The General Assembly of the Reformed Church of Scotland met for the first time in 1560; and thereafter, in spite of the struggle in which the Church was involved, meetings were held generally twice a year, sometimes oftener, and the Church was organised for active work.
A third book, variously called The Book of Common Order,[343] The Order of Geneva, and now frequently Knox’s Liturgy, was a directory for the public worship and services of the Church. It was usually bound up with a metrical version of the Psalms, and is often spoken of as the Psalm Book.
Calvin’s Catechism was translated and ordered to be used for the instruction of the youth in the faith. Later, the Heidelberg Catechism was translated and annotated for the same purpose. They were both superseded by Craig’s Catechism, which in its turn gave way to the Larger and Shorter Catechisms of the Westminster Divines.[344]
The democratic ideas of Presbyterianism, enforced by the practical necessity of trusting in the people, made the Scotch Reformers pay great attention to education. All the leaders of the Reformation, whether in Germany, France, or Holland, had felt the importance of enlightening the commonalty; but perhaps Scotland and Holland were the two countries where the attempt was most successful. The education of the people was no new thing in Scotland; and although in the troublous times before and during the Reformation high schools had disappeared and the Universities had decayed, still the craving for learning had not altogether died out. Knox and his friend George Buchanan had a magnificent scheme of endowing schools in every parish, high schools or colleges in all important towns, and of increasing the power and influence of the Universities. Their scheme, owing to the greed of the Barons, who had seized the Church property, was little more than a devout imagination; but it laid hold on the mind of Scotland, and the lack of endowments was more than compensated by the craving of the people for education. The three Universities of St. Andrews, Glasgow, and Aberdeen took new life, and a fourth, the University of Edinburgh, was founded. Scotch students who had been trained in the continental schools of learning, and who had embraced the Reformed faith, were employed to superintend the newly-organised educational system of the country, and the whole organisation was brought into sympathy with the everyday life of the people by the preference given to day schools over boarding schools, and by a system of inspection by the most pious and learned men in each circle of parishes. Knox also was prepared to order compulsory attendance at school on the part of two classes of society, the upper and the lower—the middle class he thought might be trusted to its own natural desire for learning; and he wished to see the State so exercise power and patronage as to lay hold on all youths “of parts” and compel them to proceed to the high schools and Universities, that the commonwealth might get the greatest good of their service.
The form of Church government given in the First Book of Discipline represented rather an outline requiring to be filled in than a picture of what actually existed for many a year after 1560. It provided for a form of Church government by ecclesiastical councils rising from the Session of the individual congregation up to a National Assembly, and its first requisite was a fully organised church in every parish ruled by a minister with his Session or council of Elders and his body of Deacons. But there was a great lack of men having the necessary amount of education to be ordained as ministers, and consequently there were few fully equipped congregations. The first court in existence was the Kirk-Session; it was in being in every organised congregation. The second in order of time was the General Assembly. Its first meeting was in Edinburgh, Dec. 20th, 1560. Forty-two members were present, of whom only six were ministers. These were the small beginnings from which it grew. The Synods came into existence later. At first they were yearly gatherings of the ministry of the Superintendent’s district, to which each congregation within the district was asked to send an Elder and a Deacon. The Court of the Presbytery came latest into existence; it had its beginnings in the “weekly exercise.”
The work had been rapidly done. Barely a year had elapsed between the return of Knox to Scotland and the establishment of the Reformed religion by the Estates. Calvin wrote from Geneva (Nov. 8th, 1559):
“As we wonder at success incredible in so short a time, so also we give great thanks to God, whose special blessing here shines forth.”
And Knox himself, writing from the midst of the battle, says:[345]
“We doe nothing but goe about Jericho, blowing with trumpets, as God giveth strength, hoping victorie by his power alone.”[346]
But dangers had been imminent; shot at through his window, deadly ambushes set, and the man’s powers taxed almost beyond endurance:
“In twenty-four hours I have not four free to naturall rest and ease of this wicked carcass ... I have nead of a good and an assured horse, for great watch is laid for my apprehension, and large money promissed till any that shall kyll me.”[347]
If the victory had been won, it was not secured. The sovereigns Mary and Francis had refused to ratify the Acts of their Estates; and it was not until Mary was deposed in 1567 that the Acts of the Estates of 1560 were legally placed on the Statute Book of Scotland. Francis II. died in 1560 (Dec. 5th), and Mary the young and widowed Queen returned to her native land (Aug. 19th, 1561). Her coming was looked forward to with dread by the party of the Reformation.
