The government's attitude was that
Having respect to the malignity of this present time, with the inclination of the people to erroneous opinions, the translation of the New Testament should rather be the occasion of continuance or increase of errors among the said people than any benefit or commodity towards the weal of their souls.
But the magistrates were unable to quench the fiery zeal of Tyndale who continued to translate parts of the Old Testament and to print them and other tracts at Antwerp and at Cologne, until his martyrdom at {285} Vilvorde, near Brussels, on October 6, 1536. In 1913 a monument was erected on the place of his death.
Under the leadership of Tyndale on the one side and of More on the other the air became dark with a host of controversial tracts. [Sidenote: Controversial tracts] They are half filled with theological metaphysic, half with the bitterest invective. Luther called Henry VIII "a damnable and rotten worm, a snivelling, drivelling swine of a sophist"; More retorted by complaining of the violent language of "this apostate, this open incestuous lecher, this plain limb of the devil and manifest messenger of hell." Absurd but natural tactic, with a sure effect on the people, which relishes both morals and scandal! To prove that faith justifies, the Protestants pointed to the debauchery of the friars; to prove the mass a sacrifice their enemies mocked at "Friar Martin and Gate Callate his nun lusking together in lechery." But with all the invective there was much solid argument of the kind that appealed to an age of theological politics. In England as elsewhere the significance of the Reformation was that it was the first issue of supreme importance to be argued by means of the press before the bar of a public opinion sufficiently enlightened to appreciate its importance and sufficiently strong to make a choice and to enforce its decision.
The party of the Reformation in England at first consisted of two classes, London tradesmen and certain members of what Bismarck long afterward called "the learned proletariat." In 1532 the bishops were able to say:
In the crime of heresy, thanked be God, there hath no
notable person fallen in our time. Truth it is that
certain apostate friars and monks, lewd priests, bankrupt
merchants, vagabonds and lewd, idle fellows of corrupt
nature have embraced the abominable and erroneous
{286}
opinions lately sprung in Germany and by them have
been some seduced in simplicity and ignorance.
[Sidenote: Anti-clerical feeling]
But though both anti-clerical feeling and sympathy with the new doctrines waxed apace, it is probable that no change would have taken place for many years had it not been for the king's divorce. The importance of this episode, born of the most strangely mingled motives of conscience, policy, and lust, is not that, as sometimes said, it proved the English people ready to follow their government in religious matters as sheep follow their shepherd. Its importance is simply that it loosed England from its ancient moorings of papal supremacy, and thus established one, though only one, of the cardinal principles of the Protestant revolt. The Reformation consisted not only in a religions change but in an assertion of nationalism, in a class revolt, and in certain cultural revolutions. It was only the first that the government had any idea of sanctioning, but by so doing it enabled the people later to take matters into their own hands and add the social and cultural elements. Thus the Reformation in England ran a course quite different from that in Germany. In the former the cultural revolution came first, followed fast by the rising of the lower and the triumph of the middle classes. Last of all came the successful realization of a national state. But in England nationalism came first; then under Edward the economic revolution; and lastly, under the Puritans, the transmutation of spiritual values.
[Sidenote: Divorce of Catherine of Aragon]
The occasion of the breach with Rome was the divorce of Henry from Catharine of Aragon, who had previously married his brother Arthur when they were both fifteen, and had lived with him as his wife for five months until his death. As marriage with a brother's widow was forbidden by Canon Law, a {287} dispensation from the pope had been secured, to enable Catharine to marry Henry. The king's scruples about the legality of the act were aroused by the death of all the queen's children, save the Princess Mary, in which he saw the fulfilment of the curse denounced in Leviticus xx, 21: "If a man shall take his brother's wife . . . they shall be childless." Just at this time Henry fell in love with Anne Boleyn, [Sidenote: Anne Boleyn] and this further increased his dissatisfaction with his present estate.