But we must glance at England, though the story of its defection is so well known that we will not do more than pencil the outlines of the conflict on this occasion. After twenty years of married life, without a scruple to mar his domestic peace, without a breath of scandal to sully the fair fame of the queen, Henry VIII. suddenly strives to obtain a divorce from his wife, Catharine of Aragon, that he may marry one who is already his mistress and the acknowledged head of his court. A faithful son of the church until a personal test of fidelity is demanded from him, he had already refuted Luther's errors, and gained the title of “Defender of the Faith.” But passion blinds him, and everywhere he seeks a sanction for his unrestrained license. He applies to Rome and to Wittenberg: the latter answers in a deprecatory tone, “Rather than divorce your wife marry two queens”; the former, in the person of Clement VII., urges him to desist from his unlawful courses. Repulsed [pg 599] the first time, the pope sends Cardinal Campeggio, his legate, to treat of the matter with Cardinal Wolsey; they summon the queen to their presence; she refuses point-blank, and appeals directly to Rome.
In 1531, Cromwell, the astute and traitorous protégé of Wolsey, suggests schism to the king as a means to the desired end. Henry, knowing the corrupt and venal state of the clergy in England, eagerly accepts the proposals, and instantly attempts to enforce a declaration of his supreme headship of the English Church by putting in force, against the clergy, several obsolete statutes of Norman origin, named “præmunire”; the whole ecclesiastical body is threatened with the punishment of attainder due to high treason, and to save the rest they offer the king a ransom of £100,000 (equal at that period to at least four times that sum according to modern computation). The king only accepts this amount with the supplementary condition of the “oath of supremacy.” At one stroke the episcopate is gagged, and schism practically effected. Meanwhile, Cranmer is sent to Rome to apply anew for the divorce.
His mission proved unsuccessful, and on his return a final council was held at Dunstable, Bedfordshire, where, however, the queen refused again to appear, and was therefore condemned as contumacious. Shortly after, at Lambeth, her marriage was annulled, and her daughter, the Princess Mary, declared illegitimate. Pope Clement VII. threatened to excommunicate the king; Henry never heeded him. A public consistory, held at Rome in 1534, reversed the Lambeth decision, but the die was already cast, and the complaisant parliament was ready to confirm Henry in all his desires. More's and Fisher's were the only dissentient voices heard throughout the kingdom; we know at what cost their courageous protest was raised. A reign of blood was inaugurated; confiscations enriched the royal treasury, and the servile episcopate bent to the shameful yoke like one man. Of the Franciscan friars, Peyto and Elston, who dared to preach to the king's face against his adulterous union, the Protestant historian Cobbett says: “They were not fanatics, as some have said; they were the defenders of morality and order, and I know of no instance in ancient or modern history of a greater and nobler heroism than this.”[218]
In 1536, Queen Catharine died, and the same year was performed the marriage of Henry with Anne Boleyn by a Catholic chaplain, who was ordered to say Mass early one morning by the king, Henry falsely alleging that he had in his possession the newly arrived permission from Rome. But passion is no foundation whereon to build a permanent and happy domestic life. Anne's immorality matched Henry's, and ere long she was accused, vaguely, it is true, of treason, adultery, and incest. Her supposed accomplices and lovers were all executed, and she herself, in cruel derision, condemned on the 15th of May, 1536, to be executed on the 19th, while, on the intermediate 17th, the Archbishop of Canterbury, according to his royal master's orders, declared her marriage annulled, and her daughter Elizabeth illegitimate. Thus she was first proved to have never been the king's lawful wife, and then beheaded for infidelity to the man who had never been her husband. Of Henry's subsequent wives and his methods of disposing of them we need say nothing; the separation from Rome had won him a sad independence [pg 600] of the only tribunal once recognized by kings, and divorce, adultery, and consequent murder had already begun the dark record which has ever since steadily increased in England.
The church was the only bulwark adequate to resist that flood of violent and powerful passions which kingly supremacy naturally incites and fosters, and, in breaking with the church, the licentious sovereigns of the XVIth century acted indeed with the wisdom of the children of this world. Still the church stood fast, sad but not conquered; the Mosaic law stood fast, passing into the dicta of society even where it was exiled from the legal courts—for who does not attach even now some idea of obloquy to a divorced or impure person?—still history pointed to the inevitable punishments that fall on the adulterer, and of which the “churches” so-called, born of royal adultery, have invariably been palpable monuments.
In our days, who can doubt that that church alone which guarantees the sanctity and indissolubility of marriage can hope to become the saviour and regenerator of modern society; that that church alone which protects and ennobles woman can remain triumphant in lands where woman's influence is slowly leavening the whole social mass; who can doubt that that church alone which can trace its uncompromising laws back to Mount Sinai can hope to retain the moral mastery over the unruly ages to come, even to that age which shall witness the Last Judgment and the final condemnation?
Fleurange.
By Mrs. Craven, Author Of “A Sister's Story.”
Translated From The French, With Permission.