A history of England principally in the seventeenth century, Volume 1 (of 6)

CHAPTER IV.

THE SEPARATION OF THE ENGLISH CHURCH.

Already at Orvieto Stephen Gardiner had told the Pope that, if the King did not obtain justice from him, he would do himself justice in his own kingdom. Later it was plainly declared to the Pope that, if they saw the Emperor had the ascendancy in his Council, the nobility of England with the King at their head would feel themselves compelled to cast off obedience to Rome. It seems as though the Roman Court however had no real fear of this. For the King, so they said, would do himself most damage by such a step.[103] The Papal Nuncio declared himself positively convinced, that it was necessary to deal with the English sharply and forcibly, if one would gain their respect.

But these tendencies were more deeply rooted among the English than was remembered at Rome. They went back as far as the Articles of Clarendon, the projects of King John, the antipapal agitation under Edward III; the present question which involved an exceptionable and personal motive, exposed to public disapprobation, nevertheless touched on the deepest interests of the country. The wish to make the succession safe was perfectly justifiable. According to Clement VII's own declarations, the English were convinced that he was only hindered by regard for the Emperor from coming to a decision which was essential to them. His vacillation is very intelligible, very natural: but it did not correspond to the idea of the dignity with which he was clothed. There was to be an independent supreme Pontiff for this very reason, that right might be done in the quarrels of princes, without respect of persons, according to the state of the case. It clashed with the idea of the Papacy that alterations of political relations exercised such a decisive influence as they did in this matter. There was indeed something degrading for the English in their being made to feel the reaction of the Emperor's Italian victory, and his preponderance, in their weightiest affairs.

Henry VIII had now made up his mind to throw off that ecclesiastical subjection, which was politically so disadvantageous; the circumstances were very favourable. It was the time at which some German principalities, and the kingdoms of the North, had given themselves a constitution which rested on the exclusion of the hierarchic influences of Rome: the King could reckon on many allies in his enterprise. Moreover he had no dangerous hostilities to fear, as long as the jealousy lasted between the Emperor and King Francis. Between them Henry VIII needed only to revert to his natural policy of neutrality.

And the accomplishment of the affair was already prepared in the country itself, through no one more than through Cardinal Wolsey.

The dignity of legate, which was granted him by Pope Leo, and then prolonged for five, for ten years, and at last for life, gave him a comprehensive spiritual authority. He obtained by it the right of visiting and reforming all ecclesiastical persons and institutions, even those which possessed a legal exemption of their own. Some orders of monks, which contended against it, were reduced to obedience by new bulls. But from the visitation of the monasteries Wolsey proceeded to their suppression: he united old convents (such as that one which has brought down to recent times the name of an Anglo-Saxon king's daughter, Frideswitha, from the eighth century) with the splendid colleges which he endowed so richly, for the advancement of learning and the renown of his name, at Oxford and at Ipswich. His courts included all branches of the ecclesiastical and mixed jurisdiction, and the King had no scruple in arming him with all the powers of the crown which were necessary for the government of the Church. What aspirations then arose are shewn by the compact which Wolsey made with King Francis I to counteract the influence which the Emperor might exert over the captive Pope. When it was settled in this, that whatever the cardinal and the English prelates should enact with the King's consent should have the force of law, does not this imply at least a temporary schism?

When Clement became free, he named Wolsey his Vicar-General for the English Church: his position was again to be what it had been from the beginning, the expression of the unity between the Pope and the Crown. But now how if this were dissolved? The victorious Emperor exercised a still greater influence over the Pope when free than he had ever done over him when captive. Under these circumstances Wolsey submitted to the supreme spiritual power, the King resolved to withstand it: it was exactly on this point that open discord broke out between them. For a time the cardinal seemed still to maintain his courage; but when on St. Luke's day—the phrase ran that the evangelist had disevangelised him—the great seal was taken from him, he lost all self-reliance. Wolsey was not a Ximenes or a Richelieu. He had no other support than the King's favour; without this he fell back into his nothingness. He was heard to wail like a child: the King comforted him by a token of favour, probably however less out of personal sympathy than because he could not be yet quite dispensed with.[104] The High Treasurer, Norfolk, who generally acted as first minister, received the seals, and held them till some time afterwards Thomas More was named Chancellor. While these administered affairs in London, Suffolk, as President of the Privy Council, was to accompany the King in person. The chief direction of the administration passed over to the two leading lay lords.

Henry VIII's resolution to call the Parliament together was of almost greater importance for the progress of events than the alteration in the ministry.

During the fourteen years of his administration Wolsey had summoned Parliament only once, and that was when, in order to carry on the war in alliance with the Emperor against France, he needed an extraordinary grant of money. But his opening discourses were received with silence and dislike. Never, says a contemporary who was present, was the need of money more pressingly represented to a Parliament and never was there greater opposition; after a fortnight's consultation the proposal only passed at a moment when the members of the King's household and court formed the majority of thosepresent.[105] The Parliament and the country always murmured at Wolsey's oppressive and lavish finance management;[106] a later attempt to raise taxes that had not been voted doubled the outcry against him. His fall and the convocation of a Parliament seemed a return to parliamentary principles in general, which in themselves exactly agreed with the view taken by the King in the present questions.