There was abundant reason for alarm. Mary was the Stuart Queen; she represented France, the old hereditary ally; she had been trained from childhood by a consummate politician and deadly enemy of the Reformation, her uncle the Cardinal of Lorraine, to be his instrument to win back Scotland and England to the deadliest type of Romanism. She was a lovely creature, and was, besides, gifted with a power of personal fascination greater than her physical charms, and such as no other woman of her time possessed; she had a sweet caressing voice, beautiful hands; and not least, she had a gift of tears at command. She had been brought up at a Court where women were taught to use all such charms to win men for political ends. The Escadron volant de la Reine had not come into existence when Mary left France, but its recruits were ready, and some of them had been her companions. She had made it clearly understood that she meant to overthrow the Reformation in Scotland.[348] Her unscrupulous character was already known to Knox and the other Protestant leaders. Nine days before her marriage she had signed deeds guaranteeing the ancient liberties and independence of Scotland; six days after her marriage she and her husband had appended their signatures to the same deeds; but twenty days before her wedding she had secretly signed away these very liberties, and had made Scotland a mere appanage of France.[349] They suspected that the party in France whose figure-head she was, would stick at no crime to carry out their designs, and had shown what they were ready to do by poisoning four of the Scotch Commissioners sent to Paris for their young Queen’s wedding, because they refused to allow Francis to be immediately crowned King of Scotland.[350] They knew how apt a pupil she had already shown herself in their school, when she led her boy husband and her ladies for a walk round the Castle of Amboise, to see the bodies of dozens of Protestants hung from lintels and turrets, and to contemplate “the fair clusters of grapes which the grey stones had produced.”[351]
It was scarcely wonderful that Lord James, Morton, and Lethington, were it not for obedience’ sake, “cared not thoughe theie never saw her face,” and felt that there was no safety for them but in Elizabeth’s protection. As for Knox, we are told: “Mr. Knox is determined to abide the uttermost, and others will not leave him till God have taken his life and theirs together.”[352] What use might she not make of these fascinations of hers on the vain, turbulent nobles of Scotland? Is it too much to say that but for the passionate womanly impulse—so like a Stuart[353]—which made her fling herself first into the arms of Darnley and then of Bothwell, and but for Knox, she might have succeeded in re-establishing Popery in Scotland and in reducing Protestant England?
Cecil himself was not without his fears, and urged the Protestants in Scotland to stand firm. Randolph’s answer shows how much he trusted Knox’s tenacity, however much he might sometimes deprecate his violence:
“Where your honour exhortethe us to stowteness, I assure you the voyce of one man is hable in one hower to put more lyf in us than five hundred trompettes contynually blusteringe in our eares.”[354]
He was able to write after Mary’s arrival:
“She (Mary) was four days without Mass; the next Sunday after arrival she had it said in her chapel by a French priest. There were at it besides her uncles and her own Household, the Earle of Montrose, Lord Graham ... the rest were at Mr. Knox sermon, as great a number as ever was any day.”[355]
Mary’s advisers, her uncles, knew how dangerous the state of Scotland was for their designs, and counselled her to temporise and gradually win over the leading Reforming nobles to her side. The young Queen entered on her task with some zest. She insisted on having Mass for her own household; but she would maintain, she promised, the laws which had made the Mass illegal in Scotland; and it says a great deal for her powers of fascination and dissimulation that there was scarcely one of the Reforming nobles that she did not win over to believe in her sincerity at one time or another, and that even the sagacious Randolph seemed for a time to credit that she meant what she said.[356] Knox alone in Scotland read her character and paid unwilling tribute to her abilities from his first interview with her.[357]
He saw that she had been thoroughly trained by her uncles, and especially by the Cardinal of Lorraine, and that it was hopeless to expect anything like fair dealing from her:
“In verry dead hir hole proceadings do declayr that the Cardinalles lessons ar so deaplie prented in hir heart, that the substance and the qualitie ar liek to perische together. 1 wold be glaid to be deceaved, but I fear I shall not. In communication with her, I espyed such craft as I have not found in such aige.”[358]
Maitland of Lethington thought otherwise. Writing to Cecil (Oct. 25th, 1561) he says:
“You know the vehemency of Mr. Knox spreit, which cannot be brydled.... I wold wishe he shold deale with her more gently, being a young princess unpersuaded.”[359]
It was thought that Mary might be led to adopt the Reformation if she were only tenderly guided. When Mary’s private correspondence is read, when the secret knowledge which her co-religionists abroad had of her designs is studied and known, it can be seen how true was Knox’s reading of her character and of her intentions.[360] He stood firm, almost alone at times among the leading men, but faithfully supported by the commons of Scotland.[361]
Then began the struggle between the fascinating Queen, Mary Stuart, one of the fairest flowers of the French Renaissance, and the unbending preacher, trained in the sternest school of the Reformation movement—a struggle which was so picturesque, in which the two opponents had each such strongly marked individuality, and in which the accessories were so dramatic, that the spectator insensibly becomes absorbed in the personal side of the conflict, and is tempted to forget that it was part of a Revolution which was convulsing the whole of middle and western Europe.
A good deal has been written about the rudeness with which Knox assailed Mary in public and in private, and his conversations with her are continually referred to but seldom quoted in full. It is forgotten that it was Mary who wished to try her gifts of fascination on the preacher, just as Catherine de’ Medici tried to charm de Bèze before Poissy; that Knox never sought an interview; that he never approached the Court unless he was summoned by the sovereign to her presence; that he was deferential as a subject should be; and it was only when he was compelled by Mary herself to speak on themes for which he was ready to lay down his life that he displayed a sternness which monarchs seldom experience in those to whom they give audience. What makes these interviews stand forth in history is that they exhibit the first clash of autocratic kingship and the hitherto unknown power of the people. It was an age in which sovereigns were everywhere gaining despotic power, when the might of feudal barons was being broken, when the commonalty was dumb. A young Queen, whose training from childhood had stamped indelibly on her character that kingship meant the possession of unlimited autocratic privileges before which everything must give way, who had seen that none in France had dared dispute the will of her sickly, dull boy-husband simply because he was King, was suddenly confronted by something above and beyond her comprehension:
“‘What have ye to do,’ said sche, ‘with my marriage? Or what ar ye within this Commounwealth?’ ‘A subject borne within the same,’ said he, ‘Madam. And albeit I neather be Erle, Lord, nor Barroun within it, yitt hes God maid me (how abject that ever I be in your eyes) a profitable member within the same.’”[362]
Modern democracy came into being in that answer. It is curious to see how this conflict between autocratic power and the civil and religious rights of the people runs through all the interviews between Mary and Knox, and was, in truth, the question of questions between them.[363]
It is unnecessary to tell the story of the seven years of struggle between 1560 and 1567. In the end, Mary was imprisoned in Lochleven Castle, deposed, and her infant son, James VI., was placed on the throne. Lord James Stewart, Earl of Moray, was made Regent. The Estates or Parliament again voted the Confession of Faith, and engrossed it in their Acts. The Regent, acting for the sovereign, signed the Acts. The Confession thus became part of the law of the land, and the Reformed Church was legally recognised in Scotland.
