A Student's History of England, v. 2: 1509-1689

9. The Oxford Reformers.– Especially was this the case with a group of Oxford Reformers, Grocyn, Linacre, and Colet, who were fighting hard to introduce the study of Greek into the University. Among these Colet specially addicted himself to the explanation of the epistles of St. Paul, insisting on following their plain meaning instead of the mystical interpretations then in vogue. In 1510 he founded St. Paul's School, that boys might be there taught without being subjected to the brutal flogging which was in those days the lot even of the most diligent of schoolboys. The most remarkable member of this group of scholars was Thomas More. Young More, who had hoped much from the accession of Henry VIII., had been disappointed to find him engaging in a war with France instead of cultivating the arts of peace. He meditated deeply over the miseries of his fellow-men, and longed for a time when governments would think it to be their highest duty to labour for those who are too weak to help themselves.

10. 'The Utopia.' 1515-1516.– In 1515 and 1516 More produced a book which he called Utopia, or Nowhere, intending it to serve as a satire on the defects of the government of England, by praising the results of a very different government in his imaginary country. The Utopians, he declared, fought against invaders of their own land or the land of their allies, or to deliver other peoples from tyranny, but they made no wars of aggression. In peace no one was allowed either to be idle or overworked. Everyone must work six hours a day, and then he might listen to lectures for the improvement of his mind. As for the religion of Utopia, no one was to be persecuted for his religious opinions, as long as he treated respectfully those who differed from him. If, however, he used scornful and angry words towards them, he was to be banished, not as a despiser of the established religion, but as a stirrer up of dissension. Men of all varieties of opinion met together in a common temple, the worship in which was so arranged that all could take part in it. Amongst their priests were women as well as men. More practical was the author's attack on the special abuses of the times. England swarmed with vagrants, who easily passed into robbers, or even murderers. The author of Utopia traced the evil to its roots. Soldiers, he said, were discharged on their return home, and, being used to roving and dissolute habits, naturally took to vagrancy. Robbery was their only resource, and the law tempted a robber to murder. Hanging was the penalty both for robbing and murder, and the robber, therefore, knowing that he would be hanged if he were detected, usually killed the victim whom he had plundered in order to silence evidence against himself; and More consequently argued that the best way of checking murder would be to abolish the penalty of death for robbery. Another great complaint of More's was against the ever-growing increase of inclosures for pasturage. "Sheep," he said, "be become so great devourers and so wild that they eat up and swallow down the very men themselves. They consume, destroy, and devour whole fields, houses, and cities." More saw the evil, but he did not see that the best remedy lay in the establishment of manufactures, to give employment in towns to those who lost it in the country. He wished to enforce by law the reversion of all the new pasturage into arable land.

11. More and Henry VIII.– Henry VIII. was intolerant of those who resisted his will, but he was strangely tolerant of those who privately contradicted his opinions. He took pleasure in the society of intelligent and witty men, and he urged More to take office under him. More refused for a long time, but in 1518– the year of the league of universal peace – believing that Henry was now a convert to his ideas, he consented, and became Sir Thomas More and a Privy Councillor. Henry was so pleased with his conversation that he tried to keep him always with him, and it was only by occasionally pretending to be dull that More obtained leave to visit his home.

12. The Contest for the Empire. 1519.– In January 1519 the Emperor Maximilian died. His grandson Charles was now possessed of more extensive lands than any other European sovereign. He ruled in Spain, in Austria, in Naples and Sicily, in the Netherlands, and in the County of Burgundy, usually known as Franche Comté. Between him and Francis I. a struggle was inevitable. The chances were apparently, on the whole, on the side of Charles. His dominions, indeed, were scattered, and devoid of the strength given by national feeling, whilst the smaller dominions of Francis were compact and united by a strong national bond. In character, however, Charles had the superiority. He was cool and wary, whilst Francis was impetuous and uncalculating. Both sovereigns were now candidates for the Empire. The seven electors who had it in their gift were open to bribery. Charles bribed highest, and being chosen became the Emperor Charles V.

13. The Field of the Cloth of Gold. 1520.– Wolsey tried hard to keep the peace. In 1520 Henry met Francis on the border of the territory of Calais, and the magnificence of the display on both sides gave to the scene the name of the Field of the Cloth of Gold. In the same year Henry had interviews with Charles. Peace was for a time maintained, because both Charles and Francis were still too much occupied at home to quarrel, but it could hardly be maintained long.

