A History of the Reformation Volume II Part 17

BOOK IV.

_THE REFORMATION IN ENGLAND_

CHAPTER I.

THE CHURCH OF HENRY VIII.[364]

The Church and people of England broke away from the mediaeval papal ecclesiastical system in a manner so exceptional, that the rupture had not very much in common with the contemporary movements in France and Germany. Henry VIII. destroyed the papal supremacy, spiritual and temporal, within the land which he governed; he cut the bands which united the Church of England with the great Western Church ruled over by the Bishop of Rome; he built up what may be called a kingly papacy on the ruins of the jurisdiction of the Pope. His starting-point was a quarrel with the Pope, who refused to divorce him from Catharine of Aragon.

It would be a mistake, however, to think that Henry's eagerness to be divorced from Catharine accounts for the English Reformation. No king, however despotic, could have forced on such a revolution unless there was much in the life of the people that reconciled them to the change, and evidence of this is abundantly forthcoming.

There was a good deal of _heresy_, so called, in England long before Luther's voice had been heard in Germany. Men maintained that the t.i.thes were exactions of covetous priests, and were not sanctioned by the law of G.o.d; they protested against the hierarchical const.i.tution of the mediaeval Church; they read the Scriptures, and attended services in the vernacular; and they scoffed at the authority of the Church and attacked some of its doctrines. Lollardy had never died out in England, and Lollardy was simply the English form of that pa.s.sive protest against the mediaeval Church which under various names had maintained itself in France, Germany, and Bohemia for centuries in spite of persecution.

Foxe's _Acts and Monuments_ show that there was a fairly active repression of so-called heresy in England before Luther's days, and his accounts are confirmed by the State Papers of the period. In 1511, Andreas Ammonius, the Latin secretary of Henry VIII., writing to Erasmus, says that wood has grown scarce and dear because so much was needed to burn heretics, "and yet their numbers grow." Yet Dr. James Gairdner declares that only a solitary pair had suffered during that year at the stake![365] Early in 1512 the Archbishop of Canterbury summoned a meeting of convocation for the express purpose of arresting the spread of heresy;[366] in that same year Erasmus was told by More that the _Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum_ were popular everywhere throughout England;[367] and a commission was given to the Bishop of Coventry and others to inquire about Lollards in Wales and other parts;[368] and as late as 1521 the Bishop of London arrested five hundred Lollards.[369] In 1530, Henry VIII. himself, always curious about theology and anxious to know about the books which interested his subjects, sent to Oxford for a copy of the Articles on which Wiclif had been condemned.[370] Anyone who scoffed at relics or pilgrimages was thought to be a Wiclifite.[371] In 1531, divinity students were required to take an oath to renounce the doctrines of Wiclif, Hus, and Luther;[372] and in 1533, More, writing to Erasmus, calls Tyndale and his sympathisers Wiclifites.[373] Henry VIII. was engaged as early as 1518 in composing a book against heresy and vindicating the claims of the Roman See, which in its first inception could scarcely be directed against Luther, and probably dealt with the views of home heretics.[374]

Some modern historians are inclined to find a strong English revolt against Rome native to the soil and borrowing little or nothing from Luther, which they believe to have been the initial force at work in shaping the English Reformation. Mr. Pollard points out that in many particulars this Reformation followed the lines laid down by Wiclif. Its leaders, like Wiclif, denounced the Papal Supremacy on the ground of the political injury it did to the English people; declaimed against the sloth, immorality, and wealth of the English ecclesiastics; advocated a preaching ministry; and looked to the secular power to restrain the vices and reform the manners of the clergy, and to govern the Church. He shows that

"most of the English Reformers were acquainted with Wycliffe's works: Cranmer declares that he set forth the truth of the Gospel; Hooper recalls how he resisted 'the popish doctrine of the Ma.s.s'; Ridley, how he denied transubstantiation; and Bale, how he denounced the friars.... Bale records with triumph that, in spite of the efforts to suppress (the writings of Wicliffe), not one had utterly perished."[375]

And Dr. Rashdall goes the length of saying:

"It is certain that the Reformation had virtually broken out in the secret Bible-readings of the Cambridge Reformers before either the trumpet-call of Luther or the exigencies of Henry VIII.'s personal and political position set men free once more to talk openly against the Pope and the monks, and to teach a simpler and more spiritual gospel than the system against which Wycliffe had striven."[376]

Even if it be admitted that these statements are somewhat strong, they at least call attention to the fact of the vigorous Lollard leaven which permeated the English people, and are a very necessary corrective of the misleading a.s.sertions of Dr. James Gairdner on the matter.

