The Leading Facts of English History Part 32

The light that shone in those eyes, though hardly that "Gospel light"

which the poet calls it,[1] was yet bright enough to effectually clear up all difficulties in the royal mind. The King now declared that he felt conscientiously moved to obtain a divorce from his old wife, and to marry a new one. In that determination lay most momentous consequences, since it finally separated England from the jurisdiction of the Church of Rome.

[1] "When love could teach a monarch to be wise, And Gospel light first dawned from Bullen's [Boleyn's] eyes."

--Gray.

344. Wolsey favors the Divorce from Catharine.

Cardinal Wolsey, Henry's chief counselor,--the man who thought that he ruled both King and Kingdom,[2]--lent his powerful aid to bring about the divorce, but with the expectation that the King would marry a princess from France, and thus form an alliance with that country. If so, his own ambitious schemes would be forwarded, since the united influence of the two kingdoms might elevate him to the Papacy.

[2] The Venetian amba.s.sador in a dispatch to his government, wrote of Cardinal Wolsey: "It is he who rules both the King and the entire Kingdom. At first the Cardinal used to say, `His Majesty will do so and so'; subsequently he went on, forgetting himself, and commenced saying, `We shall do so and so'; at present (1519) he has reached such a pitch that he says, `I shall do so and so.'"

When Wolsey learned that the King's choice was Anne Boleyn (S343), he fell on his knees, and begged him not to persist in his purpose; but his entreaties had no effect, and the Cardinal was obliged to continue what he had begun.

345. The Court at Blackfriars (1529).

The King had applied to the Pope to annul the marriage with Catharine (S342) on the ground of illegality; but the Emperor Charles V, who was the Queen's nephew, used his influence in her behalf. Vexatious delays now became the order of the day. At last, a court composed of Cardinal Wolsey and Cardinal Campeggio, an Italian, as papal legates, or representatives, was convened at Blackfriars, London, to test the validity of the marriage.

Henry and Catharine were summoned. The first appeared and answered to his name. When the Queen was called she declined to answer, but throwing herself at Henry's feet, begged him with tears and sobs not to put her away without cause. Finding him inflexible, she left the court, and refused to attend again, appealing to Rome for justice.

This was in the spring (1529). Nothing was done that summer, and in the autumn, the court, instead of reaching a decision, dissolved.

Campeggio, the Italian legate, returned to Italy, and Henry, to his disappointment and rage, received an order from Rome to carry the question to the Pope for settlement.

346. Fall of Wolsey (1529).

Both the King and Anne Boleyn believed that Wolsey had played false with them. They now resolved upon his destruction. The Cardinal had a presentiment of his impending doom. The French amba.s.sador, who saw him at this juncture, said that his face had shrunk to half its size.

But his fortunes were destined to shrink even more than his face.

By a law of Richard II no representative of the Pope had any rightful authority in England[1] (S265). Though the King had given his consent to Wolsey's holding the office of legate, yet now that a contrary result to what he expected had been reached, he proceeded to prosecute him to the full extent of the law.

[1] Act of Praemunire. See S243 and Summary of Const.i.tutional History in the Appendix, p. xiii, S14, and p. x.x.xii.

It was an easy matter for him to crush the Cardinal. Erasmus said of him, "He was feared by all, he was loved by few--I may say by n.o.body."

His arrogance and extravagant ostentation had excited the jealous hate of the n.o.bility; his constant demands for money in behalf of the King set Parliament against him; and his exactions from the common people had, as the chronicle of the time tells us, made them weep, beg, and "speak cursedly."

Wolsey bowed to the storm, and to save himself gave up everything; his riches, pomp, power, all vanished as suddenly as they had come. It was Henry's hand that stripped him, but it was Anne Boleyn who moved that hand. Well might the humbled favorite say of her:

"There was the weight that pulled me down.

... all my glories In that one woman I have lost forever."[1]

[1] Shakespeare's "Henry VIII," Act III, scene ii.

Thus deprived of well-nigh everything but life, the Cardinal was permitted to go into retirement in the north; less than a twelve-month later he was arrested on a charge of high treason. Through the irony of fate, the warrant was served by a former lover of Anne Boleyn's, whom Wolsey, it is said, had separated from her in order that she might consummate her unhappy marriage with royalty. On the way to London Wolsey fell mortally ill, and turned aside at Leicester to die in the abbey there, with the words:

"...O, Father Abbot, An old man, broken with the storms of state, Is come to lay his weary bones among ye: Give him a little earth for charity!"[2]

[2] Shakespeare's "Henry VIII," Act IV, scene ii.

347. Appeal to the Universities.

Before Wolsey's death, Dr. Thomas Cranmer, of Cambridge, suggested that the King lay the divorce question before the universities of Europe. Henry caught eagerly at this proposition, and exclaimed, "Cranmer has the right pig by the ear." The scheme was at once adopted. Several universities returned favorable answers. In a few instances, as at Oxford and Cambridge, where the authorities hesitated, a judicious use of bribes or threats soon brought them to see the matter in a proper light.

348. The Clergy declare Henry Head of the Church, 1531.

Armed with these decisions in his favor, Henry now charged the whole body of the English Church with being guilty of the same crime of which Wolsey had been accused (S346). The clergy, in their terror, made haste to buy a pardon at a cost reckoned at nearly $5,000,000 at the present value of money.

They furthermore declared Henry to be the supreme head on earth of the Church of England, adroitly adding, "in so far as is permitted by the law of Christ." Thus the Reformation came into England "by a side door, as it were." Nevertheless, it came.