BOOK IV.
THE REFORMATION IN ENGLAND
CHAPTER I.
THE CHURCH OF HENRY VIII.[364]
The Church and people of England broke away from the mediæval papal ecclesiastical system in a manner so exceptional, that the rupture had not very much in common with the contemporary movements in France and Germany. Henry VIII. destroyed the papal supremacy, spiritual and temporal, within the land which he governed; he cut the bands which united the Church of England with the great Western Church ruled over by the Bishop of Rome; he built up what may be called a kingly papacy on the ruins of the jurisdiction of the Pope. His starting-point was a quarrel with the Pope, who refused to divorce him from Catharine of Aragon.
It would be a mistake, however, to think that Henry’s eagerness to be divorced from Catharine accounts for the English Reformation. No king, however despotic, could have forced on such a revolution unless there was much in the life of the people that reconciled them to the change, and evidence of this is abundantly forthcoming.
There was a good deal of heresy, so called, in England long before Luther’s voice had been heard in Germany. Men maintained that the tithes were exactions of covetous priests, and were not sanctioned by the law of God; they protested against the hierarchical constitution of the mediæval Church; they read the Scriptures, and attended services in the vernacular; and they scoffed at the authority of the Church and attacked some of its doctrines. Lollardy had never died out in England, and Lollardy was simply the English form of that passive protest against the mediæval Church which under various names had maintained itself in France, Germany, and Bohemia for centuries in spite of persecution. Foxe’s Acts and Monuments show that there was a fairly active repression of so-called heresy in England before Luther’s days, and his accounts are confirmed by the State Papers of the period. In 1511, Andreas Ammonius, the Latin secretary of Henry VIII., writing to Erasmus, says that wood has grown scarce and dear because so much was needed to burn heretics, “and yet their numbers grow.” Yet Dr. James Gairdner declares that only a solitary pair had suffered during that year at the stake![365] Early in 1512 the Archbishop of Canterbury summoned a meeting of convocation for the express purpose of arresting the spread of heresy;[366] in that same year Erasmus was told by More that the Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum were popular everywhere throughout England;[367] and a commission was given to the Bishop of Coventry and others to inquire about Lollards in Wales and other parts;[368] and as late as 1521 the Bishop of London arrested five hundred Lollards.[369] In 1530, Henry VIII. himself, always curious about theology and anxious to know about the books which interested his subjects, sent to Oxford for a copy of the Articles on which Wiclif had been condemned.[370] Anyone who scoffed at relics or pilgrimages was thought to be a Wiclifite.[371] In 1531, divinity students were required to take an oath to renounce the doctrines of Wiclif, Hus, and Luther;[372] and in 1533, More, writing to Erasmus, calls Tyndale and his sympathisers Wiclifites.[373] Henry VIII. was engaged as early as 1518 in composing a book against heresy and vindicating the claims of the Roman See, which in its first inception could scarcely be directed against Luther, and probably dealt with the views of home heretics.[374] Some modern historians are inclined to find a strong English revolt against Rome native to the soil and borrowing little or nothing from Luther, which they believe to have been the initial force at work in shaping the English Reformation. Mr. Pollard points out that in many particulars this Reformation followed the lines laid down by Wiclif. Its leaders, like Wiclif, denounced the Papal Supremacy on the ground of the political injury it did to the English people; declaimed against the sloth, immorality, and wealth of the English ecclesiastics; advocated a preaching ministry; and looked to the secular power to restrain the vices and reform the manners of the clergy, and to govern the Church. He shows that
“most of the English Reformers were acquainted with Wycliffe’s works: Cranmer declares that he set forth the truth of the Gospel; Hooper recalls how he resisted ‘the popish doctrine of the Mass’; Ridley, how he denied transubstantiation; and Bale, how he denounced the friars.... Bale records with triumph that, in spite of the efforts to suppress (the writings of Wicliffe), not one had utterly perished.”[375]
And Dr. Rashdall goes the length of saying:
“It is certain that the Reformation had virtually broken out in the secret Bible-readings of the Cambridge Reformers before either the trumpet-call of Luther or the exigencies of Henry VIII.’s personal and political position set men free once more to talk openly against the Pope and the monks, and to teach a simpler and more spiritual gospel than the system against which Wycliffe had striven.”[376]
Even if it be admitted that these statements are somewhat strong, they at least call attention to the fact of the vigorous Lollard leaven which permeated the English people, and are a very necessary corrective of the misleading assertions of Dr. James Gairdner on the matter.