Henry VIII. had other popular forces behind him--the rooted dislike to the clergy which characterised a large ma.s.s of the people, the effects of the teaching of the Christian Humanists of England, and the spread of Lutheran opinions throughout the land.

The Bishop of London, writing to Wolsey about the proposal to try his Chancellor, Dr. Horsey, for complicity in the supposed murder of Richard Hunne, declared that if the Chancellor

"be tried by any twelve men in London, they be so maliciously set _in favorem haereticae pravitatis_ that they will cast and condemn any clerk though he were as innocent as Abel."[377]

This dislike was not confined to the capital. The Parliaments showed themselves anti-clerical long before Henry had thrown off his allegiance to Rome;[378] and Englishmen could find no better term of insult to throw at the Scots than to call them "Pope's men."[379]

Nor should the work of the Christian Humanists be forgotten. The double tendency in their longings for a reformation of the abuses of superst.i.tion, of pilgrimages, of relic-worship, etc., may be seen in the lives of Sir Thomas More and of William Tyndale. When the former saw that reform meant the breaking up of the mediaeval Church, he became more and more conservative. But More in 1520 (Feb. 28th) could write to Lea that if the Pope (Leo X.) should withdraw his approval of Erasmus' Greek New Testament, Luther's attacks on the Holy See were piety itself compared with such a deed.[380] Tyndale, the favourite pupil of Dean Colet, on the other hand, went forward and earned the martyr's crown.

These Christian Humanists had expected much from Henry VIII., whom they looked on as imbued with the New Learning; and in the end perhaps they were not altogether mistaken. If the _Bishops' Book_ and the _King's Book_ be studied, it will be seen that in both what is insisted upon is a reformation of conduct and a study of the Bible--quite in the spirit of Colet and of Erasmus.

The writings of Luther found early entrance into England, and were read by King[381] and people. A long list of them, including six copies of his work _De potestate Papae_, is to be found in the stock of the Oxford bookseller, John Dorne[382] (1520). Erasmus, writing to Oecolampadius (May 15th, 1521), declares that there are many of Luther's books in England, and hints that but for his exertions they would have been burnt.[383] That was before Luther's official condemnation. On May 28th, Silvester, Bishop of Worcester, wrote to Wolsey from Rome announcing that the Cardinals had agreed to declare Martin a heretic, and that a Bull was being prepared on the subject.[384] The Bull itself appeared in Rome on the 15th of June; and thereafter our information about Luther's writings in England comes from evidence of endeavours to destroy them.

Warham, the Archbishop of Canterbury, wrote to Wolsey (March 8th, 1521) that he had received letters from Oxford which declared that the University was infected with Lutheranism, and that the forbidden books were in circulation there.[385] Indeed, most of the canons appointed to Wolsey's new foundation of the Cardinal College were suspect. Cambridge was as bad, if not worse. Members of the University met at the White Horse Tavern to read and discuss Luther's writings; the inn was called "Germany," and those who frequented it "the Germans." Pope Leo urged both the King and Wolsey to prevent the circulation of Lutheran literature; and they did their best to obey. We read that on May 12th, 1521, Wolsey went in great state to St. Paul's, and after various ceremonies mounted a scaffold, seated himself "under a cloth of estate,"

and listened to a sermon preached by Bishop Fisher against Lutheran errors. At his feet on the right side sat the Pope's amba.s.sadors and the Archbishop of Canterbury, and on the left side the imperial amba.s.sadors and the Bishop of Durham. While the sermon was being preached, numbers of Lutheran books were burnt in a huge bonfire kindled hard by in St. Paul's Churchyard.[386] The representatives of Pope and Emperor saw it all, and doubtless reported to their respective Courts that Wolsey was doing his duty by Church and Empire. It may be doubted whether such theatrical exhibitions hindered the spread of Luther's books in England or prevented them being read.

All these things indicated a certain preparedness in England for the Reformation, and all meant that there was a strong national force behind Henry VIII. when he at last made up his mind to defy Rome.

Nor was a national separation from Rome so formidable an affair as Dr.

Gairdner would have us believe. The Papacy had secularised itself, and European monarchs were accustomed to treat the Popes as secular princes.

The possibility of England breaking away from papal authority and erecting itself into a separate patriarchate under the Archbishop of Canterbury had been thought probable before the divorce was talked about.[387]

It was Henry himself who clung strenuously to the conception of papal supremacy, and who advocated it in a manner only done hitherto by canonists of the Roman Curia. Whatever be the secret reason which he gave to Sir Thomas More, and which silenced the latter's remonstrances, it is evident that the validity of Henry's marriage and the legitimacy of his children by Catharine of Aragon depended on the Pope being in possession of the very fullest powers of dispensation. Henry had been married to Catharine under very peculiar circ.u.mstances, which might well suggest doubts about the validity of the marriage ceremony.