In the first years of Henry VIII the Parliament had wished to do away with some of the most startling exemptions of the clergy from the temporal jurisdiction, for instance in reference to the crimes of felony and murder; the ecclesiastics had on the other hand extended their jurisdiction yet further, even to cases that had reference solely to questions of property. Hence the antagonism between the two jurisdictions had revived at that time with bitter keenness. It is noticeable that the temporal claims were upheld by a learned Minorite, Henry Standish, who declared it to be quite lawful to limit the ecclesiastical privileges for the sake of the public good; especially in the case of a crime that did not properly come before any spiritual court. Both sides then applied to the King: the ecclesiastics reminded him that he ought to uphold the rights of Holy Church, the laymen that he should maintain the powers of jurisdiction belonging to the crown. The King's declaration was favourable to the laymen; he recommended the clergy to acquiesce in some exceptions from their decretals. But the contest was rather suspended than decided. Wolsey's government followed, in which the spiritual courts extended their powers still further, and in reality exercised an offensive control over all the relations of private life. Even the ecclesiastics did not love his authority: they acquiesced in it because it was ecclesiastical: the laity endured it with the utmost impatience.

It was inevitable that at the first fresh assembly of a Parliament these contests about jurisdiction should be mentioned. The Lower House began its action with a detailed charge against the spiritual courts, not merely against their abuses and the oppression that arose from them, but against their very existence and their legislation; the clergy made laws without the King's foreknowledge, without the participation of any laymen, and yet the laity were bound by them. The King was called on to reconcile his subjects of the spiritual and temporal estate with each other by good laws, since he was their sole head, the sovereign, lord and protector of both parties.

It was a slight phrase.[107] 'the sole head of his subjects spiritual and temporal,' but one of the weightiest import. The very existence of the clergy as an order had hitherto depended precisely on their claim to a legislative power independent of the temporal supremacy as being their original right: on its universal maintenance rested the Papacy and its influence on the several countries. Were the clergy now to leave it to the King, who however only represented the temporal power, to adjust the differences between their legislation and that of the state? Were they, like the laity, virtually to recognise him as their Head?

It is clear that they would thus sever themselves from the great union under one spiritual Head, from the constitution of the Latin Church. Whoever it was that introduced the word 'Head,' no doubt had this in view. The King and the laity took it up, they wished only to induce the clergy themselves to come to a resolution in this sense.

The chief motive which was to serve this purpose is connected with the lordship which the Popes possessed in England in the thirteenth century, or rather with the reaction against it which went on throughout the fourteenth. This is most distinctly expressed in the statutes of 1393, which threatened with the severest penalties all participation in any attempt, to the injury of the King's supremacy, to obtain a church-benefice from Rome; and this too even where the King had given his consent to it. Clergy and laity were thus allied against the encroachments of the Roman Curia. Wolsey was now accused of having transgressed thisstatute:[108] he had in virtue of his legatine power given away benefices, and established a jurisdiction by which that of the King was encroached on; he was found guilty of this in regular form. He anticipated the full effect of this sentence by submitting without any defence and surrendering all his property to the King. It was then that York House in Westminster, with its gardens and the land adjoining, the Whitehall of later times, passed into the possession of the crown.[109] He still kept his archbishopric; we find him soon after at Caywood, the palace belonging to it, and in fact even busied once more with his buildings. At times the King again thought of his old counsellor, and to many it quite seemed as though he might yet recover power. In those days the general belief was, that Anne Boleyn had exerted her whole influence against it. But most of the other persons of distinction in court and state were also opposed to Wolsey. Did he then really, as was imputed to him, try to gain a party among the clergy, and move the Pope to pronounce excommunication against the King?[110] A pretext at any rate was found for arresting him as a traitor: but as he was being brought to the Tower, he died on the way. He wished, so far as we know, to starve himself to death; it was at that time supposed that in his wish to die he was aided by help from others.

Neither for his mental nor for his moral qualities can Wolsey be reckoned among men of the first rank; yet his position and the ability which he showed in it, his ambition and his political plans, what he did and what he suffered, his success and his fall, have won him an imperishable name in English history. His attempt to link the royal power with the Papacy by the closest ties rent them asunder for ever. No sooner was he dead than the clergy became subject to the Crown—a subjection which could forebode nothing less than this final rupture.