Henry VIII. had other popular forces behind him—the rooted dislike to the clergy which characterised a large mass of the people, the effects of the teaching of the Christian Humanists of England, and the spread of Lutheran opinions throughout the land.
The Bishop of London, writing to Wolsey about the proposal to try his Chancellor, Dr. Horsey, for complicity in the supposed murder of Richard Hunne, declared that if the Chancellor
“be tried by any twelve men in London, they be so maliciously set in favorem hæreticæ pravitatis that they will cast and condemn any clerk though he were as innocent as Abel.”[377]
This dislike was not confined to the capital. The Parliaments showed themselves anti-clerical long before Henry had thrown off his allegiance to Rome;[378] and Englishmen could find no better term of insult to throw at the Scots than to call them “Pope’s men.”[379]
Nor should the work of the Christian Humanists be forgotten. The double tendency in their longings for a reformation of the abuses of superstition, of pilgrimages, of relic-worship, etc., may be seen in the lives of Sir Thomas More and of William Tyndale. When the former saw that reform meant the breaking up of the mediæval Church, he became more and more conservative. But More in 1520 (Feb. 28th) could write to Lea that if the Pope (Leo X.) should withdraw his approval of Erasmus’ Greek New Testament, Luther’s attacks on the Holy See were piety itself compared with such a deed.[380] Tyndale, the favourite pupil of Dean Colet, on the other hand, went forward and earned the martyr’s crown. These Christian Humanists had expected much from Henry VIII., whom they looked on as imbued with the New Learning; and in the end perhaps they were not altogether mistaken. If the Bishops’ Book and the King’s Book be studied, it will be seen that in both what is insisted upon is a reformation of conduct and a study of the Bible—quite in the spirit of Colet and of Erasmus.
The writings of Luther found early entrance into England, and were read by King[381] and people. A long list of them, including six copies of his work De potestate Papæ, is to be found in the stock of the Oxford bookseller, John Dorne[382] (1520). Erasmus, writing to Oecolampadius (May 15th, 1521), declares that there are many of Luther’s books in England, and hints that but for his exertions they would have been burnt.[383] That was before Luther’s official condemnation. On May 28th, Silvester, Bishop of Worcester, wrote to Wolsey from Rome announcing that the Cardinals had agreed to declare Martin a heretic, and that a Bull was being prepared on the subject.[384] The Bull itself appeared in Rome on the 15th of June; and thereafter our information about Luther’s writings in England comes from evidence of endeavours to destroy them. Warham, the Archbishop of Canterbury, wrote to Wolsey (March 8th, 1521) that he had received letters from Oxford which declared that the University was infected with Lutheranism, and that the forbidden books were in circulation there.[385] Indeed, most of the canons appointed to Wolsey’s new foundation of the Cardinal College were suspect. Cambridge was as bad, if not worse. Members of the University met at the White Horse Tavern to read and discuss Luther’s writings; the inn was called “Germany,” and those who frequented it “the Germans.” Pope Leo urged both the King and Wolsey to prevent the circulation of Lutheran literature; and they did their best to obey. We read that on May 12th, 1521, Wolsey went in great state to St. Paul’s, and after various ceremonies mounted a scaffold, seated himself “under a cloth of estate,” and listened to a sermon preached by Bishop Fisher against Lutheran errors. At his feet on the right side sat the Pope’s ambassadors and the Archbishop of Canterbury, and on the left side the imperial ambassadors and the Bishop of Durham. While the sermon was being preached, numbers of Lutheran books were burnt in a huge bonfire kindled hard by in St. Paul’s Churchyard.[386] The representatives of Pope and Emperor saw it all, and doubtless reported to their respective Courts that Wolsey was doing his duty by Church and Empire. It may be doubted whether such theatrical exhibitions hindered the spread of Luther’s books in England or prevented them being read.
All these things indicated a certain preparedness in England for the Reformation, and all meant that there was a strong national force behind Henry VIII. when he at last made up his mind to defy Rome.
Nor was a national separation from Rome so formidable an affair as Dr. Gairdner would have us believe. The Papacy had secularised itself, and European monarchs were accustomed to treat the Popes as secular princes. The possibility of England breaking away from papal authority and erecting itself into a separate patriarchate under the Archbishop of Canterbury had been thought probable before the divorce was talked about.[387]
It was Henry himself who clung strenuously to the conception of papal supremacy, and who advocated it in a manner only done hitherto by canonists of the Roman Curia. Whatever be the secret reason which he gave to Sir Thomas More, and which silenced the latter’s remonstrances, it is evident that the validity of Henry’s marriage and the legitimacy of his children by Catharine of Aragon depended on the Pope being in possession of the very fullest powers of dispensation. Henry had been married to Catharine under very peculiar circumstances, which might well suggest doubts about the validity of the marriage ceremony.
The England of Henry VII. was almost as much a satellite of Spain as Scotland was of France, and to make the alliance still stronger a marriage was arranged between Arthur, Prince of Wales, and Catharine the youngest of the three daughters of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain. The Spanish Princess landed at Plymouth (October 2nd, 1501), and the wedding took place in St. Paul’s on November 14th. But Prince Arthur died a few months afterwards (April 2nd, 1502), and Catharine became a widow. The circumstances of the two nations appeared to require more than ever the cementing of the alliance by intermarriage, and it was proposed from the side of Spain that the young widow should marry Henry, her brother-in-law, now Prince of Wales.[388] Ferdinand brought pressure to bear on England by insisting that if this were not done Catharine should be sent back to Spain and the first instalment of her dowry (all that had been paid) returned. The two Kings then besieged the Pope, Julius II., to grant a dispensation for the marriage. At first His Holiness was very unwilling to consent. Such a marriage had been branded as sin by canonical law, and the Pope himself had great doubts whether it was competent for him to grant a dispensation in such a case.[389] In the end he was persuaded to give it. The two young people had their own scruples of conscience. Ferdinand felt called upon to reason with his proposed son-in-law.[390] The confessor of his daughter was changed.[391] The Archbishop of Canterbury, who doubted whether the Pope could grant dispensation for what was a mortal sin in his eyes, was silenced.[392] The wedding took place (June 11th, 1509).