The England of Henry VII. was almost as much a satellite of Spain as Scotland was of France, and to make the alliance still stronger a marriage was arranged between Arthur, Prince of Wales, and Catharine the youngest of the three daughters of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain. The Spanish Princess landed at Plymouth (October 2nd, 1501), and the wedding took place in St. Paul's on November 14th. But Prince Arthur died a few months afterwards (April 2nd, 1502), and Catharine became a widow. The circ.u.mstances of the two nations appeared to require more than ever the cementing of the alliance by intermarriage, and it was proposed from the side of Spain that the young widow should marry Henry, her brother-in-law, now Prince of Wales.[388] Ferdinand brought pressure to bear on England by insisting that if this were not done Catharine should be sent back to Spain and the first instalment of her dowry (all that had been paid) returned. The two Kings then besieged the Pope, Julius II., to grant a dispensation for the marriage. At first His Holiness was very unwilling to consent. Such a marriage had been branded as sin by canonical law, and the Pope himself had great doubts whether it was competent for him to grant a dispensation in such a case.[389] In the end he was persuaded to give it. The two young people had their own scruples of conscience. Ferdinand felt called upon to reason with his proposed son-in-law.[390] The confessor of his daughter was changed.[391] The Archbishop of Canterbury, who doubted whether the Pope could grant dispensation for what was a mortal sin in his eyes, was silenced.[392] The wedding took place (June 11th, 1509).

The marriage was in one sense singularly unfortunate. The first four children were either stillborn or died soon after birth; and it was rumoured in Rome as early as 1514 that Henry might ask to be divorced in order to save England from a disputed succession. Mary was born in 1516 and survived, but all the children who came afterwards were either stillborn or died in early infancy. It became evident by 1525 that if Henry did not divorce his wife he would have no male heir.

There is no doubt that the lack of a male heir troubled Henry greatly.

The English people had not been accustomed to a female sovereign; it was currently, if erroneously, reported in England that the laws of the land did not permit a woman to be sovereign, and such well-informed diplomatists as the Venetian Amba.s.sadors believed the statement;[393]and the Tudor dynasty was not so firmly settled on the throne that it could afford to look forward to a disputed succession. The King's first idea was to ask the Pope to legitimise his illegitimate son the Duke of Richmond;[394]and Cardinal Campeggio actually suggested that the Princess Mary should be married to her half-brother.[395] These projects came to an end with the death of the young Prince.

There seems to be no reason for questioning the sincerity of Henry's doubts about the legitimacy of his marriage with Catharine, or that he actually looked upon the repeated destruction of his hopes of a male heir as a divine punishment for the sin of that contract.[396]Questions of national policy and impulses of pa.s.sion quicken marvellously conscientious convictions, but they do not show that the convictions are not real. In the perplexities of his position the shortest way out seemed to be to ask the Pope to declare that he had never been legally married to Catharine. If he had scruples of conscience about his marriage with his brother's widow, this would end them; if the fears of a disputed succession haunted him, he could marry again, and might hope for a son and a lawful heir whose succession none would dispute.

Cardinal Wolsey adopted his master's plans, and the Pope was to be asked for a declaration that the marriage with Catharine had been no marriage at all.

There entered, however, into all this, at what time it is not easy to determine, an element of sordidness which goes ill with a.s.serted scruples of conscience and imperious necessities of State. Wolsey was astonished when he learned that Henry had made up his mind to marry Anne Boleyn, a lady whose station in life and personal reputation unfitted her for the position of Queen of England. It was Henry's inordinate, if not very long-lived, pa.s.sion for this lady that put him in the wrong, and enabled the Pope to pose as the guardian of the public morality of Europe.

It is plain that Henry VIII. fully expected that the Pope would declare his first marriage invalid; there was many a precedent for such action--two in Henry's own family;[397] and the delay had nothing to do with the interests of public morality. The Pope was at the time practically in the power of Charles V., to whom his aunt, the injured Catharine, had appealed, and who had promised her his protection. One has only to study the phases of the protracted proceedings in the "Divorce" and compare them with the contemporary situation in Italy to see that all that the Curia cared for was the success of the papal diplomacy in the Italian peninsula. The interests of morality were so little in his mind that Clement proposed to Henry more than once that the King might take a second wife without going through the formality of having his first marriage declared null and void.[398] This had been the papal solution of the matter in an earlier instance, and Clement VII. saw no reasons why what had been allowed to a King of Spain should be denied to the King of England.[399] He was prepared to tolerate bigamy, but not to thwart Charles, so long as the Emperor was master within Italy.[400]

