A Popular History of England, From the Earliest Times to the Reign of Queen Victoria; Vol. II

by François Guizot

Chapter XVII.
The Royal Reform.

Personal Government Of Henry VIII.
(1529 — 1547).

The fall of Wolsey was mainly due to the ascendancy of Anne Boleyn, the first victim, and the precursor of many other ruined fortunes, that were to spring from the guilty passions of Henry VIII. The new ministers that surrounded him were the great noblemen who had overthrown the cardinal; the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk and Sir Thomas Boleyn, now become Viscount Rochford, and subsequently Earl of Wiltshire. Sir Thomas More had with regret accepted the onerous duties of chancellor, perhaps in the hope of serving the public welfare, perhaps through a weakness which he was to pay dearly for. All questions then resolved themselves into that of the divorce of Catherine of Aragon; all politics turned upon this pivot. The king had consulted all the universities of Europe, the theologians and lawyers; Oxford and Cambridge had taken sides, and opinions were there keenly discussed from each point of view; but the king had gained ground among the prelates; his agents were skilful and numerous. Cranmer, formerly a tutor in a wealthy family, now a chaplain to Henry VIII., had recently published a learned treatise in favour of the divorce, insisting that the word of God alone should decide the question without any appeal to the Pope, and maintaining that the Bible, interpreted by the Fathers of the Church, interdicted marriage with the widow of a brother. The opinion of the two English universities in favour of the divorce was obtained. The Italian universities, Bologna, Padua, Ferrara, declared themselves for King Henry; it was a question of money. The Germans had still more fear of the Emperor than taste for English gold; they were all opposed to the divorce—the Protestant theologians were as outspoken as the Catholics. "It were better that the King of England should have two wives than be divorced from Catherine to marry another," said Luther. The Pope published, in the month of March, 1530, a brief, which formally forbade the King of England to conclude a second marriage, under pain of excommunication. A few days later, the Earl of Wiltshire presented himself at Bologna, where the Pope and the Emperor were at that time; people were shocked to see the father of Anne Boleyn employed in this mission. "Let your colleagues speak, my lord," said Charles V. to him, "for you are a party to this matter." The assurance of the earl, and his offers of money, completed the exasperation of the Emperor. "I will not sell the honour of my good aunt Catherine!" he exclaimed angrily. The embassy retired without having obtained anything, and the Earl of Wiltshire was compelled to confine his intrigues to the French universities, from which he contrived to secure several favourable opinions. But of what use were all the decisions of the faculties when the Pope refused his assent?

This assent was of supreme importance, for the time had come when the bonds which held the crown of England to Rome were about to be broken abruptly for bad and shameful reasons, but not without a certain assent from the mass of the people. None among the prelates who surrounded the king had dared to advise him to brave the will of the Pope; Cranmer himself, who had secretly married the daughter of a German pastor, was too timid to break his lance in the face of the court of Rome; it was a servant of Wolsey, who had become a servant of the king, Thomas Cromwell, the son of a blacksmith at Putney, a man as bold as he was corrupt and skilful, who struck the great blow and opened up to Henry VIII. the path in which he was henceforth to walk. The king was troubled by the obstinate resistance of the Pope; he had hoped to obtain the divorce without great difficulty; he hesitated, and a rumour of the disgrace of Anne Boleyn was already circulated among the courtiers, when Cromwell approached his royal master. "The embarrassments of your Grace arise from the timidity of your ministers," he said; and he explained that with the favourable opinions of all the universities, and the assent of the English Parliament, which it was not difficult, to procure, it was easy to proceed without troubling the Pope. "The king could even," he added, "follow the example of the German princes, who had shaken off the yoke of the court of Rome, and declare himself purely and simply the head of the Church of England. The clergy thus depending solely upon the king, he would become the absolute master of his kingdom, instead of being only half king."

This bold conception was designed to please King Henry VIII.; his vanity, his taste for power, and his avidity alike found satisfaction in it. Neither his conscience (such as it was), nor his convictions ever belonged to the new faith. Internally and by doctrine he remained a Catholic, but his policy and interest, like his passion impelled him in another direction; he accomplished in his country a religious reform—governmental as well as liberal, aristocratic and popular—the effects of which were immense and profoundly advantageous to England; but he accomplished all this without religious faith and without general principles, for the sake of his personal desires and with selfish aim. It was to God, through the hands of Henry VIII., that England owed this great step in her history; she has no obligation to be grateful to the despotic and corrupt monarch who severed his connexion with Rome in order to repudiate his wife and to dispose of the ecclesiastical benefices at his pleasure.

The door, however, had been opened, and Parliament, being at once convoked, received a communication detailing all the proceedings of the king for the purpose of surrounding himself with learned authorities upon the question of the legitimacy of his marriage. At the same time the clergy were assembled. Very uneasy at a royal act which involved them all in a common disgrace as guilty of having seconded and supported Cardinal Wolsey, by admitting his authority as legate—an authority which had been confirmed by Henry himself—the prelates, accustomed to the demands of the king, immediately offered a hundred thousand pounds sterling in order to appease his anger. Henry VIII. accepted the offering, but announced that he would grant the pardon only on condition of a vote of the ecclesiastical convention which should recognize him as "the protector and supreme head of the Church and the clergy of England." Three days were occupied in discussion; the opposition was powerful and numerous, but timidity gained the ascendant; there was a disposition to admit the supremacy of the king, with this reservation: Quantum per legem Christi liceat (as much as it is permitted by the law of Christ).

"I will have neither tantum nor quantam," replied the king, when Cromwell came to tell him how matters stood; "return to them, and let the vote be given without quantums or tantums." The reservation was, however, maintained, and the king consoled himself with his hundred thousand pounds sterling, augmented by a small gift of the clergy of the north.

After the prorogation of Parliament Henry VIII. endeavoured to intimidate Catherine, and to compel her to accept the decision of four prelates and four lay peers. She steadily refused; being transferred from Greenwich to Windsor, and from Windsor to Hertfordshire, she was at length sent to Ampthill, where she fixed her residence. "To whatever place I may be made to go, I remain the legitimate wife of the king," she said. In the main the nation was of her opinion, and no one was more convinced of it than the chancellor. Sir Thomas More; weary of serving as an instrument of a policy of which he disapproved, but which he could not modify, he asked permission to retire, and on the 16th of May, 1532, he returned peaceably to his mansion at Chelsea, delivered of a burden which had weighed him down, and free to devote himself to the learned studies which constituted the charm of his life.