The marriage was in one sense singularly unfortunate. The first four children were either stillborn or died soon after birth; and it was rumoured in Rome as early as 1514 that Henry might ask to be divorced in order to save England from a disputed succession. Mary was born in 1516 and survived, but all the children who came afterwards were either stillborn or died in early infancy. It became evident by 1525 that if Henry did not divorce his wife he would have no male heir.
There is no doubt that the lack of a male heir troubled Henry greatly. The English people had not been accustomed to a female sovereign; it was currently, if erroneously, reported in England that the laws of the land did not permit a woman to be sovereign, and such well-informed diplomatists as the Venetian Ambassadors believed the statement;[393]and the Tudor dynasty was not so firmly settled on the throne that it could afford to look forward to a disputed succession. The King’s first idea was to ask the Pope to legitimise his illegitimate son the Duke of Richmond;[394]and Cardinal Campeggio actually suggested that the Princess Mary should be married to her half-brother.[395] These projects came to an end with the death of the young Prince.
There seems to be no reason for questioning the sincerity of Henry’s doubts about the legitimacy of his marriage with Catharine, or that he actually looked upon the repeated destruction of his hopes of a male heir as a divine punishment for the sin of that contract.[396]Questions of national policy and impulses of passion quicken marvellously conscientious convictions, but they do not show that the convictions are not real. In the perplexities of his position the shortest way out seemed to be to ask the Pope to declare that he had never been legally married to Catharine. If he had scruples of conscience about his marriage with his brother’s widow, this would end them; if the fears of a disputed succession haunted him, he could marry again, and might hope for a son and a lawful heir whose succession none would dispute. Cardinal Wolsey adopted his master’s plans, and the Pope was to be asked for a declaration that the marriage with Catharine had been no marriage at all.
There entered, however, into all this, at what time it is not easy to determine, an element of sordidness which goes ill with asserted scruples of conscience and imperious necessities of State. Wolsey was astonished when he learned that Henry had made up his mind to marry Anne Boleyn, a lady whose station in life and personal reputation unfitted her for the position of Queen of England. It was Henry’s inordinate, if not very long-lived, passion for this lady that put him in the wrong, and enabled the Pope to pose as the guardian of the public morality of Europe.
It is plain that Henry VIII. fully expected that the Pope would declare his first marriage invalid; there was many a precedent for such action—two in Henry’s own family;[397] and the delay had nothing to do with the interests of public morality. The Pope was at the time practically in the power of Charles V., to whom his aunt, the injured Catharine, had appealed, and who had promised her his protection. One has only to study the phases of the protracted proceedings in the “Divorce” and compare them with the contemporary situation in Italy to see that all that the Curia cared for was the success of the papal diplomacy in the Italian peninsula. The interests of morality were so little in his mind that Clement proposed to Henry more than once that the King might take a second wife without going through the formality of having his first marriage declared null and void.[398] This had been the papal solution of the matter in an earlier instance, and Clement VII. saw no reasons why what had been allowed to a King of Spain should be denied to the King of England.[399] He was prepared to tolerate bigamy, but not to thwart Charles, so long as the Emperor was master within Italy.[400]
It is needless to follow the intricacies of the Divorce. The protracted proceedings were an object lesson for English statesmen. They saw a grave moral question—whether a man could lawfully marry his deceased brother’s widow; a matter vitally affecting the welfare of the English people—the possibility of a disputed succession; the personal wishes of a powerful, strong-willed, and choleric sovereign (for all considerations were present, not only the last)—all subjected to the shifting needs of a petty Italian prince. So far as England was concerned, the grave interest in the case ended when Campeggio adjourned the inquiry (July 23rd, 1529). Henry knew that he could not expect the Pope to give him what he wanted; and although his agents fought the case at Rome, he at once began preparing for the separation from papal jurisdiction.
