ON THE ENGLISH CHURCH UNDER HENRY VIII., EDWARD VI., AND MARY
REFORMATION. _State of public opinion as to religion._--No revolution
has ever been more gradually prepared than that which separated almost
one-half of Europe from the communion of the Roman see; nor were Luther
and Zuingle any more than occasional instruments of that change which,
had they never existed, would at no great distance of time have been
effected under the names of some other reformers. At the beginning of
the sixteenth century, the learned doubtfully and with caution, the
ignorant with zeal and eagerness, were tending to depart from the faith
and rites which authority prescribed. But probably not even Germany was
so far advanced on this course as England. Almost a hundred and fifty
years before Luther, nearly the same doctrines as he taught had been
maintained by Wicliffe, whose disciples, usually called Lollards, lasted
as a numerous, though obscure and proscribed sect, till, aided by the
confluence of foreign streams, they swelled into the protestant church
of England. We hear indeed little of them during some part of the
fifteenth century; for they generally shunned persecution; and it is
chiefly through records of persecution that we learn the existence of
heretics. But immediately before the name of Luther was known, they seem
to have become more numerous, or to have attracted more attention; since
several persons were burned for heresy, and others abjured their errors,
in the first years of Henry VIII.'s reign. Some of these (as usual among
ignorant men engaging in religious speculations) are charged with very
absurd notions; but it is not so material to observe their particular
tenets as the general fact, that an inquisitive and sectarian spirit had
begun to prevail.
Those who took little interest in theological questions, or who retained
an attachment to the faith in which they had been educated, were in
general not less offended than the Lollards themselves with the
inordinate opulence and encroaching temper of the clergy. It had been
for two or three centuries the policy of our lawyers to restrain these
within some bounds. No ecclesiastical privilege had occasioned such
dispute, or proved so mischievous, as the immunity of all tonsured
persons from civil punishment for crimes. It was a material improvement
in the law under Henry VI. that, instead of being instantly claimed by
the bishop on their arrest for any criminal charge, they were compelled
to plead their privilege at their arraignment, or after conviction.
Henry VII. carried this much farther, by enacting that clerks convicted
of felony should be burned in the hand. And in 1513 (4 H. 8), the
benefit of clergy was entirely taken away from murderers and highway
robbers. An exemption was still made for priests, deacons, and
subdeacons. But this was not sufficient to satisfy the church, who had
been accustomed to shield under the mantle of her immunity a vast number
of persons in the lower degrees of orders, or without any orders at all;
and had owed no small part of her influence to those who derived so
important a benefit from her protection. Hence, besides violent language
in preaching against this statute, the convocation attacked one Doctor
Standish, who had denied the divine right of clerks to their exemption
from temporal jurisdiction. The temporal courts naturally defended
Standish; and the parliament addressed the king to support him against
the malice of his persecutors. Henry, after a full debate between the
opposite parties in his presence, thought his prerogative concerned in
taking the same side; and the clergy sustained a mortifying defeat.
About the same time, a citizen of London named Hun, having been confined
on a charge of heresy in the bishop's prison, was found hanged in his
chamber; and though this was asserted to be his own act, yet the
bishop's chancellor was indicted for the murder on such vehement
presumptions, that he would infallibly have been convicted, had the
attorney-general thought fit to proceed in the trial. This occurring at
the same time with the affair of Standish, furnished each party with an
argument; for the clergy maintained that they should have no chance of
justice in a temporal court; one of the bishops declaring, that the
London juries were so prejudiced against the church, that they would
find Abel guilty of the murder of Cain. Such an admission is of more
consequence than whether Hun died by his own hands, or those of a
clergyman; and the story is chiefly worth remembering, as it illustrates
the popular disposition towards those who had once been the objects of
reverence.[83]
_Henry VIII.'s controversy with Luther._--Such was the temper of England
when Martin Luther threw down his gauntlet of defiance against the
ancient hierarchy of the catholic church. But, ripe as a great portion
of the people might be to applaud the efforts of this reformer, they
were viewed with no approbation by their sovereign. Henry had acquired a
fair portion of theological learning, and on reading one of Luther's
treatises, was not only shocked at its tenets, but undertook to confute
them in a formal answer.[84] Kings who divest themselves of their robes
to mingle among polemical writers, have not perhaps a claim to much
deference from strangers; and Luther, intoxicated with arrogance, and
deeming himself a more prominent individual among the human species than
any monarch, treated Henry, in replying to his book, with the rudeness
that characterised his temper. A few years afterwards, indeed, he
thought proper to write a letter of apology for the language he had held
towards the king; but this letter, a strange medley of abjectness and
impertinence, excited only contempt in Henry, and was published by him
with a severe commentary.[85] Whatever apprehension therefore for the
future might be grounded on the humour of the nation, no king in Europe
appeared so steadfast in his allegiance to Rome as Henry VIII. at the
moment when a storm sprang up that broke the chain for ever.
_His divorce from Catherine._--It is certain that Henry's marriage with
his brother's widow was unsupported by any precedent and that, although
the pope's dispensation might pass for a cure of all defects, it had
been originally considered by many persons in a very different light
from those unions which are merely prohibited by the canons. He himself,
on coming to the age of fourteen, entered a protest against the marriage
which had been celebrated more than two years before, and declared his
intention not to confirm it; an act which must naturally be ascribed to
his father.[86] It is true that in this very instrument we find no
mention of the impediment on the score of affinity; yet it is hard to
suggest any other objection, and possibly a common form had been adopted
in drawing up the protest. He did not cohabit with Catherine during his
father's lifetime. Upon his own accession, he was remarried to her; and
it does not appear manifest at what time his scruples began, nor whether
they preceded his passion for Anne Boleyn.[87] This, however, seems the
more probable supposition; yet there can be little doubt, that weariness
of Catherine's person, a woman considerably older than himself and
unlikely to bear more children, had a far greater effect on his
conscience than the study of Thomas Aquinas or any other theologian. It
by no means follows from hence that, according to the casuistry of the
catholic church and the principles of the canon law, the merits of that
famous process were so much against Henry, as out of dislike to him and
pity for his queen we are apt to imagine, and as the writers of that
persuasion have subsequently assumed.