The whole clergy was so far involved in Wolsey's guilt that it had supported his Legatine Powers, and so had shared in the violation of the statutes. It shows the English spirit of keeping to the strict letter of the law, that the King, though he had for years given his consent and help in all this, now came forward to avenge the violation of the law. To avert his displeasure the Convocation of Canterbury was forced to vote him a very considerable sum of money, yet even this did not satisfy him. Rather it seemed to him the fitting and decisive moment for forcing the clergy, conformably with the Address of the Commons, to accept the Anglican point of view. He demanded from Convocation the express acknowledgment that they recognised him as the Protector and the Supreme Head of the Church and Clergy of England; he commanded the judges not to issue the Act of Pardon unless this acknowledgment were at once incorporated with the bill for the money payment. It is not hard to see what made him choose this exact moment for so acting; it was the serious turn which the affair of his Divorce had taken at Rome. He had once more made application to the Curia to let it be decided in England; the Cardinals discussed the point in their Consistory, Dec. 22, 1530, but resolved that the question must come of right before the Assessors of the Rota, who should afterwards report on it to the Sacred College.[111] What their sentence would be was the less doubtful, since the Curia was now linked closer than ever with the Emperor, who had just closed the Diet of Augsburg in the way they wished, and was now about to carry out its decrees. The traces of a new alliance with Rome, which was imputed to Wolsey as an act of treason, must have contributed to the same result. The King wished to break off this connexion by a Declaration, which would serve him as a standing-ground later on, and show the Court of Rome that he had nothing to fear from it. On Feb. 7, 1531, the King's demand was laid before both Houses of Convocation. Who could avoid seeing its decisive significance for the age? The clergy, which had without much trouble agreed to the money-vote, nevertheless strove long against a Declaration which altered their whole position. But a hard necessity lay on them. In default of the Pardon, which, as the judges repeatedly assured them, depended on this Declaration, they would have found themselves out of the protection of the King and the Law. They sent two bishops, to get the King's demand softened by a personal appeal; Henry VIII refused to hear them. They proposed that some members of both Houses should confer with the Privy Council and the judges; the answer was that the King wished for no discussion, he wanted a clear answer. Thus much however they ascertained, that the King would be content with a mode of statement in which he was unconditionally recognised as the protector and sovereign of the Church and clergy of England, but as its supreme head only so far as religion allows. This was comprehended in the formula in so far as is permitted by the law of Christ, an expression which men might assent to on opposite grounds. Some might accept it from seeing in it only the limitation which is set to all power by the laws of God; others from thinking that it excluded generally the influence of the secular power on what were properly spiritual matters. When the clause was laid before them, at the morning sitting of Feb. 11, it was received with an ambiguous silence; but on closer consideration, it was so evidently their only possible resource, that in the afternoon, first the Upper House of Convocation, and then the Lower, gave their consent. Then the King accepted the money-bill, and granted them in return the Act of Pardon.[112]

The clergy had yet other causes for seeking the King's protection. The writings of the Reformers, which attacked good works and vows, the Mass and the Priesthood, and all the principles on which the ecclesiastical system rested, found their way across the Channel, and filled men's minds in England also with similar convictions. The only safeguard against them lay in the King's power; his protection was no empty word, the clergy was lost if it drew on itself Henry's aversion, which was now directed against the Papal See.

The heavy weight of the King's hand and the impulse of self-preservation were however not the only reasons why they yielded. It is undeniable that the conception of the Universal Church, according to which the National Church did but form part of a larger whole, was nearly as much lost among the clergy as among the laity. In the Parliament of 1532 Convocation had presented a petition in which they desired to be released from the payments which had been hitherto made to the supreme spiritual authority, especially the annates and first-fruits. The National Church was the existing, immediate authority—why should they allow taxes to be laid on them for a distant Power, a Power moreover of which they had no need? As the bishops complained that this injured their families and their benefices, Parliament calculated the sums which Rome had drawn out of the country on this ground since Henry VII's time, and which it would soon draw at the impending vacancies; what losses the country had already suffered in this way, and would yet suffer.[113]

The tendency of men's minds in this direction showed itself also in the understanding come to on the chief question of all.

Parliament renewed its complaints of the abuses in the ecclesiastical legislation, and learned men brought out clearly the want of any divine authority to justify it; at last the bishops virtually renounced their right of special legislation, and pledged themselves for the future not to issue any kind of Ordinance or Constitution without the King's knowledge and consent. A revision of the existing canons by a mixed commission, under the presidentship of their common head, the King, was to restore the unity of legislation.

The clause was then necessarily omitted by which the recognition of the Crown's supremacy over the clergy had been hitherto limited. The defenders of the secular power put forth the largest claims. They said, the King has also the charge of his subjects' souls, the Parliament is divinely empowered to make ordinances concerning them also.[114]

So a consolidation of public authority grew up in England, unlike anything which had yet been seen in the West. One of the great statutes that followed begins with the preamble that England is a realm to which the Almighty has given all fulness of power, under one supreme head, the King, to whom the body politic has to pay natural obedience, next after God; that this body consists of clergy and laity; to the first belongs the decision in questions of the divine law and things spiritual, while temporal affairs devolve on the laity; that one jurisdiction aids the other for the due administration of justice, no foreign intervention is needed. This is the Act by which, for these very reasons, legal appeals to Rome were abolished. It was now possible to carry out what in previous centuries had been attempted in vain. All encroachments on the prerogative of the 'Imperial Crown' were to be abolished, the supreme jurisdiction of the Roman Curia was to be valid no longer; appeals to Rome were not only forbidden but subjected to penalties.

The several powers of the realm united to throw off the foreign authority which had hitherto influenced them, and which limited the national independence, as being itself a higher power.

As the oaths taken by the bishops were altered to suit these statutes, the King set himself to modify his coronation oath also in the same sense. He would not swear any longer to uphold the rights of the Church in general, but only those guaranteed to the Church of England, and not derogatory to his own dignity and jurisdiction; he did not pledge himself to maintain the peace of the Church absolutely, but only the concord between the clergy and his lay subjects according to his conscience; not, unconditionally, to maintain the laws and customs of the land, but only those that did not conflict with his crown and imperial duties. He promised favour only for the cases in which favour ought to find a place.[115]

How predominant is the strong feeling of aggrandisement, of personal right, and of kingly independence!