The embarkation of Henry VIII. from Dover, 1520: from the original painting at Hampton Court.

14. The Execution of the Duke of Buckingham. 1521.– Henry was entirely master in England. In 1521 the Duke of Buckingham, son of the Buckingham who had been beheaded by Richard III., was tried and executed as a traitor. His fault was that he had great wealth, and that, being descended from the Duke of Gloucester, the youngest son of Edward III., he had not only cherished some idea of claiming the throne after Henry's death, but had chattered about his prospects. In former days justice was not to be had by those who offended the great lords. Now, one despot had stepped into the place of many, and justice was not to be had by those who offended the king. The legal forms of trial were now as before observed. Buckingham was indeed tried before the court of the Lord High Steward, which consisted of a select number of peers, and which had jurisdiction over peers when Parliament was not sitting. These, however, were no more than forms. It was probably a mingled feeling of gratitude and fear which made peers as well as ordinary juries ready to take Henry's word for the guilt of any offender.

15. Another French War. 1522-1523.– The diplomacy of those days was a mere tissue of trickery and lies. Behind the falsehood, however, Wolsey had a purpose of his own, the maintenance of peace on the Continent. Yet, in 1521 war broke out between Charles and Francis, both of whom laid claim to the Duchy of Milan, and it was evident that Wolsey would be unable to keep England out of the struggle. If there was to be fighting Henry preferred to fight France rather than to fight Charles. In 1522, in conjunction with Charles, he invaded France. There was burning and ravaging enough, but nothing of importance was done. Nevertheless in 1523 Henry was in high spirits. A great French noble, the Duke of Bourbon, provoked by ill-treatment, revolted against Francis, and Henry and Charles fancied that he would open a way to them into the heart of France. If Henry was to be crowned at Paris, which was the object on which he was bent, he must have a supply of money from his subjects. Though no Parliament had been summoned for nearly eight years, one was summoned now, of which More was the Speaker. Wolsey asked for an enormous grant of 800,000l., nearly equal to 12,000,000l. at the present day. Finding that the Commons hesitated, he swept into the House in state to argue with them. Expecting a reply, and finding silence, he turned to More, who told him that it was against the privilege of the House to call on it for an immediate answer. He had to depart unsatisfied, and after some days the House granted a considerable sum, but far less than that which had been demanded. Wolsey was now in a position of danger. His own policy was pacific, but his master's policy was warlike, and he had been obliged to make himself the unquestioning mouthpiece of his master in demanding supplies for war. He had long been hated by the nobles for thrusting them aside. He was now beginning to be hated by the people as the supposed author of an expensive war, which he would have done his best to prevent. He had not even the advantage of seeing his master win laurels in the field. The national spirit of France was roused, and the combined attack of Henry and Charles proved as great a failure in 1523 as in 1522. The year 1524 was spent by Wolsey in diplomatic intrigue.

16. The Amicable Loan. 1525.– Early in 1525 Europe was startled by the news that Francis had been signally defeated by the Imperialists at Pavia, and had been carried prisoner to Spain. Wolsey knew that Charles's influence was now likely to predominate in Europe, and that unless England was to be overshadowed by it, Henry's alliance must be transferred to Francis. Henry, however, saw in the imprisonment of Francis only a fine opportunity for conquering France. Wolsey had again to carry out his master's wishes as though they were his own. Raking up old precedents, he suggested that the people should be asked for what was called an Amicable Loan, on the plea that Henry was about to invade France in person. He obtained the consent of the citizens of London by telling them that, if they did not pay, it might 'fortune to cost some their heads.' All over England Wolsey was cursed as the originator of the loan. There were even signs that a rebellion was imminent. In Norfolk when the Duke of Norfolk demanded payment there was a general resistance. On his demanding the name of the captain of the multitude which refused to pay, a man told him that their captain's 'name was Poverty,' and 'he and his cousin Necessity' had brought them to this. Wolsey, seeing that it was impossible to collect the money, took all the unpopularity of advising the loan upon himself. 'Because,' he wrote, 'every man layeth the burden from him, I am content to take it on me, and to endure the fame and noise of the people, for my goodwill towards the king … but the eternal God knoweth all.' Henry had no such nobility of character as to refuse to accept the sacrifice. He liked to make his ministers scapegoats, to heap on their heads the indignation of the people that he might himself retain his popularity. For three centuries and a half it was fully believed that the Amicable Loan had originated with Wolsey.