It would be unnecessary to repeat, what is told by so many historians,
the vacillating and evasive behaviour of Clement VII., the assurances he
gave the king, and the arts with which he receded from them, the
unfinished trial in England before his delegates, Campegio and Wolsey,
the opinions obtained from foreign universities in the king's favour,
not always without a little bribery,[88] and those of the same import at
home, not given without a little intimidation, or the tedious
continuance of the process after its adjournment to Rome. More than five
years had elapsed from the first application to the pope, before Henry,
though by nature the most uncontrollable of mankind, though irritated by
perpetual chicanery and breach of promise, though stimulated by
impatient love, presumed to set at nought the jurisdiction to which he
had submitted, by a marriage with Anne. Even this was a furtive step;
and it was not till compelled by the consequences that he avowed her as
his wife, and was finally divorced from Catherine by a sentence of
nullity, which would more decently, no doubt, have preceded his second
marriage.[89] But, determined as his mind had become, it was plainly
impossible for Clement to have conciliated him by anything short of a
decision, which he could not utter without the loss of the emperor's
favour and the ruin of his own family's interests in Italy. And even for
less selfish reasons, it was an extremely embarrassing measure for the
pope, in the critical circumstances of that age, to set aside a
dispensation granted by his predecessor; knowing that, however erroneous
allegations of fact contained therein might serve for an outward
pretext, yet the principle on which the divorce was commonly supported
in Europe, went generally to restrain the dispensing power of the holy
see. Hence it may seem very doubtful whether the treaty which was
afterwards partially renewed through the mediation of Francis I., during
his interview with the pope at Nice about the end of 1533, would have
led to a restoration of amity through the only possible means; when we
consider the weight of the imperial party in the conclave, the discredit
that so notorious a submission would have thrown on the church, and,
above all, the precarious condition of the Medici at Florence in case of
a rupture with Charles V. It was more probably the aim of Clement to
delude Henry once more by his promises; but this was prevented by the
more violent measure into which the cardinals forced him, of a
definitive sentence in favour of Catherine, whom the king was required
under pain of excommunication to take back as his wife. This sentence of
the 23rd of March 1534, proved a declaration of interminable war; and
the king, who, in consequence of the hopes held out to him by Francis,
had already despatched an envoy to Rome with his submission to what the
pope should decide, now resolved to break off all intercourse for ever,
and trust to his own prerogative and power over his subjects for
securing the succession to the crown in the line which he designed. It
was doubtless a regard to this consideration that put him upon his last
overtures for an amicable settlement with the court of Rome.[90]
But long before this final cessation of intercourse with that court,
Henry had entered upon a course of measures which would have opposed
fresh obstacles to a renewal of the connection. He had found a great
part of his subjects in a disposition to go beyond all he could wish in
sustaining his quarrel, not, in this instance, from mere terror, but
because a jealousy of ecclesiastical power, and of the Roman court, had
long been a sort of national sentiment in England. The pope's avocation
of the process to Rome, by which his duplicity and alienation from the
king's side was made evident, and the disgrace of Wolsey, took place in
the summer of 1529. The parliament which met soon afterwards was
continued through several sessions (an unusual circumstance), till it
completed the separation of this kingdom from the supremacy of Rome. In
the progress of ecclesiastical usurpation, the papal and episcopal
powers had lent mutual support to each other; both consequently were
involved in the same odium, and had become the object of restrictions in
a similar spirit. Warm attacks were made on the clergy by speeches in
the Commons, which Bishop Fisher severely reprehended in the upper
house. This provoked the Commons to send a complaint to the king by
their speaker, demanding reparation; and Fisher explained away the words
that had given offence. An act passed to limit the fees on probates of
wills, a mode of ecclesiastical extortion much complained of, and upon
mortuaries.[91] The next proceeding was of a far more serious nature.
It was pretended, that Wolsey's exercise of authority as papal legate
contravened a statute of Richard II., and that both himself and the
whole body of the clergy, by their submission to him, had incurred the
penalties of a praemunire, that is, the forfeiture of their movable
estate, besides imprisonment at discretion. These old statutes in
restraint of the papal jurisdiction had been so little regarded, and so
many legates had acted in England without objection, that Henry's
prosecution of the church on this occasion was extremely harsh and
unfair. The clergy, however, now felt themselves to be the weaker party.
In convocation they implored the king's clemency, and obtained it by
paying a large sum of money. In their petition he was styled the
protector and supreme head of the church and clergy of England. Many of
that body were staggered at the unexpected introduction of a title that
seemed to strike at the supremacy they had always acknowledged in the
Roman see. And in the end it passed only with a very suspicious
qualification, "so far as is permitted by the law of Christ." Henry had
previously given the pope several intimations that he could proceed in
his divorce without him. For, besides a strong remonstrance by letter
from the temporal peers as well as bishops against the procrastination
of sentence in so just a suit, the opinions of English and foreign
universities had been laid before both houses of parliament and of
convocation, and the divorce approved without difficulty in the former,
and by a great majority in the latter. These proceedings took place in
the first months of 1531, while the king's ambassadors at Rome were
still pressing for a favourable sentence, though with diminished hopes.
Next year the annates, or first fruits of benefices, a constant source
of discord between the nations of Europe, and their spiritual chief,
were taken away by act of parliament, but with a remarkable condition,
that if the pope would either abolish the payment of annates, or reduce
them to a moderate burthen, the king might declare before next session,
by letters patent, whether this act, or any part of it, should be
observed. It was accordingly confirmed by letters patent more than a
year after it received the royal assent.
It is difficult for us to determine whether the pope, by conceding to
Henry the great object of his solicitude, could in this stage have not
only arrested the progress of the schism, but recovered his former
ascendency over the English church and kingdom. But probably he could
not have done so in its full extent. Sir Thomas More, who had rather
complied than concurred with the proceedings for a divorce, though his
acceptance of the great seal on Wolsey's disgrace would have been
inconsistent with his character, had he been altogether opposed in
conscience to the king's measures, now thought it necessary to resign,
when the papal authority was steadily, though gradually, assailed.[92]
In the next session an act was passed to take away all appeals to Rome
from ecclesiastical courts; which annihilated at one stroke the
jurisdiction built on long usage and on the authority of the false
decretals. This law rendered the king's second marriage, which had
preceded it, secure from being annulled by the papal court. Henry,
however, still advanced, very cautiously, and on the death of Warham,
Archbishop of Canterbury, not long before this time, applied to Rome for
the usual bulls in behalf of Cranmer, whom he nominated to the vacant
see. These were the last bulls obtained, and probably the last instance
of any exercise of the papal supremacy in this reign. An act followed in
the next session, that bishops elected by their chapter on a royal
recommendation, should be consecrated, and archbishops receive the pall,
without suing for the pope's bulls. All dispensations and licences
hitherto granted by that court were set aside by another statute, and
the power of issuing them in lawful cases transferred to the Archbishop
of Canterbury. The king is in this act recited to be the supreme head of
the church of England, as the clergy had two years before acknowledged
in convocation. But this title was not formally declared by parliament
to appertain to the Crown till the ensuing session of parliament.[93]
_Separation from the Church of Rome._--By these means was the church of
England altogether emancipated from the superiority of that of Rome. For
as to the pope's merely spiritual primacy and authority in matters of
faith, which are, or at least were, defended by catholics of the
Gallican or Cisalpine school on quite different grounds from his
jurisdiction or his legislatorial power in points of discipline, they
seem to have attracted little peculiar attention at the time, and to
have dropped off as a dead branch, when the axe had lopped the fibres
that gave it nourishment. Like other momentous revolutions, this divided
the judgment and feelings of the nation. In the previous affair of
Catherine's divorce, generous minds were more influenced by the rigour
and indignity of her treatment than by the king's inclinations, or the
venal opinions of foreign doctors in law. Bellay, Bishop of Bayonne, the
French ambassador at London, wrote home in 1528, that a revolt was
apprehended from the general unpopularity of the divorce.[94] Much
difficulty was found in procuring the judgments of Oxford and Cambridge
against the marriage; which was effected in the former case, as is said,
by excluding the masters of arts, the younger and less worldly part of
the university, from their right of suffrage. Even so late as 1532, in
the pliant House of Commons, a member had the boldness to move an
address to the king, that he would take back his wife. And this temper
of the people seems to have been the great inducement with Henry to
postpone any sentence by a domestic jurisdiction, so long as a chance of
the pope's sanction remained.