Henry VIII too regarded himself as a successor of Constantine the Great, who had given laws to the Church. True, said he, kings are sons of the Church, but not the less are they supreme over Christian men. Of the doctrines which came from Germany none found greater acceptance with him than this—that every man must be obedient to the higher powers. We possess Tyndale's book in which these principles are set forth; by Anne Boleyn's means it came into Henry's hands. That Pope Clement summoned him formally before his judgment-seat, he declared to be an offence to the Kingly Majesty. Was a Prince, he exclaims, to submit himself to a creature whom God had made subject to him; to humble himself before a man who, in opposition to God and Right, wished to oppress him? It would be a reversal of the ordinance of God.[116]

Whilst we follow the questions which here come into discussion—on the relations of Church and State, the rights of nations and kings—questions of infinite importance for this as for all other states, we almost lose sight of the affair of the Divorce, which had been the original cause of quarrel, and which had meanwhile moved on in the direction given it once for all. Pope Clement restrained himself as much as possible, he still more than once made advances to the King and offered him conciliatory terms; but the King had already gone too far in his separation from Rome to be able to accept them. At the beginning of 1533 he celebrated his marriage with Anne Boleyn privately. He had once, when he was still waiting for the Pope's decision, tried to influence it by favourable opinions of learned theologians.[117] With this view he had applied to the most distinguished universities in Italy and Germany, in France and in England itself; and managed to obtain a large number of decisions, by which the Pope's right of dispensation was denied; and this in spite of the constant efforts in various ways of the Imperial agents; even the two mother-universities, Bologna and Paris, had declared in his favour. He protested that he had been thereby enabled in his conscience to free himself from the yoke of an unlawful union, bordering on incest, and to proceed to another marriage. But all the more urgent was it that the legality of this marriage should be recognised according to the forms at that time lawfully valid. He no longer wished for a recognition from the Pope; he laid the question before the two Convocations of the English Church-provinces. For the general course of Church history we must admit it to be an event of the highest significance, that they dared to pronounce the dispensation of Pope Julius II invalid according to God's law. The authority hitherto regarded as the expression of God's will on earth was found guilty, by the representatives of the Church of one particular country, of transgressing that will. It now followed that the King's marriage, concluded on the strength of that dispensation, was declared by the Archbishop's court at Canterbury null and void, and invalid from the beginning. Catharine was henceforth to be treated no longer as Queen but only as still Princess-dowager.

She was unable to realise the things that were happening around her. That she was expected to renounce her rank as Queen awoke in her quite as much astonishment as anger. 'For she had not come to England,' she said, 'on mercantile business at a venture, but according to the will of the two venerated kings now dead: she had married King Henry according to the decision of the Holy Father at Rome: she was the anointed and crowned Queen of England; were she to give up her title, she would have been a concubine these twenty-four years, and her daughter a bastard; she would be false to her conscience, to her own soul, her confessor would not be able to absolve her.' She became more and more absorbed in strict Catholic religious observances. She rose soon after midnight, to be present at the mass; under her dress she wore the habit of the third order of S. Francis; she confessed twice and fasted twice a week; her reading consisted of the legends of the saints. So she lived on for two years more, undisturbed by the ecclesiastico-political statutes which passed in the English Parliament. Till the very end she regarded herself as the true Queen of England.

Immediately after the sentence on Catharine followed Anne's coronation, which was performed with all the ancient ceremonial, all the more carefully attended to because she was not born a princess. On the Thursday before Whitsuntide she was escorted from Greenwich by the Mayor and the Trades of London, in splendidly adorned barges, with musical instruments playing, till she was greeted by the cannon of the Tower. The Saturday after she went in procession through the City to Westminster. The King had created eighteen knights of the Order of the Bath. These in their new decorations, and a great part of the nobility, which felt itself honoured in Anne's elevation, accompanied her:[118] she sat on a splendid seat, supported by and slung between horses: the canopy over her was borne by the barons of the Cinque Ports; her hair was uncovered, she was charming as always, and (it appears) not without a sense of high good fortune. On Sunday she was escorted to Westminster Abbey by the Archbishop of Canterbury and six bishops, the Abbot of Westminster and twelve other abbots in full canonicals: she was in purple, her ladies in scarlet, for so old custom required; the Duke of Suffolk bore the crown before her, which was placed on her head by the hands of the archbishop. Nobles and commons greeted her with emulous devotion, the ecclesiastics joined in; they expected from her an heir to England.—Not a son, but a daughter, Elizabeth, did she then bear beneath her heart.

Anne's coronation was at the same time the complete expression of the revolt of the nation collectively from the Roman See: it is noteworthy that Pope Clement VII, in his all-calculating and temporising policy, even then reserved to himself the last word. As he had once yielded to the Emperor, to conclude his peace with him, so now again—for he did not wish to be entirely dependent on him—he had entered into close relations with King Francis, who on his side saw in the continuance of his union with England one of the conditions of his position in Europe. The political weight of England reacted indirectly on the Pope: he indeed annulled Archbishop Cranmer's decision, but he could not yet bring himself to take a further step, often as he had promised the Emperor and pledged himself in his agreements to do so.[119] Charles V supplied his ambassador at Rome with yet another means to advance (as he expressed himself) the decision of the proceedings with the Pope and with the Holy See—for he made a distinction between them. The Pope inquired of him what, after this had ensued, would then be done to carry it out. The Emperor answered, his Holiness should do what justice pledged him to do, what he could not omit if he would fulfil his duty to God and the world, and maintain his own importance; this must come first, the Church must use all its own means before it called in the temporal arm: but if the matter came to that point, he would not fail to do his part; to declare himself explicitly beforehand might excite religious scruples.[120] And however much the policy of the Pope might waver, there could be no doubt about the decision of the Rota. On the 23 March 1534 one of the auditors, Simonetta, bishop of Pesaro, made a statement on the subject in the consistory of the cardinals: there were only three among them who demanded a further delay: all the rest joined without any more consideration in the decision that Henry's marriage with Catharine was perfectly lawful, and their children legitimate and possessed of full rights. The Imperialists held this to be a great victory, they made the city ring with their cries of 'the Empire and Spain':[121] yet even then the French did not give up the hope of bringing the Pope to another mind. But meanwhile in England the last steps were already taken.

