CHAPTER XX

HENRY VIII AND THE SEPARATION FROM ROME (1529–1547)

Thomas Cranmer (1489-1556) and Thomas Cromwell (1485-1540). Although Henry appointed More Chancellor he made use of two other men as his chief councilors. Thomas Cranmer was a young Cambridge divine who gained the royal ear by his suggestion that the question of the validity of the marriage might be submitted to the learned men of the universities of Europe, and that, if they decided against it, the case might be settled in the King's own courts. To Cranmer, who was taken into the royal service and rose to be Archbishop of Canterbury, we owe the lofty and beautiful language of the Book of Common Prayer, and he had a large share in shaping the articles of faith for the Church of England, though he was too gentle a soul to fill the duties of his high office with vigor and independence, especially under a master so self-willed as Henry VIII. Thomas Cromwell, who for ten years acted as Henry's right-hand man, suggested most of the fertile expedients for increasing the royal power and swelling the royal revenue. After spending his early years as a soldier and trader in Italy and Flanders, he returned to his native land where he set up as a scrivener1 and merchant. Wolsey, recognizing his ability, made him his secretary and chief agent, where he showed himself so devoted and capable that Henry shrewdly concluded he would be invaluable in the royal service. Cromwell advised the King to settle the divorce in his own courts by another means than that advocated by Cranmer, namely, by discarding the authority of the Pope and declaring himself supreme head of the Church of England. Rising steadily until finally he became Vicegerent in ecclesiastical affairs, Cromwell possessed remarkable qualities; he had a wide knowledge of men, extraordinary business skill, and was thoroughly unscrupulous. While he took the extreme Protestant side, he apparently had no real religious feeling; for he died professing himself a true Catholic. Indispensable as he was to the King, he maintained his position only by extreme servility 1 A combination of lawyer and money lender.

and patience under insult, and even knocks on the pate from the royal knuckles.

The Reformation Parliament (1529-1536). — When Clement VII revoked the divorce suit to Rome, Henry appealed to English national sentiment by calling a Parliament to meet, 3 November, 1529. Combining force and management, he carried through a series of measures which, beginning with a design of forcing the Pope's hand, culminated in annihilating his authority in England. The manipulation consisted in bringing to expression sentiments against clerical privileges and exactions which, hitherto, had not been widely or openly voiced. The work of the "Reformation Parliament," extending over seven years, is most significant. Beside putting Henry in place of the Pope as head of the English Church, it increased vastly the royal powers: it decreed the dissolution of the monasteries, which not only greatly augmented the royal revenue, but provided resources to bind a large class to the royal policy; it deprived the clergy of independent powers of legislation in Convocation, and broke the power of the bishops by making them practically nominees of the Crown. Nor was Parliament as subservient as it seems at first sight. It indorsed the royal will in legislation against the Church and clergy because it suited the interest and inclination of the majority; in more than one case, however, especially those touching the pocket of the subject, it stood out against the royal dictation. The work of Henry in this Parliament was indirectly productive of results far beyond anything he may have contemplated; by breaking the spell of the ancient traditional Church he started forces of opposition, which, not content with mere separation from Rome, came to assert successfully the principle that the Reformation should be moral and religious as well as political, and that extremer forms of Protestantism than that provided in the Church established by law should receive recognition.

Parliament Storms the Outworks (1529). — In the very first session, as the result of an understanding by which the King and Cromwell agreed to help the laity against the clergy in return for parliamentary aid against the Pope, bills were passed restricting excessive fees and curtailing the secular pursuits of priests and monks. The clerical outworks were thus successfully stormed. Yet Henry continued to pose as the orthodox Defender of the Faith. Heretics were compelled to abjure, while those who refused were burned, or hanged in chains. The Universities and Convocation. Following Cranmer's suggestion, the "King's matter" was referred to the universities. The opinions returned had little to do with the merits of the case; it required manipulation to secure a scant majority at Oxford and Cam

bridge, while, on the Continent, decisions were determined by the influence which Henry and Francis or Charles V and the Pope were able to exert. At the meeting of Convocation, in 1531, Henry threatened the whole body of the clergy with the penalties of præmunire for having submitted to Wolsey's legatine jurisdiction, so, as the price for pardon from forfeiture and imprisonment, they were obliged to grant him £118,000 and to acknowledge him as their Su preme Head, so far as the law of Christ allows." In 1532 Convocation was forced a step further, and, by the " submission of the clergy" agreed to make no laws without royal consent, and to submit the existing ecclesiastical laws to a committee of clergy and laity for revision. This was too much for Sir Thomas More, who resigned the Chancellorship the next day.

Anti-Papal Legislation and the "Divorce" of Catharine (1533). On 25 January, 1533, Henry was secretly married to Anne Boleyn, and, in February, he appointed Cranmer to the Archbishopric of Canterbury recently fallen vacant — with the aim of employing the new Primate to declare against the validity of his first marriage and for the legality of his second. This done, he strengthened his hand by various high-handed enactments. By the Act of Appeals, Parliament provided that all spiritual cases should be finally determined within the King's jurisdiction and not elsewhere, while Convocation was forced to declare that Henry's marriage with Catharine was against divine law. Thus fortified, Cranmer, in a court held in Dunstable, at which Catharine refused to appear, pronounced the final sentence which deprived her of her position as Queen, 23 April, 1533. Her rival Anne was crowned 1 June; in September a child was born, though, to the infinite disappointment of the King, it proved to be a girl. The Pope's reply to the new marriage was to draw up a bull of excommunication against the royal couple, and to issue a formal decision that Catharine was Henry's lawful wife and that he should take her back. But, sometime before, Henry had declared that if the Pope launched ten thousand excommunications, he would not care a straw for them.