The aversion entertained by a large part of the community, and
especially of the clerical order, towards the divorce, was not perhaps
so generally founded upon motives of justice and compassion, as on the
obvious tendency which its prosecution latterly manifested to bring
about a separation from Rome. Though the principal Lutherans of Germany
were far less favourably disposed to the king in their opinions on this
subject than the catholic theologians, holding that the prohibition of
marrying a brother's widow in the Levitical law was not binding on
Christians, or at least that the marriage ought not to be annulled after
so many years' continuance;[95] yet in England the interests of Anne
Boleyn and of the Reformation were considered as the same. She was
herself strongly suspected of an inclination to the new tenets; and her
friend Cranmer had been the most active person both in promoting the
divorce, and the recognition of the king's supremacy. The latter was, as
I imagine, by no means unacceptable to the nobility and gentry, who saw
in it the only effectual method of cutting off the papal exactions that
had so long impoverished the realm; nor yet to the citizens of London,
and other large towns, who, with the same dislike of the Roman court,
had begun to acquire some taste for the protestant doctrine. But the
common people, especially in remote counties, had been used to an
implicit reverence for the holy see, and had suffered comparatively
little by its impositions. They looked up also to their own teachers as
guides in faith; and the main body of the clergy was certainly very
reluctant to tear themselves, at the pleasure of a disappointed monarch,
in the most dangerous crisis of religion, from the bosom of catholic
unity.[96] They complied indeed with all the measures of government far
more than men of rigid conscience could have endured to do; but many who
wanted the courage of More and Fisher, were not far removed from their
way of thinking.[97] This repugnance to so great an alteration showed
itself, above all, in the monastic orders, some of whom by wealth,
hospitality, and long-established dignity, others by activity in
preaching and confessing, enjoyed a very considerable influence over the
poorer class. But they had to deal with a sovereign, whose policy as
well as temper dictated that he had no safety but in advancing; and
their disaffection to his government, while it overwhelmed them in ruin,
produced a second grand innovation in the ecclesiastical polity of
England.
_Dissolution of monasteries._--The enormous, and in a great measure
ill-gotten, opulence of the regular clergy had long since excited
jealousy in every part of Europe. Though the statutes of mortmain under
Edward I. and Edward III. had put some obstacle to its increase, yet as
these were eluded by licences of alienation, a larger proportion of
landed wealth was constantly accumulating, in hands which lost nothing
that they had grasped.[98] A writer much inclined to partiality towards
the monasteries says that they held not one-fifth part of the kingdom;
no insignificant patrimony! He adds, what may probably be true, that
through granting easy leases, they did not enjoy more than one-tenth in
value.[99] These vast possessions were very unequally distributed among
four or five hundred monasteries. Some abbots, as those of Reading,
Glastonbury, and Battle, lived in princely splendour, and were in every
sense the spiritual peers and magnates of the realm. In other
foundations, the revenues did little more than afford a subsistence for
the monks, and defray the needful expenses. As they were in general
exempted from episcopal visitation, and intrusted with the care of their
own discipline, such abuses had gradually prevailed and gained strength
by connivance, as we may naturally expect in corporate bodies of men
leading almost of necessity useless and indolent lives, and in whom very
indistinct views of moral obligations were combined with a great
facility of violating them. The vices that for many ages had been
supposed to haunt the monasteries, had certainly not left their
precincts in that of Henry VIII. Wolsey, as papal legate, at the
instigation of Fox, Bishop of Hereford, a favourer of the Reformation,
commenced a visitation of the professed as well as secular clergy in
1523, in consequence of the general complaint against their
manners.[100] This great minister, though not perhaps very rigid as to
the morality of the church, was the first who set an example of
reforming monastic foundations in the most efficacious manner, by
converting their revenues to different purposes. Full of anxious zeal
for promoting education, the noblest part of his character, he obtained
bulls from Rome suppressing many convents (among which was that of St.
Frideswide at Oxford), in order to erect and endow a new college in that
university, his favourite work, which after his fall was more completely
established by the name of Christ Church.[101] A few more were
afterwards extinguished through his instigation; and thus the prejudice
against interference with this species of property was somewhat worn
off, and men's minds gradually prepared for the sweeping confiscations
of Cromwell. The king indeed was abundantly willing to replenish his
exchequer by violent means, and to avenge himself on those who gainsayed
his supremacy; but it was this able statesman who, prompted both by the
natural appetite of ministers for the subject's money and by a secret
partiality towards the Reformation, devised and carried on with complete
success, if not with the utmost prudence, a measure of no inconsiderable
hazard and difficulty. For such it surely was, under a system of
government which rested so much on antiquity, and in spite of the
peculiar sacredness which the English attach to all freehold property,
to annihilate so many prescriptive baronial tenures, the possessors
whereof composed more than a third part of the House of Lords, and to
subject so many estates which the law had rendered inalienable, to
maxims of escheat and forfeiture that had never been held applicable to
their tenure. But for this purpose it was necessary, by exposing the
gross corruptions of monasteries, both to intimidate the regular clergy,
and to excite popular indignation against them. It is not to be doubted
that in the visitation of these foundations under the direction of
Cromwell, as lord vicegerent of the king's ecclesiastical supremacy,
many things were done in an arbitrary manner, and much was unfairly
represented.[102] Yet the reports of these visitors are so minute and
specific that it is rather a preposterous degree of incredulity to
reject their testimony, whenever it bears hard on the regulars. It is
always to be remembered that the vices to which they bear witness, are
not only probable from the nature of such foundations, but are imputed
to them by the most respectable writers of preceding ages. Nor do I find
that the reports of this visitation were impeached for general falsehood
in that age, whatever exaggeration there might be in particular cases.
And surely the commendation bestowed on some religious houses as pure
and unexceptionable, may afford a presumption that the censure of others
was not an indiscriminate prejudging of their merits.[103]
The dread of these visitors soon induced a number of abbots to make
surrenders to the king; a step of very questionable legality. But in the
next session the smaller convents, whose revenues were less than L200 a
year, were suppressed by act of parliament, to the number of three
hundred and seventy-six, and their estates vested in the crown. This
summary spoliation led to the great northern rebellion soon afterwards.