King Henry reckons it as honourable to himself that he had not yielded to the offer of the Roman Court, made to him indirectly, to decide in his favour, but had set himself against its usurped jurisdiction, without being influenced by the proposal,[122] not for himself alone but in the interest of all kings. Yet once more had he laid the question before learned ecclesiastics, whether the Pope of Rome had any authority in England by divine right; as the University of Oxford declares, their theologians had searched for this through the books of Holy Scripture and its most approved interpreters; they had compared the places, conferred with each other on them and come at last to the conclusion, to answer the King's question unreservedly in the negative. The Cambridge scholars and both Convocations declared themselves in the same sense. On this the Parliament had no scruple in abrogating piece by piece the hierarchic-Romish order of things; it was nothing but a revocable right which they had hitherto borne with. The Annates were transferred to the crown; never more was an English bishop to receive his pallium from Rome. It was made penal to apply for dispensing faculties; with their abolition the fees usually paid for them also ceased. The oldest token of the devotion of the Anglo-Saxon race to the Roman See, the Peter's penny, was definitely abolished. Care was taken that for the appeal in the last resort, hitherto made to the Roman courts, there should be a similar court at home. On the other hand the King granted a greater freedom in the election of bishops, at least in its outward forms. The existing laws against heretics were confirmed, though those independent proceedings of the bishops which had been usual in the times of the Lancasters received some limitation. For the episcopal constitution and the old doctrine were to be retained: the wish was to establish an Anglo-Catholic Church under the supremacy of the crown. The King added to his titles the designation of 'Supreme Head on earth of the Church of England immediately under God.' The Parliament awarded him the right of Visitation over the Church in reference to abuses and even to errors, as well as the right of reforming them. For the exercise moreover of the Papal authority, which so far passed over to him, he had an example before him which he had only to follow. Wolsey for a series of years, as Legate of the Pope and then as his Vicar General, had administered the English Church by means of English courts: the unity of the English common-weal had been represented in his twofold power as legate and first minister; practically it was no violent change when the King himself now appointed a Vicar General who, empowered by him, exercised this authority without any reference to the Pope. It was an assistant of Wolsey, Thomas Cromwell, who was at the same time Keeper of the Great Seal, who regulated the management of these affairs in a way not altogether new to him. From this point of view Wolsey represents exactly the man of the transition, who occupied the intermediate position in nationalising the English Church.

Though Henry VIII did not always follow in his father's footsteps, he was yet his genuine successor in the work he began. What the first Tudor achieved in the temporal domain, viz. the exclusion of foreign influence, that the second extended to spiritual affairs. The great question now was, whether the conflicting elements, in themselves independent but ceaselessly agitated by their connexion with the rest of Europe, would continue loyal to the idea of the common-weal; then even their opposition might become a new impulse and help to perfect the power of the State and the Constitution.

CHAPTER V.

THE OPPOSING TENDENCIES WITHIN THE SCHISMATIC STATE.

It was to this very statute that Bishop Fisher of Rochester and Sir Thomas More fell victims. They did not refuse to acknowledge the order of succession itself thus enacted, for this was within the competence of Parliament, but they would not confirm with their oath the reason laid down in the statute, that Henry's marriage with Catharine was against Scripture and invalid from the beginning. More ranks among the original minds of this great century: he is the first who learnt how to write English prose; but in the great currents of the literary movement he shrank back from the foremost place: after he had aided them by writings in the style of Erasmus, he set himself as Lord Chancellor of England to oppose their onward sweep with much rigour: he would not have the Church community itself touched. Of the last statute he said, it killed either the body if one opposed it, or the soul if one obeyed: he preferred to save his soul. He met his death with so lively a realisation of the future life, in which the troubles of this life would cease, that he looked on his departure out of it with all the irony which was in general characteristic of him. The fact that the Pope at this moment had named Bishop Fisher cardinal of the Roman Church seems to have still more hastened his execution. They both died as martyrs to the ideas by which England had been hitherto linked to the Church community of the West and to the authority of the Papacy.

If we turn our eyes abroad, the succession statute above all must have made a most disagreeable impression on the Emperor Charles V. He saw in it a political loss, an injury to his house, and indeed to all sovereign families, and a danger to the Church. With a view to opposing it, he formed the plan of drawing the King of France into an enterprise against England. He proposed to him the marriage of his third son, the Duke of Angoulême, with the Princess Mary, who was recognised as the only lawful heiress of England by the Apostolic See, and whose claims would then accrue to this prince.[123] And they would not be difficult, so he said, to establish, as a great part of the English abhorred the King's proceedings, his second marriage, and his divergence from the Church. At the same time the Emperor proposed the closest dynastic union of the two houses by a double marriage of his two children with a son and a daughter of Francis I. What in the whole world would he not have attained, if he had won over France to himself! His combination embraced as usual West and East, Church and State, Italian German and Northern affairs.

