CHAPTER I.
THE CHURCH OF HENRY VIII.[364]
The Church and people of England broke away from the mediæval 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 tithes were exactions of covetous priests, and were not sanctioned by the law of God; they protested against the hierarchical constitution of the mediæval 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 passive protest against the mediæval 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 Epistolæ 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 Mass’; 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 assertions 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 mass 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 hæreticæ 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 superstition, 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 mediæval 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 Papæ, 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 ambassadors and the Archbishop of Canterbury, and on the left side the imperial ambassadors 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 circumstances, 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 circumstances 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 Ambassadors 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 passion 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 asserted 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, passion 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 nobles, 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 Præmunire—an accusation to which he pleaded guilty.[401]
Meanwhile Henry had taken measures to summon a Parliament; and in the interval between summons and assembly, 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 assembly 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 mass of the laity, Henry next set himself to force the clergy into submission. He suddenly charged them all with being guilty of Præmunire 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 Præmunire, 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 ambassador 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 Præmunire, 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 assistance in forcing on the submission, not only of the clergy of England, but of the Pope, to his wishes. The Commons presented a petition 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 mediæval 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 passed 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 document 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 principal 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, pronounced 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 pronounced 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 passing 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]
2. An Act forbidding the payment of Peter’s Pence to the Bishop of Rome; forbidding all application to the Pope for dispensations; and declaring that all such dispensations were to be sought for in the ecclesiastical courts within England.[422]
3. The Act of Succession, which was followed by a second within the same year in which the nullity of the marriage of Henry with Catharine of Aragon was clearly stated, and Catharine was declared to be the “Princess of Wales,” i.e. the widow of Arthur; which affirms the validity of the King’s marriage with Anne Boleyn, and declares that all the issue of that marriage are legitimate; and which affirms that, failing male succession, the crown falls to the Princess Elizabeth.[423]
4. The Supremacy Act, which declares that the King is rightfully the Supreme Head of the Church of England, has been recognised as such by Convocation, and that it is within his powers to make ecclesiastical visitations and to redress ecclesiastical abuses.[424]
5. The Treasons Act must also be included, inasmuch as one of its provisions is that it is treason to deny to the King any of his lawful titles (the Supreme Head of the Church of England being one), and that treason includes calling the King a heretic or a schismatic.[425]
To complete the list, it is necessary to mention that the two Convocations of Canterbury and of York solemnly declared that “the Roman Pontiff had no greater jurisdiction bestowed on him by God in the Holy Scriptures than any other foreign (externus) Bishop”—a declaration called the Abjuration of the Papal Supremacy by the Clergy.[426]
This separation of the Church of England from Rome really meant that instead of there being a dual control, there was to be a single one only. The Kings of England had always claimed to have some control over the Church of their realm; Henry went further, and insisted that he would share that supervision with no one. But it should be noticed that what he did claim was, to use the terms of canon law, the potestas jurisdictionis, not the potestas ordinis; he never asserted his right to ordain or to control the sacraments. Nor was there at first any change in definition of doctrines. The Church of England remained what it had been in every respect, with the exception that the Bishop of Rome was no longer recognised as the Episcopus Universalis, and that, if appeals were necessary from the highest ecclesiastical courts in England, they were not to be taken as formerly to Rome, but were to be settled in the King’s courts within the land of England. The power of jurisdiction over the affairs of the Church could scarcely be exercised by the King personally. Appeals could be settled by his judges in the law courts, but he required a substitute to exercise his power of visitation. This duty was given to Thomas Cromwell, who was made Vicar-General,[427] and the office to some small extent may be said to resemble that of the Papal Legate; he represented the King as the Legate had represented the Pope.
It was impossible, however, for the Church of England to maintain exactly the place which it had occupied. There was some stirring of Reformation life in the land. Cranmer had been early attracted by the writings of Luther; Thomas Cromwell was not unsympathetic, and, besides, he had the idea that there would be some advantage gained politically by an approach to the German Protestants. There was soon talk about a set of Articles which would express the doctrinal beliefs of the Church of England. It was, however, no easy matter to draft them. While Cranmer, Cromwell, and such new Bishops as Latimer, had decided leanings towards the theology of the Reformation, the older Bishops held strongly by the mediæval doctrines. The result was that, after prolonged consultations, little progress was made, and very varying doctrines seem to have been taught, all of which tended to dispeace. In the end, the King himself, to use his own words, “was constrained to put his own pen to the book, and conceive certain articles which were agreed upon by Convocation as catholic and meet to be set forth by authority.”[428] They were published in 1536 under the title, Articles devised by the Kyng’s Highnes Majestie to stablysh Christen quietnes, and were ordered to be read “plainly” in the churches.[429] They came to be called the Ten Articles, the first doctrinal symbol of the Church of England.