It was, in fact, not merely to wound the people's strongest impressions
of religion, and especially those connected with their departed friends,
for whose souls prayers were offered in the monasteries, but to deprive
the indigent, in many places, of succour, and the better rank of
hospitable reception. This of course was experienced in a far greater
degree at the dissolution of the larger monasteries, which took place in
1540. But, Henry having entirely subdued the rebellion, and being now
exceedingly dreaded by both the religious parties, this measure produced
no open resistance; though there seems to have been less pretext for it
on the score of immorality and neglect of discipline than was found for
abolishing the smaller convents.[104] These great foundations were all
surrendered; a few excepted, which, against every principle of received
law, were held to fall by the attainder of their abbots for high
treason. Parliament had only to confirm the king's title arising out of
these surrenders and forfeitures. Some historians assert the monks to
have been turned adrift with a small sum of money. But it rather appears
that they generally received pensions not inadequate, and which are said
to have been pretty faithfully paid.[105] These however were voluntary
gifts on the part of the Crown. For the parliament which dissolved the
monastic foundations, while it took abundant care to preserve any
rights of property which private persons might enjoy over the estates
thus escheated to the Crown, vouchsafed not a word towards securing the
slightest compensation to the dispossessed owners.
The fall of the mitred abbots changed the proportions of the two estates
which constitute the upper house of parliament. Though the number of
abbots and priors to whom writs of summons were directed varied
considerably in different parliaments, they always, joined to the
twenty-one bishops, preponderated over the temporal peers.[106] It was
no longer possible for the prelacy to offer an efficacious opposition to
the reformation they abhorred. Their own baronial tenure, their high
dignity as legislative counsellors of the land, remained; but, one
branch as ancient and venerable as their own thus lopped off, the
spiritual aristocracy was reduced to play a very secondary part in the
councils of the nation. Nor could the protestant religion have easily
been established by legal methods under Edward and Elizabeth without
this previous destruction of the monasteries. Those who, professing an
attachment to that religion, have swollen the clamour of its adversaries
against the dissolution of foundations that existed only for the sake of
a different faith and worship, seem to me not very consistent or
enlightened reasoners. In some, the love of antiquity produces a sort of
fanciful illusion; and the very sight of those buildings, so magnificent
in their prosperous hour, so beautiful even in their present ruin,
begets a sympathy for those who founded and inhabited them. In many, the
violent courses of confiscation and attainder which accompanied this
great revolution excite so just an indignation, that they either forget
to ask whether the end might not have been reached by more laudable
means, or condemn that end itself either as sacrilege, or at least as an
atrocious violation of the rights of property. Others again, who
acknowledge that the monastic discipline cannot be reconciled with the
modern system of religion, or with public utility, lament only that
these ample endowments were not bestowed upon ecclesiastical
corporations, freed from the monkish cowl, but still belonging to that
spiritual profession to whose use they were originally consecrated. And
it was a very natural theme of complaint at the time, that such abundant
revenues as might have sustained the dignity of the crown and supplied
the means of public defence without burthening the subject, had served
little other purpose than that of swelling the fortunes of rapacious
courtiers, and had left the king as necessitous and craving as before.
Notwithstanding these various censures, I must own myself of opinion,
both that the abolition of monastic institutions might have been
conducted in a manner consonant to justice as well as policy, and that
Henry's profuse alienation of the abbey lands, however illaudable in its
motive, has proved upon the whole more beneficial to England than any
other disposition would have turned out. I cannot, until some broad
principle is made more obvious than it ever has yet been, do such
violence to all common notions on the subject, as to attach an equal
inviolability to private and corporate property. The law of hereditary
succession, as ancient and universal as that of property itself, the law
of testamentary disposition, the complement of the former, so long
established in most countries as to seem a natural right, have invested
the individual possessor of the soil with such a fictitious immortality,
such anticipated enjoyment, as it were, of futurity, that his perpetual
ownership could not be limited to the term of his own existence, without
what he would justly feel as a real deprivation of property. Nor are the
expectancies of children, or other probable heirs, less real
possessions, which it is a hardship, if not an absolute injury, to
defeat. Yet even this hereditary claim is set aside by the laws of
forfeiture, which have almost everywhere prevailed. But in estates held,
as we call it, in mortmain, there is no intercommunity, no natural
privity of interest, between the present possessor and those who may
succeed him; and as the former cannot have any pretext for complaint,
if, his own rights being preserved, the legislature should alter the
course of transmission after his decease, so neither is any hardship
sustained by others, unless their succession has been already designated
or rendered probable. Corporate property therefore appears to stand on a
very different footing from that of private individuals; and while all
infringements of the established privileges of the latter are to be
sedulously avoided, and held justifiable only by the strongest motives
of public expediency, we cannot but admit the full right of the
legislature to new mould and regulate the former in all that does not
involve existing interests upon far slighter reasons of convenience. If
Henry had been content with prohibiting the profession of religious
persons for the future, and had gradually diverted their revenues
instead of violently confiscating them, no protestant could have found
it easy to censure his policy.
It is indeed impossible to feel too much indignation at the spirit in
which these proceedings were conducted. Besides the hardship sustained
by so many persons turned loose upon society for whose occupations they
were unfit, the indiscriminate destruction of convents produced several
public mischiefs. The visitors themselves strongly interceded for the
nunnery of Godstow, as irreproachable managed, and an excellent place of
education; and no doubt some other foundations should have been
preserved for the same reason. Latimer, who could not have a prejudice
on that side, begged earnestly that the priory of Malvern might be
spared, for the maintenance of preaching and hospitality. It was urged
for Hexham abbey that, there not being a house for many miles in that
part of England, the country would be in danger of going to waste.[107]
And the total want of inns in many parts of the kingdom must have
rendered the loss of these hospitable places of reception a serious
grievance. These and probably other reasons ought to have checked the
destroying spirit of reform in its career, and suggested to Henry's
counsellors that a few years would not be ill consumed in contriving new
methods of attaining the beneficial effects which monastic institutions
had not failed to produce, and in preparing the people's minds for so
important an innovation.
The suppression of monasteries poured in an instant such a torrent of
wealth upon the crown, as has seldom been equalled in any country by the
confiscations following a subdued rebellion. The clear yearly value was
rated at L131,607; but was in reality, if we believe Burnet, ten times
as great; the courtiers undervaluing those estates, in order to obtain
grants or sales of them more easily. It is certain, however, that
Burnet's supposition errs extravagantly on the other side.[108] The
movables of the smaller monasteries alone were reckoned at L100,000;
and, as the rents of these were less than a fourth of the whole, we may
calculate the aggregate value of movable wealth in the same proportion.
All this was enough to dazzle a more prudent mind than that of Henry,
and to inspire those sanguine dreams of inexhaustible affluence with
which private men are so often filled by sudden prosperity.