Perhaps the success of such a scheme was not probable; but independently of this, Henry VIII had good cause to prepare himself to meet the superior power of the Emperor, with whom he had so decidedly broken. As we have already hinted, he could have no want of allies in this struggle. It was under these circumstances that he entered into relations with the powerful demagogues who were then from their central position at Lubeck labouring to transform the North, and to sever it from all Netherlandish-Burgundian influence. But it was of still more importance to him to form an alliance with the Protestant princes and estates of Germany proper, who had gradually become a power in opposition to Pope and Emperor. In the autumn of 1535 we find English ambassadors in Germany, who attended the meeting of the League at Schmalkald, and the most serious negociations were entered on. Both sides were agreed not to recognise the Council which was then announced by the Pope, for the very reason that the Pope announced it, who had no right to do so. The German princes demanded an engagement that if one of the two parties was attacked, the other should lend no support to its enemy; for the King this was not enough; he wished, in case he was attacked, to be able to reckon on support from Germany in cavalry, infantry, and ships, in return for which he was ready to give a very considerable contribution to the chest of the League. It was even proposed that he should undertake the protection of the League.[124]

All this however was based on a presupposition, which could not but lead the English to further ecclesiastical changes. It was not a schism affecting the constitution and administration of justice, but a complete system of dissentient Church doctrines, with which Henry VIII came in contact. The German Protestants made it a condition of their alliance with England, that there should be full agreement between them as to doctrine.

We may ask whether this was altogether possible.

If we compare the Church movements and events that had taken place during the last years in Germany and in England, their great difference is visible at a glance. In Germany the movement was theological and popular, corresponding to the wants and needs of the territorial state; in England it was juridico-canonical, not connected with appeals to the people or with free preaching, but based on the unity of the nation. Though the German Diet had for a moment inclined to the Reform and had once even given it a legal sanction, it afterwards by a majority set itself against it: to carry it through became now the part of the minority, the Protesting party. In England on the contrary all proceeded from the plan of the sovereign and the resolutions of Parliament, in which the bishops themselves with few exceptions took part. Perhaps a more deep-seated ground of difference may be that the German bishops were more independent than the English, and that an Emperor was then ruling who, being at the same time King of Spain and Naples, troubled himself little about the unity of Germany in particular; while in England a newly-formed strong political power existed which made the national interests its own and upheld them on all sides.

Despite all this the English Schism had nevertheless a deep inner analogy with the German Reformation.

From the beginning the dispute as to jurisdiction was based on the historical point of view, on which Luther too laid much stress. Standish, who has been already mentioned, derived the right to limit the ecclesiastical prerogatives, from this among other grounds, that there were Christian churches in which they were altogether rejected, for instance the rule as to the celibacy of the clergy was not accepted by the Greeks. He inferred too, that, as no one disputed the claim of the Greek Church to be Christian, the conception of the universal Church must be different from that which Romanism asserts. Both countries also found the groundwork of the true church-community in Scripture. In the chief instance before them, that of the divorce, the German theologians were not of the same mind as the English; but both sides agreed in this, that there was a revealed will of God, which the ecclesiastical power might not contravene: the conviction took root that the Papacy did not represent the highest communion of men with divine things, but that this rested on the divine record alone. The use of Scripture had at last influenced various questions in England also. For abolishing the Annates it was argued that such an impost contradicts a maxim of the Apostle Paul; for doing away the Papal jurisdiction, that no place of Scripture justifies it. This is what was meant when the assertion that the Papacy is of divine right was denied. This becomes quite clear when Henry VIII instead of the previous prohibitions against distributing the Bible in the vernacular gave his licence for it. As he once declared with great animation, the advancement of God's word and of his own authority were one and the same thing.[125] The engraved title-page of the translation which appeared with his privilegium puts into his mouth the expression 'Thy word is a light to my feet.' The order soon followed to place a copy of the Book of books in every church: there every man might look into the disputed places, and convince himself, by this highest of codes, as to the rightfulness of the procedure that had been chosen.

But then it was impossible to stop at mere divergences of jurisdiction. The German interpretation of Scripture gained ground in every direction: a theological school grew up, though only here and there, which adhered to it more or less openly.

It must needs have had the greatest effect, that the followers of this view obtained a great number of bishoprics. The archbishopric of Canterbury had already fallen to the lot of a man who had completed his theological training in Germany: this very man, Thomas Cranmer, had carried through the divorce; his was one of those natures which must have the support of the supreme power to help them to follow out their own views; as they then appear enterprising and courageous, so do they become pliant and yielding when this favour fails them; they do not shine through moral greatness, but they are well suited to preserve, under difficult circumstances, what they have once embraced, for better times. Hugh Latimer was cast in a sterner mould; he actually dared, in the midst of the persecutions, to admonish the King, whose chaplain he was, of the welfare of his soul and his duty as King. However little this act effected for the moment, yet he may have thus contributed to enlighten the King (who now and then showed him personal goodwill) as to his title of 'Defender of the Faith.' Latimer was a fervent and effective preacher: he was made bishop of Worcester. Nicolas Shaxton, Bishop of Salisbury, Hilsey of Rochester, Bisham of S. Asaph's and then S. David's, Goodrich of Ely, were all disposed to Protestantism. Edward Fox who had been named Bishop of Hereford, had at Schmalkald openly declared the Pope to be Antichrist, and assured the Protestants in the strongest manner of his sovereign's inclination to attach himself to their Confession. It was the grand union of these biblical scholars among the bishops, which in the Convocation of 1536 undertook to carry through the work of drawing their church nearer that of Germany. Latimer opened the war by a fervent sermon against image-worship, indulgences, purgatory, and other doctrines or rites which were at variance with the Bible. Cranmer proved that Holy Scripture contains all that is necessary for man to know for the salvation of his soul, and that tradition is not needed. The Bishop of Hereford communicated it, as an experience of his journey, that the laity everywhere would now be instructed only out of the Revelation. Thomas Cromwell, who took part in the sittings as the King's representative, lent them much support, and once brought with him a Scottish scholar who had just returned from Wittenberg, to combat the received doctrine of the Sacrament.[126] On the other side also stood men of weight and consideration, Lee archbishop of York who had expressly opposed himself, together with his clergy, to the adoption of the King's new title, Stokesley of London who broke a lance for the seven sacraments, Gardiner of Winchester and Longland of Lincoln who after contributing materially to the King's divorce nevertheless rejected any alteration in doctrine, Tonstall of Durham, Nix of Norwich.