17. Closing Years of Wolsey's Greatness. 1525-1527.– All idea of continuing the war being now abandoned, Wolsey cautiously negotiated for an alliance with France, and in the autumn of 1525 peace was signed between France and England. In February 1526 Charles set Francis at liberty on his promising to abandon to him large tracts of French territory. As soon as he was out of Spain Francis declared that, without the consent of his subjects, such promises were not binding on him. An Italian league, jealous of Charles's power, gathered round the Pope, Clement VII., to oppose him. In May 1527 the exiled Duke of Bourbon, who was now one of Charles's generals, took Rome by assault. He was himself slain as he mounted the wall, but his followers took prisoner the Pope, and sacked Rome with horrible barbarity. Wolsey was too worldly-minded to be shocked at the Pope's misfortunes; but he had much to fear from the enormous extension of the Emperor's power. For some weeks he had been negotiating a close alliance with France on the basis of a marriage between Henry's only surviving child, Mary, and the worn-out voluptuary Francis. Suddenly the scheme was changed to a proposal for a marriage between Mary, who was ten years old, and the second son of Francis, who was but six. The bargain was concluded, and for a time there was some thought of carrying it out. At all events when the news of the sack of Rome arrived, England and France were already in close alliance. Wolsey's position was, to all outward appearance, secure.

CHAPTER XXV

THE BREACH WITH THE PAPACY. 1527-1534

LEADING DATES

Reign of Henry VIII., 1509-1547

• Henry seeks for a divorce 1527

• His suit before a Legatine Court 1529

• Fall of Wolsey 1529

• The clergy acknowledge Henry to be Supreme Head of the Church of England 1531

• The first Act of Annates 1532

• The king's marriage to Anne Boleyn and the Act of Appeals 1533

• Cranmer's sentence of divorce 1533

• The final separation from Rome 1534

1. The Papacy and the Renascence.– The Renascence alone could not make the world better, and in many respects it made it worse. The respect which it paid to humanity, which was its leading characteristic, allied itself in More with a reverence for God, which led him to strive to mellow the religious teaching of the Middle Ages, by fitting it for the needs of the existing world. Too many threw off all religious restraints, and made it their first thought to seek their own enjoyment, or the triumphs of their own intellectual skill. Sensual delights were pursued with less brutal directness, but became more seductive and more truly debasing by the splendour and gracefulness of the life of which they formed a part. In Italy the Popes swam with the current. Alexander VI. (1492-1503) gave himself up to the most degrading vices. Julius II. (1503-1513) was a passionate warrior struggling for the extension of his temporal possessions. Leo X. (1513-1521) was a polished lover of art, perfectly indifferent to religious duty. "Let us enjoy the Papacy," he said when he was elected, "since God has given it to us." Amidst the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, the Popes became as other Italian princes, no better and no worse. Spiritual guidance was no longer to be expected of them.

2. Wolsey and the Papacy.– By Wolsey and his master the Papacy was respected as a venerable and useful institution, the centre of a religious organisation which they believed to be of divine origin, though when it came in conflict with their own projects they were quite ready to thwart it. In 1521 Leo X. died, and Wolsey, having some hopes of being himself elected, asked Charles V. to send troops to compel the cardinals to choose him, promising to pay the expenses of the armament. Charles, though, in the previous year, he had offered to support Wolsey's candidature at the next vacancy, now deserted him, and the new Pope was Adrian VI., who in 1523 was succeeded by Clement VII. (see p. 374 (#chap24sec17)).

3. Wolsey's Legatine Powers.– It is unlikely that Wolsey was much disappointed. His chief sphere of action was England, where since 1518 he had held unwonted authority, as in that year he had been appointed Legate a latere[1 - i. e. a Legate sent from the Pope's side, and therefore having power to speak almost with full Papal authority.] by Leo X. at Henry's request, and the powers of a Legate a latere were superior even to those of Warham, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Wolsey was therefore clothed with all the authority of king and Pope combined. His own life was, indeed, like those of many churchmen in his day, very far from the ideal of Christianity; but for all that he had that respect for religious order which often lingers in the hearts of men who break away from the precepts of religion, and he was too great a statesman to be blind to the danger impending over the Church. The old order was changing, and Wolsey was as anxious as More, though from more worldly motives, that the change should be effected without violence. He knew that the Church was wealthy, and that wealth tempted plunderers, and he also knew that, with some bright exceptions, the clergy were ignorant, and even when not absolutely dissolute were remiss and easy-going in their lives. He was, therefore, anxious to make them more worthy of respect, and, with the consent of king and Pope, he began in 1524 to dissolve several small monasteries, and to apply their revenues to two great colleges, the one founded by him at Oxford and the other at Ipswich. He hoped that without any change of doctrine or organisation the Church would gradually be purified by improved education, and would thus once more command the respect of the laity.