The monastic rule of life being thus abrogated, as neither conformable
to pure religion nor to policy, it is to be considered, to what uses
these immense endowments ought to have been applied. There are some,
perhaps, who may be of opinion that the original founders of
monasteries, or those who had afterwards bestowed lands on them, having
annexed to their grants an implied condition of the continuance of
certain devotional services, and especially of prayers for the repose of
their souls, it were but equitable that, if the legislature rendered the
performance of this condition impossible, their heirs should re-enter
upon the lands that would not have been alienated from them on any other
account. But, without adverting to the difficulty in many cases of
ascertaining the lawful heir, it might be answered that the donors had
absolutely divested themselves of all interest in their grants, and that
it was more consonant to the analogy of law to treat these estates as
escheats or vacant possessions, devolving to the sovereign, than to
imagine a right of reversion that no party had ever contemplated. There
was indeed a class of persons, very different from the founders of
monasteries, to whom restitution was due. A large proportion of
conventual revenues arose out of parochial tithes, diverted from the
legitimate object of maintaining the incumbent to swell the pomp of some
remote abbot. These impropriations were in no one instance, I believe,
restored to the parochial clergy, and have passed either into the hands
of laymen, or of bishops and other ecclesiastical persons, who were
frequently compelled by the Tudor princes to take them in exchange for
lands.[109] It was not in the spirit of Henry's policy, or in that of
the times, to preserve much of these revenues to the church, though he
had designed to allot L18,000 a year for eighteen new sees, of which he
only erected six with far inferior endowments. Nor was he much better
inclined to husband them for public exigencies, although more than
sufficient to make the Crown independent of parliamentary aid. It may
perhaps be reckoned a providential circumstance that his thoughtless
humour should have rejected the obvious means of establishing an
uncontrollable despotism, by rendering unnecessary the only exertion of
power which his subjects were likely to withstand. Henry VII. would
probably have followed a very different course. Large sums, however, are
said to have been expended in the repair of highways, and in fortifying
ports in the Channel.[110] But the greater part was dissipated in
profuse grants to the courtiers, who frequently contrived to veil their
acquisitions under cover of a purchase from the crown. It has been
surmised that Cromwell, in his desire to promote the Reformation,
advised the king to make this partition of abbey lands among the nobles
and gentry, either by grant, or by sale on easy terms, that, being thus
bound by the sure ties of private interest, they might always oppose any
return towards the dominion of Rome.[111] In Mary's reign accordingly
her parliament, so obsequious in all matters of religion, adhered with a
firm grasp to the possession of church lands; nor could the papal
supremacy be re-established until a sanction was given to their
enjoyment. And we may ascribe part of the zeal of the same class in
bringing back and preserving the reformed church under Elizabeth to a
similar motive; not that these gentlemen were hypocritical pretenders to
a belief they did not entertain, but that, according to the general laws
of human nature, they gave a readier reception to truths which made
their estates more secure.
But, if the participation of so many persons in the spoils of
ecclesiastical property gave stability to the new religion, by pledging
them to its support, it was also of no slight advantage to our civil
constitution, strengthening, and as it were infusing new blood into the
territorial aristocracy, who were to withstand the enormous prerogative
of the Crown. For if it be true, as surely it is, that wealth is power,
the distribution of so large a portion of the kingdom among the nobles
and gentry, the elevation of so many new families, and the increased
opulence of the more ancient, must have sensibly affected their weight
in the balance. Those families indeed, within or without the bounds of
the peerage, which are now deemed the most considerable, will be found,
with no great number of exceptions, to have first become conspicuous
under the Tudor line of kings; and, if we could trace the titles of
their estates, to have acquired no small portion of them, mediately or
immediately, from monastic or other ecclesiastical foundations. And
better it has been that these revenues should thus from age to age have
been expended in liberal hospitality, in discerning charity, in the
promotion of industry and cultivation, in the active duties or even
generous amusements of life, than in maintaining a host of ignorant and
inactive monks, in deceiving the populace by superstitious pageantry, or
in the encouragement of idleness and mendicity.[112]
A very ungrounded prejudice had long obtained currency, and,
notwithstanding the contradiction it has experienced in our more
accurate age, seems still not eradicated, that the alms of monasteries
maintained the indigent throughout the kingdom, and that the system of
parochial relief, now so much the topic of complaint, was rendered
necessary by the dissolution of those beneficent foundations. There can
be no doubt that many of the impotent poor derived support from their
charity. But the blind eleemosynary spirit inculcated by the Romish
church is notoriously the cause, not the cure, of beggary and
wretchedness. The monastic foundations, scattered in different counties,
but by no means at regular distances, could never answer the end of
local and limited succour, meted out in just proportion to the demands
of poverty. Their gates might indeed be open to those who knocked at
them for alms, and came in search of streams that must always be too
scanty for a thirsty multitude. Nothing could have a stronger tendency
to promote that vagabond mendicity, which unceasing and very severe
statutes were enacted to repress. It was and must always continue a hard
problem, to discover the means of rescuing those whom labour cannot
maintain from the last extremities of helpless suffering. The regular
clergy were in all respects ill fitted for this great office of
humanity. Even while the monasteries were yet standing, the scheme of a
provision for the poor had been adopted by the legislature, by means of
regular collections, which in the course of a long series of statutes,
ending in the 43rd of Elizabeth, were almost insensibly converted into
compulsory assessments.[113] It is by no means probable that, however
some in particular districts may have had to lament the cessation of
hospitality in the convents, the poor in general were placed in a worse
condition by their dissolution; nor are we to forget that the class to
whom the abbey lands have fallen have been distinguished at all times,
and never more than in the first century after that transference of
property, for their charity and munificence.
These two great political measures, the separation from the Roman see,
and the suppression of monasteries, so broke the vast power of the
English clergy, and humbled their spirit, that they became the most
abject of Henry's vassals, and dared not offer any steady opposition to
his caprice, even when it led him to make innovations in the essential
parts of their religion. It is certain that a large majority of that
order would gladly have retained their allegiance to Rome, and that they
viewed with horror the downfall of the monasteries. In rending away so
much that had been incorporated with the public faith, Henry seemed to
prepare the road for the still more radical changes of the reformers.
These, a numerous and increasing sect, exulted by turns in the
innovations he promulgated, lamented their dilatoriness and
imperfection, or trembled at the reaction of his bigotry against
themselves. Trained in the school of theological controversy, and
drawing from those bitter waters fresh aliment for his sanguinary and
imperious temper, he displayed the impartiality of his intolerance by
alternately persecuting the two conflicting parties. We all have read
how three persons convicted of disputing his supremacy, and three
deniers of transubstantiation, were drawn on the same hurdle to
execution. But the doctrinal system adopted by Henry in the latter years
of his reign, varying indeed in some measure from time to time, was
about equally removed from popish and protestant orthodoxy. The corporal
presence of Christ in the consecrated elements was a tenet which no one
might dispute without incurring the penalty of death by fire; and the
king had a capricious partiality to the Romish practice in those very
points where a great many real catholics on the Continent were earnest
for its alteration, the communion of the laity by bread alone, and the
celibacy of the clergy. But in several other respects he was wrought
upon by Cranmer to draw pretty near to the Lutheran creed, and to permit
such explications to be given in the books set forth by his authority,
the _Institution_, and the _Erudition of a Christian Man_, as, if they
did not absolutely proscribe most of the ancient opinions, threw at best
much doubt upon them, and gave intimations which the people, now become
attentive to these questions, were acute enough to interpret.[114]
_Progress of the reformed doctrine in England._--It was natural to
suspect, from the previous temper of the nation, that the revolutionary
spirit which blazed out in Germany should spread rapidly over England.
