coercion complete was the failure to unite the voices of the learned and bribery throughout Christendom in the king's favor that no attempt fail to pro sensus of opinion. duce a con- was made to lay before the pontiff1 the great mass of literature which resulted from Cranmer's grand inquest; it was laid instead before the second session of the parliament, which met in January, 1531.2 Henry' draws nearer to in second session, January, 1530-31; 3 Angered and disheartened by the failure of Norfolk's bungling diplomacy, by Cranmer's fruitless appeal to the learned, and by the fresh refusal of the pope to permit him to settle Cromwell's the question of the divorce in his own courts, Henry was now policy; fresh as- ready to renew his assaults upon the clergy, and to draw sault upon the clergy nearer, as a last resort, to Cromwell's policy. Upon Wolsey's conviction a year before under the Statute of Præmunire, it had been held, through a legal fiction of the judges, that the entire clergy of the realm had become involved in his guilt by their recognition of his legatine authority; and the attorneygeneral had been directed to file an information against them in the king's bench as his "fautors and abettors."4 Startled by this novel method of attack, the convocation of Canterbury, which was hastily assembled, offered the king a hundred thousand pounds for a full pardon. To this offer the response was made that it could not be accepted unless in the preamble to the grant the king should be acknowledged "to be the protector and only supreme head of the church and clergy of England." After an earnest remonstrance, the difference was tion forced settled by a compromise suggested by Warham, which qualithe king's fied the admission by the saving clause, "as far as the law headship of the church of Christ will allow, the supreme head." 5 The convocation of with a qual York adopted the same language in a grant which gave to the king nearly one fifth of the sum granted by the southern convocation. When the bill for the pardon of the clergy was convoca to admit ification; 1 Such was the original intention. See Legrand, vol. iii. p. 443. 2 On the 30th of March Sir Thomas More read to the Commons the decisions of the various universities. Hali, p. 780; Burnet, vol. i. p. 80. 8 January 5, 1531, a bull was issued by the pope and published in Flanders forbidding any person or court to pronounce a divorce between Henry and Catherine. Legrand, vol. iii. p. 531. "He seems to have done nothing further in the matter during the whole of the year 1531."- Blount, Reform. of the Church of Eng., vol. i. pp. 178, 179. 4 As to the whole matter, see Burnet, vol. i. p. 81; Amos, Reformation Parliament, p. 51. 5 With that proviso the grant was first carried by the silent consent of both houses. Wilkins, Conc., vol. ii. pp. 725, 742. Subsequently, express assent was demanded and granted. Blount, Reform. of the Church of Eng., vol. i. pp. 207-209. "The statute for pardoning the the com lords and commons presented for parliamentary sanction, the ever cautious com- cautious mons, fearing that with the king's love of the letter of the law policy of the subtle theory upon which the church had been impaled mons; might be extended to the whole nation, refused their assent until a general pardon should be granted to the laity as well. After some negotiation, the matter was adjusted by the passage of a bill for the pardon of the clergy of the province of Canterbury, after it had been settled that another should be passed wherein his majesty, "by the authority of the present parliament, granted to all and singular his temporal and lay subjects and temporal bodies politic and corporate, and to every one of them his pardon for offences against the Statutes of Provisors and Præmunire."2 Shortly after adjournment, the king made a fresh attempt to influence events at Rome after adby an address to the pope, signed by the lords temporal and journment, spiritual, and part of the commons, in which they, after espous- part of the ing the cause of the king as their own, laid before the pontiff address the pope in the their version of the judgments which had been pronounced by king's the universities in favor of the divorce, with the significant inti- behalf; mation that "extreme remedies are ever harsh of application; but he that is sick will by all means be rid of his distemper." "3 And as a further evidence of the firmness of his resolve, Henry followed up this covert threat by the banishment of Catherine in July, 1531, from the royal palace to Ampthill. Before the Catherine end of the year still another effort was made to obtain a favor- Ampthill; able answer from Clement by the dispatch of a fresh embassy to Rome, headed by the new bishop of Winchester, Stephen Gardiner, whose rapid rise in royal favor since the fall of Wol- Gardiner's sey was now being surely surpassed by the great and growing Rome. influence of Cromwell. The utter failure of Gardiner's mission left the new favorite free to make a fresh attack in parliament upon papal and clerical privileges through the two clergy of the province of York was not passed till the next session (23 Hen. VIII. c. 19); it is similar, in its terms, to the statute relating to Canterbury, only the price of the pardon was to be £18,840, os. 10 d." - Amos, pp. 57, 58. 1 22 Hen. VIII. c. 15. 2 22 Hen. VIII. c. 16. The admission of parliament into a participation with the king in the exercise of the pardon banished to mission to Third session of 1531-32: statute limiting jurisdiction of church courts to diocese of defendant's statute forbidding acts which specially distinguish the proceedings of the third session of 1531-32. The first of these acts, passed to prohibit the citation of persons out of the diocese in which they reside, recites in its preamble that much vexation and oppression had been occasioned by requiring persons to go far away from their homes in order to appear in the court of archives, and in other high archiepiscopal courts, in order to answer in causes of defamaresidence; tion, tithes, and the like, which were more often begun through malice than from any just cause; and in which, if the party did not appear, the spiritual sentence which was pronounced could only be absolved by the payment of court fees together with the charges of the summoner or apparitor by whom the process had been served. It was therefore enacted that, with certain exceptions, no person should be cited outside of the diocese of his residence, while the fee for the summons was reduced from two shillings to three pence.2 The limitation conditional thus imposed upon the jurisdiction of the spiritual courts was soon followed by an act forbidding the payment to the pope payment of of the annates, or firstfruits of benefices, which the bishops firstfruits, had