It seems as though the King, who was still busied in the Parliament itself with the confirmation of his church regulations, thought he detected in this party too much predilection for the Papacy. He found another motive in the necessity of having allies for the coming Council; he decisively took the side of Reform. Ten articles were laid before the Convocation in his name, the first five of which are taken from the Augsburg Confession or from the commentaries on it; as to these the Bishop of Hereford agreed with the theologians of Wittenberg. In them the faithful were referred exclusively to the contents of the Bible, and the three oldest creeds; only three sacraments were still recognised, Baptism, Penance, and the Lord's Supper. The real presence was maintained in them, in the words of those commentaries, and entirely in Luther's original sense.[127] But still this tendency was not yet so strong as to be able to make itself exclusively felt. In the following articles, the veneration, even the invocation, of saints, and no small part of the existing ceremonies, were allowed—though in terms which with all their moderation cannot disguise the rejection of them in principle. Despite these limitations the document contains a clear adoption of the principles of religious reform as they were carried out in Germany. It was subscribed by 18 bishops, 40 abbots and priors, 50 members of the lower house of Convocation: the King, as the Head of the Church, promulgated it for general observance. His vicegerent in Church affairs commanded all the clergy entrusted with a cure of souls to explain the articles, and also at certain times to lay before the people the rightfulness of the abrogation of Papal authority. He required them to give warnings against image-worship, belief in modern miracles, and pilgrimages. Children were henceforth to learn the Lord's Prayer, the articles of the Creed, and the Ten Commandments in English.[128] It was the beginning of the Church service in the vernacular, which was rightly regarded as the chief means of withdrawing the national Church from Romish influence.

But Cromwell was also engaged in another enterprise, not less hostile and injurious to the Papacy.

As many of the great men in State and Church thought, so thought also the pious members of the monasteries and cloistered convents; they opposed the Supremacy, not as they said from inclination to disobedience, but because Holy Mother Church ordered otherwise than King and Parliament ordained.[129] The apology merely served to condemn them. In the rules they followed, in the Orders to which they belonged, the intercommunion of Latin Christianity had its most living expression; but it was exactly this which King and Parliament wished to sever. Wolsey had already, as we know, and with the help of Cromwell himself, taken in hand to suppress many of them: but in the new order of things there was absolutely no more place for the monastic system; it was necessarily sacrificed to the unity of the country, and at the same time to the greed of the great men.

But it cannot be imagined that innovations which struck so deep could be carried through without opposition. After all the efforts of the old kings to establish Christianity in agreement with Rome, after the victories of the Papacy when the kings quarrelled with it, and the violent suppression of all dissent, it was inevitable that the belief of the hierarchic ages, which is besides so peculiarly adapted to this end, had in England as elsewhere sunk deep into men's minds, and in great measure still swayed them. Was what had been always held for heresy no longer to merit this name because it was avowed by the ruling powers? In the northern counties neither the clergy nor the people would hear of the King's supremacy; they continued to pray for the Pope; Cromwell's injunctions were disregarded. It may be that horrible abuses and vices were prevalent in the cloisters, but all did not labour under such reproaches; many were objects of reverence in their own districts, and centres of hospitality and charity. It would have been wonderful if their violent destruction had not excited popular discontent. And this temper was shared by those who enjoyed the chief consideration in the provinces. Among the nobles there were still men like Lord Darcy of Templehurst, who had borne arms against the Moors in the service of Isabella and Ferdinand: how offensive to them must innovations be which ran counter to all their reminiscences! The lords in these provinces were believed to have pledged their word to each other to suppress the heresies, as they called the Protestant opinions, together with their authors and abettors. The country people, who apprehended yet further encroachments, were easily stirred up to commotion; collections of money were made from house to house, and the strongest men of each parish provided with the necessary weapons: in the autumn of 1536 open revolt broke out. A lawyer, Robert Aske, placed himself at its head; he set before the people all the damage that the suppression of the monasteries did to the country around, by diverting their revenues and abstracting their treasures. In a short time he had gained over the whole of the North. The city of York joined him; Darcy admitted him into the strong castle of Pomfret: in that broad county only one single castle still held out in its obedience to the government: then the neighbouring districts also were carried away by the movement: Aske saw an army of thirty thousand men around him. He took the road to London to, as he said, drive base-born men out of the King's council, and restore the Christian church in England: he called his march a 'Pilgrimage of Grace.' But when he came into contact with royal troops at Doncaster he paused; for it was not a war, which would cost the country too dear, but only a great armed remonstrance in favour of the old system that he contemplated. He contented himself with presenting his demands—suppression of heresies, restitution of the supreme charge of souls to the Pope, restoration of the monasteries, and in particular the punishment of Cromwell with his abettors, and the calling of a Parliament.[130]

