Sir Thomas More, wearing the collar of SS: from an original portrait painted by Holbein in 1527, belonging to Edward Huth, Esq.
16. Sir Thomas More and the Protestants. 1529-1532.—The submission of the clergy cost Henry the services of the best and wisest of his statesmen. Sir Thomas More had been appointed Chancellor on Wolsey's fall in 1529. When More wrote the Utopia, Luther had not yet broken away from the Papacy, and the tolerant principles of the author of that book had not been put to the test. Even in the Utopia More had confined his tolerance to those who argued in opposition to the received religion without anger or spite, and when he came to be in office he learnt by practical experience that opposition is seldom carried on in the spirit of meekness. Protestantism, as the Lutheran tenets began to be called in 1529, spread into England, though as yet it gained a hold only on a few scattered individuals. Here and there thoughtful men, dissatisfied with the teaching given to them and with the lives of many of their teachers, embraced the Lutheran doctrine of justification by faith. Even the best of them could hardly be expected to treat with philosophic calm the doctrines which they had forsaken; whilst some of their converts took a pleasure in reviling the clergy and the common creed of the vast majority of Englishmen. With many again the doctrine of justification by faith slipped into the condemnation of the merit of good works, and even into a light estimation of good works themselves. For this bitterness of speech and mind More had no tolerance, and while he pursued his antagonists with argument and ridicule, he also used his authority to support the clergy in putting down what they termed heresy by the process of burning the obstinate heretic.
17. Resignation of Sir Thomas More. 1532.—More had no ground for fearing that the increase of the king's authority over the clergy would at once encourage revolt against the Church. Henry was a representative Englishman, and neither he nor the House of Commons had the least sympathy with heresy. They wanted to believe and act as their fathers had done. More, however, was sufficiently prescient to foresee that a lay authority could not for ever maintain this attitude. Laymen were certain to be moved by the current of thought which prevailed in their age, and it was only, he believed, the great Papal organisation which could keep them steady. Though Henry had not yet directly attacked that organisation, he might be expected to attack it soon, and, in 1532, More retired from all connection with Henry's government rather than take part in that attack.
18. The First Act of Annates. 1532.—Having secured himself, as it were, in the rear by the submission of the clergy, Henry proceeded to deal with the Pope. He still wished if possible to win him to his side, and before the end of 1532 he obtained from Parliament an Act of Annates. Annates were the first-fruits or first year's income of ecclesiastical benefices, and by this Act the first-fruits of bishoprics, which had hitherto been paid to the Pope, were to be kept back. The Act was not, however, to come into force till the king had ratified it, and Henry refused for a time to ratify it hoping to reduce Clement to submission by suspending over his head a threat upon his purse.
19. The King's Marriage and the Act of Appeals. 1533.—Henry, however, found that Clement was not to be moved, and his patience coming at last to an end, he was secretly married to Anne Boleyn on January 25, 1533. Now that he had reluctantly given up hope of obtaining a favourable decision from the Pope, he resolved to put an end to the Papal jurisdiction in England. Otherwise if he obtained a sentence in an English ecclesiastical court declaring his marriage with Catharine to be null from the beginning, his injured wife might appeal to the superior court of the Pope. He accordingly obtained from Parliament the Act of Appeals, declaring that the king held the supreme authority in England, and that as under him all temporal matters were to be decided by temporal judges, and all spiritual matters by spiritual judges, no appeals should hereafter be suffered to any authority outside the realm. Henry was capable of any meanness to serve his ends, but he also knew how to gain more than his immediate ends by connecting them with a large national policy. He almost made men forget the low design which prompted the Act of Appeals by fixing their eyes on the great object of national independence.