The English nobles, who had long chafed under the rule of Wolsey, took advantage of the great Minister’s failure in the Divorce negotiations to press forward his downfall. He was deprived of the Lord Chancellorship, which was given to Sir Thomas More, and was further indicted before the King’s Bench for infringement of the law of Præmunire—an accusation to which he pleaded guilty.[401]
Meanwhile Henry had taken measures to summon a Parliament; and in the interval between summons and assembly, it had been suggested to him that Cranmer was of opinion that the best way to deal with the Divorce was to take it out of the hands of the Curia and consult the canonists of the various Universities of Europe. Cranmer was instructed to prepare the case to be laid before them. This was done so successfully that the two great English Universities, the French Universities of Paris, Orleans, Bourges, and Toulouse, decided that the King’s marriage with Catharine was not valid; the Italian Universities of Ferrara, Padua, Pavia, and Bologna came to the same conclusion in spite of a proclamation issued by the Pope prohibiting all doctors from maintaining the invalid nature of the King’s marriage.[402]
Parliament met on November 3rd, 1529, and, from the matters brought before it, received the name of the “Parliament for the enormities of the clergy.”[403] It revealed the force of lay opinion on which Henry might count in the struggle he was about to begin with the clergy. With a view of strengthening his hands still further, the King summoned an assembly of Notables,[404] which met on June 12th, 1530, and addressed the Pope in a letter in which they prayed him to consent to the King’s desire, pointed out the evils which would follow from delaying the Divorce, and hinted that they might be compelled to take the matter into their own hands. This seems to have been the general feeling among the laity of England; for a foreigner writing to the Republic of Florence says: “Nothing else is thought of in that island every day, except of arranging affairs in such a way that they do no longer be in want of the Pope, neither for filling vacancies in the Church, nor for any other purpose.”[405]
Having made himself sure of the great mass of the laity, Henry next set himself to force the clergy into submission. He suddenly charged them all with being guilty of Præmunire because they had accepted the authority of Papal Legates within the kingdom; and managed to extort a sum of £100,000, to be paid in five yearly instalments, by way of a fine from the clergy of the Province of Canterbury.[406] At the same meeting of Convocation (1531) the clergy were compelled, under threat of the law of Præmunire, to declare that the King was “their singular protector and only supreme lord, and, as far as that is permitted by the law of Christ, the Supreme Head of the Church and of the clergy.” The ambiguity in the acknowledgment left a loophole for weak consciences; but the King was satisfied with the phrase, feeling confident that he could force his own interpretation of the acknowledgment on the Church. “It is all the same,” Charles V.’s ambassador wrote to his master, “as far as the King is concerned, as if they had made no reservation; for no one now will be so bold as to contest with his lord the importance of this reservation.”[407]
This acknowledgment was, according to the King, simply a clearer statement of what was contained in the old statutes of Præmunire, and in all his subsequent ecclesiastical legislation he claimed that he was only giving effect to the earlier laws of England.
The Parliament of 1532 gave the King important assistance in forcing on the submission, not only of the clergy of England, but of the Pope, to his wishes. The Commons presented a petition complaining of various grievances affecting the laity in the working of the ecclesiastical courts, which was sent with a set of demands from the King to the Convocation. The result was the important resolution of Convocation (May 15th, 1532) which is called the Submission of the Clergy, where it is promised not to make any new canons without the King’s licence and ratification, and to submit all previous canons to a committee of revision, to consist of thirty-two persons, sixteen from Parliament and sixteen from the clergy, and all to be chosen by the King. This committee was to expunge all containing anything prejudicial to the King’s prerogative. This Act of Convocation practically declared that the Church of England could neither make any rules for its own guidance without the King’s permission, nor act according to the common law of the mediæval Church when that, in the King’s opinion, invaded the royal prerogative.[408] From this Act the Church of England has never been able to free itself. The other deed of this Parliament which was destined to be of the greatest use to Henry in his dealings with the Pope was an Act dealing with the annates, i.e. one year’s income from all ecclesiastical benefices paid to the Pope on entrance into any benefice. The Act declared that the annates should be withheld from the Pope and given to the King, but permitted His Majesty to suspend its operation so long as it pleased him.[409] It was the suspensory clause which enabled Henry to coerce the Pope, and he was not slow to take advantage of it.[410] Writing to Rome (March 21st, 1532), he said: “The Pope and Cardinals may gain our friendship by truth and justice. Take care that they do not hope or despair too much from this power which has been committed to us by the statute. I do not mean to deceive them, but to tell them the fact that this statute will be to their advantage, if they show themselves deserving of it; if not, otherwise. Nothing has been defined at present, which must be to their advantage if they do not despise my friendship.”[411]
Archbishop Warham, who had presided at the Convocation which made the submission of the clergy, died in August 1532; and Henry resolved that Cranmer, notwithstanding his unwillingness, should succeed him as Archbishop of Canterbury. Cranmer conscientiously believed that the royal supremacy was a good thing, and would cure many of the ecclesiastical evils which no appeals to the Pope seemed able to reform; and he was also convinced that the marriage of Henry with Catharine had been one for which not even the highest ecclesiastical authority could give a dispensation. He was prepared to carry out the King’s wishes in both respects. He could not be an acceptable Primate to the Roman Curia. Yet Henry, by threatening the Pope with the loss of the annates, actually compelled him to send Bulls to England, and that with unusual speed, ratifying the appointment to the Primacy of a man who was known to believe in the nullity of the King’s marriage, and to be ready to give effect to his opinion; and this at a time when the Parliament of England had declared that the Primate’s court was the supreme ecclesiastical tribunal for the English Church and people. The deed made the Curia really responsible for almost all that followed in England. For Parliament in February 1533, acting on the submission of the clergy, had passed an Act prohibiting all appeals to Rome from the Archbishop’s court, and ordering that, if any appeals were taken, they must be to the King’s Court of Chancery. This was the celebrated Act of Restraint of Appeals.[412]
In the beginning of 1533 (Jan. 25th), Henry VIII. was privately married to Anne Boleyn. He had taken the Pope’s advice in this one particular, to get married without waiting for the Divorce; but soon afterwards (April 5th) he got from the Convocation of Canterbury a document declaring that the Pope had no power to grant a dispensation in such a case as the marriage of Henry with Catharine;[413] and the Act of Restraint of Appeals had made such a decision practically final so far as England was concerned.