4. Henry VIII. and the Clergy.– With Wolsey's object Henry, being himself well educated and well read, fully sympathised. For many years there had been a tacit understanding between the king and the Pope, and now that both the king and the Pope supported Wolsey's action there seemed to be less danger than ever of any disturbance of the friendly relations between Church and State. Yet though Henry was on good terms with the Pope, he had made up his mind that whenever there was a conflict of jurisdiction in ecclesiastical matters his own will, and not that of the clergy, was to be predominant. As early as in 1515, when a question of this kind was moved, Wolsey asked on behalf of the clergy that it might be referred to the Pope. "We," said Henry proudly, "are by God's grace king of England, and have no superior but God; we will maintain the rights of the crown like our predecessors; your decrees you break and interpret at your pleasure, but we will not consent to your interpretation of them any more than our predecessors have done." Henry VIII., in short, took up the position which Henry II. had assumed towards the clergy of his day, and he was far more powerful to give effect to his views than Henry II. had ever been. Such an act of self-assertion would probably have caused a breach with the great Popes of the middle ages, such as Gregory VII. or Innocent III. Leo X. was far too much a man of the world to trouble himself about such matters.

5. German Lutheranism.– Before many years had passed the beginnings of a great religious revolution which appeared in Germany served to bind Henry and Leo more closely together. Martin Luther, a Saxon friar, had been disgusted by the proceedings of a hawker of indulgences, who extracted small sums from the ignorant by the sale of the remission of the pains of purgatory. What gave world-wide importance to Luther's resistance was that he was not only an eloquent preacher of morality, but the convinced maintainer of a doctrine which, though not a new one, had long been laid aside. He preached justification by faith, and the acceptance of his teaching implied even more than the acceptance of a new doctrine. For centuries it had been understood that each Christian held intercourse with God through the sacraments and ordinances of the Church. His individuality was, as it were, swallowed up in the vast community to which he belonged. Luther taught each of his hearers that the important thing was his faith, that is to say his immediate personal relation with God, and that the intervention of human beings might, indeed, be helpful to him, but could be no more. Such a doctrine touched all human activity. The man who in religion counted his own individual faith as the one thing necessary was likely to count his own individual convictions in social or political matters as worth more to him than his obedience to the authority of any government. In Luther's teaching was to be found the spirit of political as well as of religious liberty. This side of it, however, was not likely to reveal itself at once. After a time Luther shook off entirely the claims of the Papacy upon his obedience, but he magnified the duty of obeying the princes who gave him their support in his struggle with the Pope.

6. Henry's Controversy with Luther.– Luther, when once he was engaged in controversy with the Papacy, assailed other doctrines than those relating to justification. In 1521 Henry, vain of his theological learning, wrote a book against him in defence of the seven sacraments. Luther, despising a royal antagonist, replied with scurrilous invective. Pope Leo was delighted to have found so influential a champion, and conferred on Henry the title of Defender of the Faith. If Henry had not been moved by stronger motives than controversial vanity he might have remained the Pope's ally till the end of his life.

7. Queen Catharine and Anne Boleyn.– It was a great disappointment to Henry that he had no surviving male children. England had never been ruled by a queen, and it was uncertain whether Henry's daughter, Mary, would be allowed to reign. Henry had already begun to ask himself whether he might not get rid of his wife, on the plea that a marriage with his brother's wife was unlawful, and this consideration had the greater weight with him because Catharine was five years older than himself and was growing distasteful to him. When in 1521, in his book against Luther, he assigned a divine origin to the Papacy, he told More of a secret reason for this exaltation of the Pope's power, and it is possible that this reason was his desire to obtain from the Pope a divorce under the pretext that it would secure a peaceful succession. At all events his scruples regarding his marriage with Catharine were quickened in 1522 by the appearance at court of Anne Boleyn, a sprightly black-eyed flirt in her sixteenth year, who took his fancy as she grew into womanhood. Flirt as she was, she knew her power, and refused to give herself to him except in marriage. The king, on his part, being anxious for a legitimate son, set his heart on a divorce which would enable him to marry Anne. Wolsey, knowing the obstacles in the way, urged him to abandon the project; but it was never possible to turn Henry from his course, and Wolsey set himself, in this as in all things else, to carry out his master's wishes, though he did so very reluctantly. Moral scruples had little weight with Wolsey, but in 1525, when he learnt the king's design, there were strong political reasons against its execution, as England was in alliance with Catharine's nephew, the Emperor, Charles V., and a divorce would be certain to endanger the alliance.