When we consider that Ireland was in revolt, Cornwall in a state of ferment, men's Catholic sympathies stirred up by foreign princes, it is easy to understand how some voices in the King's Privy Council were raised in favour of concession. Henry VIII, a true Tudor, was not the man to give in on such a point. He upbraided the rebels in haughty words with their ignorance and presumption, and repeated that all he did and ordered was in conformity with God's law and for the interests of the country; but it was mainly by promising to call a Parliament at York that he really laid the gathering storm. But at the first breach of the law that occurred he revoked this promise;[131] if he had relaxed the maintenance of his prerogative for a moment, he exercised it immediately after all the more relentlessly. He at last got all the leaders of the revolt into his hands, and appeared to the world to be conqueror. But we cannot for this reason hold that the movement did not react upon him. His plan was not, and in fact could not be, to incur the hostility of his people or endanger the crown for the sake of dogmatic opinions. True, he held to his order that the Bible should be promulgated in the English tongue, for his revolt from the hierarchy, and demand of obedience from all estates, rested on God's written word: nor did he allow himself to swerve from the legally enacted suppression of the monasteries; but he abandoned further innovations, and an altered tendency displayed itself in all his proclamations. Even during the troubles he called on the bishops to observe the usual church ceremonies: he put forth an edict against the marriage of priests (although he had been inclined to allow it) from regard to popular opinion. The importation of books printed abroad, and any publication of a work in England itself without a previous censorship, were again prohibited. Processions, genuflexions, and other pious usages, in church and domestic life, were once more recommended. The sharpest edicts went forth against any dissent from the strict doctrine of the Sacrament and against any extreme variations in doctrine. The King actually appeared in person to take part in confuting the misbelievers. He would prove to the world that he was no heretic.

It had also already become evident that no invasion by the Emperor was at present impending. Soon after his overtures to the King of France, Charles V perceived that he could not win him over to his side. In the Spanish Council of State they took it into consideration that Henry VIII, if anything was undertaken against him, would at all times have the King of France on his side, and in his passionate temperament might be easily instigated to take steps which they would rather avoid.[132] After Catharine's death they made mutual advances, which it is true did not bring about a good understanding, but yet excluded actual hostilities. It would only disturb our view if we were here to follow one by one the manifold fluctuations in the course of these political relations and negociations. One motive in favour of peace under all circumstances was supplied by the ever-growing commerce between England and the Netherlands, on which the prosperity of both countries depended, and the destruction of which would have been injurious to the sovereigns themselves. When, some time after, the prospect of an alliance with France against England was presented to him by the interposition of the new Pope, Paul III, Charles declined it. He remarked that the German Protestants, to whom his attention must be mainly directed, would be strengthened by it.[133] At the most an interruption of this system could only be expected in case civil disturbances in England invited the Emperor to make a sudden attack. Once it even appeared as if a Yorkist movement might be combined with the religious agitation. A descendant of Edward IV, the Marquis of Exeter, formed the plan of marrying the Princess Mary, and undertaking the restoration of the old church system. He found much sympathy in the country for this plan; the co-operation of the Emperor with him might have been very dangerous.

Henry lost no time in fortifying the harbours and coasts against such an attack.

But the chief means of preventing all dangers of this kind lay in cutting from under them the ground on which they rested. Henry VIII was not minded to yield a jot of the full power he had inherited: on the contrary his supremacy in church matters was confirmed in 1539 by a new act of Parliament: another finally ordained the suppression of the greater abbeys also, whose revenues served to endow some new bishoprics, but mainly passed into the possession of the Crown and the Lords: the unity of the Church and the exclusive independence of the country were still more firmly established. But the more Henry was resolved to abide by his constitutional innovations, the more necessary it seemed to him, in reference to doctrine, to avoid any deviation that could be designated as heretical. And though he some years before made advances to the Protestants because he needed their support against the Emperor and the Pope, things were now on the contrary in such a state that he could feel himself all the safer, the less connexion he had with the Germans. Under quite different auspices of home and foreign politics was the religious debate, that had led in 1536 to the Ten Articles, resumed three years later. The bishops who held to the old belief were as steady as ever and, so far as we know, bound together still more closely by a special agreement. They knew how to get rid of the old suspicion of their having thought of restoring the Papal supremacy and jurisdiction, by showing complete devotion to the King. On the other hand the Protestants had suffered a very sensible loss in Bishop Fox of Hereford, who had always possessed much influence over the King, but had died lately. An understanding between the two parties on questions which were dividing the whole world was not to be thought of; they confronted each other as irreconcilable antagonists. The debates were transferred on Norfolk's proposal to Parliament and Convocation; at last it was thought best that each of the two parties should bring in the outline of a bill expressing its own views. This was done: but first both bills were delivered to the King, on whose word, according to the prevailing point of view, the decision mainly depended. We may as it were imagine him with the two religious schemes in his hand. On the one side lay progressive innovation, increasing ferment in the land, and alliance with the Protestants: on the other, change confined to the advantages already gained by the crown, the contentment of the great majority of the people, who adhered to the old belief, peace and friendship with the Emperor. The King himself too had a liking for the doctrines he had acknowledged from his youth. The balance inclined in favour of the bishops of the old belief: Henry gave their bill the preference. It was the bloody bill of the Six Articles, mainly, so far as we know, the work of Bishop Gardiner of Winchester.