According to the preface, they were meant to secure, by royal authority, unity and concord in religious beliefs, and to repress and utterly extinguish all dissent and discord. Foxe the Martyrologist describes them very accurately as meant for “weaklings newly weaned from their mother’s milk of Rome.” Five deal with doctrines and five with ceremonies. The Bible, the Three Creeds (Apostles’, Nicene, and Athanasian), and the doctrinal decisions of the first four Œcumenical Councils, are to be regarded as the standards of orthodoxy; baptism is necessary for salvation—children dying in infancy “shall undoubtedly be saved thereby, and else not”; the Sacrament of Penance is retained with confession and absolution, which are declared to be expedient and necessary; the substantial, real, corporeal Presence of Christ’s Body and Blood under the form of Bread and Wine in the Eucharist is taught; faith as well as charity is necessary to salvation; images are to remain in the churches; the saints and the Blessed Virgin are to be reverenced as intercessors; the saints are to be invoked; certain rites and ceremonies, such as clerical vestments, sprinkling with holy water, carrying candles on Candlemas Day, and sprinkling ashes on Ash-Wednesday, are good and laudable; the doctrines of Purgatory and of prayers for the dead were not denied, but people were warned about them. It should be noticed that while the three Sacraments of Baptism, the Eucharist, and Penance are retained, no mention is made of the other four, and that this is not unlike what Luther taught in the Babylonian Captivity of the Church of Christ; that while the Real Presence is maintained, nothing is said about Transubstantiation; that while images are retained in churches, all incensing, kneeling, or offering to images is forbidden; that while saints and the Virgin may be invoked as intercessors, it is said that it is a vain superstition to believe that any saint can be more merciful than Christ Himself; and that the whole doctrine of Attrition and Indulgences is paralysed by the statement that amendment of life is a necessary part of Penance.
It is only when these Articles are read along with the Injunctions issued in 1536 and 1538 that it can be fully seen how much they were meant to wean the people, if gradually, from the gross superstition which disgraced the popular mediæval religion. If this be done, they seem an attempt to fulfil the aspirations of Christian Humanists like Dean Colet and Erasmus.
After warning the clergy to observe all the laws made for the abolition of the papal supremacy, all those insisting on the supremacy of the King as the “supreme Head of the Church of England,” and to preach against the Pope’s usurped power within the realm of England, the Injunctions proceed to say that the clergy are to expound the Ten Articles to their people. In doing so they are to explain why superfluous holy days ought not to be observed; they are to exhort their people against such superstitions as images, relics, and priestly miracles. They are to tell them that it is best to keep God’s commandments, to fulfil His works of charity, to provide for their families, and to bestow upon the poor the money they often lavish on pilgrimages, images, and relics. They are to see that parents and teachers instruct children from their earliest years in the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, and the Ten Commandments. They are to be careful that the sacraments are duly and reverently administered within their parishes, are to set an example of moral living, and are to give themselves to the study of the Scriptures. The second set of Injunctions (1538) goes further. The clergy are told to provide “one whole Bible of the largest volume in English,” which is to be set somewhere in the church where the parishioners can most easily read it; and they are to beware of discouraging any man from perusing it, “for it is the lively word of God that every Christian man is bound to embrace and follow.” They are to preach a sermon at least every quarter, in which they are to declare the very gospel of Christ, and to exhort the people to the works of charity, mercy, and faith especially prescribed in the Scriptures. They are to warn them against trusting to fancies entirely outside of Scripture, such as “wandering to pilgrimages, offering of money or candles to images or relics, kissing or licking the same, and saying over a number of beads or suchlike superstitions.” They are not to permit candles, tapers, or images of wax to be placed before the images in the churches, in order to avoid “that most detestable offence of idolatry.”[430]
The Ten Articles thus authoritatively expounded are anything but “essentially Romish with the Pope left out in the cold.” They are rather an attempt to construct a brief creed which a pliant Lutheran and a pliant Romanist might agree upon—a singularly successful attempt, and one which does great credit to the theological attainments of the English King.
