James Froude - The Divorce of Catherine of Aragon

With this impression, and with the Statute Book for a guide, I wrote the opening portion of my “History of England, from the Fall of Wolsey to the Defeat of the Armada.” The published criticisms upon my work were generally unfavourable. Catholic writers inherited the traditions and the temper of their forefathers, and believed the catena of their own historians. Protestants could not believe in a defence of the author of the Six Articles Bill. Secular reviewers were easily witty at the “model husband” whom they supposed me to be imposing upon them, and resented the interference with a version of the story authenticated by great names among my predecessors. The public, however, took an interest in what I had to say. The book was read, and continues to be read; at the close of my life, therefore, I have to go once more over the ground; and as I am still substantially alone in maintaining an opinion considered heretical by orthodox historians, I have to decide in what condition I am to leave my work behind me. In the thirty-five years which have elapsed since those early volumes appeared large additions have been made to the materials for the history of the period. The vast collection of manuscripts in the English Record Office, which then were only partially accessible, have been sorted, catalogued, and calendared by the industry of my friends Mr. Brewer and Mr. Gairdner. Private collections in great English houses have been examined and reported on by the Historical Manuscripts Commission. Foreign archives at Paris, Simancas, Rome, Venice, Vienna, and Brussels have been searched to some extent by myself, but in a far larger degree by able scholars specially appointed for the purpose. In the despatches, thus made accessible, of the foreign ambassadors resident at Henry’s court we have the invaluable, if not impartial, comments of trained and responsible politicians who related from day to day the events which were passing under their eyes. Being Catholics, and representatives of Catholic powers, they were bitterly hostile to the Reformation – hostile alike on political grounds and religious – and therefore inclined to believe and report the worst that could be said both of it and of its authors. But they wrote before the traditions had become stereotyped; their accounts are fresh and original; and, being men of the world, and writing in confidence to their own masters, they were as veracious as their prejudices would allow them to be. Unconsciously, too, they render another service of infinite importance. Being in close communication with the disaffected English peers and clergy, and engaged with them secretly in promoting rebellion, the ministers of Charles V. reveal with extraordinary clearness the dangers with which the Government had to deal. They make it perfectly plain that the Act of Supremacy, with its stern and peremptory demands, was no more than a legitimate and necessary defence against organised treason.

It was thus inevitable that much would have to be added to what I had already published. When a microscope is applied to the petal of a flower or the wing of an insect, simple outlines and simple surfaces are resolved into complex organisms with curious and beautiful details. The effect of these despatches is precisely the same – we see with the eyes, we hear with the ears, of men who were living parts of the scenes which they describe. Stories afterwards elaborated into established facts we trace to their origin in rumours of the hour; we read innumerable anecdotes, some with the clear stamp of truth on them, many mere creations of passing wit or malice, no more authentic than the thousands like them which circulate in modern society, guaranteed by the positive assertions of personal witnesses, yet visibly recognisable as lies. Through all this the reader must pick his way and use his own judgment. He knows that many things are false which are reported about his own eminent contemporaries. He may be equally certain that lies were told as freely then as now. He will probably allow his sympathies to guide him. He will accept as fact what fits in with his creed or his theory. He will share the general disposition to believe evil, especially about kings and great men. The exaggerated homage paid to princes, when they are alive, has to be compensated by suspecting the worst of them as soon as they are gone. But the perusal of all these documents leaves the broad aspect of the story, in my opinion, precisely where it was. It is made more interesting by the greater fulness of particulars; it is made more vivid by the clear view which they afford of individual persons who before were no more than names. But I think now, as I thought forty years ago, that through the confusions and contradictions of a stormy and angry time, the statute-book remains the safest guide to follow. If there be any difference, it is that actions which till explained appeared gratuitously cruel, like the execution of Bishop Fisher, are seen beyond dispute to have been reasonable and just. Bishop Fisher is proved by the words of the Spanish Ambassador himself to have invited and pressed the introduction of a foreign Catholic army into England in the Pope’s interest.

Thus I find nothing to withdraw in what I then wrote, and little to alter save in correcting some small errors of trivial moment; but, on the other hand, I find much to add; and the question rises in what way I had better do it, with fair consideration for those who have bought the book as it stands. To take the work to pieces and introduce the new material into the text or the notes will impose a necessity of buying a new copy, or of being left with an inferior one, on the many friends who least deserve to be so treated. I have concluded, therefore, on writing an additional volume, where such parts of the story as have had important light thrown upon them can be told over again in ampler form. The body of the history I leave as it stands. It contains what I believe to be a true account of the time, of the immediate causes which brought about the changes of the sixteenth century, and of the characters and principles of the actors in them. I have only to fill up certain deficiencies and throw light into places hitherto left dark. For the rest, I do not pretend to impartiality. I believe the Reformation to have been the greatest incident in English history; the root and source of the expansive force which has spread the Anglo-Saxon race over the globe, and imprinted the English genius and character on the constitution of mankind. I am unwilling to believe more evil than I can help of my countrymen who accomplished so beneficent a work, and in a book written with such convictions the mythical element cannot be wholly wanting. Even things which immediately surround us, things which we see and touch, we do not perceive as they are; we perceive only our own sensations, and our sensations are a combined result of certain objects and of the faculties which apprehend them. Something of ourselves must always be intermixed before knowledge can reach us; in every conclusion which we form, in every conviction which is forced upon us, there is still a subjective element. It is so in physical science. It is so in art. It is so in our speculations on our own nature. It is so in religion. It is so even in pure mathematics. The curved and rectilineal figures on which we reason are our own creation, and have no existence exterior to the reasoning mind. Most of all is it so in history, where we have no direct perceptions to help us, but are dependent on the narratives of others whose beliefs were necessarily influenced by their personal dispositions. The first duty of an historian is to be on his guard against his own sympathies; but he cannot wholly escape their influence. In judging of the truth of particular statements, the conclusion which he will form must be based partly upon evidence and partly upon what he conceives to be likely or unlikely. In a court of justice, where witnesses can be cross-examined, uncertain elements can in some degree be eliminated; yet, after all care is taken, judges and juries have been often blinded by passion and prejudice. When we have nothing before us but rumours set in circulation, we know not by whom or on what authority, and we are driven to consider probabilities, the Protestant, who believes the Reformation to have been a victory of truth over falsehood, cannot come to the same conclusion as the Catholic, who believes it to have been a curse, or perhaps to the same conclusion as the indifferent philosopher, who regards Protestant and Catholic alike with benevolent contempt. For myself, I can but say that I have discriminated with such faculty as I possess. I have kept back nothing. I have consciously distorted nothing which conflicts with my own views. I have accepted what seems sufficiently proved. I have rejected what I can find no support for save in hearsay or prejudice. But whether accepting or rejecting, I have endeavoured to follow the rule that incidents must not be lightly accepted as authentic which are inconsistent with the universal laws of human nature, and that to disprove a calumny it is sufficient to show that there is no valid witness for it.