dares friendship with the virtuous fall'n own
Cromwell had clung to Wolsey 'till his end,
And Heaven repays him with as fast a friend.
Fed twice each day two hundred at his gate,
Was branded with imaginary crimes;
And learn, ye too secure, from genuine rhymes,
That fickle minds will change as change the times.
The place where Henry, and Francis I. of France met, was, from the unexampled and prodigal splendor of the two Courts, called “The Field of Cloth of Gold.”
The Reformation was said to be owing to a jest made by Sir Thomas Wyatt, who, when Henry was waiting for the Pope's assent to his divorce, said “Lord! that a man cannot repent him of his sins without leave from the Pope.” Thus Wyatt hinted, Cranmer opened, and the Universities made, the way to the Reformation. Vide “An Englishman's History of England.”
At this period an account was kept of the diabolical mischiefs perpetrated by the armies invading Scotland, with all the regulatity of a tradesman's ledger. The following was the sum total of the ravages from July to November, in 1544, as delivered in by the warden of the marches:—
Towns, towers, steeds, barnekyns, parish churches, bastel houses, cast down or burnt ......................... 192 Scots slain, ...................... 403 Prisoners taken, .................. 816 Nolt (horned cattle) taken, .......10,389 Sheep, ............................12,492 Nags and geldings, ................ 1,296 Goats, ............................ 200 Bolls of corn, .................... 850 By Lord Hertford's invasion into the counties of Berwick and Roxburgh only, and between the 8th and 23d of September, 1545, there were destroyed,— Monasteries and friar-houses, 7 Castles, towers, and piles, ....... 16 Market towns, ..................... 5 Villages, ......................... 243 Milnes, ........................... 13 Hospitals, ........................ 3
Haynes's State Papers apud Robertson.John Skelton, Poet Laureat to King Henry VIII. attacked Cardinal Wolsey without mercy, for his upstart insolence, and in his uncouth, but nervous doggrel, did his utmost to render him ridiculous, thus—
Of this gentile Jacke-breche;
Of what estate he be,
Of sp'ritual dignitie—
Nor duke of hye degree.
Nor marquis, earle, or lorde,
Which shrewdly doth accord:
That he, borne so base—
All nobles should outface;
His count'nance like a cayser,
My lord is not at layser.
Sir, ye must tarry astounde,
'Till better layser be founde;
Sir, ye must dance attendaunce,
And take pacient sufferaunce;
For my lorde's grace,
Has now, nor time, nor place,
To speak with you as yet.
And so they may sit, or flit,
Sit, or walk, or ride,
And his layser abide;
Perchance, half-a-yere,—
And yet be never the nere, &c.
Vide J. P. Andrew.
164 suppress'd monasteries, 90 colleges, 2374 chauntrys and chapels, and 110 hospitals produced a revenue of £161,100 to the crown: from which fund some additional colleges and professorships were given to the universities, and 6 new bishopricks were erected. The common people were much displeased with the stoppage of that hospitality the monks were used to exercise: there is an old ballad called “Truth and Ignorance,” the latter, who is represented as a rustic, says—
“Before the vriars went hence,
“A bushel of the best wheate,
“Was zold for vourteen-pence.
“And vorty egges a penny.
“That were both good and newe;
“And this, che say, myselfe have seene,
“And yet I am no Jewe.”
| A Metrical History of England | |