It was thought good to have a brief manual of religious instruction to place in the hands of the lower clergy and of the people, perhaps because the Ten Articles were not always well received. A committee of divines, chiefly Bishops,[431] were appointed to “compile certain rudiments of Christianity and a Catechism.”[432] The result was a small book, divided into four parts—an exposition of the Apostles’ Creed, of the seven Sacraments, of the Ten Commandments, of the Lord’s Prayer, and the Ave Maria. Two other parts were added from the Ten Articles—one on Justification, for which faith is said to be necessary; and the other on Purgatory, which is stoutly denied. Great difficulties were experienced in the compilation, owing to the “great diversity of opinions”[433] which prevailed among the compilers; and the book was a compromise between those who were stout for the old faith and those who were keen for the new; but in the end all seemed satisfied with their work. The chief difference between its teaching and that of the Ten Articles is that the name sacrament is given to seven and not three of the chief ceremonies of the mediæval Church; but, on the other hand, the doctrine of Purgatory is denied. It was expected that the King would revise the book before its publication,[434] but he “had no time convenient to overlook the great pains” bestowed upon it.[435] Drafts of an imprimatur by the King have been found among the State Papers,[436] but the book was finally issued in 1537 by the “Archbishops and Bishops of England,” and was therefore popularly called the Bishops’ Book. All the clergy were ordered “to read aloud from the pulpit every Sunday a portion of this book” to their people.[437] The Catechism appears to have been published at the same time, and to have been in large request.[438]
Henry VIII. afterwards revised the Bishops’ Book according to his own ideas. The revision was published in 1543, and was known as the King’s Book.[439]
Perhaps the greatest boon bestowed on the people of England by the Ten Articles and the Injunctions which enforced them was the permission to read and hear read a version of the Bible in their own tongue. For the vernacular Scriptures had been banned in England as they had not been on the Continent, save perhaps during the Albigensian persecution. The seventh of the Constitutions of Thomas Arundel ordains “that no one hereafter translates into the English tongue or into any other, on his own authority, the text of Holy Scripture either by way of book, or booklet, or tract.” This constitution was directed against Wiclif’s translation, which had been severely proscribed. That version, like so many others during the Middle Ages, had been made from the Vulgate. But Luther’s example had fired the heart of William Tyndale to give his countrymen an English version translated directly from the Hebrew and the Greek originals.
Tyndale was a distinguished scholar, trained first at Oxford and then at Cambridge. When at the former University he had belonged to that circle of learned and pious men who had encouraged Erasmus to complete his critical text of the New Testament. He knew, as did More, that Erasmus desired that the weakest woman should be able to read the Gospels and the Epistles of St. Paul; that the husbandman should sing portions of them to himself as he followed the plough; that the weaver should hum them to the tune of his shuttle; and that the traveller should beguile the tedium of the road by repeating their stories; and he did not, like More, turn his back on the ennobling enthusiasms of his youth.[440]
Tyndale found that he could not attempt his task in England. He went to Germany and began work in Cologne; but, betrayed to the magistrates of that centre of German Romanism, he fled to Worms. There he finished the translation of the New Testament, and printed two editions, one in octavo and the other in quarto—the latter being enriched with copious marginal notes. The ecclesiastical authorities in England had early word of this translation, and by Nov. 3rd, Archbishop Warham was exerting himself to buy and destroy as many copies as he could get hold of both in England and abroad; and, thanks to his exertions, Tyndale was supplied with funds to revise his work and print a corrected edition. This version was welcomed in England, and passed secretly from hand to hand. It was severely censured by Sir Thomas More, not because the work was badly done, but really because it was so scholarly. The faithful translation of certain words and sentences was to the reactionary More “a mischievous perversion of those writings intended to advance heretical opinion”;[441] and, strange to say, Dr. James Gairdner seems to agree with him.[442] Tyndale’s version had been publicly condemned in England at the Council called by the King in 1530 (May), and copies of his book had been publicly burnt in St. Paul’s Churchyard, while he himself had been tracked like a wild beast by emissaries of the English Government in the Netherlands.
