Ten Tudor Statesmen

by Arthur D. Innes

Henry had sought to have the nullity of the marriage with Katharine established ostensibly for two main reasons. The first was the fruit of conscience, that the union, though sanctioned by the Pope, was against the moral law. The second was a reason of State, that a male heir to the throne with an indisputable title was a necessity, and therefore the king must be provided with another wife than Katharine. The other wife he had chosen was Anne Boleyn, but she had failed to do what was expected of her. Like her predecessor, she had borne a daughter, and had two miscarriages Henry was tired of her, and was attracted to another lady whose virtue was impregnable; therefore he wanted to be rid of her in turn. Charges of treason on the ground of post-nuptial immorality were brought against her, and on these she was condemned by a court of peers composed in great part of those who would have been readiest to welcome her acquittal. Here, we have nothing to do with the truth or falsehood of the allegations; Cranmer was not one of the judges, and had nothing whatever to do with the trial. But Anne had from the first shown him the best side of her character, and he had a perfect conviction that she was a good woman. He could not influence the court; he had nothing which could be called evidence in her favour to bring forward. The king’s wishes were obvious. Yet Cranmer took the somewhat bold step of addressing the king, pleading earnestly and even passionately on her behalf—though vainly.

But, for reasons best known to himself, Henry was not satisfied with a condemnation for treason: he also required a divorce—or, to express it more correctly, a declaration that the marriage, like that with Katharine, had been void from the beginning. How could Cranmer, who had officially declared it valid, now make any such pronouncement? The answer is, that the technical ground on which it was voided had not previously been taken into account. The story of a pre-contract with Northumberland need not count for much, though for the avoidance of scandal it was put in the forefront. The charges on which Anne was condemned to death, while effective for proper divorce proceedings, were irrelevant to the question of nullity. The real ground was that at an earlier stage Henry had illicit relations with Anne’s elder sister, Mary, thereby technically creating affinity with Anne, and rendering the marriage with her void by canon law. How far Cranmer knew or suspected this unofficially, when he declared the marriage valid, is a matter of doubt—which is not set at rest by his pamphlet in favour of the divorce. But, being now officially informed of it, he could not maintain the technical validity of the marriage any longer. His view of the importance of merely canonical prohibitions is illustrated by his own uncanonical marriage. Even if he knew of the “affinity” he would probably have accounted it no moral bar to a union. But, knowing it, he could not deny that it made the marriage technically invalid. It is, perhaps, worth noting that his plea for Anne’s life contains a reference to Henry’s own morals, which may very well have been a reminder that it was the king’s sin, not Anne’s, which had placed her in a false position. As for her actual guilt or innocence under the other accusations, the Primate could not protest against the king or the judges being persuaded by the evidence, but he could, and did, declare that, not having the evidence before him, he could not bring himself to believe that the charges were true: but that did not touch the question of nullity. Whoever deserved blame over the affair, Cranmer did not.

Some years later Thomas Cromwell was struck down by his master. His government had been in many respects a reign of terror. The populace had no affection for him; the nobles hated him: the new men, even those he had made, feared him; the king’s wrath was kindled against him. The downfall of Wolsey had not been more universally acceptable. But there was one man who lifted up his voice to plead for the fallen minister—Thomas Cranmer, the time-server. As in the case of Anne Boleyn, it was impossible for him to take up the cudgels in defence of the man who had been less dangerous, perhaps, to him than to most others—dangerous he was to every one, for he spared neither friend nor foe—but who else would have dared, or ever did dare, to appeal to Henry in the day of his wrath?

It was not Cranmer who directed the course of the Reformation under Henry. The breach with Rome in all its completeness was devised and carried out without aid from him, unless the suggestion of taking the opinion of the Universities on the divorce is to be counted as aid. Before the king had ever heard of Cranmer, Gardiner had told Clement in plain terms that if he refused to entertain the English king’s wishes England would repudiate his jurisdiction altogether. The great majority of the bishops were no friends to the Papal claims, though some of them would have taken a different line if they had not been too late in discovering that the king meant to impose his own yoke instead of the Pope’s: and the same thing might be said of Convocation generally. Gardiner and Stokesley, the most persistent of Cranmer’s antagonists, had been foremost in supporting the king against the Pope. The clergy had writhed and resisted when the attack was turned against themselves by the “Supplication against the Ordinaries,” but they had been forced to surrender and make their “Submission” while Warham was still Archbishop and Cranmer was engaged in other matters. Even after he became Primate Cranmer had no actual hand or voice in the great despoiling measures which accompanied the dissolution of the monasteries; while the downfall of the monastic system in itself was probably not unwelcome to the bulk of the secular clergy, between whom and the regulars there was constant friction and jealousy.