The Memorable Sessions of 1534. In the year 1534 Parliament held two sessions and passed a series of Acts by which the authority of the Pope in England was completely abolished and that of the King set up in its place. During the first session, ending 30 March, an Act providing that henceforth no more annates, or first fruits, should be paid to the Pope, originally passed in 1532, was confirmed and extended, and all other payments to Rome, including Peter's Pence, were for

1 The excommunication was drawn up 11 July, 1533, but was not published till December, 1538. A bull of deposition drawn up in 1535 was never published.

bidden. Also, an Act of Succession settled the succession, to the throne on the heirs of Henry by Anne Boleyn; moreover, it was declared high treason to slander their marriage, "by writing, print, deed, or act and an oath was imposed on all subjects to observe the whole contents of the Statute upon pain of misprision of treason.1

Prosecutions and Persecutions in 1534. During the summer, commissioners went about administering the Oath of Succession, and many who withstood the royal will paid dearly, even with their lives. Some, however, were put to death on other grounds. The first to suffer was "the Nun of Kent," a poor hysterical servant girl, who pretended to foretell the future, and in an evil moment was led to declare against Henry's treatment of Catharine, and to prophesy his speedy death. A confession of fraud was extorted from her, a Bill of Attainder was drawn up, and 20 April, 1534, she and five companions were put to death at Tyburn. Among those who stood out against the Oath of Succession were More and Fisher, the saintly Bishop of Rochester, the latter of whom had already been fined £300 for accepting the "Nun's" revelations. Although they were willing to accept the line of succession as regulated in the Act, they refused the oath, because it repudiated the primacy of the Pope and involved an acknowledgment that the marriage of Henry and Catharine had been unlawful from the first and that the Princess Mary was illegitimate. For their refusal both were sent to the Tower. The royal commissioners for imposing the oath also busied themselves silencing preachers, both papal and Lutheran. While the King's orders were generally obeyed by the secular clergy and some of the regular, the friars resisted unanimously, and 17 June, two cartloads were driven to the Tower. The refusal of two communities of Observants 2 offered an excuse for suppressing the Crder throughout England. Their houses were seized and such of their members as had not already been imprisoned were distributed among various monasteries, loaded in chains, and subjected

to other harsh treatment.

Henry Supreme Head of the Church in England (1534-1535). On 3 November, the Parliament of 1534 reassembled for its second session, during which an Act was passed declaring Henry "Supreme Head of the Church of England"; a new Treason Act imposed the death penalty on any one who called the King a "heretic, schismatic, tyrant, infidel, or usurper "; and an Act of Attainder was drawn up against More and Fisher. Henry, who formally assumed the title

1Complicity involving penalties less severe than those visited on the main offenders.

They were the Franciscans of the stricter branch.

P

of Supreme Head, 15 January, 1535, was now absolute ruler over Church as well as State in his own land.

The Executions of More and Fisher (1535).—The Prior of Charterhouse, a community of London Carthusians, noted for their sanctity and self-denial, had reluctantly accepted the Oath of Succession, but, refusing a new oath tendered him after the passage of the Act of Supreme Head, was ruthlessly executed, 4 May, together with three others. More, confronted with the Act of Supreme Head, declined to accept or deny it; for, he declared, it was like a two-edged sword, "if he said it were good, he would imperil his soul, if he said contrary to the Statute, it was death to the body." Yet he professed himself a faithful subject. Although Fisher was old and broken in health the case against him was clearer. He had fought Catharine's cause valiantly in the legatine court; he would not accept the Act of Supreme Head; and to crown all, the Pope created him a cardinal. Fisher was beheaded, 22 June, declaring that he died contentedly for the honor of God and the Holy See. More, having in a final examination denounced the Act of Supreme Head as contrary to the laws of God and the Holy Church, and a violation of Magna Carta, perished 6 July. More and Fisher died martyrs to their faith, though, in Henry's opinion, they merited death because they defied his authority, thereby threatening the stability of the system he had set up and the unity of his Kingdom. The executions which sent a shock through Catholic Europe put an end to the last hope of a settlement with the Pope.

Death of Catharine (8 January, 1536). Poor Queen Catharine, who, since her unmerited disgrace had been living in retirement, was finally released by death, 8 January, 1536. It is now believed that she died from cancer of the heart, but the event was so welcome to Henry that many have suspected that she was poisoned. praised!" cried the King when he heard the news, and the next day he appeared at a ball with a white feather in his hat and clad from head to foot in festive yellow.

The Monasteries on the Eve of Their Dissolution. Having made himself supreme head of Church as well as State, Henry's next step was to secure resources to maintain his absolutism and to guard against a return to the old order by a judicious distribution of bribes. A way was discovered in the dissolution of the monasteries, which offered the further attraction of crushing a class which contained many opponents to the royal policy. These were the real reasons for the step, suggested, no doubt, by the resourceful Cromwell, who, 21 January, 1535, received a commission as Vicar-General and Vicegerent, to hold a general ecclesiastical visitation. The King and his supporters rep