Henry VIII.

by A. F. Pollard

Pending the result of Henry's appeal to the universities, little was done in the matter in England. The lords spiritual and temporal signed in June, 1530, a letter to the Pope urging him to comply with their King's request for a divorce.[788] Parliament did not meet until 16th January, 1531, and even then Chapuys reports that it was employed on nothing more important than cross-bows and hand-guns, the act against which was not, however, passed till 1534. The previous session had shown that, although the Commons might demur to fiscal exactions, they were willing enough to join Henry in any attack on the Church, and the question was how to bring the clergy to a similar state of acquiescence. It was naturally a more difficult task, but Henry's ingenuity provided a sufficient inducement. His use of the statutes of præmunire was very characteristic. It was conservative, it was legal, and it was unjust. Those statutes were no innovation designed to meet his particular case; they had been for centuries the law of the land; and there was no denying the fact that the clergy had broken the law by recognising Wolsey as legate. Henry, of course, had licensed Wolsey to act as legate, and to punish the clergy for an offence, at which he had connived, was scarcely consistent with justice; but no King ever showed so clearly how the soundest constitutional maxims could be used to defeat the pleas of equity; it was frequently laid down during his reign that no licence from the King could be pleaded against penalties imposed by statute, and not a few parliamentary privileges were first asserted by Henry VIII.[789] So the clergy were cunningly caught in the meshes of the law. Chapuys declares that no one could understand the mysteries of præmunire; "its interpretation lies solely in the King's head, who amplifies it and declares it at his pleasure, making it apply to any case he pleases". He at least saw how præmunire could be made to serve his purposes.[790]

These, at the moment, were two. He wanted to extract from the clergy a recognition of his supremacy over the Church, and he wanted money. He was always in need of supplies, but especially now, in case war should arise from the Pope's refusal to grant his divorce; and Henry made it a matter of principle that the Church should pay for wars due to the Pope.[791] The penalty for præmunire was forfeiture of goods and imprisonment, and the King probably thought he was unduly lenient in granting a pardon for a hundred thousand pounds, when he might have taken the whole of the clergy's goods and put them in gaol as well. The clergy objected strongly; in the old days of the Church's influence they would all have preferred to go to prison, and a unanimous refusal of the King's demands would even now have baulked his purpose. But the spirit was gone out of them. Chapuys instigated the papal nuncio to go down to Convocation and stiffen the backs of the clergy.[792] They were horrified at his appearance, and besought him to depart in haste, fearing lest this fresh constitutional breach should be visited on their heads. Warham frightened them with the terrors of royal displeasure; and the clerics had to content their conscience with an Irish bull and a subterfuge. "Silence gives consent," said the Archbishop when putting the question; "Then are we all silent," cried the clergy. To their recognition of Henry as Supreme Head of the Church, they added the salvo "so far as the law of Christ allows". It was an empty phrase, thought Chapuys, for no one would venture to dispute with the King the point where his supremacy ended and that of Christ began;[793] there was in fact "a new Papacy made here".[794] The clergy repented of the concession as soon as it was granted; they were "more conscious every day," wrote Chapuys, "of the great error they committed in acknowledging the King as sovereign of the Church"; and they made a vain, and not very creditable, effort to get rejected by spiritual votes in the House of Lords the measures to which they had given their assent in Convocation.[795] The Church had surrendered with scarcely a show of fight; henceforth Henry might feel sure that, whatever opposition he might encounter in other quarters, the Church in England would offer no real resistance.

In Parliament, notwithstanding Chapuys' remark on the triviality of its business, more than a score of acts were passed, some limiting such abuses as the right of sanctuary, some dealing in the familiar way with social evils like the increase of beggars and vagabonds. The act depriving sanctuary-men, who committed felony, of any further protection from their sanctuary was recommended to Parliament by the King in person. So was a curious act making poisoning treason.[796] There had recently been an attempt to poison Fisher, which the King brought before the House of Lords. However familiar poisoning might be at Rome, it was a novel method in England, and was considered so heinous a crime that the ordinary penalties for murder were thought to be insufficient. Then the King's pardon to the clergy was embodied in a parliamentary bill. The Commons perceived that they were not included, took alarm, and refused to pass the bill. Henry at first assumed a superior tone; he pointed out that the Commons could not prevent his pardoning the clergy; he could do it as well under the Great Seal as by statute. The Commons, however, were not satisfied. "There was great murmuring among them," says Chapuys, "in the House of Commons, where it was publicly said in the presence of some of the Privy Council that the King had burdened and oppressed his kingdom with more imposts and exactions than any three or four of his predecessors, and that he ought to consider that the strength of the King lay in the affections of his people. And many instances were alleged of the inconveniences which had happened to princes through the ill-treatment of their subjects."[797] Henry was too shrewd to attempt to punish this very plain speaking. He knew that his faithful Commons were his one support, and he yielded at once. "On learning this," continues Chapuys, "the King granted the exemption which was published in Parliament on Wednesday last without any reservation." The two acts for the pardon of the spiritualty and temporalty were passed concurrently. But, whereas the clergy had paid for their pardon with a heavy fine and the loss of their independence, the laity paid nothing at all. The last business of the session was the reading of the sentences in Henry's favour obtained from the universities.[798] Parliament was then prorogued, and its members were enjoined to relate to their constituents that which they had seen and heard.