Cranmer was consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury on March 30th, 1533. His opinions were known. He had been one of the Cambridge “Germans”; he had freely consorted with Lutheran divines in Germany; he had begun to pray in private for the abolition of the Pope’s power in England as early as 1525; and it was not without reason that Chapuys called him a “Lutheran.”[414]
On April 11th, 1533, the new Primate asked the King to permit him to try the question of the Divorce before his own ecclesiastical court; and leave was granted him on the following day, as the principal minister “of our spiritual jurisdiction.”[415] The trial was begun, and the court, acting on the decisions of Convocation two months earlier, which had declared[416] that no dispensation could be given for a marriage with the widow of a brother provided the marriage had been consummated, and[417] that the marriage between Arthur and Catharine had been consummated, pronounced that the marriage between the King and Catharine of Aragon was null and void.[418] This was followed by an inquiry about the marriage between the King and Anne Boleyn, which was pronounced valid, and preparations were made for the coronation of Queen Anne, which took place on June 1st, 1533.[419]
This act of defiance to Rome was at once resented by the Pope. The Curia declared that the marriage between Henry and Catharine was lawful, and a Bull was issued commanding Henry to restore Catharine and put away Anne within ten days on pain of excommunication; which sentence the Emperor, all Christian Princes, and Henry’s own subjects were called upon to execute by force of arms.[420]
The action at Rome was answered from England by the passing of several strong Acts of Parliament—all in 1534. They completed the separation of the Church and people of England from the See of Rome.
1. The Act forbidding the payment of annates to the Pope was again introduced, and this time made absolute; no annates were for the future to be sent to Rome as the first-fruits of any benefice. In the same Act new provisions were made for the appointment of Bishops; they were for the future to be elected by the Deans and Chapters on receiving a royal letter of leave and nomination.[421]
2. An Act forbidding the payment of Peter’s Pence to the Bishop of Rome; forbidding all application to the Pope for dispensations; and declaring that all such dispensations were to be sought for in the ecclesiastical courts within England.[422]
3. The Act of Succession, which was followed by a second within the same year in which the nullity of the marriage of Henry with Catharine of Aragon was clearly stated, and Catharine was declared to be the “Princess of Wales,” i.e. the widow of Arthur; which affirms the validity of the King’s marriage with Anne Boleyn, and declares that all the issue of that marriage are legitimate; and which affirms that, failing male succession, the crown falls to the Princess Elizabeth.[423]
4. The Supremacy Act, which declares that the King is rightfully the Supreme Head of the Church of England, has been recognised as such by Convocation, and that it is within his powers to make ecclesiastical visitations and to redress ecclesiastical abuses.[424]
5. The Treasons Act must also be included, inasmuch as one of its provisions is that it is treason to deny to the King any of his lawful titles (the Supreme Head of the Church of England being one), and that treason includes calling the King a heretic or a schismatic.[425]
To complete the list, it is necessary to mention that the two Convocations of Canterbury and of York solemnly declared that “the Roman Pontiff had no greater jurisdiction bestowed on him by God in the Holy Scriptures than any other foreign (externus) Bishop”—a declaration called the Abjuration of the Papal Supremacy by the Clergy.[426]
This separation of the Church of England from Rome really meant that instead of there being a dual control, there was to be a single one only. The Kings of England had always claimed to have some control over the Church of their realm; Henry went further, and insisted that he would share that supervision with no one. But it should be noticed that what he did claim was, to use the terms of canon law, the potestas jurisdictionis, not the potestas ordinis; he never asserted his right to ordain or to control the sacraments. Nor was there at first any change in definition of doctrines. The Church of England remained what it had been in every respect, with the exception that the Bishop of Rome was no longer recognised as the Episcopus Universalis, and that, if appeals were necessary from the highest ecclesiastical courts in England, they were not to be taken as formerly to Rome, but were to be settled in the King’s courts within the land of England. The power of jurisdiction over the affairs of the Church could scarcely be exercised by the King personally. Appeals could be settled by his judges in the law courts, but he required a substitute to exercise his power of visitation. This duty was given to Thomas Cromwell, who was made Vicar-General,[427] and the office to some small extent may be said to resemble that of the Papal Legate; he represented the King as the Legate had represented the Pope.
It was impossible, however, for the Church of England to maintain exactly the place which it had occupied. There was some stirring of Reformation life in the land. Cranmer had been early attracted by the writings of Luther; Thomas Cromwell was not unsympathetic, and, besides, he had the idea that there would be some advantage gained politically by an approach to the German Protestants. There was soon talk about a set of Articles which would express the doctrinal beliefs of the Church of England. It was, however, no easy matter to draft them. While Cranmer, Cromwell, and such new Bishops as Latimer, had decided leanings towards the theology of the Reformation, the older Bishops held strongly by the mediæval doctrines. The result was that, after prolonged consultations, little progress was made, and very varying doctrines seem to have been taught, all of which tended to dispeace. In the end, the King himself, to use his own words, “was constrained to put his own pen to the book, and conceive certain articles which were agreed upon by Convocation as catholic and meet to be set forth by authority.”[428] They were published in 1536 under the title, Articles devised by the Kyng’s Highnes Majestie to stablysh Christen quietnes, and were ordered to be read “plainly” in the churches.[429] They came to be called the Ten Articles, the first doctrinal symbol of the Church of England.