8. Henry's Demand for a Divorce. 1527-1528.– Two years later, in 1527, as Henry was veering round towards a French alliance (see p. 374 (#chap24sec17)), he had no longer much reason to consider the feelings of the Emperor. On the other hand, the strong position which Charles occupied in Italy after the sack of Rome made it improbable that Clement VII. who was then Pope, and who thought more of his political than of his ecclesiastical position, would do anything to thwart the Emperor. An attempt made by Henry in 1527 to draw Clement to consent to the divorce failed, and in 1528 Wolsey sent to Rome his secretary, Stephen Gardiner, an adroit man of business, to induce Clement to appoint legates to decide the question in Henry's favour. Clement, anxious to please all parties, appointed Wolsey and another cardinal, Campeggio, as his legates, but took care to add that nothing done by them should be valid until it had received his own approval.

9. The Legatine Court. 1529.– The court of the two legates was opened at Blackfriars in 1529. Before proceeding to business they tried hard to induce either Henry to abstain from asking for a divorce or Catharine to abstain from resisting his demand. In such a matter Catharine was as firm as the self-willed Henry. Even if she could consent to leave the throne, she could not, if she retained any sense of womanly dignity, acknowledge that she had never been a wife to Henry, or suffer her daughter to be branded with illegitimacy. When king and queen were at last cited to appear Catharine knelt before her husband. She had, she said been his true and obedient wife for twenty years, and had done nothing to deserve being put to open shame. As it was, she appealed to Rome. The queen's cause was popular with the masses, who went straight to the mark, and saw in the whole affair a mere attempt to give a legal covering to Henry's lust. The legates refused to consider the queen's appeal, but when they came to hear arguments on the merits of the case they were somewhat startled by the appearance of the aged Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, one of the holiest and most learned prelates of the day, who now came voluntarily, though he knew that Henry's wrath was deadly, to support the cause of Catharine. Campeggio took advantage of the strong feeling which was growing against the king to interpose delays which he knew to be well-pleasing to Clement, and before these delays were at an end Clement annulled all the proceedings in England and revoked the cause to Rome. Most probably he was alarmed at the threats of the Emperor, but he had also reasons of his own for the course which he took. Henry did not ask for a divorce on any of the usual grounds, but for a declaration that his marriage had been null from the beginning. As, however, his marriage had been solemnised with a Papal dispensation, Clement was asked to set aside the dispensation of one of his predecessors, a proceeding to which no Pope with any respect for his office could reasonably be expected to consent.

10. The Fall of Wolsey. 1529-1530.– Henry was very angry and made Wolsey his victim. Wolsey's active endeavours to procure the divorce counted as nothing. It was enough that he had failed. He was no longer needed to conduct foreign affairs, as Henry cared now only for the divorce, and raised no objection when Charles and Francis made peace at Cambrai without consulting his interests. The old nobility, headed by the Duke of Norfolk, the son of the victor of Flodden, had long hated Wolsey bitterly, and the profligate courtiers, together with the friends and relatives of Anne, hated him no less bitterly now. Before the end of the year proceedings under the Statute of Præmunire (see pp. 258, 382 (#chap25sec7)) were taken against him on the ground that he had usurped legatine powers. It was notorious that he had exercised them at the king's wish, and he could have produced evidence to show that this had been the case. In those days, however, it was held to be a subject's duty not to contest the king's will, and Wolsey contented himself with an abject supplication for forgiveness. He was driven from his offices, and all his goods and estates seized. The college which he had founded at Ipswich was sold for the king's use, and his college at Oxford, then known as Cardinal College, was also seized, though it was afterwards refounded under the name of Christchurch by the robber king. Wolsey was reduced to extreme poverty. In 1530 he was allowed to return to the possession of the archbishopric of York; but he imprudently opened communications with the French ambassador, and harmless as they were, they gave a handle to his enemies. Henry ordered him to be charged with treason. The sufferings of his mind affected his body, and on his way to London he knew that he was a dying man. "Father Abbot," he said, in taking shelter in Leicester Abbey, "I am come hither to leave my bones among you." "If I had served my God," he acknowledged as he was passing away, "as diligently as I have done my king, He would not have given me over in my grey hairs."