Primed by communion with their neighbours, members of Parliament assembled once more on 15th January, 1532, for more important business than they had yet transacted. Every effort was made to secure a full attendance of Peers and Commons; almost all the lords would be present, thought Chapuys, except Tunstall, who had not been summoned; Fisher came without a summons, and apparently no effort was made to exclude him.[799] The readiness of the Commons to pass measures against the Church, and their reluctance to consent to taxation, were even more marked than before. Their critical spirit was shown by their repeated rejection of the Statutes of Wills and Uses designed by Henry to protect from evasion his feudal rights, such as reliefs and primer seisins.[800] This demand, writes Chapuys,[801] "has been the occasion of strange words against the King and the Council, and in spite of all the efforts of the King's friends, it was rejected".[802] In the matter of supplies they were equally outspoken; they would only grant one-tenth and one-fifteenth, a trifling sum which Henry refused to accept.[803] It was during this debate on the question of supplies that two members moved that the King be asked to take back Catherine as his wife.[804] They would then, they urged, need no fresh armaments and their words are reported to have been well received by the House. The Commons were not more enthusiastic about the bill restraining the payment of annates to the Court at Rome.[805] They did not pay them; their grievance was against bishops in England, and they saw no particular reason for relieving those prelates of their financial burdens. Cromwell wrote to Gardiner that he did not know how the annates bill would succeed;[806] and the King had apparently to use all his persuasion to get the bill through the Lords and the Commons. Only temporal lords voted for it in the Upper House, and, in the Lower, recourse was had to the rare expedient of a division.[807] In both Houses the votes were taken in the King's presence. But it is almost certain that his influence was brought to bear, not so much in favour of the principle of the bill, as of the extremely ingenious clause which left the execution of the Act in Henry's discretion, and provided him with a powerful means of putting pressure on the Pope. That was Henry's statement of the matter. He told Chapuys, before the bill was passed, that the attack on annates was being made without his consent;[808] and after it had been passed he instructed his representatives at Rome to say that he had taken care to stop the mouth of Parliament and to have the question of annates referred to his decision.[809] "The King," writes the French envoy in England at the end of March, "has been very cunning, for he has caused the nobles and people to remit all to his will, so that the Pope may know that, if he does nothing for him, the King has the means of punishing him."[810] The execution of the clauses providing for the confirmation and consecration of bishops without recourse to Rome was also left at Henry's option.

But no pressure was needed to induce the Commons to attack abuses, the weight of which they felt themselves. Early in the session they were discussing the famous petition against the clergy, and, on 28th February, Norfolk referred to the "infinite clamours" in Parliament against the Church.[811] The fact that four corrected drafts of this petition are extant in the Record Office, is taken as conclusive proof that it really emanated from the Court.[812] But the drafts do not appear to be in the known hand of any of the Government clerks. The corrections in Cromwell's hand doubtless represent the wishes of the King; but, even were the whole in Cromwell's hand, it would be no bar to the hypothesis that Cromwell reduced to writing, for the King's consideration, complaints which he heard from independent members in his place in Parliament. The fact that nine-tenths of our modern legislation is drawn up by Government draughtsmen, cannot be accepted as proof that that legislation represents no popular feeling. On the face of them, these petitions bear little evidence of Court dictation; the grievances are not such as were felt by Henry, whose own demands of the clergy were laid directly before Convocation, without any pretence that they really came from the Commons. Some are similar to those presented to the Parliament of 1515; others are directed against abuses which recent statutes had sought, but failed, to remedy. Such were the citation of laymen out of their dioceses, the excessive fees taken in spiritual courts, the delay and trouble in obtaining probates. Others complained that the clergy in Convocation made laws inconsistent with the laws of the realm; that the ordinaries delayed instituting parsons to their benefices; that benefices were given to minors; that the number of holy-days, especially in harvest-time, was excessive; and that spiritual men occupied temporal offices. The chief grievance seems to have been that the ordinaries cited poor men before the spiritual courts without any accuser being produced, and then condemned them to abjure or be burnt. Henry, reported Chapuys, was "in a most gracious manner" promising to support the Commons against the Church "and to mitigate the rigours of the inquisition which they have here, and which is said to be more severe than in Spain".[813]