It is needless to follow the intricacies of the Divorce. The protracted proceedings were an object lesson for English statesmen. They saw a grave moral question--whether a man could lawfully marry his deceased brother's widow; a matter vitally affecting the welfare of the English people--the possibility of a disputed succession; the personal wishes of a powerful, strong-willed, and choleric sovereign (for all considerations were present, not only the last)--all subjected to the shifting needs of a petty Italian prince. So far as England was concerned, the grave interest in the case ended when Campeggio adjourned the inquiry (July 23rd, 1529). Henry knew that he could not expect the Pope to give him what he wanted; and although his agents fought the case at Rome, he at once began preparing for the separation from papal jurisdiction.

The English n.o.bles, who had long chafed under the rule of Wolsey, took advantage of the great Minister's failure in the Divorce negotiations to press forward his downfall. He was deprived of the Lord Chancellorship, which was given to Sir Thomas More, and was further indicted before the King's Bench for infringement of the law of _Praemunire_--an accusation to which he pleaded guilty.[401]

Meanwhile Henry had taken measures to summon a Parliament; and in the interval between summons and a.s.sembly, it had been suggested to him that Cranmer was of opinion that the best way to deal with the Divorce was to take it out of the hands of the Curia and consult the canonists of the various Universities of Europe. Cranmer was instructed to prepare the case to be laid before them. This was done so successfully that the two great English Universities, the French Universities of Paris, Orleans, Bourges, and Toulouse, decided that the King's marriage with Catharine was not valid; the Italian Universities of Ferrara, Padua, Pavia, and Bologna came to the same conclusion in spite of a proclamation issued by the Pope prohibiting all doctors from maintaining the invalid nature of the King's marriage.[402]

Parliament met on November 3rd, 1529, and, from the matters brought before it, received the name of the "Parliament for the enormities of the clergy."[403] It revealed the force of lay opinion on which Henry might count in the struggle he was about to begin with the clergy. With a view of strengthening his hands still further, the King summoned an a.s.sembly of Notables,[404] which met on June 12th, 1530, and addressed the Pope in a letter in which they prayed him to consent to the King's desire, pointed out the evils which would follow from delaying the Divorce, and hinted that they might be compelled to take the matter into their own hands. This seems to have been the general feeling among the laity of England; for a foreigner writing to the Republic of Florence says: "Nothing else is thought of in that island every day, except of arranging affairs in such a way that they do no longer be in want of the Pope, neither for filling vacancies in the Church, nor for any other purpose."[405]

Having made himself sure of the great ma.s.s of the laity, Henry next set himself to force the clergy into submission. He suddenly charged them all with being guilty of _Praemunire_ because they had accepted the authority of Papal Legates within the kingdom; and managed to extort a sum of 100,000, to be paid in five yearly instalments, by way of a fine from the clergy of the Province of Canterbury.[406] At the same meeting of Convocation (1531) the clergy were compelled, under threat of the law of _Praemunire_, to declare that the King was "their singular protector and only supreme lord, and, _as far as that is permitted by the law of Christ_, the Supreme Head of the Church and of the clergy." The ambiguity in the acknowledgment left a loophole for weak consciences; but the King was satisfied with the phrase, feeling confident that he could force his own interpretation of the acknowledgment on the Church.

"It is all the same," Charles V.'s amba.s.sador wrote to his master, "as far as the King is concerned, as if they had made no reservation; for no one now will be so bold as to contest with his lord the importance of this reservation."[407]

This acknowledgment was, according to the King, simply a clearer statement of what was contained in the old statutes of _Praemunire_, and in all his subsequent ecclesiastical legislation he claimed that he was only giving effect to the earlier laws of England.