According to the preface, they were meant to secure, by royal authority, unity and concord in religious beliefs, and to repress and utterly extinguish all dissent and discord. Foxe the Martyrologist describes them very accurately as meant for “weaklings newly weaned from their mother’s milk of Rome.” Five deal with doctrines and five with ceremonies. The Bible, the Three Creeds (Apostles’, Nicene, and Athanasian), and the doctrinal decisions of the first four Œcumenical Councils, are to be regarded as the standards of orthodoxy; baptism is necessary for salvation—children dying in infancy “shall undoubtedly be saved thereby, and else not”; the Sacrament of Penance is retained with confession and absolution, which are declared to be expedient and necessary; the substantial, real, corporeal Presence of Christ’s Body and Blood under the form of Bread and Wine in the Eucharist is taught; faith as well as charity is necessary to salvation; images are to remain in the churches; the saints and the Blessed Virgin are to be reverenced as intercessors; the saints are to be invoked; certain rites and ceremonies, such as clerical vestments, sprinkling with holy water, carrying candles on Candlemas Day, and sprinkling ashes on Ash-Wednesday, are good and laudable; the doctrines of Purgatory and of prayers for the dead were not denied, but people were warned about them. It should be noticed that while the three Sacraments of Baptism, the Eucharist, and Penance are retained, no mention is made of the other four, and that this is not unlike what Luther taught in the Babylonian Captivity of the Church of Christ; that while the Real Presence is maintained, nothing is said about Transubstantiation; that while images are retained in churches, all incensing, kneeling, or offering to images is forbidden; that while saints and the Virgin may be invoked as intercessors, it is said that it is a vain superstition to believe that any saint can be more merciful than Christ Himself; and that the whole doctrine of Attrition and Indulgences is paralysed by the statement that amendment of life is a necessary part of Penance.
It is only when these Articles are read along with the Injunctions issued in 1536 and 1538 that it can be fully seen how much they were meant to wean the people, if gradually, from the gross superstition which disgraced the popular mediæval religion. If this be done, they seem an attempt to fulfil the aspirations of Christian Humanists like Dean Colet and Erasmus.
After warning the clergy to observe all the laws made for the abolition of the papal supremacy, all those insisting on the supremacy of the King as the “supreme Head of the Church of England,” and to preach against the Pope’s usurped power within the realm of England, the Injunctions proceed to say that the clergy are to expound the Ten Articles to their people. In doing so they are to explain why superfluous holy days ought not to be observed; they are to exhort their people against such superstitions as images, relics, and priestly miracles. They are to tell them that it is best to keep God’s commandments, to fulfil His works of charity, to provide for their families, and to bestow upon the poor the money they often lavish on pilgrimages, images, and relics. They are to see that parents and teachers instruct children from their earliest years in the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, and the Ten Commandments. They are to be careful that the sacraments are duly and reverently administered within their parishes, are to set an example of moral living, and are to give themselves to the study of the Scriptures. The second set of Injunctions (1538) goes further. The clergy are told to provide “one whole Bible of the largest volume in English,” which is to be set somewhere in the church where the parishioners can most easily read it; and they are to beware of discouraging any man from perusing it, “for it is the lively word of God that every Christian man is bound to embrace and follow.” They are to preach a sermon at least every quarter, in which they are to declare the very gospel of Christ, and to exhort the people to the works of charity, mercy, and faith especially prescribed in the Scriptures. They are to warn them against trusting to fancies entirely outside of Scripture, such as “wandering to pilgrimages, offering of money or candles to images or relics, kissing or licking the same, and saying over a number of beads or suchlike superstitions.” They are not to permit candles, tapers, or images of wax to be placed before the images in the churches, in order to avoid “that most detestable offence of idolatry.”[430]
The Ten Articles thus authoritatively expounded are anything but “essentially Romish with the Pope left out in the cold.” They are rather an attempt to construct a brief creed which a pliant Lutheran and a pliant Romanist might agree upon—a singularly successful attempt, and one which does great credit to the theological attainments of the English King.
It was thought good to have a brief manual of religious instruction to place in the hands of the lower clergy and of the people, perhaps because the Ten Articles were not always well received. A committee of divines, chiefly Bishops,[431] were appointed to “compile certain rudiments of Christianity and a Catechism.”[432] The result was a small book, divided into four parts—an exposition of the Apostles’ Creed, of the seven Sacraments, of the Ten Commandments, of the Lord’s Prayer, and the Ave Maria. Two other parts were added from the Ten Articles—one on Justification, for which faith is said to be necessary; and the other on Purgatory, which is stoutly denied. Great difficulties were experienced in the compilation, owing to the “great diversity of opinions”[433] which prevailed among the compilers; and the book was a compromise between those who were stout for the old faith and those who were keen for the new; but in the end all seemed satisfied with their work. The chief difference between its teaching and that of the Ten Articles is that the name sacrament is given to seven and not three of the chief ceremonies of the mediæval Church; but, on the other hand, the doctrine of Purgatory is denied. It was expected that the King would revise the book before its publication,[434] but he “had no time convenient to overlook the great pains” bestowed upon it.[435] Drafts of an imprimatur by the King have been found among the State Papers,[436] but the book was finally issued in 1537 by the “Archbishops and Bishops of England,” and was therefore popularly called the Bishops’ Book. All the clergy were ordered “to read aloud from the pulpit every Sunday a portion of this book” to their people.[437] The Catechism appears to have been published at the same time, and to have been in large request.[438]