After debating these points in Parliament, the Commons agreed that "all the griefs, which the temporal men should be grieved with, should be put in writing and delivered to the King"; hence the drafts in the Record Office. The deputation, with the Speaker at its head, presented the complaints to Henry on 18th March. Its reception is quite unintelligible on the theory that the grievances existed only in the King's imagination. Henry was willing, he said, to consider the Commons' petition. But, if they expected him to comply with their wishes, they must make some concession to his; and he recommended them to forgo their opposition to the bills of Uses and Wills, to which the Lords had already agreed. After Easter he sent the Commons' petition to Convocation; the clergy appealed to the King for protection. Henry had thus manœuvred himself into the position of mediator, in which he hoped, but in vain, to extract profit for himself from both sides.[814] From Convocation he demanded submission to three important claims; the clergy were to consent to a reform of ecclesiastical law, to abdicate their right of independent legislation, and to recognise the necessity of the King's approval for existing canons. These demands were granted. As usual, Henry was able to get what he wanted from the clergy; but from the Commons he could get no more than they were willing to give. They again rejected the bills of Uses and Wills, and would only concede the most paltry supplies. But they passed with alacrity the bills embodying the submission of the clergy. These were the Church's concessions to Henry, but it must bend the knee to the Commons as well, and other measures were passed reforming some of the points in their petition. Ordinaries were prohibited from citing men out of their proper dioceses, and benefit of clergy was denied to clerks under the order of sub-deacon who committed murder, felony, or petty treason; the latter was a slight extension of a statute passed in 1512. The bishops, however, led by Gardiner and aided by More,[815] secured in the House of Lords the rejection of the concessions made by the Church to the King, though they passed those made to the Commons. Parliament, which had sat for the unusual space of four months, was prorogued on the 14th of May; two days later, More resigned the chancellorship and Gardiner retired in disfavour to Winchester.

Meanwhile the divorce case at Rome made little progress. In the highest court in Christendom the facilities afforded for the law's delays were naturally more extended than before inferior tribunals; and two years had been spent in discussing whether Henry's "excusator," sent merely to maintain that the King of England could not be cited to plead before the Papal Court, should be heard or not. Clement was in suspense between two political forces. In December, 1532, Charles was again to interview the Pope, and imperialists in Italy predicted that his presence would be as decisive in Catherine's favour as it had been three years before. But Henry and Francis had, in October, exhibited to the world the closeness of their friendship by a personal interview at Boulogne.[816] No pomp or ceremony, like that of the Field of Cloth of Gold, dazzled men's eyes; but the union between the two Kings was never more real. Neither Queen was present; Henry would not take Catherine, and he objected so strongly to Spanish dress that he could not endure the sight of Francis's Spanish Queen.[817] Anne Boleyn, recently created Marquis (so she was styled, to indicate the possession of the peerage in her own right) of Pembroke,[818] took Catherine's place; and plans for the promotion of the divorce formed the staple of the royal discussions. Respect for the power of the two Kings robbed the subsequent interview between Emperor and Pope of much of its effect; and before Charles and Clement parted, the Pope had secretly agreed to accord a similar favour to Francis; he was to meet him at Nice in the following summer. Long before then the divorce had been brought to a crisis. By the end of January Henry knew that Anne Boleyn was pregnant. Her issue must at any cost be made legitimate. That could only be done by Henry's divorce from Catherine, and by his marriage with Anne Boleyn.[819] There was little hope of obtaining these favours from Rome. Therefore it must be done by means of the Archbishop of Canterbury; and to remove all chance of disputing his sentence, the Court of the Archbishop of Canterbury must, before his decision was given, be recognised as the supreme tribunal for English ecclesiastical cases.

