England under the Tudors

by Arthur D. Innes

[Sidenote: Appeal to the universities]

When Campeggio suspended the sittings of the Commission the, King withdrew to Waltham Cross. Steven Gardiner and Foxe the King's almoner, who were in his suite, met Cranmer who had left Cambridge on account of an outbreak of the sweating sickness. They had, as was natural, a conversation on "the King's affair"; when Cranmer propounded the theory that if the Universities of Europe—that is, the qualified divines—gave it as their opinion that the union with Katharine had been contrary to the Divine Law, the King might follow the dictates of his conscience and pronounce the marriage null without recognising Papal jurisdiction. This was clearly quite a different thing from producing the judgment of the Doctors merely as an expert opinion which must carry weight with the Judge at Rome. It was practically an assertion that the Pope's judgment was not of higher authority than the King's; an answer to a question as to jurisdiction; a suggestion of replying to the Pope's revocation of the case by a counter-revocation. Foxe reported the conversation to Henry, who caught at the new method of giving a constitutional colour to an arbitrary proceeding. Cranmer was summoned to court, attached to the Boleyn household, set down to write a thesis on the point of conscience, and sent off early in 1530 in the train of the Earl of Wiltshire (to which dignity Sir Thomas Boleyn—had been raised) on an embassy to the Emperor at Bologna. Moreover his plan for consulting the Universities was actively taken in hand.

[Sidenote: The new Parliament]

In the meantime, in November, Henry's most famous Parliament had opened session. The last, called six years before under Wolsey's regime to obtain supplies, had shown a qualified submissiveness. The new one, whether packed or not, displayed prompt signs of activity. Known to fame as the "Seven Years'" or "Reformation" Parliament, it consistently displayed three characteristics: it was anti-papal and anti-clerical; it endorsed the Royal will; but it refused dictation where its pocket was concerned. Its first session lasted only a few weeks, but was marked by an attack on clerical abuses, and by the sudden prominence achieved by Thomas Cromwell.

[Sidenote: Thomas Cromwell]

Concerning Cromwell's early years, much is reported and little is known. The common rumour declared that he was the son of a blacksmith—as it declared Wolsey to be the son of a butcher. He is said to have tried various trades, among others those of man-at-arms in the mercenary troop of an Italian nobleman, wool-merchant and usurer at Antwerp, usurer and petty attorney in England. On all these points the evidence is scanty and inconclusive. About 1520, he found his way into Wolsey's entourage, and was a member of the 1523 parliament. Wolsey found him an apt man of business, and entrusted him with a good deal of the financial management of his educational schemes; in the course of which it is at least probable that he applied the twin practices of bribery and blackmail, which not without reason were attributed at a later date to his servants. Yet, however unscrupulous he may have been in his dealings with others, to the master whose service he had followed he was always loyal. Wolsey made him his secretary; and when the Cardinal fell, the secretary's position seemed exceedingly precarious. Whether from an admirable fidelity or through amazingly astute hypocrisy, he boldly and openly took up the cudgels in parliament on behalf of the stricken minister, apparently challenging imminent ruin for himself. Action so courageous won him applause and good-will instead of present hostility. More than that, it immediately marked him in the eyes of the King—an exceedingly shrewd judge of men—as an invaluable prospective servant for himself. A combination of audacity and fidelity with shrewdness, resourcefulness, and unscrupulosity, was precisely what he wanted and precisely what he had found. The Cardinal's secretary became the King's secretary, and forthwith identified himself with the policy of establishing the Royal autocracy in a stronger form than it had ever before assumed in England. Whether or no Thomas Cromwell learnt his political principles as an adventurer in Italy, he became himself the living embodiment of those doctrines of state-craft which were systematised by Macchiavelli in his treatise "The Prince".

[Sidenote: Pope, Clergy and King]

In the reconstruction of the relations between Church and State which covers more than nine-tenths of the Reformation under Henry VIII. there were three parties concerned; the Pope, the Sovereign, and the Clerical Organisation in England. From time immemorial, Popes and Kings had striven periodically with each other in asserting antagonistic control over the ecclesiastical body; and the ecclesiastical body had made common cause, now with the Pope and now with the King, in resisting encroachments by the rival authority. If the clergy submitted to one or the other, it was always with a reservation that submission to physical force could not impair the inherent rights of the successors of the Apostles. Similarly, if the Pope gave way to the King or the King to the Pope, their respective successors regarded the claims surrendered as rights not cancelled but in abeyance. The prevailing conditions at any given time were always looked upon as a modus vivendi liable to readjustment when any of the three parties felt impelled to claim a larger freedom of action or a larger power of control. In the past however the Spiritual Powers had drawn effectively upon their armoury of excommunications and interdicts in the conflict; it was now to be seen whether these ancient weapons had become obsolete. If they could be defied with comparative impunity, there could be but one end to a struggle between the Spiritual and the Temporal forces.

[Sidenote: Double campaign opens]

By the appeal to the Universities, Henry gave warning of a possible anti-papal campaign: in which he could look for a considerable degree of clerical support up to a certain point, more particularly because the clergy generally were ready to be released from the financial exactions of the Holy See, as well as from its practical exercise of patronage. Parliament opened an anti-clerical campaign, but its measures at first were confined to dealing with almost indefensible and obvious abuses. Bishop Fisher recognised the familiar thin end of the wedge, and charged the Commons with desiring "the goods, not the good" of the Church; but the opposition was slender. In the six weeks of the first session, there were passed, the Probate and Mortuaries Acts, abolishing, reducing, or regulating fees, and the Pluralities Act, forbidding the clergy in general to hold more than one benefice, and requiring Residence—a very inconvenient arrangement for papal nominees. The general value of the Act however was impaired by a schedule of exemptions. Fisher's protest had its counterpart in the protest of Convocation, not against the avowed objects of this legislation but against Parliament as its source: the position being that Convocation was itself preparing legislation with the same ends in view, and was the proper body to do so.