The Papal See governed by an unscrupulous ambition to realize the success of its projects for acquiring unbounded territorial aggrandizement, has, with equal craft and baseness, endeavored to make the vices as well as the power of princes administer to its interests. This policy is illustrated in the schemes of papal policy and intrigue concocted under the reign of King John, youngest son of Henry II., who on the decease of his father in 1199 ascended the English throne. This prince had conspired against the most indulgent of fathers, had warred against his brother Richard, had murdered his brother Arthur, had repudiated his wives, and had exercised regal authority with insolence and tyranny, without provoking the maledictions or interference of the Holy See. But as these enormities deprived him of the affections of his subjects, a ruler's chief support; exhausted his coffers, the sinews of war and opposition; made him more dependent on the favor of Rome, more entangled in the network of its policy, and admirably prepared the way for the accomplishment of its ulterior designs, its indulgence, and perhaps connivance may be reasonably accounted for. But after a war with France exhausted the resources of John, rendered him less popular, and more irascible and impatient, Pope Innocent III. improved the flattering opportunity which crime and misfortune had presented, to provoke a collision with him favorable to the success of the papal designs. John claimed the right of investiture; and in making this claim seems to have been supported by the cooperation of the papal political machinery. The See of Canterbury having become vacant, the pope appointed Cardinal Langston to fill the vacancy. This act John resisted as an unjustifiable encroachment on the prerogatives of the crown. But the arts of the pope had involved the king in a snare; and now having fairly entangled him, proceeded to prepare the way for realizing his temporal project by exercising his spiritual functions. Accordingly he suspended the performance of religious worship in the king's dominions, excommunicated him, and absolved his subjects from their allegiance to him. The papal political machinery acting in harmony with the maledictions of the pope, the wildest disorders were excited among the people; anarchy suspended all law; the army refused to obey the king's orders; his friends deserted him; and he found himself without domestics, without alliances, and without the means of resistance. It is an invariable practice of the holy fathers, who claim a right to all the world by virtue of their office, to endeavor to supersede the necessity of this title by acquiring a legal one. Hence, Innocent III., seeing the helpless condition to which he had reduced John, and touched at the cruel misfortunes in which he had involved him, now graciously proposed to mitigate the rigors of his adversities, and to restore him to his former authority, if he would cede his kingdom to the Pope of Rome, and consent to rule it as a vassal of the pope, Divested of adherents, arms or alliances, the king submitted unconditionally to the terms dictated by the sacerdotal despot. The design of the papal See of reducing England to a state of vassalage, conceived in ambition, pursued by craft and cruelty, was thus consummated by the most execrable tyranny. This empty title to England and Ireland, so full of trick and fraud, is nevertheless still mentioned by the Holy See as valid and indisputable.
But the benefits of the statesmanship, and of the divinely inspired council of the holy father, by which John was bound in future to be governed in the administration of his kingdom, did not prevent him from exciting the indignation of his subjects, by encroachments on their rights; nor restrain him from the perpetration of such unwarrantable acts as created a popular hatred of him, which finally culminated in open resistance to his authority. So violent were the conflicts that arose between him and his subjects, that in order to save his crown he had to yield to their demand the act of the "Magna Charta." The pope, however, the natural foe of all constitutional guarantees of popular right and liberty, benevolently interposed in behalf of the imbecile and overawed prince, and absolved him from all obligations to comply with any of the unpleasant concessions which he had made; declaring the Magna Charta antagonistical to the Catholic religion; forbidding the king to observe any of its provisions; and pronouncing sentence of excommunication on all who should obey, or attempt to enforce the heretical act. Again the papal machinery was set in violent operation. Spies watched, confessors reported, abbots schemed, bishops predicted, priests thundered, monks prowled and assassins murdered, until every city, village and house, was distracted with alarm. In the midst of the consternation which stupefied the public mind the king, through the instrumentality of the papal machinery, suddenly appeared at the head of a formidable army; and as if he were a foreign enemy, commenced butchering his subjects, firing their dwellings and carrying terror and devastation through his own kingdom. So profoundly secret were the papal machinations carried on, and so suddenly and unexpectedly had John appeared with an army fully equipped for war that—no suspicion of such a design having been excited in the minds of the military barons—no preparations were made to meet the emergency. As suddenly, mysteriously, and adroitly as King John's army had sprung into existence, so did the barons resolve, in order to defeat its object, to tender the crown of the realm to France; which proffer being accepted, the intrigues of the pope were thwarted, and Philip of France became sovereign of England.
