“So far the King has become Lutheran, that, because the Pope has refused to sanction his divorce, he has ordered, on penalty of death, that every one shall believe and preach that not the Pope but himself is the head of the universal Church. All other papistry, monasteries, mass, indulgences, and intercessions for the dead, are pertinaciously adhered to.”[454]
The English embassy went from Schmalkald to Wittenberg, where they met a number of divines, including Luther and Melanchthon, and proceeded to discuss the question of doctrinal agreement. Melanchthon had gone over the Augsburg Confession, and produced a series of articles which presented all that the Wittenberg theologians could concede, and Luther had revised the draft.[455] Both the Germans were charmed with the learning and courtesy of Archdeacon Heath. Bishop Foxe “had the manner of prelates,” says Melanchthon, and his learning did not impress the Germans.[456] The conference came to nothing. Henry did not care to accept a creed ready made for him, and thought that ecclesiastical ceremonies might differ in different countries. He was a King “reckoned somewhat learned, though unworthy,” he said, “and having so many learned men in his realm, he could not accept at any creature’s hand the observing of his and the realm’s faith; but he was willing to confer with learned men sent from them.”[457]
Before the conference at Wittenberg had come to an end, Henry believed that he had no need for a German alliance. The ill-used Queen Catharine, who, alone of all persons concerned in the Divorce proceedings, comes out unstained, died on Jan. 7th, 1536. Her will contained the touching bequest: “To my daughter, the collar of gold which I brought out of Spain”[458]—out of Spain, when she came a fair young bride to marry Prince Arthur of England thirty-five years before.
There is no need to believe that Henry exhibited the unseemly manifestations of joy which his enemies credit him with when the news of Catharine’s death was brought to him, but it did free him from a great dread. He read men and circumstances shrewdly, and he knew enough of Charles V. to believe that the Emperor, after his aunt’s death, and when he had no flagrant attack on the family honour of his house to protest against, would not make himself the Pope’s instrument against England.
Henry had always maintained himself and England by balancing France against the Empire, and could in addition weaken the Empire by strengthening the German Protestants. But in 1539, France and the Emperor had become allies, and Henry was feeling himself very insecure. It is probable that the negotiations which led to Henry’s marriage with Anne of Cleves were due to this new danger. On the other hand, there had been discontent in England at many of the actions which were supposed to come from the advance towards Reformation.
Henry VIII. had always spent money lavishly. His father’s immense hoards had disappeared, while England, under Wolsey, was the paymaster of Europe, and the King was in great need of funds. In England as elsewhere the wealth of the monasteries seemed to have been collected for the purpose of supplying an empty royal exchequer. A visitation of monasteries was ordered, under the superintendence of Thomas Cromwell; and, in order to give him a perfectly free hand, all episcopal functions were for the time being suspended. The visitation disclosed many scandalous things. It was followed by the Act of Parliament (1536) for The Dissolution of the Lesser Monasteries.[459] The lands of all monasteries whose annual rental was less than £200 a year were given to the King, as well as all the ornaments, jewels, and other goods belonging to them. The dislodged monks and nuns were either to be taken into the larger houses or to receive some measure of support, and the heads were to get pensions sufficient to sustain them. The lands thus acquired might have been formed into a great crown estate yielding revenues large enough to permit taxation to be dispensed with; but the King was in need of ready money, and he had courtiers to gratify. The convent lands were for the most part sold cheaply to courtiers, and the numbers and power of the county families were largely increased. A new visitation of the remaining monasteries was begun in 1538, this time accompanied with an inquiry into superstitious practices indulged in in various parts of the country, and notorious relics were removed. They were of all sorts—part of St. Peter’s hair and beard; stones with which St. Stephen was stoned; the hair shirt and bones of St. Thomas the martyr; a crystal containing a little quantity of Our Lady’s milk, “with two other bones”; the “principal relic in England, an angel with one wing that brought to Caversham (near Reading) the spear’s head that pierced the side of our Saviour on the cross”; the ear of Malchus, which St. Peter cut off; a foot of St. Philip at Winchester “covered with gold plate and (precious) stones”; and so forth.[460] Miraculous images were brought up to London and their mechanism exposed to the crowd, while an eloquent preacher thundered against the superstition:
“The bearded crucifix called the ‘Rood of Grace’ (was brought from Maidstone, and) while the Bishop of Rochester preached it turned its head, rolled its eyes, foamed at the mouth, and shed tears,—in the presence, too, of many other famous saints of wood and stone ... the satellite saints of the Kentish image acted in the same way. It is expected that the Virgin of Walsingham, St. Thomas of Canterbury, and other images will soon perform miracles also in the same place; for the trickery was so thoroughly exposed that every one was indignant at the monks and impostors.”[461]
A second Act of Parliament followed, which vested all monastic property in the King; and this gave the King possession not only of huge estates, but also of an immense quantity of jewels and precious metals.[462] The shrine of St. Thomas at Canterbury, when “disgarnished,” yielded, it is said, no fewer than twenty-six cartloads of gold and silver.[463]
This wholesale confiscation of monastic property, plundering of shrines, and above all the report that Henry had ordered the bones of St. Thomas of Canterbury to be burned and the ashes scattered to the winds, determined Pope Paul III. to renew (Dec. 17th, 1538) the execution of his Bull of excommunication (Aug. 30th, 1535), which had been hitherto suspended. It was declared that the Bull might be published in St. Andrews or “in oppido Calistrensi” in Scotland, at Dieppe or Boulogne in France, or at Tuam in Ireland.[464] The Pope knew that he could not get it published in England itself.
The violent destruction of shrines and pilgrimage places, which had been holiday resorts as well as places of devotion, could not fail to create some popular uneasiness, and there were other and probably deeper roots of discontent. England, like other nations, had been suffering from the economic changes which were a feature of the times. One form peculiar to England was that wool-growing had become more profitable than keeping stock or raising grain, and landed proprietors were enclosing commons for pasture land and letting much of their arable land lie fallow. The poor men could no longer graze their beasts on the commons, and the substitution of pasture for arable land threw great numbers out of employment. They had to sell the animals they could no longer feed, and did not see how a living could be earned; nor had they the compensation given to the disbanded monks. The pressure of taxation increased the prevailing distress. Risings took place in Yorkshire, Lancashire, and Lincolnshire, and the insurgents marched singing: