General View of the Last Years of the Fifteenth Century

At the end of the fifteenth century great changes were taking place in the world at large. An intellectual revival the Renaissance had begun in Italy a century and a half before, and its influence had spread to France and Germany. A new learning, a new art, and a new architecture bore witness to the fact that men had freed themselves from the narrowness of the Middle Ages.

The use of the compass was making possible navigation and geographical discovery, in consequence of which a new world was opening to the knowledge of men. The Atlantic Ocean was becoming a dangerous commercial rival of the Mediterranean and the Baltic, and England, France, Spain, and Portugal, the great maritime states on its coast, were gradually supplanting the Mediaeval Empire in political importance.

Gunpowder was gradually destroying the efficiency of the old feudal methods of defence and attack in warfare, and infantry were taking the place of armed men on horseback. Commerce was raising the middle classes to a position in the state of greater importance in the eyes of kings than that which the old nobility had so long occupied. The invention of paper and the printing-press was bringing the new ideas and the new learning to the knowledge of all, and books were taking the place of old manuscripts which had been so laboriously copied. A new system of astronomy; the Copernican, was teaching men gradually but surely that the earth was not the centre of the universe, and that the sun did not revolve about it.

The new thoughts and the new opportunities arising from these changes altered men's ideas about themselves, about their relations to the world they lived in, about their relations to the church and to God. Already had they begun to doubt the teaching of the mediaeval schoolmen and theologians, and it was inevitable that they should begin to ask new questions regarding their duties as Christians and their obligations to their fellow-men.

Henry VIII

All these things were at work in the minds of the people when, in 1509, Henry VII died, and his son, Prince Henry, came to the throne as Henry VIII. The new king was but eighteen years old, handsome, full of life and energy, and eager to have a part in every new interest. He was young when Maximilian, Ferdinand, and Louis XII were growing old, rich when the other monarchs had impoverished themselves in war, popular when the others had to maintain themselves by standing armies.' Scarcely was he king when he showed his love for magnificent display. The treasure that his father had accumulated he spent in fetes, balls, masquerades, theatricals, tournaments, and the like. He was himself the life of the court. He was the most graceful cavalier, the hardiest athlete, the best tennis player, horseman, and lute-player. At first all seemed to be for pleasure; though at the very opening of his reign an ominous note was struck when Empson and Dudley, charged, not with illegal exactions from the people, as might have been expected from their conduct in the previous reign, but with conspiracy against the king, were sent to the Tower and finally executed. This showed a stern will behind the pleasing exterior, a love of power accompanying a love of display and pleasure.

The New Learning at Oxford

During the early years of his reign Henry had become interested in a new movement at Oxford, and had shown himself a friend and patron of the men connected with it. These were John Colet, Thomas More, Desiderius Erasmus, Grocyn, Linacre, and others. Colet, the first of these, had spent some time in Italy and had studied Greek, not for the sake of reading the classics, but in order to interpret the New Testament. Returning to England, he had begun to expound the Epistles of St. Paul, as books to be understood without regard to what the mediaeval theologians had said about them. But the chief work of Colet was the founding of a public school, entirely different from the monastic schools, and free from all scholastic teaching. The founding of St. Paul's School marked a new era in the history of education, for later public schools and grammar schools were modelled after it.

While Colet was doing this great work for education, Erasmus was striking a blow at the old ecclesiastical organization and practice. He was a pupil of Colet's, a friend of More's, and had learned Greek from Grocyn. It was at More's house that he wrote his famous work, Praise of Folly, in which he exposed to ridicule the priests and monks of that day, with their narrow theology, their ignorance, pedantry, and superstitions. He also translated into Latin the New Testament with an accuracy never before attained, for he brought to bear upon it the same rules of philology and criticism that students were applying to the classical authors. His work was revolutionary in that it furnished a new text, free from the errors which were everywhere present in the authorized version, the Vulgate.