certain articles drawn up berg in 1536; While the English theologians were thus striving to formulate a creed which would prove acceptable at home, the king had sent an embassy abroad to confer with the Lutheran divines with the view of arriving at a common basis of religious belief, and the result was the tentative scheme embodied in certain articles 1 drawn up at Wittenberg early in 1536. But nothing came of the negotiation at the time, and the whole at Witten matter was permitted to sleep until 1538, when Henry, again anxious to strengthen his hands by an alliance with the "princes of the Augsburg Confession," sent a confidential agent to them with the request that they would send over Melancthon and other divines for the purpose of a conference. In response to this request a German embassy, the chief of which was Burckhardt, was sent to England to confer with a commission with Cranmer at its head, and after actually agreeing upon Thirteen Articles,2 the conference of the joint body progressed favorably until the sacraments were reached, when a hopeless disagreement ended rather abruptly the last real effort ever made to unite the Lutherans in one common doctrine with the Church of England. Thus disappointed of his hope of a German alliance, and of his plan of satisfying the Lutheran party within his own realm, Henry, whose catholic instincts had been shocked by the assaults which that small yet aggressive faction were now making upon the shrines, the reliquaries, the ceremonies of the older faith, resolved to hush, Thirteen Articles of 1538. mandate under the king's order that it 1 An account of these articles is 2 These articles were found by Dr. Jenkyns among the papers of Cranmer, and are printed in his Cranmer, vol. iv. p. 273. They are also printed in Hardwick, Appendix II., where the passages, which are almost identical with the Augsburg Confession, are included between [], and where "the passages or phrases which have reappeared in the Edwardine Articles are denoted by Italics." 8 See Strype's Eccl. Mem., i. chaps. xxxii. and xxxiv., with documents in Appendix; and also Blount, Reform. of the Church of Eng., vol. i. p. 471. The final statement made by the German divines of their views as to the sacrament, the marriage of the priesthood, etc., and Henry's reply thereto are printed in Burnet, Addenda to Part I. (Collectanea, pp. 138 and 140). once for all, religious dissension by a more stern and reactionary policy, for the definition and enforcement of which was called the parliament which met in London in April, 1539. from the The popular branch of the preceding parliament, which had Parliament of 1539 been hastily assembled in 1536, was filled by creatures of the called court, some of whom were returned under circumstances of to hush religious the grossest pressure.1 From the history of the election of discord; 1539 it is clear that the crown did not fail to make every effort to again secure the same advantage, the attainment of which was in due time certified by Cromwell to the king in a letter in which he said that "your Grace had never more tractable parliament." 2 After the speech from the throne had speech been read, announcing to the houses that they had been called throne; together to close the religious quarrels by which the kingdom was distracted, the lords were invited to appoint a committee to consider the nature of the evil and to report a remedy.3 A long pause then followed, during which the parliament, while awaiting the report of the committee on religion, passed three memorable statutes, two of which embodied the extremest effort which the estates could possibly make for the exaltation of the royal authority. Upon the complaint of the king that his proclamations were not duly observed, and that statute giv offenders against them could not be punished as law-break- ing king's ers, an act was passed in which the parliament so far abdi- tions the cated its functions as to declare that royal proclamations, law; issued with the consent of the council, should have the same force as its own enactments, and that pains and penalties might be inflicted upon all who violated them, provided the same were duly defined beforehand in each proclamation. A further limitation was also imposed to the effect that the king 1 For details, see Froude, vol. iii. pp. 189-193 and notes, special reference being made to the account of the Canterbury election. 2 Cromwell to Henry VIII., State Papers, vol. i. p. 693. 8 The committee was composed of Cromwell, the two archbishops, and ten bishops. Lords' Journal, 31 Hen. VIII. Six questions were submitted to the committee by the king (the six articles in an interrogative form) which are stated in the preamble of the act. The committee failed to agree, and the proclama force of suppression of the greater monas teries; should not by virtue of his new powers set aside either existing statutes or the customary law.1 The unprecedented grant of legislative power thus made to the crown was soon followed by an act 2 confirming the surrender of all the religious houses which had dissolved themselves since the act of 1536, and empowering the king to extend its provisions to all others that "might be hereafter dissolved, suppressed, surrendered, or had or might by any other means come into the hands of the king." Thus at a blow fell the six hundred greater monasteries which had survived the first assault, and with their fall disappear disappeared from the house of lords the twenty-six abbots and ance of the the two priors who then sat as lords of parliament by virtue parliamentary abbots; of their baronial status, which ended with the destruction of rics; their houses. The fruit of the spoliation of the monasteries was so great that the king promised never again to call upon his people for subsidies. In addition to this promise the hope was held out that from its fresh resources the crown would creation of create twenty-one new bishoprics, and convert a large propornew bishop- tion of the religious houses into chapters of deans and prebendaries, which were to be attached both to the old and new 5 In order to facilitate that pious purpose, an act was passed authorizing the crown to make such creations and endowments by letters patent. The number of new bishoprics dwindled down, however, to six, houses were actually converted. sees. 1 As to the prior history of “Delegated Legislation," see Amos, Reformation Parliament, pp. 64, 65. 2 13 Hen. VIII. c. 13. 