A History of the Reformation (Vol. 1 of 2)

by Thomas M. Lindsay

The foreign policy of Henry vii. was alliance with Spain and a long-sighted attempt to secure Scotland by peaceful means. It had for consequences two marriages which had far-reaching results. The marriage of Henry's daughter Margaret with James iv. of Scotland led to the union of the two crowns three generations later; and that between Katharine, the third daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, and the son of Henry vii. came to be the occasion, if not the cause, of the revolt of England from Rome. Katharine was married to Arthur, Prince of Wales, in 1501 (November 14th). Prince Arthur died on January 14th, 1502. After protracted negotiation, lengthened by the unwillingness of the Pope (Pius iii.) to grant a dispensation, Katharine was contracted to Henry, and the marriage took place in the year of Prince Henry's accession to the crown. Katharine and Henry were crowned together at Westminster on June 28th, 1509.

England had prospered during the reign of the first Tudor sovereign. The steady increase in wool-growing and wool-exporting is in itself testimony to the fact that the period of internal wars had ceased, for sheep speedily [pg 022] become extinct when bands of raiders disturb the country. The growth in the number of artisan capitalists shows that money had become the possession of all classes in the community. The rise of the companies of merchant adventurers proves that England was taking her share in the world-trade of the new era. English scholars like Grocyn and Linacre (tutor in Italy of Pope Leo x. and in England of the Prince of Wales) had imbibed the New Learning in Italy, and had been followed there by John Colet, who caught the spirit of the Renaissance from the Italian Humanists and the fervour of a religious revival from Savonarola's work in Florence. The country had emerged from Mediævalism in almost everything when Henry viii., the hope of the English Humanists and reformers, ascended the throne in 1509.

§ 4. France.

If England entered on the sixteenth century as the most compact kingdom in Europe, in the sense that all classes of its society were welded together more firmly than anywhere else, it may be said of France at the same date that nowhere was the central authority of the sovereign more firmly established. Many things had worked for this state of matters. The Hundred Years' War with England did for France what the wars against the Moors had done for Spain. It had created a sense of nationality. It had also made necessary national armies and the raising of national taxes. During the weary period of anarchy under Charles vi. every local and provincial institution of France had seemed to crumble or to display its inefficiency to help the nation in its sorest need. The one thing which was able to stand the storms and stress of the time was the kingly authority, and this in spite of the incapacity of the man who possessed it. The reign of Charles vii. had made it plain that England was not destined to remain in possession of French territory; and the succeeding reigns had seen the central authority slowly acquiring irresistible strength. Charles vii. by his policy of yielding slightly to [pg 023] pressure and sitting still when he could—by his inactivity, perhaps masterly,—Louis xi. by his restless, unscrupulous craft, Anne of Beaujeu (his daughter) by her clear insight and prompt decision, had not only laid the foundations, but built up and consolidated the edifice of absolute monarchy in France. The kingly power had subdued the great nobles and feudatories; it had to a large extent mastered the Church; it had consolidated the towns and made them props to its power; and it had made itself the direct lord of the peasants.

The work of consolidation had been as rapid as it was complete. In 1464, three years after his succession, Louis xi. was confronted by a formidable association of the great feudatories of France, which called itself the League of Public Weal. Charles of Guyenne, the king's brother, the Count of Charolais (known as Charles the Bold of Burgundy), the Duke of Brittany, the two great families of the Armagnacs, the elder represented by the Count of Armagnac, and the younger by the Duke of Nemours, John of Anjou, Duke of Calabria, and the Duke of Bourbon, were allied in arms against the king. Yet by 1465 Normandy had been wrested from the Duke of Guyenne; Guyenne itself had become the king's in 1472; the Duke of Nemours had been crushed and slain in 1476; the Count of Charolais, become Duke of Burgundy, had been overthrown, his power shattered, and himself slain by the Swiss peasant confederates, and almost all his French fiefs had been incorporated by 1480; and on the death of King René (1480) the provinces of Anjou and Provence had been annexed to the Crown of France. The great feudatories were so thoroughly broken that their attempt to revolt during the earlier years of the reign of Charles viii. was easily frustrated by Anne of Beaujeu acting on behalf of the young king.

The efforts to secure hold on the Church date back from the days of the Council of Basel, when Pope Eugenius was at hopeless issue with the majority of its members. In 1438 a deputation from the Council waited upon the [pg 024] king and laid before him the conciliar plans of reform. Charles vii. summoned an assembly of the French clergy to meet at Bourges. He was present himself with his principal nobles; and the meeting was also attended by members of the Council and by papal delegates. There the celebrated Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges was formally presented and agreed upon.

This Pragmatic Sanction embodied most of the cherished conciliar plans of reform. It asserted the ecclesiastical supremacy of Councils over Popes. It demanded a meeting of a Council every ten years. It declared that the selection of the higher ecclesiastics was to be left to the Chapters and to the Convents. It denied the Pope's general claim to the reservation of benefices, and greatly limited its use in special cases. It did away with the Pope's right to act as Ordinary, and insisted that no ecclesiastical cases should be appealed to Rome without first having exhausted the lower courts of jurisdiction. It abolished the Annates, with some exceptions in favour of the present Pope. It also made some attempts to provide the churches with an educated ministry. All these declarations simply carried out the proposals of the Council of Basel; but they had an important influence on the position of the French clergy towards the king. The Pragmatic Sanction, though issued by an assembly of the French clergy, was nevertheless a royal ordinance, and thereby gave the king indefinite rights over the Church within France. The right to elect bishops and abbots was placed in the hands of Chapters and Convents, but the king and nobles were expressly permitted to bring forward and recommend candidates, and this might easily be extended to enforcing the election of those recommended. Indefinite rights of patronage on the part of the king and of the nobles over benefices in France could not fail to be the result, and the French Church could scarcely avoid assuming the appearance of a national Church controlled by the king as the head of the State. The abolition of the Pragmatic Sanction was always a bait which the French king could dangle [pg 025] before the eyes of the Pope, and the promise to maintain the Pragmatic Sanction was always a bribe to secure the support of the clergy and the Parlements of France.

In 1516, Francis i. and Leo x. agreed on a Concordat, the practical effect of which was that the king received the right to nominate to almost all the higher vacant benefices in France, while the Popes received the Annates. The results were not beneficial to the Church. It left the clergy a prey to papal exactions, and it compelled them to seek for promotion through subserviency to the king and the court; but it had the effect of ranging the monarch on the side of the Papacy when the Reformation came.

It can scarcely be said that France was a compact nation. The nobility were separated from the middle and lower classes by the fact that all younger sons retained the status and privileges of nobles. In ancient times they had paid no share of the taxes raised for war, on the ground that they rendered personal service, and the privilege of being free from taxation was retained long after the services of a feudal militia had disappeared. The nobility in France became a caste, numerous, poor in many instances, and too proud to belittle themselves by entering any of the professions or engaging in commerce.