History of the English People, Volume IV | Page 9

a skilful shipbuilder; and
among the many enterprises which the restless genius of Cromwell
undertook there was probably none in which Henry took so keen an
interest as in his creation of an English fleet. Hitherto merchant ships
had been impressed when a fleet was needed; but the progress of naval
warfare had made the maintenance of an armed force at sea a condition
of maritime power, and the resources furnished by the dissolution of
the abbeys had been devoted in part to the building of ships of war, the
largest of which, the Mary Rose, carried a crew of seven hundred men.

The new strength which England was to wield in its navy was first seen
in 1544. An army was gathered under Lord Hertford; and while
Scotland was looking for the usual advance over the border the Earl's
forces were quietly put on board and the English fleet appeared on the
third of May in the Firth of Forth. The surprise made resistance
impossible. Leith was seized and sacked, Edinburgh, then a town of
wooden houses, was given to the flames, and burned for three days and
three nights. The country for seven miles round was harried into a
desert. The blow was a hard one, but it was little likely to bring
Scotchmen round to Henry's projects of union. A brutal raid of the
English borderers on Melrose and the destruction of his ancestors'
tombs estranged the Earl of Angus, and was quickly avenged by his
overthrow of the marauders at Ancrum Moor. Henry had yet to learn
the uselessness of mere force to compass his ends. "I shall be glad to
serve the king of England, with my honour," said the Lord of
Buccleugh to an English envoy, "but I will not be constrained thereto if
all Teviotdale be burned to the bottom of hell."
Hertford's force returned in good time to join the army which Henry in
person was gathering at Calais to co-operate with the forces assembled
by Charles on the north-eastern frontier of France. Each sovereign
found himself at the head of forty thousand men, and the Emperor's
military ability was seen in his proposal for an advance of both armies
upon Paris. But though Henry found no French force in his front, his
cautious temper shrank from the risk of leaving fortresses in his rear;
and while their allies pushed boldly past Châlons on the capital, the
English troops were detained till September in the capture of Boulogne,
and only left Boulogne to form the siege of Montreuil. The French
were thus enabled to throw their whole force on the Emperor, and
Charles found himself in a position from which negotiation alone could
extricate him.
[Sidenote: Growth of Lutheranism.]
His ends were in fact gained by the humiliation of France, and he had
as little desire to give England a strong foothold in the neighbourhood
of his own Netherlands as in Wolsey's days. The widening of English

territory there could hardly fail to encourage that upgrowth of heresy
which the Emperor justly looked upon as the greatest danger to the hold
of Spain upon the Low Countries, while it would bring Henry a step
nearer to the chain of Protestant states which began on the Lower Rhine.
The plans which Charles had formed for uniting the Catholics and
Lutherans in the conferences of Augsburg had broken down before the
opposition both of Luther and the Pope. On both sides indeed the
religious contest was gathering new violence. A revival had begun in
the Church itself, but it was the revival of a militant and
uncompromising orthodoxy. In 1542 the fanaticism of Cardinal Caraffa
forced on the establishment of a supreme Tribunal of the Inquisition at
Rome. The next year saw the establishment of the Jesuits. Meanwhile
Lutheranism took a new energy. The whole north of Germany became
Protestant. In 1539 the younger branches of the house of Saxony joined
the elder in a common adherence to Lutheranism; and their conversion
had been followed by that of the Elector of Brandenburg. Southern
Germany seemed bent on following the example of the north. The
hereditary possessions of Charles himself fell away from Catholicism.
The Austrian duchies were overrun with heresy. Bohemia promised
soon to become Hussite again. Persecution failed to check the triumph
of the new opinions in the Low Countries. The Empire itself threatened
to become Protestant. In 1540 the accession of the Elector Palatine
robbed Catholicism of Central Germany and the Upper Rhine; and
three years later, at the opening of the war with France, that of the
Archbishop of Koln gave the Protestants not only the Central
Rhineland but a majority in the College of Electors. It seemed
impossible for Charles to prevent the Empire from repudiating
Catholicism in his lifetime, or to