Cranmer induced Convocation in 1534 to petition for an English version of the Bible, and next year Cromwell persuaded Miles Coverdale to undertake his translation in 1535. It was made from the Vulgate with some assistance from Luther’s version, and was much inferior to the proscribed version of Tyndale; but it had a large private sale in England, and the King was induced to license it to enable the clergy to obey the Injunctions of 1536, which had ordered a copy of the English Bible to be placed in all the churches before August 1537.[443]
The Archbishop, however, had another version in view, which he sent to Cromwell (Aug. 1537), saying that he liked it better than any other translation, and hoped it would be licensed to be read freely until the Bishops could set forth a better, which he believes will not be until after Doomsday. This version was practically Tyndale’s.
Tyndale had entrusted one of his friends, Rogers, with his translation of the Old Testament, finished as far as the Book of Jonah, and with his complete version of the New Testament. Rogers had taken Tyndale’s New Testament, his Old Testament as far as the Book of Chronicles, borrowed the remaining portion of the Old Testament from Coverdale’s version, and printed them with a dedication to the King, signed Thomas Matthew.[444] This was the edition recommended by Cranmer to Cromwell, which was licensed. The result was that Tyndale’s New Testament (the same version which had been denounced as pernicious, and which had been publicly burnt only a few years before) and a large part of his Old Testament were publicly introduced into the parish churches of England, and became the foundation of all succeeding translations of the Bible into the English language.[445] On reconsideration, the translation was found to be rather too accurate for the Government, and some changes (certainly not corrections) were made in 1538—39. Thus altered, the translation was known as the Great Bible, and, because Cranmer wrote the preface, as Cranmer’s Bible.[446] This was the version, the Bible “of the largest volume,” which was ordered to be placed in the churches for the people to read, and portions of which were to be read from the pulpit every Sunday, according to the Injunctions of 1538.
From 1533 on to the middle of 1539, there was a distinct if slow advance in England towards a real Reformation; then the progress was arrested, if the movement did not become decidedly retrograde. It seems more than probable that if Henry had lived a few years longer, there would have been another attempt at an advance.
Part of the advance had been a projected political and religious treaty with the German Protestants. Neither Henry viii. nor John Frederick of Saxony appears to have been much in earnest about an alliance, and from the English King’s instructions to his envoys it would appear that his chief desire was to commit the German divines to an approval of the Divorce.[447] Luther was somewhat scornful, and seems to have penetrated Henry’s design.[448] The German theologians had no doubt but that the marriage of Henry with Catharine was one which should never have taken place; but they all held that, once made, it ought not to be broken.[449] Determined efforts were made to capture the sympathies of Melanchthon. Bishop Foxe, selected as the theological ambassador, was instructed to take him presents to the value of £70.[450] His books were placed on the course of study for Cambridge at Cromwell’s order.[451] Henry exchanged complimentary letters, and graciously accepted the dedication of Melanchthon’s De Locis Communibus.[452] An embassy was despatched, consisting of Foxe, Bishop elect of Hereford; Heath, Archdeacon of Canterbury; and Dr. Barnes, an English divine, who was a pronounced Lutheran. They met the Protestant Princes at Schmalkald and had long discussions. The confederated Princes and Henry found themselves in agreement on many points: they would stoutly disown the primacy of the Pope; they would declare that they would not be bound by the decrees of any Council which the Pope and the Emperor might assemble; and they would pledge each other to get their Bishops and preachers to declare them null and void. The German Princes were quite willing to give Henry the title of “Defender of the Schmalkald League.” But they insisted as the first articles of any alliance that the English Church and King must accept the theology of the Augsburg Confession and adopt the ceremonies of the Lutheran Church; and on these rocks of doctrine and ritual the proposed alliance was shattered.[453] The Germans had their own private view of the English Reformation under Henry VIII., which was neither very flattering nor quite accurate.