In this connexion, however, while Cranmer, like Gardiner and the rest, neither aided nor hindered Cromwell’s work, it ought to stand to his eternal credit that he was almost alone in protesting, not against the spoliation itself—practically no one seems to have ventured to do that—but against the misuse of the wealth which thus changed hands. He wrote to Cromwell emphatically expressing his grief and disappointment that those funds were not appropriated to education—still accounted one of the primary functions of the Church. Had the course which he urged been followed there would have been little possibility of saying that the Church was robbed. But Cromwell and his master had other uses for the spoils. It is remarkable, too, that when educational establishments were endowed Cranmer made a vigorous stand on behalf of humble scholars against those who would have confined their benefits to the sons of the well-to-do.

So far, however, as concerned matters of doctrine and practice the Archbishop exercised some influence. His sojourn in Germany had not made him a Lutheran, but it had inclined him to give favourable consideration to the opinions of sober reformers on the Continent. Viewing the Papacy as the enemy, he was always sanguine of the possibility that a common standard of doctrine might be formulated in consultation with the Protestant leaders; and such an agreement was a pet project of his, the theological counterpart of Cromwell’s political league with the Lutherans. Henry, however, looked askance on both schemes, and the Archbishop’s efforts were doomed to disappointment.

Anxious as Cranmer was for a union of the opponents of Papacy, there were many disputable points on which his own judgment had not crystallised. In the matter, however, on which he really laid most stress he got his way. An English Bible which all men might read was the desire of his heart, and that was the one innovation of first-rate importance to which Henry acceded. The first Convocation over which he presided petitioned for a commission to prepare such a volume, and the petition was granted. The Commission itself was ineffective enough; some of the members, like Stokesley, desired only to obstruct the work as far as in them lay. But the principle was conceded, and the Commission was made superfluous by the appearance of Coverdale’s and “Matthew’s” versions. There is no doubt at all that the main credit is due to Cranmer, though his efforts would have been vain enough without the powerful support of Cromwell. A kindred concession to Cranmer’s enthusiasm for the English language was the authorisation, in Henry’s later years, of an English Litany.

When John Frith affirmed the proposition that a correct belief on the subject of the Eucharist could not be essential to salvation, there were few, if any, of his contemporaries who did not regard him as an anarchist in religion. But the subject of the Eucharist was only one among many as to which men were in a state of great uncertainty concerning the belief which should be regarded as correct. A standard was wanted; it might be rigid, or it might be elastic. Given a standard fixed by authority, no one was prepared as yet to admit that the individual was at liberty to set up a different standard for himself: no one doubted that the lack of an authoritative standard was an evil. Hence arose the efforts in Henry’s reign to evolve acceptable formularies, which should define what must be acknowledged as true doctrines.

In the devising of these Cranmer, as well as many others, had his share. They did not express the views of any one man—unless it were the king—or any one party. They were three in number: first, the “Ten Articles” for “establishing Christian quietness”; then the “Institution of a Christian Man,” commonly called the Bishop’s Book; and some years later the “Necessary Doctrine and Erudition of a Christian Man,” known as the King’s Book. Between the first and the last there is no definite change of doctrinal attitude. None of the three breaks away from received opinion; they differ mainly in the precision with which certain points are insisted upon. Thus, in the first, the doctrine of the Real Presence is affirmed, but not explicitly in the form of Transubstantiation. The movement is rather towards rigidity. Cranmer and some of his colleagues made tentative suggestions in favour of admitting more advanced views, which were not approved, and in the case of the King’s Book, it is clear that the opposing party hoped to get something of a much more decisively reactionary character.

Cranmer was a long way from being an Anselm, a Becket, or a Langton. But on the whole, taking together the history of those three formularies, and adding that of the Six Articles Act, which intervened, the surprising thing about him is not his subserviency, but the persistency with which he defended his own views. The “Whip with Six Strings” was a tightening of the bonds which came upon the advanced party with a startling shock. Cranmer fought the Bill in Parliament, and he fought some of its positions in convocation after the king’s mind was very well known. By the king’s desire, he put his argument down in black-and-white for the royal perusal after the Act had become law—a manifestly dangerous step. When the “King’s Book” was in hand, he again fought, though unsuccessfully, for the admission of views which the Act condemned; and he told Henry with perfect candour that, although he obeyed the law as in duty bound, his opinion remained unaltered. Throughout all the discussions he criticised the royal suggestions and comments with an admirable frankness which none of his colleagues ventured to display.