A history of England principally in the seventeenth century, Volume 1 (of 6)

by Leopold von Ranke

The dignity of legate, which was granted him by Pope Leo, and then prolonged for five, for ten years, and at last for life, gave him a comprehensive spiritual authority. He obtained by it the right of visiting and reforming all ecclesiastical persons and institutions, even those which possessed a legal exemption of their own. Some orders of monks, which contended against it, were reduced to obedience by new bulls. But from the visitation of the monasteries Wolsey proceeded to their suppression: he united old convents (such as that one which has brought down to recent times the name of an Anglo-Saxon king's daughter, Frideswitha, from the eighth century) with the splendid colleges which he endowed so richly, for the advancement of learning and the renown of his name, at Oxford and at Ipswich. His courts included all branches of the ecclesiastical and mixed jurisdiction, and the King had no scruple in arming him with all the powers of the crown which were necessary for the government of the Church. What aspirations then arose are shewn by the compact which Wolsey made with King Francis I to counteract the influence which the Emperor might exert over the captive Pope. When it was settled in this, that whatever the cardinal and the English prelates should enact with the King's consent should have the force of law, does not this imply at least a temporary schism?

When Clement became free, he named Wolsey his Vicar-General for the English Church: his position was again to be what it had been from the beginning, the expression of the unity between the Pope and the Crown. But now how if this were dissolved? The victorious Emperor exercised a still greater influence over the Pope when free than he had ever done over him when captive. Under these circumstances Wolsey submitted to the supreme spiritual power, the King resolved to withstand it: it was exactly on this point that open discord broke out between them. For a time the cardinal seemed still to maintain his courage; but when on St. Luke's day—the phrase ran that the evangelist had disevangelised him—the great seal was taken from him, he lost all self-reliance. Wolsey was not a Ximenes or a Richelieu. He had no other support than the King's favour; without this he fell back into his nothingness. He was heard to wail like a child: the King comforted him by a token of favour, probably however less out of personal sympathy than because he could not be yet quite dispensed with.[104] The High Treasurer, Norfolk, who generally acted as first minister, received the seals, and held them till some time afterwards Thomas More was named Chancellor. While these administered affairs in London, Suffolk, as President of the Privy Council, was to accompany the King in person. The chief direction of the administration passed over to the two leading lay lords.

Henry VIII's resolution to call the Parliament together was of almost greater importance for the progress of events than the alteration in the ministry.

During the fourteen years of his administration Wolsey had summoned Parliament only once, and that was when, in order to carry on the war in alliance with the Emperor against France, he needed an extraordinary grant of money. But his opening discourses were received with silence and dislike. Never, says a contemporary who was present, was the need of money more pressingly represented to a Parliament and never was there greater opposition; after a fortnight's consultation the proposal only passed at a moment when the members of the King's household and court formed the majority of thosepresent.[105] The Parliament and the country always murmured at Wolsey's oppressive and lavish finance management;[106] a later attempt to raise taxes that had not been voted doubled the outcry against him. His fall and the convocation of a Parliament seemed a return to parliamentary principles in general, which in themselves exactly agreed with the view taken by the King in the present questions.

In the first years of Henry VIII the Parliament had wished to do away with some of the most startling exemptions of the clergy from the temporal jurisdiction, for instance in reference to the crimes of felony and murder; the ecclesiastics had on the other hand extended their jurisdiction yet further, even to cases that had reference solely to questions of property. Hence the antagonism between the two jurisdictions had revived at that time with bitter keenness. It is noticeable that the temporal claims were upheld by a learned Minorite, Henry Standish, who declared it to be quite lawful to limit the ecclesiastical privileges for the sake of the public good; especially in the case of a crime that did not properly come before any spiritual court. Both sides then applied to the King: the ecclesiastics reminded him that he ought to uphold the rights of Holy Church, the laymen that he should maintain the powers of jurisdiction belonging to the crown. The King's declaration was favourable to the laymen; he recommended the clergy to acquiesce in some exceptions from their decretals. But the contest was rather suspended than decided. Wolsey's government followed, in which the spiritual courts extended their powers still further, and in reality exercised an offensive control over all the relations of private life. Even the ecclesiastics did not love his authority: they acquiesced in it because it was ecclesiastical: the laity endured it with the utmost impatience.

It was inevitable that at the first fresh assembly of a Parliament these contests about jurisdiction should be mentioned. The Lower House began its action with a detailed charge against the spiritual courts, not merely against their abuses and the oppression that arose from them, but against their very existence and their legislation; the clergy made laws without the King's foreknowledge, without the participation of any laymen, and yet the laity were bound by them. The King was called on to reconcile his subjects of the spiritual and temporal estate with each other by good laws, since he was their sole head, the sovereign, lord and protector of both parties.

It was a slight phrase.[107] 'the sole head of his subjects spiritual and temporal,' but one of the weightiest import. The very existence of the clergy as an order had hitherto depended precisely on their claim to a legislative power independent of the temporal supremacy as being their original right: on its universal maintenance rested the Papacy and its influence on the several countries. Were the clergy now to leave it to the King, who however only represented the temporal power, to adjust the differences between their legislation and that of the state? Were they, like the laity, virtually to recognise him as their Head?

It is clear that they would thus sever themselves from the great union under one spiritual Head, from the constitution of the Latin Church. Whoever it was that introduced the word 'Head,' no doubt had this in view. The King and the laity took it up, they wished only to induce the clergy themselves to come to a resolution in this sense.

The chief motive which was to serve this purpose is connected with the lordship which the Popes possessed in England in the thirteenth century, or rather with the reaction against it which went on throughout the fourteenth. This is most distinctly expressed in the statutes of 1393, which threatened with the severest penalties all participation in any attempt, to the injury of the King's supremacy, to obtain a church-benefice from Rome; and this too even where the King had given his consent to it. Clergy and laity were thus allied against the encroachments of the Roman Curia. Wolsey was now accused of having transgressed thisstatute:[108] he had in virtue of his legatine power given away benefices, and established a jurisdiction by which that of the King was encroached on; he was found guilty of this in regular form. He anticipated the full effect of this sentence by submitting without any defence and surrendering all his property to the King. It was then that York House in Westminster, with its gardens and the land adjoining, the Whitehall of later times, passed into the possession of the crown.[109] He still kept his archbishopric; we find him soon after at Caywood, the palace belonging to it, and in fact even busied once more with his buildings. At times the King again thought of his old counsellor, and to many it quite seemed as though he might yet recover power. In those days the general belief was, that Anne Boleyn had exerted her whole influence against it. But most of the other persons of distinction in court and state were also opposed to Wolsey. Did he then really, as was imputed to him, try to gain a party among the clergy, and move the Pope to pronounce excommunication against the King?[110] A pretext at any rate was found for arresting him as a traitor: but as he was being brought to the Tower, he died on the way. He wished, so far as we know, to starve himself to death; it was at that time supposed that in his wish to die he was aided by help from others.

Neither for his mental nor for his moral qualities can Wolsey be reckoned among men of the first rank; yet his position and the ability which he showed in it, his ambition and his political plans, what he did and what he suffered, his success and his fall, have won him an imperishable name in English history. His attempt to link the royal power with the Papacy by the closest ties rent them asunder for ever. No sooner was he dead than the clergy became subject to the Crown—a subjection which could forebode nothing less than this final rupture.