“So far the King has become Lutheran, that, because the Pope has refused to sanction his divorce, he has ordered, on penalty of death, that every one shall believe and preach that not the Pope but himself is the head of the universal Church. All other papistry, monasteries, mass, indulgences, and intercessions for the dead, are pertinaciously adhered to.”[454]
The English embassy went from Schmalkald to Wittenberg, where they met a number of divines, including Luther and Melanchthon, and proceeded to discuss the question of doctrinal agreement. Melanchthon had gone over the Augsburg Confession, and produced a series of articles which presented all that the Wittenberg theologians could concede, and Luther had revised the draft.[455] Both the Germans were charmed with the learning and courtesy of Archdeacon Heath. Bishop Foxe “had the manner of prelates,” says Melanchthon, and his learning did not impress the Germans.[456] The conference came to nothing. Henry did not care to accept a creed ready made for him, and thought that ecclesiastical ceremonies might differ in different countries. He was a King “reckoned somewhat learned, though unworthy,” he said, “and having so many learned men in his realm, he could not accept at any creature’s hand the observing of his and the realm’s faith; but he was willing to confer with learned men sent from them.”[457]
Before the conference at Wittenberg had come to an end, Henry believed that he had no need for a German alliance. The ill-used Queen Catharine, who, alone of all persons concerned in the Divorce proceedings, comes out unstained, died on Jan. 7th, 1536. Her will contained the touching bequest: “To my daughter, the collar of gold which I brought out of Spain”[458]—out of Spain, when she came a fair young bride to marry Prince Arthur of England thirty-five years before.
There is no need to believe that Henry exhibited the unseemly manifestations of joy which his enemies credit him with when the news of Catharine’s death was brought to him, but it did free him from a great dread. He read men and circumstances shrewdly, and he knew enough of Charles V. to believe that the Emperor, after his aunt’s death, and when he had no flagrant attack on the family honour of his house to protest against, would not make himself the Pope’s instrument against England.
Henry had always maintained himself and England by balancing France against the Empire, and could in addition weaken the Empire by strengthening the German Protestants. But in 1539, France and the Emperor had become allies, and Henry was feeling himself very insecure. It is probable that the negotiations which led to Henry’s marriage with Anne of Cleves were due to this new danger. On the other hand, there had been discontent in England at many of the actions which were supposed to come from the advance towards Reformation.
Henry VIII. had always spent money lavishly. His father’s immense hoards had disappeared, while England, under Wolsey, was the paymaster of Europe, and the King was in great need of funds. In England as elsewhere the wealth of the monasteries seemed to have been collected for the purpose of supplying an empty royal exchequer. A visitation of monasteries was ordered, under the superintendence of Thomas Cromwell; and, in order to give him a perfectly free hand, all episcopal functions were for the time being suspended. The visitation disclosed many scandalous things. It was followed by the Act of Parliament (1536) for The Dissolution of the Lesser Monasteries.[459] The lands of all monasteries whose annual rental was less than £200 a year were given to the King, as well as all the ornaments, jewels, and other goods belonging to them. The dislodged monks and nuns were either to be taken into the larger houses or to receive some measure of support, and the heads were to get pensions sufficient to sustain them. The lands thus acquired might have been formed into a great crown estate yielding revenues large enough to permit taxation to be dispensed with; but the King was in need of ready money, and he had courtiers to gratify. The convent lands were for the most part sold cheaply to courtiers, and the numbers and power of the county families were largely increased. A new visitation of the remaining monasteries was begun in 1538, this time accompanied with an inquiry into superstitious practices indulged in in various parts of the country, and notorious relics were removed. They were of all sorts—part of St. Peter’s hair and beard; stones with which St. Stephen was stoned; the hair shirt and bones of St. Thomas the martyr; a crystal containing a little quantity of Our Lady’s milk, “with two other bones”; the “principal relic in England, an angel with one wing that brought to Caversham (near Reading) the spear’s head that pierced the side of our Saviour on the cross”; the ear of Malchus, which St. Peter cut off; a foot of St. Philip at Winchester “covered with gold plate and (precious) stones”; and so forth.[460] Miraculous images were brought up to London and their mechanism exposed to the crowd, while an eloquent preacher thundered against the superstition:
“The bearded crucifix called the ‘Rood of Grace’ (was brought from Maidstone, and) while the Bishop of Rochester preached it turned its head, rolled its eyes, foamed at the mouth, and shed tears,—in the presence, too, of many other famous saints of wood and stone ... the satellite saints of the Kentish image acted in the same way. It is expected that the Virgin of Walsingham, St. Thomas of Canterbury, and other images will soon perform miracles also in the same place; for the trickery was so thoroughly exposed that every one was indignant at the monks and impostors.”[461]
A second Act of Parliament followed, which vested all monastic property in the King; and this gave the King possession not only of huge estates, but also of an immense quantity of jewels and precious metals.[462] The shrine of St. Thomas at Canterbury, when “disgarnished,” yielded, it is said, no fewer than twenty-six cartloads of gold and silver.[463]
This wholesale confiscation of monastic property, plundering of shrines, and above all the report that Henry had ordered the bones of St. Thomas of Canterbury to be burned and the ashes scattered to the winds, determined Pope Paul III. to renew (Dec. 17th, 1538) the execution of his Bull of excommunication (Aug. 30th, 1535), which had been hitherto suspended. It was declared that the Bull might be published in St. Andrews or “in oppido Calistrensi” in Scotland, at Dieppe or Boulogne in France, or at Tuam in Ireland.[464] The Pope knew that he could not get it published in England itself.