been for a long time compelled to pay before they could receive the papal bulls necessary for the confirmation of their elections. It was now enacted that if any bishop should pay such tribute, it should cause a forfeiture of his lands and goods; that if any bishop presented by the king to the pope should be hindered by the withholding of the bulls, he should be and author- consecrated without them by the archbishop; and that if any izing the archbishop should be so hindered, he should be consecrated by two bishops to be named by the king. In accordance with the prevailing policy of menace and supplication this act was qualified by a proviso, which empowered Henry at his discretion to declare by letters patent, before the beginning of the next session, whether the act should take effect "as an act or statute of this present parliament or not." This assault upon the papal exchequer Cromwell quickly followed up by a fresh assertion of his theory of the ecclesiastical supremacy annates or consecra tion of bish ops without papal authority; 246. 3 1 Another act, the first of the ses- 2 23 Hen. VIII. c. 9; Amos, pp. 245, 23 Hen. VIII. c. 20. 4 Amos, p. 254. forbidden to legislate royal ("Act of Hen. VIII. at the end of the crown. That theory, already admitted by convocation a year before, "so far as the law of Christ will allow," now found expression in an address1 procured from the commons, in which they were made to complain that the clerical legislatures, without consultation with the other estates, often enacted laws touching temporal matters which, in spite of contrary statutes, were enforced by spiritual penalties. After a long and painful negotiation Henry demanded, and convo- convocation cation was forced to make, an act of "Submission," wherein the clergy were made to promise "that we will never from without henceforth enact, put in use, promulgate, or execute any license new canons, or constitutions provincial, or any new ordinance, Submis provincial or synodal, in our convocation, or synod, in time sion," 25 coming (which convocation is, always hath been, and must be c. 19, passed assembled only by your high commandment of writ), only your of 1533); Highness, by your royal assent shall license us to assemble our convocation, and to make, promulgate, and execute such constitutions and ordinaments as shall be made in the same; and thereto give your royal assent and authority." The "Submission" was subscribed May 15, 1532, and at the end of 1533 it was embodied in the "Act of Submission," 25 Hen. VIII. c. 19, passed at that time, in which it was provided that all canons ecclesiastical then in force, not in conflict with the laws of the realm or the royal prerogative, should continue to bind until abolished by further legislation. Thus by this new concordat between church and state it was settled 3 (1) that the old canons of the church, not in conflict with the laws of the realm or the royal supremacy, should remain in force; (2) that convocation should not discuss the enactment of new canons without a license from the crown; (3) that no new canons should have force unless they were ratified by the crown,—an arrangement which has continued until the present time. The counterblast from Rome to these fresh assaults upon the clergy was a brief issued in November, in which Clement declared both Henry and Anne excommunicate unless Mr. Gladstone on the Royal Supremacy, p. 31. 1 This address was presented to the king in March, 1532. Herbert's Henry VIII., P. 357. 2 Wilkins, Conc., vol. iii. p. 754. 8 As to the status of convocation as a legislative body after the Reformation Statutes, see vol. i. p. 344, citing 4 As to the canons enacted since the passage of the "Act of Submission," see Blount, Reform. of the Church of Eng., vol. ii. pp. 368–373. excommu Anne. conditional they should cease to cohabit within a month; and in the event nication of they should attempt to marry, such a marriage was declared Henry and beforehand to be illegal.1 But the time had now come when neither papal bulls nor acts of parliament could stay the march of physical conditions which made it imperative that the marriage of Henry and Anne should be hastened. Although the date of the marriage was at the time intentionally involved in confusion, there can hardly be a doubt that it was secretly celebrated late in January, 1533.2 Fourth session, February, statute Kome in certain cases; Such was the condition of things on the 4th of February, when the fourth session of the parliament began,3 in which 1532-33: was passed the act of forbidding appeals to Rome in all forbidding causes testamentary, of marriage and divorce, oblations, tithes, appeals to and obventions, whether already commenced or hereafter to be commenced. It was provided that in all such causes, whether affecting the king or his subjects, the hearing should be had in the king's courts, temporal or spiritual, and not the course elsewhere; and furthermore that the course of appeal should of appeal; be from the archdeacon to the bishop, and from the bishop to the archbishop of his province; and in any cause touching the king or his successors, the appeal should be to the upper house of convocation.5 Such an act had now become a pressing 1 Burnet, i.; Records, ii. 111-119; Legrand, i. 228-230. 2 Lingard (vol. v. pp. 2, 3, and notes) fixes the day as the 25th of January, not only on the authority of Sanders, but upon that of a manuscript history of the divorce published thirty years before it. Legrand, ii. p. 110. Froude (vol. i. p. 410, note 2), after setting the date of the 25th of January in the margin, says, upon the authority of Cranmer, "and 'somewhere about St. Paul's day,' Anne Boleyn received the prize for which she had thirsted seven long years," etc. Burnet (vol. i. p. 95) says that the marriage took place on the 14th of the previous November. He states at the same time, however, that Stowe fixes it on the 25th of January. Elizabeth was born on the 7th of the following September. It closed April 7, 1533. 4 24 Hen. VIII. c. 12. 5 As to the modification of this act providing that in all manner of appeals the appeal should be made "from the archbishop's court to the king in his chancery, where a commission shall be accorded for the determination of the appeal, and from thence no further," see Reeves' Hist. Eng. Law, vol. iii. p. 241, note (b), Finlason ed. The modifying provision is contained in the "Act of Submission," 25 Hen. VIII. c. 19. The right of appeal to Rome was revived in the reign of Mary, but during that of Elizabeth (1 Eliz. c. 1) the jurisdiction of the crown as settled by the Act of Appeals was restored, "and though the court has been changed, the privy council being substituted for the delegates, the principle of the law has remained untouched to the present day." |