8 See vol. i. p. 355. After witnessing without opposing the bill offered in May, 1539, for their destruction, the abbots sat for the last time in the upper house on the 28th of June, the last day of the session, the act not having passed until that day. After their retirement the spiritual peerage was reduced to the archbishops and bishops, who, in the next parliament, numbered only twenty-one spiritual as against forty-one temporal peers. To the twenty-one old bishoprics were added the six new ones whose creation grew out of the appropriation by the state of the monastic property as explained below. Thus was the spir while only seven 7 religious And yet apart from the ex itual peerage reduced from a majority to a minority. Blount (Reform. of the Church of Eng., vol. i. p. 371), after a careful computation, concludes that "the property which the king confiscated amounted in value (taking estates, money, plate, and jewels) to at least fifty millions of pounds (£50,000,000), this being probably much below the real state of the case." 5 31 Hen. VIII. c. 9. 6 Oxford, Peterborough, Bristol, Gloucester, Chester, and Westminster, the last named suppressed in 1550. 7 Canterbury, Durham, Winchester, Ely, Carlisle, Norwich, and Worcester. "These thirteen cathedrals are therefore called those of the 'New Foundation.'"- Blount, vol. i. p. 371, note 7. penditures made upon the fortification of the coast,1 and upon the building of the new navy which was soon to give England fresh strength at sea, the crown derived but little permanent benefit from its vast acquisitions of church property. The abbey lands transfer of bulk of the abbey lands were either lavished as gifts upon how the court favorites, or sold at low prices, not so much to the older were disnobility as to the new men who had come into power under posed of; Wolsey and Cromwell, or else to the great merchants and manufacturers who were swelling the ranks of the territorial aristocracy. By the very nature of their acquisitions the new proprietors were irrevocably pledged against the restoration of the papal authority, while by the numberless transfers thus. brought about land became as it had never been before the subject of sale and purchase, to facilitate, which were soon sale and passed a series of important statutes. While measures of land facilisuch moment were swiftly passing through parliament without tated by hindrance or debate, the king was being wearied by the failure of the lords' committee to report such an act as would complete the chief business for the settlement of which the parliament had been called together. In order to end the complication into which the matter finally drifted, the king resolved to cut the knot by dictating to parliament, as he had dictated to Henry dic convocation under similar circumstances in 1536, the articles Statute of of religion which he intended should receive the sanction of Articles, the state. The result was the Statute of the Six Articles,5 in which it was declared: 1. That in the sacrament of the altar doctrinal legislation is really present, under the form of bread and wine, the natural of his reign; 1 Dowell, Hist. of Taxation, vol. i. been fortuitous."— Amos, Reformation p. 137. 2 As to the fate of the monastic property, see Froude, vol. iii. p. 206; Blount, vol. i. pp. 372-379, who comments upon the social results of the dissolution. 3 "In the very next year after the act passed for the dissolution of the greater monasteries, there were enacted the statutes of wills, of limitations, of fines, for conveyances of titles, for lessees of tenants in tail, for executions upon lands, for partitions, for disseizins, for grantees of reversions, for collusive recoveries, for arrearages of rent claimable by executors, for buying of titles; -a goodly array of improvements, which may not seem to have Parliament, pp. 313, 314. 4 After the disagreement of the first, two other committees were finally appointed (Lords' Journal, 31 Hen. VIII.), who made separate reports. The report adopted by the peers modified, in two particulars, the statute which Henry had drawn. Froude therefore concludes that "it was not, in its extreme form, the work of the king, nor did it express his own desires.". Vol. iii. p. 208. 5 31 Hen. VIII. c. 14, entitled "An Act for Abolishing of Diversity of Opinion in Certain Articles concerning Christian Religion." It received the royal assent June 24, 1539, and took effect July 12. statute; tates the the Six which closes the body and blood of Christ, which, after consecration, remains but the substance of Christ. 2. That communion in both kinds is not necessary to salvation. 3. That it is not permitted to priests, after their ordination, to marry and have wives. 4. That vows of chastity ought to be observed as perpetual obligations. 5. That private masses ought to be continued for godly consolation and benefit. 6. That auricular confession to a priest must be retained and continued. The efficacy of this measure, which thus fixed the standard of orthodoxy, Henry had no intention of leaving to pious exhortation merely. In spite of the strenuous opposition of Cranmer 1 and the five bishops, who partly sympathized with the protestant party, the act imposed upon all who should refuse to submit to its terms penalties so severe as to foreshadow the revival of active persecution. The penalty for denying transubstantiation as ing against defined in the first article was burning, without the chance of abjuring; while for offences against the other five, for the first offence forfeiture of property, for the second, death as a felon. The act declared the marriages of priests and nuns utterly void; to refuse to go to confession was felony; to refuse to receive the sacraments was also felony. By this fierce and bloody measure, under which in London alone five hundred protestants were soon indicted, Latimer and Shaxton imprisoned, and Cranmer seriously endangered,2 the doctrinal legislation of Henry's reign was brought to a close. penalties for offend the act. Revival of by the Nothing could have been more disappointing than the fresh persecution outbreak of the persecuting spirit which thus so quickly folAnglicans; lowed Henry's supreme effort to hush religious discord by command of parliament. Nothing could have been farther removed from the king's pacific designs than the cruel use which the triumphant Anglicans were so quick to make "of the whip with six strings" to lash their Lutheran opponents into fury. As a man of the New Learning, as a catholic proud of his orthodoxy, the king had no personal sympathy with the protestant party, now struggling into life, no patience with 1 It seems to be clear, however, that Cranmer's opposition was withdrawn when the bill finally came before the house of lords for a vote. See Hook's Life of Cranmer, Lives of the Archbishops, etc., 2d series, vol. ii. p. 46. 2 Hall, p. 828. Latimer and Shax ton resigned their sees, either voluntarily or at the king's request. Godwin, Annals, p. 70; State Papers, vol. i. p. 849. As to the king's intervention in behalf of Cranmer, see Burnet, vol. i. p. 194. |