11. The House of Commons and the Clergy. 1529.– No king ever felt the importance of popularity like Henry, and the compassion which had been freely given to Catharine by the crowd, on her appearance in the Legatine Court, made it necessary for him to find support elsewhere. It had been Wolsey's policy to summon Parliament as seldom as possible. It was to be Henry's policy to summon it as frequently as possible. He no longer feared the House of Lords, and either he or Wolsey's late servant, Thomas Cromwell, an able and unscrupulous man, who rose rapidly in Henry's favour, perceived the use which might be made of the House of Commons. By his influence the king could carry the elections as he pleased, and when Parliament met in 1529 it contained a packed House of Commons ready to do the king's bidding. The members were either lawyers or country gentlemen, the main supports of the Tudor monarchy, and Henry strengthened his hold upon them by letting them loose on the special abuses which had grown up in the ecclesiastical courts. Lawyers and country gentlemen were very much what they had been in the fifteenth century, without large political ideas or fine spiritual perceptions; but now that they were relieved of the oppression of the great nobles they turned upon the clergy, who claimed fees and dues which they disliked paying, and who used the powers of the ecclesiastical tribunals to exact heavy payments for moral and spiritual offences.

12. The Universities Consulted. 1530.– Henry had as yet no thought of breaking with the Pope. He wanted to put pressure on him to make him do what he had come to regard as right. In 1530 he sent to the universities of Europe to ask their opinion on the question whether a marriage with a brother's widow was contrary to the law of God. The whole inquiry was a farce. Wherever Henry or his allies could bribe or bully the learned doctors, an answer was usually given in the affirmative. Wherever the Emperor could bribe or bully, then the answer was usually given in the negative. That the experiment should have been tried, however, was a proof of the strength of the spirit of the Renascence. A question of morals which the Pope hesitated to decide was submitted to the learning of the learned.

13. The Clergy under a Præmunire. 1530-1531.– Towards the end of 1530 Henry charged the whole clergy of England with a breach of the Statute of Præmunire by their submission to Wolsey's legatine authority. A more monstrous charge was never brought, as when that authority was exercised not a priest in England dared to offend the king by resisting it. When the Convocation of Canterbury met in 1531, it offered to buy the pardon of the clergy by a grant of 100,000l., to which was afterwards added 18,000l. by the Convocation of York. Henry refused to issue the pardon unless the clergy would acknowledge him to be supreme head of the Church of England.

14. The King's Supreme Headship acknowledged by the Clergy. 1531.– The title demanded by Henry was conceded by the clergy, with the qualification that he was Supreme Head of the English Church and clergy so far as was allowed by the law of Christ. The title thus given was vague, and did not bar the acknowledgment of the Papal authority as it had been before exercised, but its interpretation would depend on the will of the stronger of the two parties. As far as the Pope was concerned, Henry's claim was no direct invasion of his rights. The Pope had exercised authority and jurisdiction in England, but he had never declared himself to be Supreme Head of the Church either in England or anywhere else. Henry indeed alleged that he asked for nothing new. He merely wanted to be known as the supreme authority in the relations between the clergy and the laity. Nevertheless it was a threat to the Pope, who might well fear lest the clergy, after giving way to the assumption of a title which implied authority over themselves, might give way to the widening of that same authority over matters on which the Pope's claims had hitherto been undoubted.

15. The Submission of the Clergy. 1532.– Everything done by Henry at this crisis was done with a view to the securing of his purposed divorce. In the Parliament which sat in 1532 the Commons were again let loose upon the clergy, and Henry, taking their side, forced Convocation[2 - There were two Convocations, of the two provinces of Canterbury and York, but the former was so much more important that it is usually spoken of simply as Convocation.] to sign a document known as the submission of the clergy. In this the clergy engaged in the first place neither to meet in Convocation nor to enact or execute new canons without the king's authority, and, secondly, to submit all past ecclesiastical legislation to examination with a view to the removal of everything prejudicial to the royal prerogative. The second article was never carried into effect, as the first was enough for Henry. He was now secure against any attempt of the clergy in Convocation to protest against any step that he might take about the divorce, and he was none the less pleased because he had incidentally settled the question of the relations between the clerical legislature and the Crown.