The violent destruction of shrines and pilgrimage places, which had been holiday resorts as well as places of devotion, could not fail to create some popular uneasiness, and there were other and probably deeper roots of discontent. England, like other nations, had been suffering from the economic changes which were a feature of the times. One form peculiar to England was that wool-growing had become more profitable than keeping stock or raising grain, and landed proprietors were enclosing commons for pasture land and letting much of their arable land lie fallow. The poor men could no longer graze their beasts on the commons, and the substitution of pasture for arable land threw great numbers out of employment. They had to sell the animals they could no longer feed, and did not see how a living could be earned; nor had they the compensation given to the disbanded monks. The pressure of taxation increased the prevailing distress. Risings took place in Yorkshire, Lancashire, and Lincolnshire, and the insurgents marched singing:
“Christ crucified,
For Thy woundes wide,
Us commons guyde,
Which pilgrims be,
Through Godes grace,
For to purchache,
Old wealth and peax
Of the Spiritualitie.”[465]
In their demands they denounced equally the contempt shown for Holy Mother Church, the dissolution of the monasteries, the spoliation of shrines, the contempt shown to “Our Ladye and all the saints,” new taxes, the enclosure of commons, the doing away with use and wont in tenant rights, the branding of the Lady Mary as illegitimate, King’s counsellors of “low birth and small estimation,” and the five reforming Bishops—Cranmer and Latimer being considered as specially objectionable.[466] The Yorkshire Rising was called the Pilgrimage of Grace.
The insurgents or “pilgrims” were not more consistent than other people, for they plundered priests to support their “army”;[467] and while they insisted on the primacy of the Bishop of Rome, they had no wish to see his authority re-established in England. They asked the King to admit the Pope to be head of spiritual things, giving spiritual authority to the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, “so that the said Bishop of Rome have no further meddling.”[468]
The insurrections were put down, and Henry did not cease his spoliation of shrines and monasteries in consequence of their protests; but the feelings of the people made known by their proclamations, at the conferences held between their leaders and the representatives of authority, and by the examination of prisoners and suspected persons, must have suggested to his shrewd mind whether the Reformation was not being pressed onward too hastily for the great majority of the English laity. England did not produce in the sixteenth century a great spiritual leader inspired by a prophetic conviction that he was speaking the truth of God, and able to create a like conviction in the hearts of his neighbours, while he was never so far before them that they could not easily follow him step by step. The King cried halt; and when Cromwell insisted on his plan of alliance with the Protestants of the Continent of Europe, he went the way of all the counsellors of Henry who withstood their imperious master (July 28th, 1540).