The enemies of ancient superstition at home, by frequent communication
with the Lutheran and Swiss reformers, acquired not only more enlivening
confidence, but a surer and more definite system of belief. Books
printed in Germany or in the Flemish provinces, where at first the
administration connived at the new religion, were imported and read with
that eagerness and delight which always compensate the risk of forbidden
studies.[115] Wolsey, who had no turn towards persecution, contented
himself with ordering heretical writings to be burned, and strictly
prohibiting their importation. But to withstand the course of popular
opinion is always like a combat against the elements in commotion; nor
is it likely that a government far more steady and unanimous than that
of Henry VIII. could have effectually prevented the diffusion of
protestantism. And the severe punishment of many zealous reformers, in
the subsequent part of his reign, tended, beyond a doubt, to excite a
favourable prejudice for men whose manifest sincerity, piety, and
constancy in suffering, were as good pledges for the truth of their
doctrine, as the people had been always taught to esteem the same
qualities in the legends of the early martyrs. Nor were Henry's
persecutions conducted upon the only rational principle, that of the
inquisition, which judges from the analogy of medicine, that a deadly
poison cannot be extirpated but by the speedy and radical excision of
the diseased part; but falling only upon a few of a more eager and
officious zeal, left a well-grounded opinion among the rest, that by
some degree of temporising prudence they might escape molestation till a
season of liberty should arrive.
One of the books originally included in the list of proscription among
the writings of Luther and the foreign Protestants, was a translation of
the New Testament into English by Tindal, printed at Antwerp in 1526. A
complete version of the Bible, partly by Tindal, and partly by
Coverdale, appeared, perhaps at Hamburgh, in 1535; a second edition,
under the name of Matthews, following in 1537; and as Cranmer's
influence over the king became greater, and his aversion to the Roman
church more inveterate, so material a change was made in the
ecclesiastical policy of this reign, as to direct the Scriptures in this
translation (but with corrections in many places) to be set up in parish
churches, and permit them to be publicly sold.[116] This measure had a
strong tendency to promote the Reformation, especially among those who
were capable of reading; not surely that the controverted doctrines of
the Romish church are so indisputably erroneous as to bear no sort of
examination, but because such a promulgation of the Scriptures at that
particular time seemed both tacitly to admit the chief point of contest,
that they were the exclusive standard of Christian faith, and to lead
the people to interpret them with that sort of prejudice which a jury
would feel in considering evidence that one party in a cause had
attempted to suppress; a danger which those who wish to restrain the
course of free discussion without very sure means of success will in all
ages do well to reflect upon.
The great change of religious opinions was not so much effected by
reasoning on points of theological controversy, upon which some are apt
to fancy it turned, as on a persuasion that fraud and corruption
pervaded the established church. The pretended miracles, which had so
long held the understanding in captivity, were wisely exposed to
ridicule and indignation by the government. Plays and interludes were
represented in churches, of which the usual subject was the vices and
corruptions of the monks and clergy. These were disapproved of by the
graver sort, but no doubt served a useful purpose.[117] The press sent
forth its light hosts of libels; and though the catholic party did not
fail to try the same means of influence, they had both less liberty to
write as they pleased, and fewer readers than their antagonists.
_Its establishment under Edward._--In this feverish state of the public
mind on the most interesting subject, ensued the death of Henry VIII.,
who had excited and kept it up. More than once, during the latter part
of his capricious reign, the popish party, headed by Norfolk and
Gardiner, had gained an ascendant and several persons had been burned
for denying transubstantiation. But at the moment of his decease,
Norfolk was a prisoner attainted of treason, Gardiner in disgrace, and
the favour of Cranmer at its height. It is said that Henry had meditated
some further changes in religion. Of his executors, the greater part, as
their subsequent conduct evinces, were nearly indifferent to the two
systems, except so far as more might be gained by innovation. But
Somerset, the new protector, appears to have inclined sincerely towards
the Reformation, though not wholly uninfluenced by similar motives. His
authority readily overcame all opposition in the council: and it was
soon perceived that Edward, whose singular precocity gave his opinions
in childhood an importance not wholly ridiculous, had imbibed a steady
and ardent attachment to the new religion, which probably, had he lived
longer, would have led him both to diverge farther from what he thought
an idolatrous superstition, and to have treated its adherents with
severity.[118] Under his reign accordingly a series of alterations in
the tenets and homilies of the English church were made, the principal
of which I shall point out, without following a chronological order, or
adverting to such matters of controversy as did not produce a sensible
effect on the people.
_Sketch of the chief points of difference between the two
religions._--1. It was obviously among the first steps required in order
to introduce a mode of religion at once more reasonable and more earnest
than the former, that the public services of the church should be
expressed in the mother tongue of the congregation. The Latin ritual had
been unchanged ever since the age when it was familiar; partly through a
sluggish dislike of innovation, but partly also because the
mysteriousness of an unknown dialect served to impose on the vulgar, and
to throw an air of wisdom around the priesthood. Yet what was thus
concealed would have borne the light. Our own liturgy, so justly
celebrated for its piety, elevation, and simplicity, is in great measure
a translation from the catholic services; those portions of course being
omitted which had relation to different principles of worship. In the
second year of Edward's reign, the reformation of the public service was
accomplished, and an English liturgy compiled not essentially different
from that in present use.[119]
2. No part of exterior religion was more prominent, or more offensive to
those who had imbibed a protestant spirit, than the worship, or at least
veneration, of images, which in remote and barbarous ages had given
excessive scandal both in the Greek and Latin churches, though long
fully established in the practice of each. The populace, in towns where
the reformed tenets prevailed, began to pull them down in the very first
days of Edward's reign; and after a little pretence at distinguishing
those which had not been abused, orders were given that all images
should be taken away from churches. It was perhaps necessary thus to
hinder the zealous Protestants from abating them as nuisances, which had
already caused several disturbances.[120] But this order was executed
with a rigour which lovers of art and antiquity have long deplored. Our
churches bear witness to the devastation committed in the wantonness of
triumphant reform, by defacing statues and crosses on the exterior of
buildings intended for worship, or windows and monuments within. Missals
and other books dedicated to superstition perished in the same manner.
Altars were taken down, and a great variety of ceremonies abrogated;
such as the use of incense, tapers, and holy water; and though more of
these were retained than eager innovators could approve, the whole
surface of religious ordinances, all that is palpable to common minds,
underwent a surprising transformation.