16. Sir Thomas More and the Protestants. 1529-1532.– The submission of the clergy cost Henry the services of the best and wisest of his statesmen. Sir Thomas More had been appointed Chancellor on Wolsey's fall in 1529. When More wrote the Utopia, Luther had not yet broken away from the Papacy, and the tolerant principles of the author of that book had not been put to the test. Even in the Utopia More had confined his tolerance to those who argued in opposition to the received religion without anger or spite, and when he came to be in office he learnt by practical experience that opposition is seldom carried on in the spirit of meekness. Protestantism, as the Lutheran tenets began to be called in 1529, spread into England, though as yet it gained a hold only on a few scattered individuals. Here and there thoughtful men, dissatisfied with the teaching given to them and with the lives of many of their teachers, embraced the Lutheran doctrine of justification by faith. Even the best of them could hardly be expected to treat with philosophic calm the doctrines which they had forsaken; whilst some of their converts took a pleasure in reviling the clergy and the common creed of the vast majority of Englishmen. With many again the doctrine of justification by faith slipped into the condemnation of the merit of good works, and even into a light estimation of good works themselves. For this bitterness of speech and mind More had no tolerance, and while he pursued his antagonists with argument and ridicule, he also used his authority to support the clergy in putting down what they termed heresy by the process of burning the obstinate heretic.

17. Resignation of Sir Thomas More. 1532.– More had no ground for fearing that the increase of the king's authority over the clergy would at once encourage revolt against the Church. Henry was a representative Englishman, and neither he nor the House of Commons had the least sympathy with heresy. They wanted to believe and act as their fathers had done. More, however, was sufficiently prescient to foresee that a lay authority could not for ever maintain this attitude. Laymen were certain to be moved by the current of thought which prevailed in their age, and it was only, he believed, the great Papal organisation which could keep them steady. Though Henry had not yet directly attacked that organisation, he might be expected to attack it soon, and, in 1532, More retired from all connection with Henry's government rather than take part in that attack.

18. The First Act of Annates. 1532.– Having secured himself, as it were, in the rear by the submission of the clergy, Henry proceeded to deal with the Pope. He still wished if possible to win him to his side, and before the end of 1532 he obtained from Parliament an Act of Annates. Annates were the first-fruits or first year's income of ecclesiastical benefices, and by this Act the first-fruits of bishoprics, which had hitherto been paid to the Pope, were to be kept back. The Act was not, however, to come into force till the king had ratified it, and Henry refused for a time to ratify it hoping to reduce Clement to submission by suspending over his head a threat upon his purse.

19. The King's Marriage and the Act of Appeals. 1533.– Henry, however, found that Clement was not to be moved, and his patience coming at last to an end, he was secretly married to Anne Boleyn on January 25, 1533. Now that he had reluctantly given up hope of obtaining a favourable decision from the Pope, he resolved to put an end to the Papal jurisdiction in England. Otherwise if he obtained a sentence in an English ecclesiastical court declaring his marriage with Catharine to be null from the beginning, his injured wife might appeal to the superior court of the Pope. He accordingly obtained from Parliament the Act of Appeals, declaring that the king held the supreme authority in England, and that as under him all temporal matters were to be decided by temporal judges, and all spiritual matters by spiritual judges, no appeals should hereafter be suffered to any authority outside the realm. Henry was capable of any meanness to serve his ends, but he also knew how to gain more than his immediate ends by connecting them with a large national policy. He almost made men forget the low design which prompted the Act of Appeals by fixing their eyes on the great object of national independence.

20. Archbishop Cranmer and the Court at Dunstable. 1533.– Henry found a convenient instrument for his personal as well as for his national policy in Thomas Cranmer, whom he appointed Archbishop of Canterbury in the spring of 1533. Cranmer was intellectually acute, and took a worthy part in the further development of the English Church; but he was morally weak, and inclined to carry out orders whatever they might be, especially if they came from a king as strong-willed as Henry. He had already thrown himself as an active agent into the cause of Henry's divorce, and he was now prepared as archbishop to give effect to his arguments. In March Convocation was half persuaded, half driven to declare Catharine's marriage to be void, and in May Cranmer, sitting at Dunstable in his archiepiscopal court, pronounced sentence against her. In accordance with the Act of Appeals the sentence was final, but both Henry and Cranmer feared lest Catharine should send her counsel to make an appeal to Rome, and they were therefore mean enough to conceal from her the day on which sentence was to be given. The temporal benefits which the Pope derived from England were now to come to an end as well as his spiritual jurisdiction, and in July the king ratified the Act of Annates.