These circumstances, of which not a hint was suffered to transpire in public, dictated Henry's policy during the early months of 1533. Never was his skill more clearly displayed; he was, wrote Chapuys in December, 1532, practising more than ever with his Parliament,[820] though he received the Spanish ambassador "as courteously as ever".[821] The difficulties with which he was surrounded might have tried the nerve of any man, but they only seemed to render Henry's course more daring and steady. The date of his marriage with Anne Boleyn is even now a matter of conjecture.[822] Cranmer repudiated the report that he performed the ceremony.[823] He declares he did not know of it until a fortnight after the event, and says it took place about St. Paul's Day (25th January). A more important question was the individuality of the archbishop who was to pronounce the nullity of Henry's marriage with Catherine of Aragon. He must obviously be one on whom the King could rely. Fortunately for Henry, Archbishop Warham had died in August, 1532. His successor was to be Thomas Cranmer, who had first suggested to Henry the plan of seeking the opinions of the universities on the divorce, and was now on an embassy at the Emperor's Court. No time was to be lost. Henry usually gathered a rich harvest during the vacancy of great bishoprics, but now Canterbury was to be filled up without any delay, and the King even lent Cranmer 1,000 marks to meet his expenses.[824] But would the Pope be so accommodating as to expedite the bulls, suspecting, as he must have done, the object for which they were wanted?

For this contingency also Henry had provided; and he was actually using the Pope as a means for securing the divorce. An appearance of friendship with Clement was the weapon he now employed with the greatest effect. The Pope was discussing with the French ambassadors a proposal to remit the divorce case to some neutral spot, such as Cambrai, and delaying that definite sentence in Catherine's favour which imperialists had hoped that his interview with Charles would precipitate;[825] the papal nuncio was being feasted in England, and was having suspiciously amicable conferences with members of Henry's council. Henry himself was writing to Clement in the most cordial terms; he had instructed his ambassadors in 1531 to "use all gentleness towards him,"[826] and Clement was saying that Henry was of a better nature and more wise than Francis I.[827] Henry was now willing to suspend his consent to the general council, where the Pope feared that a scheme would be mooted for restoring the papal States to the Emperor;[828] and he told the papal nuncio in England that, though he had studied the question of the Pope's authority and retracted his defence of the Holy See,[829] yet possibly Clement might give him occasion to probe the matter further still, and to reconfirm what he had originally written.[830] Was he not, moreover, withholding his assent from the Act of Annates, which would deprive the Pope of large revenues? Backed by this gentle hint, Henry's request not merely for Cranmer's bulls, but for their expedition without the payment of the usual 10,000 marks, reached Rome. The cardinals were loth to forgo their perquisites for the bulls, but the annates of all England were more precious still, and, on 22nd February, Consistory decided to do what Henry desired.

The same deceptive appearance of concord between King and Pope was employed to lull both Parliament and Convocation. The delays in the divorce suit disheartened Catherine's adherents. The Pope, wrote Chapuys, would lose his authority little by little, unless the case were decided at once;[831] every one, he said, cried out "au murdre" on Clement for his procrastination on the divorce, and for the speed with which he granted Cranmer's bulls.[832] There was a general impression that "he would betray the Emperor," and "many think that there is a secret agreement between Henry and the Pope".[833] That idea was sedulously fostered by Henry. Twice he took the Pope's nuncio down in state to Parliament to advertise the excellent terms upon which he stood with the Holy See.[834] In the face of such evidence, what motive was there for prelates and others to reject the demands which Henry was pressing upon them? The Convocations of Canterbury and York repeated the submission of 1532, and approved, by overwhelming majorities, of two propositions: firstly, that, as a matter of law, the Pope was not competent to dispense with the obstacle to a marriage between a man and his deceased brother's wife, when the previous marriage had been consummated; and secondly, that, as a matter of fact, the marriage between Catherine and Prince Arthur had been so consummated.[835] In Parliament, the Act forbidding Appeals to Rome,[836] and providing for the confirmation and consecration of bishops without recourse to the Papal Court, was discussed. It was, like the rest of Henry's measures, based on a specious conservative plea. General councils had, the King said, decreed that suits should be determined in the place in which they originated;[837] so there was no need for appeals to go out of England. Such opposition as it encountered was based on no religious principle. Commercial interests were the most powerful impulse of the age, and the Commons were afraid that the Act of Appeals might be followed by a papal interdict. They did not mind the interdict as depriving them of religious consolations, but they dreaded lest it might ruin their trade with the Netherlands.[838] Henry, however, persuaded them that the wool trade was as necessary to Flemings as it was to Englishmen, and that an interdict would prove no more than an empty threat. He was careful to make no other demands upon the Commons. No subsidies were required; no extension of royal prerogative was sought; and eventually the Act of Appeals was passed with a facility that seems to have created general surprise.[839]