The Parliament of 1532 gave the King important a.s.sistance in forcing on the submission, not only of the clergy of England, but of the Pope, to his wishes. The Commons presented a pet.i.tion complaining of various grievances affecting the laity in the working of the ecclesiastical courts, which was sent with a set of demands from the King to the Convocation. The result was the important resolution of Convocation (May 15th, 1532) which is called the _Submission of the Clergy_, where it is promised not to make any new canons without the King's licence and ratification, and to submit all previous canons to a committee of revision, to consist of thirty-two persons, sixteen from Parliament and sixteen from the clergy, and all to be chosen by the King. This committee was to expunge all containing anything prejudicial to the King's prerogative. This Act of Convocation practically declared that the Church of England could neither make any rules for its own guidance without the King's permission, nor act according to the common law of the mediaeval Church when that, in the King's opinion, invaded the royal prerogative.[408] From this Act the Church of England has never been able to free itself. The other deed of this Parliament which was destined to be of the greatest use to Henry in his dealings with the Pope was an Act dealing with the _annates_, _i.e._ one year's income from all ecclesiastical benefices paid to the Pope on entrance into any benefice. The Act declared that the _annates_ should be withheld from the Pope and given to the King, but permitted His Majesty to suspend its operation so long as it pleased him.[409] It was the suspensory clause which enabled Henry to coerce the Pope, and he was not slow to take advantage of it.[410] Writing to Rome (March 21st, 1532), he said: "The Pope and Cardinals may gain our friendship by truth and justice. Take care that they do not hope or despair too much from this power which has been committed to us by the statute. I do not mean to deceive them, but to tell them the fact that this statute will be to their advantage, if they show themselves deserving of it; if not, otherwise. Nothing has been defined at present, which must be to their advantage if they do not despise my friendship."[411]

Archbishop Warham, who had presided at the Convocation which made the submission of the clergy, died in August 1532; and Henry resolved that Cranmer, notwithstanding his unwillingness, should succeed him as Archbishop of Canterbury. Cranmer conscientiously believed that the royal supremacy was a good thing, and would cure many of the ecclesiastical evils which no appeals to the Pope seemed able to reform; and he was also convinced that the marriage of Henry with Catharine had been one for which not even the highest ecclesiastical authority could give a dispensation. He was prepared to carry out the King's wishes in both respects. He could not be an acceptable Primate to the Roman Curia.

Yet Henry, by threatening the Pope with the loss of the _annates_, actually compelled him to send Bulls to England, and that with unusual speed, ratifying the appointment to the Primacy of a man who was known to believe in the nullity of the King's marriage, and to be ready to give effect to his opinion; and this at a time when the Parliament of England had declared that the Primate's court was the supreme ecclesiastical tribunal for the English Church and people. The deed made the Curia really responsible for almost all that followed in England.

For Parliament in February 1533, acting on the submission of the clergy, had pa.s.sed an Act prohibiting all appeals to Rome from the Archbishop's court, and ordering that, if any appeals were taken, they must be to the King's Court of Chancery. This was the celebrated Act of Restraint of Appeals.[412]

In the beginning of 1533 (Jan. 25th), Henry VIII. was privately married to Anne Boleyn. He had taken the Pope's advice in this one particular, to get married without waiting for the Divorce; but soon afterwards (April 5th) he got from the Convocation of Canterbury a doc.u.ment declaring that the Pope had no power to grant a dispensation in such a case as the marriage of Henry with Catharine;[413] and the Act of Restraint of Appeals had made such a decision practically final so far as England was concerned.

Cranmer was consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury on March 30th, 1533.

His opinions were known. He had been one of the Cambridge "Germans"; he had freely consorted with Lutheran divines in Germany; he had begun to pray in private for the abolition of the Pope's power in England as early as 1525; and it was not without reason that Chapuys called him a "Lutheran."[414]

On April 11th, 1533, the new Primate asked the King to permit him to try the question of the Divorce before his own ecclesiastical court; and leave was granted him on the following day, as the princ.i.p.al minister "of our spiritual jurisdiction."[415] The trial was begun, and the court, acting on the decisions of Convocation two months earlier, which had declared[416] that no dispensation could be given for a marriage with the widow of a brother provided the marriage had been consummated, and[417] that the marriage between Arthur and Catharine had been consummated, p.r.o.nounced that the marriage between the King and Catharine of Aragon was null and void.[418] This was followed by an inquiry about the marriage between the King and Anne Boleyn, which was p.r.o.nounced valid, and preparations were made for the coronation of Queen Anne, which took place on June 1st, 1533.[419]

This act of defiance to Rome was at once resented by the Pope. The Curia declared that the marriage between Henry and Catharine was lawful, and a Bull was issued commanding Henry to restore Catharine and put away Anne within ten days on pain of excommunication; which sentence the Emperor, all Christian Princes, and Henry's own subjects were called upon to execute by force of arms.[420]

The action at Rome was answered from England by the pa.s.sing of several strong Acts of Parliament--all in 1534. They completed the separation of the Church and people of England from the See of Rome.

1. The Act forbidding the payment of _annates_ to the Pope was again introduced, and this time made absolute; no _annates_ were for the future to be sent to Rome as the first-fruits of any benefice. In the same Act new provisions were made for the appointment of Bishops; they were for the future to be elected by the Deans and Chapters on receiving a royal letter of leave and nomination.[421]