349. Henry marries Anne Boleyn; Act of Supremacy, 1534.

Events now moved rapidly toward a crisis. In 1533, after having waited over five years, Henry privately married Anne Boleyn (S343), and she was soon after crowned in Westminster Abbey. When the Pope was informed of this, he ordered the King, under pain of excommunication (S194), to put her away, and to take back Queen Catharine (S345).

Parliament met that demand by pa.s.sing the Act of Supremacy, 1534, which declared Henry to be without reservation the sole head of the Church, making denial thereof high treason.[1] As he signed the act, the King with one stroke of his pen overturned the traditions of a thousand years, and England stood boldly forth with a National Church independent of the Pope.[2]

[1] Henry's full t.i.tle was now "Henry VIII, by the Grace of G.o.d, King of England, France, and Ireland, Defender of the Faith and of the Church of England, and also of Ireland, on earth the Supreme Head."

[2] Attention is called to the fact that a controversy, more or less serious in its character, had been going on, at intervals for nearly five hundred years, between the English sovereigns (or the barons) and the popes. It began with William the Conqueror in 1076 (S118). It was continued by Henry I (S136), by Henry II (SS163-170), by John (S194), by the barons under Henry III (S211), by the Parliament of Merton (S211), by Edward I (S226), and it may be said to have practically culminated under Henry VIII in the Act of Supremacy of 1534 (S349). But after the formal establishment of Protestantism by Edward VI in 1549 (S362) we find the Act of Supremacy reaffirmed, in slightly different form, by Queen Elizabeth in 1559 (S382). Finally, the Revolution of 1688 settled the question (S497).

350. Subserviency of Parliament.

But as Luther said, Henry had a pope within him. The King now proceeded to prove the truth of Luther's declaration. We have already seen (S328) that since the Wars of the Roses had destroyed the power of the barons, there was no effectual check on the despotic will of the sovereign. The new n.o.bility were the creatures of the Crown, hence bound to support it; the clergy were timid, the Commons anything but bold, so that Parliament gradually became the servile echo and ready instrument of the throne.

That body twice released the King from the discharge of his just debts. It even exempted him from paying certain forced loans which he had extorted from his people. Parliament also repeatedly changed the laws of succession to the Crown to please him. Moreover it promptly attainted and destroyed such victims as he desired to put out of the way (S351). Later (1539) it declared that proclamations, concerning religious doctrines, when made by the King and Council, should have the force of acts of Parliament. This new power enabled Henry to p.r.o.nounce heretical many opinions which he disliked and to punish them with death.

351. Execution of More and Fisher (1535).

Thomas Cromwell had been Cardinal Wolsey's private secretary; but he had now become chief counselor to the King, and in his crooked and cruel policy reduced bloodshed to a science. He first introduced the practice of condemning an accused prisoner without any form of trial (by Act of Attainder), and sending him to the block[1] without allowing him to speak in his own defense (S356). No one was now safe who did not openly side with the King.

[1] Act of Attainder. See Const.i.tutional Doc.u.ments in Appendix, p. x.x.xii.

Sir Thomas More, who had been Lord Chancellor (S339), and the aged Bishop Fisher were executed because they could not affirm that they conscientiously believed that Henry was morally and spiritually ent.i.tled to be the head of the English Church (S349).

Both died with Christian fort.i.tude. More said to the governor of the Tower with a flash of his old humor, as the steps leading to the scaffold shook while he was mounting them, "Do you see me safe up, and I will make shift to get down by myself."

352. Destruction of the Monasteries; Seizure of their Property, 1536-1539.

When the intelligence of the judicial murder of the venerable ex-chancellor reached Rome, the Pope issued a bull of excommunication and deposition against Henry (S194). It delivered his soul to Satan, and his kingdom to the first invader.

The King retaliated by the suppression of the monasteries. In doing so, he simply hastened a process which had already begun. Years before, Cardinal Wolsey had not scrupled to shut up several, and take their revenues to found Christ Church College at Oxford. The truth was, that, in most cases, monasticism "was dead long before the Reformation came to bury it" (S339, note 1). It was dead because it had done its work,--in many respects a great and good work, which the world could ill have spared (SS43, 45, 46, 60). The monasteries simply shared the fate of all human inst.i.tutions, however excellent they may be.

"Our little systems have their day; They have their day and cease to be: They are but broken lights of Thee, And Thou, O Lord, art more than they."[1]

[1] Tennyson's "In Memoriam."

Henry, however, had no such worthy object as Wolsey had. His pretext was that these inst.i.tutions had sunk into a state of ingnorance, drunkenness, and profligacy. This may have been true of some of the smaller monasteries, though not of the large ones. But the vices of the monasteries the King had already made his own. It was their wealth which he now coveted. The smaller religious houses were speedily swept out of existence (1536). This caused a furious insurrection in the North, called the "Pilgrimage of Grace" (1537); but the revolt was soon put down.

Though Parliament had readily given its sanction to the extinction of the smaller monasteries, it hesitated about abolishing the greater ones. Henry, it is reported, sent for a leading member of the House o Commons, and, laying his hand on the head of the kneeling representative, said, "Get my bill pa.s.sed by to-morrow, little man, or else to-morrow this head of yours will come off." The next day the bill pa.s.sed, and the work of destruction began anew (1539). Property worth millions of pounds was confiscated, and abbots like those of Glas...o...b..ry and Charter House, who dared to resist, were speedily hanged.[1]

[1] The total number of religious houses destroyed was 645 monasteries, 2374 chapels, 90 collegiate churches, and 110 charitable inst.i.tutions. Among the most famous of these ruins are Glas...o...b..ry, Kirkstal, Furness, Netley, Tintern, and Fountains abbeys.