21. Frith and Latimer. 1533.– When a man of special intellectual acquirements like Cranmer could descend to the trick which he had played at Dunstable, it was time that some one should be found who, in the steadfastness of his faith, would refuse to truckle to the king, and would maintain the rights of individual conscience as well as those of national independence. The teaching of Zwingli, a Swiss reformer, who held that the bread and wine in the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper was a mere sign of the Body and Blood of the Redeemer, was beginning to influence the English Protestants, and its reception was one more reason for the mass of Englishmen to send to prison or the stake those who maintained what was, in their eyes, so monstrous a heresy. Amongst the noblest of the persecuted was John Frith, who whilst he stoutly held to the belief that the doctrine of transubstantiation was untrue, begged that men should be left 'to think thereon as God shall instil in any man's mind, and that neither part condemn other for this matter, but receive each other in brotherly love, reserving each other's infirmity to God.' Frith was in advance of his time as the advocate of religious liberty as well as of a special creed, and he was burnt alive. Henry meant it to be understood that his supreme headship made it easier, and not harder, to suppress heresy. He might have succeeded if he had had merely to deal with a few heroes like Frith. That which was beyond his control was the sapping process of the spirit of the Renascence, leading his bishops, and even himself, to examine and explain received doctrines, and thus to transform them without knowing what they were doing. Hugh Latimer, for instance, a favourite chaplain of the king, was, indeed, a preacher of righteousness, testing all things rather by their moral worth than by their conformity to an intellectual standard. The received doctrines about Purgatory, the worship of the saints, and pilgrimages to their images seemed to him to be immoral; but as yet he wished to purify opinion, not to change it altogether, and in this he had the support of the king, who, in 1535, made him Bishop of Worcester.

22. Completion of the Breach with Rome. 1533-1534.– Before 1533 was over Henry appealed from the Pope to a General Council. Clement not only paid no heed to his appeal, but gave sentence in favour of Catharine. When Parliament met in 1534, therefore, Henry was obliged to strengthen his position of hostility to the Pope. He procured from it three Acts. The first of these was a second Act of Annates, which conferred on him absolutely not only the first-fruits of bishoprics which had been the subject of the conditional Act of Annates in 1532 (see p. 388 (#chap25sec16)), but also the first-fruits of all the beneficed clergy, as well as a tenth of each year's income of both bishops and beneficed clergy, all of which payments had been hitherto made to the Pope. Incidentally this Act also regulated the appointment of bishops, by ordering that the king should issue a congé d'élire to the chapter of the vacant see, together with a letter missive compelling the choice of his nominee. The second was an Act concerning Peter's pence, abolishing all minor payments to the Pope, and cutting away all interference of the Pope by transferring his right to issue licences and dispensations to the Archbishop of Canterbury. The third confirmed the submission of the clergy and enacted that appeals from the courts of the Archbishop should be heard by commissioners appointed by the King, and known as the delegates of Appeals. It was by these Acts that the separation between the Churches of England and Rome was finally effected. They merely completed the work which had been done by the great Act of Appeals in 1533. The Church of England had indeed always been a national Church with its own ecclesiastical assemblies, and with ties to the Crown which were stretched more tightly or more loosely at various times. It had, however, maintained its connection with the Continental Churches by its subordination to the Pope, and this subordination had been made real by the subjection of its courts to appeals to Rome, and by the necessity of recurring to Rome for permission to do certain things prohibited by English ecclesiastical law. All this was now at an end. The old supremacy of the king was sharpened and defined. The jurisdiction of the Pope was abolished. Nominally the English ecclesiastical authorities became more independent; more capable of doing what seemed to them to be best for the Church of the nation. Such at least was the state of the law. In practice the English ecclesiastical authorities were entirely at Henry's bidding. In theory and in sentiment the Church of England was still a branch of the Catholic Church, one in doctrine and in discipline with the Continental Churches. Practically it was now, in a far more unqualified sense than before, a national Church, ready to drift from its moorings and to accept new counsels whenever the tide of opinion should break strongly upon it.

CHAPTER XXVI

THE ROYAL SUPREMACY. 1534-1547

LEADING DATES

Reign of Henry VIII., 1509-1547

• The Acts of Succession and Supremacy 1534

• Execution of Fisher and More 1535