3. But this change in ceremonial observances and outward show was
trifling, when compared to that in the objects of worship, and in the
purposes for which they were addressed. Those who have visited some
catholic temples, and attended to the current language of devotion, must
have perceived, what the writings of apologists or decrees of councils
will never enable them to discover, that the saints, but more especially
the Virgin, are almost exclusively the _popular_ deities of that
religion. All this polytheism was swept away by the reformers; and in
this may be deemed to consist the most specific difference of the two
systems. Nor did they spare the belief in purgatory, that unknown land
which the hierarchy swayed with so absolute a rule, and to which the
earth had been rendered a tributary province. Yet in the first liturgy
put forth under Edward, the prayers for departed souls were retained;
whether out of respect to the prejudices of the people, or to the
immemorial antiquity of the practice. But such prayers, if not
necessarily implying the doctrine of purgatory (which yet in the main
they appear to do), are at least so closely connected with it, that the
belief could never be eradicated while they remained. Hence, in the
revision of the liturgy, four years afterwards, they were laid
aside;[121] and several other changes made, to eradicate the vestiges of
the ancient superstition.
4. Auricular confession, as commonly called, or the private and special
confession of sins to a priest for the purpose of obtaining his
absolution, an imperative duty in the church of Rome, and preserved as
such in the statute of the six articles, and in the religious codes
published by Henry VIII., was left to each man's discretion in the new
order; a judicious temperament, which the reformers would have done well
to adopt in some other points. And thus, while it has never been
condemned in our church, it went without dispute into complete neglect.
Those who desire to augment the influence of the clergy regret, of
course, its discontinuance; and some may conceive that it would serve
either for wholesome restraint, or useful admonition. It is very
difficult, or perhaps beyond the reach of any human being, to determine
absolutely how far these benefits, which cannot be reasonably denied to
result in some instances from the rite of confession, outweigh the
mischiefs connected with it. There seems to be something in the Roman
catholic discipline (and I know nothing else so likely) which keeps the
balance, as it were, of moral influence pretty even between the two
religions, and compensates for the ignorance and superstition which the
elder preserves: for I am not sure that the protestant system in the
present age has any very sensible advantage in this respect; or that in
countries where the comparison can fairly be made, as in Germany or
Switzerland, there is more honesty in one sex, or more chastity in the
other, when they belong to the reformed churches. Yet, on the other
hand, the practice of confession is at the best of very doubtful
utility, when considered in its full extent and general bearings. The
ordinary confessor, listening mechanically to hundreds of penitents, can
hardly preserve much authority over most of them. But in proportion as
his attention is directed to the secrets of conscience, his influence
may become dangerous; men grow accustomed to the control of one perhaps
more feeble and guilty than themselves, but over whose frailties they
exercise no reciprocal command! and, if the confessors of kings have
been sometimes terrible to nations, their ascendency is probably not
less mischievous, in proportion to its extent, within the sphere of
domestic life. In a political light, and with the object of lessening
the weight of the ecclesiastical order in temporal affairs, there
cannot be the least hesitation as to the expediency of discontinuing the
usage.[122]
5. It has very rarely been the custom of theologians to measure the
importance of orthodox opinions by their effect on the lives and hearts
of those who adopt them; nor was this predilection for speculative above
practical doctrines ever more evident than in the leading controversy of
the sixteenth century, that respecting the Lord's supper. No errors on
this point could have had any influence on men's moral conduct, nor
indeed much on the general nature of their faith; yet it was selected as
the test of heresy; and most, if not all, of those who suffered death
upon that charge, whether in England or on the Continent, were convicted
of denying the corporal presence in the sense of the Roman church. It
had been well if the reformers had learned, by abhorring her
persecution, not to practise it in a somewhat less degree upon each
other, or by exposing the absurdities of transubstantiation, not to
contend for equal nonsense of their own. Four principal theories, to say
nothing of subordinate varieties, divided Europe at the accession of
Edward VI. about the sacrament of the eucharist. The church of Rome
would not depart a single letter from transubstantiation, or the change,
at the moment of consecration, of the substances of bread and wine into
those of Christ's body and blood; the accidents, in school language, or
sensible qualities of the former remaining, or becoming inherent in the
new substance. This doctrine does not, as vulgarly supposed, contradict
the evidence of our senses; since our senses can report nothing as to
the unknown being, which the schoolmen denominated substance, and which
alone was the subject of this conversion. But metaphysicians of later
ages might enquire whether material substances, abstractedly considered,
exist at all, or, if they exist, whether they can have any specific
distinction except their sensible qualities. This, perhaps, did not
suggest itself in the sixteenth century; but it was strongly objected
that the simultaneous existence of a body in many places, which the
Romish doctrine implied, was inconceivable, and even contradictory.
Luther, partly, as it seems, out of his determination to multiply
differences with the church, invented a theory somewhat different,
usually called consubstantiation, which was adopted in the confession of
Augsburgh, and to which, at least down to the end of the seventeenth
century, the divines of that communion were much attached. They imagined
the two substances to be united in the sacramental elements, so that
they might be termed bread and wine, or the body and blood, with equal
propriety.[123] But it must be obvious that there is merely a scholastic
distinction between this doctrine and that of Rome; though, when it
suited the Lutherans to magnify, rather than dissemble, their deviations
from the mother church, it was raised into an important difference. A
simpler and more rational explication occurred to Zuingle and
Oecolampadius, from whom the Helvetian Protestants imbibed their faith.
Rejecting every notion of a real presence, and divesting the institution
of all its mystery, they saw only figurative symbols in the elements
which Christ had appointed as a commemoration of his death. But this
novel opinion excited as much indignation in Luther as in the Romanists.
It was indeed a rock on which the Reformation was nearly shipwrecked;
since the violent contests which it occasioned, and the narrow
intolerance which one side at least displayed throughout the
controversy, not only weakened on several occasions the temporal power
of the protestant churches, but disgusted many of those who might have
inclined towards espousing their sentiments. Besides these three
hypotheses, a fourth was promulgated by Martin Bucer of Strasburgh, a
man of much acuteness, but prone to metaphysical subtlety, and not, it
is said, of a very ingenuous character. His theory upon the sacrament of
the Lord's supper, after having been adopted with little variation by
Calvin, was finally received into some of the offices of the English
church. If the Roman and Lutheran doctrines teemed with unmasked
absurdity, this middle system (if indeed it is to be considered as a
genuine opinion, and not rather a politic device),[124] had no advantage
but in the disguise of unmeaning terms; while it had the peculiar
infelicity of departing as much from the literal sense of the words of
institution, wherein the former triumphed, as the Zuinglian
interpretation itself. It is not easy to state in language tolerably
perspicuous this obsolete metaphysical theology. But Bucer, as I
apprehend, though his expressions are unusually confused, did not
acknowledge a local presence of Christ's body and blood in the elements
after consecration--so far concurring with the Helvetians; while he
contended that they were really, and without figure, received by the
worthy communicant through faith, so as to preserve the belief of a
mysterious union, and of what was sometimes called a real presence. It
can hardly fail to strike every unprejudiced reader that a material
substance can only in a very figurative sense be said to be received
through faith; that there can be no real presence of such a body,
consistently with the proper use of language, but by its local
occupation of space; and that, as the Romish tenet of transubstantiation
is rather the best, so this of the Calvinists is the worst imagined of
the three that have been opposed to the simplicity of the Helvetic
explanation. Bucer himself came to England early in the reign of Edward,
and had a considerable share in advising the measures of reformation.