The popes claim the divine attribute of infallibility, yet in changing their policy and practice to suit the variations of time, place and circumstance, they seem generally to have descended to the common level of humanity. In order, however, to reconcile the irreconcilable, while they profess to have had communicated to them the incommunicable, they claim to have been endowed with power to change the unchangeable. Should a prince resolve to do that which the pope's infallible holiness has declared to be criminal, and should that prince happen to be too powerful to be intimidated, and too dangerous to be provoked into rebellion, in such, delicate cases the pope, with his facilities to accommodate all difficulties, grants a dispensation, whereby the applicant is empowered to violate all the infallible laws of the church without incurring any of their penalties.
In the reign of Henry VII., who became king of England in 1485, we find an illustration of this policy. That sovereign had married Arthur, his eldest son, to Catherine, daughter of Ferdinand, king of Arragon. On the decease of Arthur, the king, with the view of retaining the opulent Spanish dowery in his family, desired to marry the widow of Arthur to his next son. The young prince Henry, but fifteen years old, protested against marrying a lady for whom he had no affection, and who was so much his senior. Besides this difficulty the contemplated alliance was in violation of the laws of consanguinity, so solemnly established by the authority of the infallible church, and so terrifically armed with all the terrors of anathemas and excommunication. To silence the objection of his son, and the thunders of the Vatican, Henry applied to the pope for permission to execute his purposes, in violation of the established laws of the church; and the pope, not deeming it prudent to offend so powerful a potentate, granted his request But vain are the pope's pretensions to be able to change the moral law of heaven unless: he can also change the natural course of events. In this attempt to accommodate principle to interest, and the infallible laws of the church to the changing whim of an avaricious monarch, he laid the foundation for the final separation of the kingdom of England from the See of Rome.
After the death of Henry VII. his son, under the title of Henry VIII., succeeded to the British throne. Frank and vain, he became at an early period of his life an object of the subtle policy of Rome. Naturally generous, his indomitable love of power and dominion often led him to violate the obligations of humanity; and impetuous in passion, and impatient of restraint, he was tempted to annihilate the constitutional restraints which conflicted with his designs, and to make the forms of justice subservient to the gratification of his ambition and interest.
Happening to become enamored of Anne Bolyne, he began to suspect the legality of his marriage with Catherine; and though he had recognized its obligations by a union of twenty years, yet the oftener he saw his mistress the stronger became his convictions of the heterodoxy and unlawfulness of his matrimonial relations, and the more scrupulous he became about his chastity. The want of male issue, and the disparity of years between him and his wife mingled reflections with these legal and religious scruples, and made them so pungent that Henry, in order to get rid of the torment thus inflicted, finally applied to the pope for a divorce. The pope promised to grant his request; but the fear of offending Charles V., Catherine's nephew, produced strange vacillation in the mind of the infallible holy father. Two powerful and crafty princes dictated to him opposite courses; to offend either would be disastrous; he therefore pretended to favor the wishes of both. Aware of papal artifice, however, Henry became imperious in his demands. The pope appeared to yield, and to soothe the impatient prince with a semblance of compliance, but a means of procrastination, he commissioned Cardinals Wolsey and Campaggio to adjust the difficulty. They cited the queen to appear before them; she appealed to the pope; they declared her contumacious. By these proceedings the controversy becoming more embarrassed than before, and less capable of a speedy solution, Henry peremptorily decided the matter by consummating his marriage with Anne Bolyne. This act astonished the pope, and enraged Charles V. To gratify Charles, and to punish Henry, the holy father proceeded to excommunicate the latter. The despotic character of Henry, however, had too much overawed his subjects to allow the papal machinery to give much efficacy to the manifestos of its prime engineer; and placing himself at the head of the Catholic church in England, he released his subjects from allegiance to the See of Rome, effected a separation from it, and nullified its temporal authority over his dominions.
Discarding the dogma of the pope's temporal power, Henry still strictly adhered to the standard of Catholic theology in all other respects; and the pope, at the same time, through the medium of Cardinal Wolsey, continued to exert considerable indirect influence on his mind. This prelate who, while he was a preacher at Limington was put into the stocks for disorderly conduct in a drunken frolic; who afterwards was made domestic chaplain by Dean, Archbishop of Canterbury, and who was finally created cardinal by the pope, obtained such unlimited power over the mind of Henry that the pope pensioned him to keep him in his interest. It is not a matter of much surprise that Henry's aversion to the reformers, inflamed by the arts of such a vicious counsellor, should have brought so many of them to the stake; nor that the bigotry and intolerance of Catholicism should have survived the destruction of its political engine. Henry VIII. condemned to death Lambert, a school teacher, for denying the real presence At intervals during his reign he rigorously persecuted the Protestants. Catherine Parr, his last wife, barely escaped execution for having encouraged the reformers. A warrant had been wrung from the king by the Bishop of Winchester, for her committal to the Tower on the charge of heretical opinions; but having become secretly apprised of the fact in time she sought the king, and satisfied him that when she had objected to his opinions it was from a desire to become enlightened by his superior knowledge and intelligence. While he employed violent means to enforce conformity to the Catholic theology, he visited equal vengeance on those who advocated the pope's temporal authority. When he discovered that the monks and friars were guilty of defending the obnoxious heresy of the pope's temporal power, he suppressed their houses; but not wishing to destroy the monastic orders, he applied the sequestered funds to the establishment of other similar institutions; but on perceiving these also to be secretly engaged in machinations to restore the pope's temporal authority, he abolished the religious orders altogether. Even Cardinal Wolsey fell under his suspicion, and was executed for treason by his order. After he had beheaded his wife, Catherine Howard for unchastity, his severity against those who advocated the pope's temporal sovereignty, and against those who denied the Romish theology, was cruel in the highest degree.