But this is to anticipate. Negotiations were still in progress with the Lords of the Schmalkald League in the spring of 1539,[469] and the King was thinking of cementing his connection with the German Lutherans by marrying Anne of Cleves,[470] the sister-in-law of John Frederick of Saxony. The Parliament of 1539 (April 28th to June 28th) saw the beginnings of the change. Six questions were introduced for discussion:
“Whether there be in the sacrament of the altar transubstantiation of the substance of bread and wine into the substance of flesh and blood or not? Whether priests may marry by the law of God or not? Whether the vow of chastity of men and women bindeth by the law of God or not? Whether auricular confession be necessary by the law of God or not? Whether private Masses may stand with the Word of God or not? Whether it be necessary by the Word of God that the sacrament of the altar should be administered under both kinds or not?”[471]
The opinions of the Bishops were divided; but the lay members of the House of Lords evidently did not wish any change from the mediæval doctrines, and believed that no one could be such a wise theologian as their King when he confounded the Bishop with his stores of learning. “We of the temporalitie,” wrote one who was present, “have been all of one opinion ... all England have cause to thank God and most heartily to rejoice of the King’s most godly proceedings.”[472] So Parliament enacted the Six Articles Act,[473] a ferocious statute commonly called “the bloody whip with six strings.” To deny transubstantiation or to deprave the sacraments was to be reckoned heresy, and to be punished with burning and confiscation of goods. It was made a felony, and punishable with death, to teach that it was necessary to communicate in both kinds in the Holy Supper; or that priests, monks, or nuns vowed to celibacy might marry. All clerical marriages which had been contracted were to be dissolved, and clerical incontinence was punishable by loss of property and benefice. Special commissions were issued to hold quarterly sessions in every county for the enforcement of the statute. The official title of the Act was An Act abolishing Diversity of Opinion. The first commission issued was for the county of London, and at the first session five hundred persons were indicted within a fortnight. The law was, however, much more severe than its enforcement. The five hundred made their submission and received the King’s pardon. It was under this barbarous statute that so-called heretics were tried and condemned during the last years of the reign of Henry VIII.
The revival of mediæval doctrine did not mean any difference in the strong anti-papal policy of the English King. It rather became more emphatic, and Henry spoke of the Pope in terms of the greatest disrespect. “That most persistent idol, enemy of all truth, and usurpator of Princes, the Bishop of Rome,” “that cankered and venomous serpent, Paul, Bishop of Rome,” are two of his phrases.[474]
The Act of the Six Statutes made Lutherans, as previous Acts had made Papists, liable to capital punishment; but while Cromwell remained in power he evidently was able to hinder its practical execution. Cromwell, however, was soon to fall. He seemed to be higher in favour than ever. He had almost forced his policy on his master, and the marriage of Henry with Anne of Cleves (Jan. 6th, 1540) seemed to be his triumph. Then Henry struck suddenly and remorselessly as usual. The Minister was impeached, and condemned without trial. He was executed (July 28th); and Anne of Cleves was got rid of on the plea of pre-contract to the son of the Duke of Lorraine (July 9th). It was not the fault of Gardiner, the sleuth-hound of the reaction, that Cranmer did not share the fate of the Minister. Immediately after the execution of Cromwell (July 30th), the King gave a brutal exhibition of his position. Three clergymen of Lutheran views, Barnes, Garret, and Jerome, were burnt at Smithfield; and three Romanists were beheaded and tortured for denying the King’s spiritual supremacy.
Henry had kept himself ostentatiously free from responsibility for the manual of doctrine entitled Institution of a Christian Man. Perhaps he believed it too advanced for his people; it was at all events too advanced for the theology of the Six Articles; another manual was needed, and was published in 1543 (May 19th). It was entitled A Necessary Doctrine and Erudition for any Christian Man; set forth by the King’s Majesty of England.
It was essentially a revision of the former manual, and may have been of composite authorship. Cranmer was believed to have written the chapter on faith, and it was revised by Convocation. The King, who issued it himself with a preface commending it, declared it to be “a true and perfect doctrine for all people.” It contains an exposition of the Creed, the Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer, and of some selected passages of Scripture. Its chief difference from the former manual is that it teaches unmistakably the doctrines of Transubstantiation, the Invocation of Saints, and the Celibacy of the Clergy. It may be said that it very accurately represented the theology of the majority of Englishmen in the year 1543. For King and people were not very far apart. They both clung to mediæval theology; and they both detested the Papacy, and wished the clergy to be kept in due subordination. There was a widespread and silent movement towards an Evangelical Reformation always making itself apparent when least expected; but probably three-fourths of the people had not felt it during the reign of Henry. It needed Mary’s burnings in Smithfield and the fears of a Spanish overlord, before the leaven could leaven the whole lump.