The curious thing is that Cranmer was the one man who could say what he would to the king without arousing his anger, as Cromwell remarked to him with not unkindly envy: but he could not deflect the monarch from the path he chose by a single hair’s breadth. Twice after Cromwell’s fall the reactionaries fancied that they had the Archbishop fairly in the toils; both times they were brought up with a round turn by their master and his. The combination of ruthless force with great intellectual power in both Cromwell and Henry found by contrast a strange attraction in the Primate’s guilelessness. “Oh, Lord God,” exclaimed Henry on one occasion, “what fond simplicity have you, so to permit yourself to be imprisoned that every enemy of yours may take vantage against you.” They both chose to protect him against the enemies who certainly were not guileless; and bestowed on him an affection which was half-admiring and half-pitying; an affection returned by that which is often felt by a tender and pliant nature for a rugged and imperious one. When Cranmer felt impelled to remonstrate with their proceedings, he did so with trepidation; they ignored the remonstrances, but liked him none the worse. It might be said that he was the only man or woman of whom, being brought in frequent contact, Henry never fell foul. There was always warm respect in Henry’s fondness for him; and Henry was by no means the man to feel respect for a time-server.
V
CRANMER AND SOMERSET
The death of Henry was the beginning of a new era. Hitherto his personality had completely dominated the situation; effectively, he had become the most uncontrolled autocrat in Europe, in spite of a very careful preservation of traditional forms. But his successor on the throne was a nine-year-old boy, and there was no dominating personality to take the dead king’s place. If Henry’s scheme for the continuation of the government had been framed with a view to the maintenance of the status quo, it was a very complete failure.
Superficially, that would seem to have been the idea. The Council of Executors in whom power was vested by Henry’s will was a body in which the progressive and stationary or reactionary parties were both represented. The strength of the latter, however, suffered serious detriment in the closing weeks of Henry’s reign by the downfall of the Howards: while their ecclesiastical leader, Gardiner, was excluded from the Council, on which their principal representative among Churchmen was Tunstal of Durham, a man as mild as Cranmer himself. Within a week, the Earl of Hertford, now become Duke of Somerset, had secured the Protectorate in his own hands, and it became immediately and abundantly clear that the whole effective power was in the hands of the progressive party.
Now at this stage there were not many points of doctrine on which the leaders of the progressive party were committed to opinions fundamentally opposed to those received. Cranmer’s chief allies had not openly rejected even the doctrine of Transubstantiation, and certainly did not dispute the Real Presence: but they definitely favoured the administration of the cup to the laity; they held that it was lawful for priests to marry; and that auricular confession was not enjoined by Scripture. Cranmer had defended each of these views at the time of the Six Articles and of the King’s Book. They had been unsatisfied by the removal of “abused images” in the last reign, and desired an extension thereof. Cranmer’s own exposition of what he considered orthodox doctrine was contained in the Book of Homilies which he had prepared but had failed to persuade Henry to authorise: while the idea of a new uniform Book of Services had long been familiar and vaguely in favour. The men of the “Old Learning” did not fear the specific innovations as particularly dangerous per se; what they did fear was that the innovators would go a great deal further.
We remark, then, first, that under the régime of Somerset, the changes in religion were almost precisely what the Archbishop had advocated under Henry VIII. The Homilies were authorised; the destruction of “abused images” was renewed; the administration of the cup to the laity in the sacrament was enjoined, and the marriage of priests permitted—both on the petition of convocation; and the promulgation of a new Order of Service was almost of necessity attended by an “Act of Uniformity” compelling the clergy to adopt it. Equally as a matter of course, the Six Articles Act, against which Cranmer had fought at the outset, was repealed. The present writer has in the past been severely rebuked for attributing the form the Reformed Church in England took to Cranmer more than to any other single man. “He ought to know,” said the critics, “that Somerset was the man.” Yet repentance lags. Somerset was the politician who, up to a certain point, carried the Reformation through: at that point his influence on it ceased abruptly, and the business passed into Warwick’s hands. The point where this change took place coincided accurately with the completion of the series of reforms of which the Archbishop had for some years past avowedly been in favour. The inference that Somerset was guided by Cranmer is sufficiently obvious, though no doubt the hand was the Protector’s hand. The further advance after Somerset’s fall was mainly, or largely, the work of men of extreme views, whose zeal the Archbishop succeeded, to some extent, in restraining; his influence was still at work—no longer, however, as that of the artificer, but as that of the moderator.
Apparently, Cranmer and the Protector worked in complete harmony, save in the one matter of the chantries; but there is no sign at all that he took his cue from the Protector. The principles of Somerset’s reformation were his. Those principles, moreover, do not appear to have gone beyond what the most anti-Protestant of modern Anglicans accept. The statutory changes, however, were accompanied by proceedings of a regrettable character. In the attack on images, individuals were guilty of violence and irreverence, not to say sacrilege. Extravagant and inflammatory language was used in the pulpits. The treatment of the leaders of the Opposition was not altogether free from vindictiveness. For the first group, Cranmer was in no way responsible; Somerset was, because in some respects he set a bad example himself. For the second, the two were jointly responsible, since preaching was restricted to licensed persons, and the licences were issued only by the Protector and the Archbishop. For the third, Somerset was guiltless. The attacks on Gardiner and Bonner were made in his absence and supported by his colleague. But the mildest of men do not often view opportunities of retaliation with entire indifference. Gardiner had certainly done his best to ruin Cranmer under Henry; and by comparison at least the measures taken against him were mild enough.
Some consideration, however, must be given to the argument that the Protector’s government forced Protestantism hastily and prematurely on a reluctant nation. Whether the religion formulated in the first Prayer Book of Edward VI. can be legitimately called Protestantism at all may be left to the controversialists; but there is no manner of doubt that the methods attending the introduction of the Service Book were ill-judged and vexatious. On the other hand, the evidence that there was any strong opposition to the change itself lies mainly in the fact that the Western rising which immediately followed was professedly directed against it. Nevertheless, the mere fact that there was an almost simultaneous rising in the Eastern counties, which beyond all question was exclusively agrarian in character, suggests forcibly that the real moving force of the Western revolt also was agrarian. Ket’s supporters, significantly enough, held daily services, using the new Service Book: while one of the demands of the Cornishmen was for the restoration of the monastic lands—that is, of the monasteries as landlords in place of their rapacious supplanters. Clerical agitators would have found little difficulty in making the Westland rustics believe that half their troubles were due to the attacks on the Church in the past reign; and the identification of greedy landlords with the cause of ecclesiastical reform was at the worst colourable. Cranmer might condemn and Latimer might lash the landlords from the pulpit, Somerset might set up his Court of Requests; these things did not reach the remote districts. But there, men did see the spoilers of the Church enclosing commons, changing tillage into sheep-runs, and evicting small tenants. And they drew their conclusions. The Reformation would have had to wait half a century if it had been delayed till that argument was deprived of all force. But it may certainly be granted that the changes which preceded Somerset’s fall went quite as far as the country at large was prepared for.
It is rather curious to observe that Cranmer fairly lost his temper over the Cornish rebellion, and scolded the insurgents somewhat after the model set by Henry VIII. when he rated the Lincolnshire men a dozen years earlier.