What papal rapaciousness cannot boldly grasp, it will secretly plot to obtain. Kings who control nations, women who may perhaps control kings, and children who are presumptive heirs of empires, are powerful instruments in the accomplishment of political designs, and especial objects of papal intrigue.
The inveterate opposition to Catholics in England rendered it almost impossible for a Catholic to ascend the throne, and eventually interdicted it by positive enactments. To counteract the consequences of this spirit, a scheme was projected by papal craft to have the heirs of the throne educated by Catholic mothers, so that future kings might rule as Protestants with Catholic proclivities, and in course of time, through the demoralization, dissatisfaction, discord and blood effected by the cooperation of its adherents, the supremacy of the pope might be reestablished in England, James I., who on the death of Elizabeth succeeded to the crown of England and Scotland, a ruler devoid of statesmen-like abilities, without firmness or stability, and bloated up with fanciful notions of royal prerogatives, was the pliant instrument of this subtle policy. An amorous flame having been kindled in him and in Henrietta Maria, daughter of Henry IV., of France, it was stipulated that the union should be consummated, on condition that the heirs which should issue should be subject to the exclusive control of their mother until they were thirteen years of age. This contract secured a Catholic education to the heirs of the British throne, and laid the foundations for the dreadful calamities which afflicted the nation during the reigns of Charles II. and James II.
The abolition of papal despotism over the English mind giving freedom to thought and inquiry, could not but enlarge its conceptions of civil and religious liberty. The old system of prerogatives sunk into contempt, and the new system of representative government became more popular as the mind became more comprehensive in its grasp, and more profound in its investigation. Hence the Puritans, who originally were Catholics, and merely advocated a simpler form of worship; the Presbyterians and the Independents, who at first questioned only the temporal power of the pope, yet driven from those whom they had venerated by the hate which persecution engenders, and disenthralled from the shackles with which custom and superstition enslaves the mind, began fearlessly and candidly to investigate the fundamental principles of faith and practice, and to elaborate theological creeds totally different from those of Catholicism, and vastly superior to them. While the people were rapidly advancing in liberal views of religion and government, the heir of the throne was too much absorbed in magnifying his visionary prerogatives to share in the progress of the age, or to study the character of the people over whom he was destined to reign. When in 1625 he ascended the English throne, under the title of Charles I., the new order of popular sentiment had become an impetuous torrent. Common sagacity might have perceived the inevitable destruction that would await him if he should attempt to stem the popular tide of thought; and prudence would have dictated a practicable compromise of differences rather than the certain alternative of civil war. But Archbishop Laud, a Catholic under the disguise of Protestantism, and who was the medium of the pope's influence, exercised a despotism over the king's mind too absolute to allow his reason to instruct, or his conscience to admonish him. The religious views and secret designs of this professed Protestant bishop cannot be misunderstood. He maintained that the papal authority had always been visible in the realm. He furnished the king with a significant list of the names of all his Catholic and Protestant subjects. He was also the principal actor in the Star Chamber, and Court of High Commission. So well was the pope satisfied with the orthodoxy of this sacerdotal miscreant that he sent him a cardinal's hat, which he declined for the ambiguous reason that the "Church of Rome was no other than it was!" The king, controlled and ill-advised by such a counsellor, blinded by his own bigotry, and elated with self-conceit, was led to scorn the rising spirit of the nation, and to adopt measures for its suppression. But parliament with prudent foresight, and patriotic boldness, taught him that the Commons were the constitutional dispensers and guardians of the public treasury. He next resolved to oblige Scotland to conform to the ritual prescribed by the Church of England; and as parliament had refused to allow him the use of the public funds for that and other purposes, he attempted to raise means for their accomplishment by unconstitutional methods. By this impolitic course he aroused a lion from its den, with whose strength and fury he could not well cope. The Scotch formed a league of Covenanters, composed of all classes and factions, for the defence of their religious liberty; and as the king viewed their enthusiastic and formidable array, and compared it with the suspicious material of his own army, he prudently concluded terms of pacification.