He therefore applied to the pope for annulment of marriage, but the unhappy Clement VII, now in the emperor's fist, felt unable to give it to him. He writhed and twisted, dallied with the proposals that Henry should take a second wife, or that his illegitimate son the Duke of Richmond should marry his half sister Mary; in short he was ready to grant a dispensation for anything save for the one horrible crime of divorce—as the annulment was then called. His difficulties in getting at the rights of the question were not made easier by the readiness of both parties to commit a little perjury or to forge a little bull to further their cause.
Seeing no help in sight from Rome Henry began to collect the opinions of universities and "strange doctors." The English, French, and Italian universities decided as the king wished that his marriage was null; Wittenberg and Marburg rendered contrary opinions. Many theologians, including Erasmus, Luther, and Melanchthon, expressed the opinion that bigamy would be the best way to meet the situation.
But more was needed to make the annulment legal than the verdict of universities. Repulsed by Rome Henry was forced to make an alliance, though it proved but a temporary one, with the Reforming and anti-clerical parties in his realm. At Easter, 1529, Lutheran books began to circulate at court, books {288} advocating the confiscation of ecclesiastical property and the reduction of the church to a state of primitive simplicity. To Chapuis, the imperial ambassador, Henry pointedly praised Luther, whom he had lately called "a wolf of hell and a limb of Satan," remarking that though he had mixed heresy in his books that was not sufficient reason for reproving and rejecting the many truths he had brought to light. To punish Wolsey for the failure to secure what was wanted from Rome, [Sidenote: November 4, 1530] the pampered minister was arrested for treason, but died of chagrin before he could be executed. "Had I served my God," said he, "as diligently as I have served my king, he would not have given me over in my grey hairs."
[Sidenote: Reformation Parliament, November 3, 1529]
In the meantime there had already met that Parliament that was to pass, in the seven years of its existence, the most momentous and revolutionary laws as yet placed upon the statute-books. The elections were free, or nearly so; the franchise varied from a fairly democratic one in London to a highly oligarchical one in some boroughs. Notwithstanding the popular feeling that Catharine was an injured woman and that war with the Empire might ruin the valuable trade with Flanders, the "government," as would now be said, that is, the king, received hearty support by the majority of members. The only possible explanation for this, apart from the king's acknowledged skill as a parliamentary leader, is the strength of the anti-clerical feeling. The rebellion of the laity against the clergy, and of the patriots against the Italian yoke, needed but the example of Germany to burst all the dykes and barriers of medieval custom. The significance of the revolution was that it was a forcible reform of the church by the state. The wish of the people was to end ecclesiastical abuses without much regard to doctrine; the wish of the king was to make himself {289} "emperor and pope" in his own dominions. While Henry studied Wyclif's program, and the people read the English Testament, the lessons they derived from these sources were at first moral and political, not doctrinal or philosophic.
[Sidenote: Submission of the clergy, December 1530]
The first step in the reduction of the church was taken when the attorney-general filed in the court of King's Bench an information against the whole body of the clergy for violating the statutes of Provisors and Praemunire by having recognized Wolsey's legatine authority. Of course there was no justice in this; the king himself had recognized Wolsey's authority and anyone who had denied it would have been punished. But the suit was sufficient to accomplish the government's purposes, which were, first to wring money from the clergy and then to force them to declare the king "sole protector and supreme head of the church and clergy of England." Reluctantly the Convocation of Canterbury accepted this demand in the form that the king was, "their singular protector, only and supreme lord and, as far as the law of Christ allows, even Supreme Head." Henry further proposed that the oaths of the clergy to the pope be abolished and himself made supreme legislator. [Sidenote: May 15, 1532] Convocation accepted this demand also in a document known as "the submission of the clergy."
If such was the action of the spiritual estate, it was natural that the temporal peers and the Commons in parliament should go much further. [Sidenote: 1532] A petition of the Commons, really emanating from the government and probably from Thomas Cromwell, complained bitterly of the tyranny of the ordinaries in ecclesiastical jurisdiction, of excessive fees and vexations and frivolous charges of heresy made against unlearned laymen. [Sidenote: May 1532] Abuses of like nature were dealt with in statutes limiting the fees exacted by priests and regulating {290} pluralities and non-residence. Annates were abolished with the proviso that the king might negotiate with the pope,—the intention of the government being thus to bring pressure to bear on the curia. No wonder the clergy were thoroughly frightened. Bishop Fisher, their bravest champion, protested in the House of Lords: "For God's sake, see what a realm the kingdom of Boheme was, and when the church fell down, there fell the glory of the kingdom. Now with the Commons is nothing but 'Down with the church,' and all this meseemeth is for lack of faith only."
[Sidenote: Marriage with Anne Boleyn]
It had taken Henry several years to prepare the way for his chief object, the divorce. His hand was at last forced by the knowledge that Anne was pregnant; he married her on January 25, 1533, without waiting for final sentence of annulment of marriage with Catharine. In so doing he might seem, at first glance, to have followed the advice so freely tendered him to discharge his conscience by committing bigamy; but doubtless he regarded his first marriage as illegal all the time and merely waited for the opportunity to get a court that would so pronounce it. The vacancy of the archbishopric of Canterbury enabled him to appoint to it Thomas Cranmer, [Sidenote: Cranmer] the obsequious divine who had first suggested his present plan. Cranmer was a Lutheran, so far committed to the new faith that he had married; he was intelligent, learned, a wonderful master of language, and capable at last of dying for his belief. But that he showed himself pliable to his master's wishes beyond all bounds of decency is a fact made all the more glaring by the firm and honorable conduct of More and Fisher. His worst act was possibly on the occasion of his nomination to the province of Canterbury; wishing to be confirmed by the pope he concealed his real views and took an oath of obedience to the Holy See, having previously signed {291} a protest that he considered the oath a mere form and not a reality.