But Peter Martyr, a disciple of the Swiss school, had also no small
influence. In the forty-two articles set forth by authority, the real or
corporeal presence, using these words as synonymous, is explicitly
denied. This clause was omitted on the revision of the articles under
Elizabeth.[125]
6. These various innovations were exceedingly inimical to the influence
and interests of the priesthood. But that order obtained a sort of
compensation in being released from its obligation to celibacy. This
obligation, though unwarranted by Scripture, rested on a most ancient
and universal rule of discipline; for though the Greek and Eastern
churches have always permitted the ordination of married persons, yet
they do not allow those already ordained to take wives. No very good
reason, however, could be given for this distinction; and the
constrained celibacy of the Latin clergy had given rise to mischiefs, of
which their general practice of retaining concubines might be reckoned
among the smallest.[126] The German Protestants soon rejected this
burden, and encouraged regular as well as secular priests to marry.
Cranmer had himself taken a wife in Germany, whom Henry's law of the six
articles, one of which made the marriage of priests felony, compelled
him to send away. In the reign of Edward this was justly reckoned an
indispensable part of the new Reformation. But the bill for that purpose
passed the Lords with some little difficulty, nine bishops and four
peers dissenting; and its preamble cast such an imputation on the
practice it allowed, treating the marriage of priests as ignominious and
a tolerated evil, that another act was thought necessary a few years
afterwards, when the Reformation was better established, to vindicate
this right of the protestant church.[127] A great number of the clergy
availed themselves of their liberty; which may probably have had as
extensive an effect in conciliating the ecclesiastical profession, as
the suppression of monasteries had in rendering the gentry favourable to
the new order of religion.
_Opposition made by part of the nation._--But great as was the number of
those whom conviction or self-interest enlisted under the protestant
banner, it appears plain that the Reformation moved on with too
precipitate a step for the majority. The new doctrines prevailed in
London, in many large towns, and in the eastern counties. But in the
north and west of England, the body of the people were strictly
Catholics. The clergy, though not very scrupulous about conforming to
the innovations, were generally averse to most of them.[128] And, in
spite of the church lands, I imagine that most of the nobility, if not
the gentry, inclined to the same persuasion; not a few peers having
sometimes dissented from the bills passed on the subject of religion in
this reign, while no sort of disagreement appears in the upper house
during that of Mary. In the western insurrection of 1549, which partly
originated in the alleged grievance of enclosures, many of the demands
made by the rebels go to the entire re-establishment of popery. Those of
the Norfolk insurgents in the same year, whose political complaints were
the same, do not, as far as I perceive, show any such tendency. But an
historian, whose bias was certainly not unfavourable to protestantism,
confesses that all endeavours were too weak to overcome the aversion of
the people towards reformation, and even intimates that German troops
were sent for from Calais on account of the bigotry with which the bulk
of the nation adhered to the old superstition.[129] This is somewhat a
humiliating admission, that the protestant faith was imposed upon our
ancestors by a foreign army. And as the reformers, though still the
fewer, were undeniably a great and increasing party, it may be natural
to enquire, whether a regard to policy as well as equitable
considerations should not have repressed still more, as it did in some
measure, the zeal of Cranmer and Somerset? It might be asked, whether,
in the acknowledged co-existence of two religions, some preference were
not fairly claimed for the creed, which all had once held, and which the
greater part yet retained; whether it were becoming that the counsellors
of an infant king should use such violence in breaking up the
ecclesiastical constitution; whether it were to be expected that a
free-spirited people should see their consciences thus transferred by
proclamation, and all that they had learned to venerate not only torn
away from them, but exposed to what they must reckon blasphemous
contumely and profanation? The demolition of shrines and images, far
unlike the speculative disputes of theologians, was an overt insult on
every catholic heart. Still more were they exasperated at the ribaldry
which vulgar Protestants uttered against their most sacred mystery. It
was found necessary in the very first act of the first protestant
parliament, to denounce penalties against such as spoke irreverently of
the sacrament, an indecency not unusual with those who held the
Zuinglian opinion in that age of coarse pleasantry and unmixed
invective.[130] Nor could the people repose much confidence in the
judgment and sincerity of their governors, whom they had seen submitting
without outward repugnance to Henry's various schemes of religion, and
whom they saw every day enriching themselves with the plunder of the
church they affected to reform. There was a sort of endowed colleges or
fraternities, called chantries, consisting of secular priests, whose
duty was to say daily masses for the founders. These were abolished and
given to the king by acts of parliament in the last year of Henry, and
the first of Edward. It was intimated in the preamble of the latter
statute that their revenues should be converted to the erection of
schools, the augmentation of the universities, and the sustenance of the
indigent.[131] But this was entirely neglected, and the estates fell
into the hands of the courtiers. Nor did they content themselves with
this escheated wealth of the church. Almost every bishopric was spoiled
by their ravenous power in this reign, either through mere alienations,
or long leases, or unequal exchanges. Exeter and Llandaff from being
among the richest sees, fell into the class of the poorest. Lichfield
lost the chief part of its lands to raise an estate for Lord Paget.
London, Winchester, and even Canterbury, suffered considerably. The Duke
of Somerset was much beloved; yet he had given no unjust offence by
pulling down some churches in order to erect Somerset House with the
materials. He had even projected the demolition of Westminster Abbey;
but the chapter averted this outrageous piece of rapacity, sufficient of
itself to characterise that age, by the usual method, a grant of some of
their estates.[132]
Tolerance in religion, it is well known, so unanimously admitted (at
least verbally) even by theologians in the present century, was seldom
considered as practicable, much less as a matter of right, during the
period of the Reformation. The difference in this respect between the
Catholics and Protestants was only in degree, and in degree there was
much less difference than we are apt to believe. Persecution is the
deadly original sin of the reformed churches; that which cools every
honest man's zeal for their cause, in proportion as his reading becomes
more extensive. The Lutheran princes and cities in Germany constantly
refused to tolerate the use of the mass as an idolatrous service;[133]
and this name of idolatry, though adopted in retaliation for that of
heresy, answered the same end as the other, of exciting animosity and
uncharitableness. The Roman worship was equally proscribed in England.
Many persons were sent to prison for hearing mass and similar
offences.[134] The Princess Mary supplicated in vain to have the
exercise of her own religion at home; and Charles V. several times
interceded in her behalf; but though Cranmer and Ridley, as well as the
council, would have consented to this indulgence, the young king, whose
education had unhappily infused a good deal of bigotry into his mind,
could not be prevailed upon to connive at such idolatry.[135] Yet in
one memorable instance he had shown a milder spirit, struggling against
Cranmer to save a fanatical woman from the punishment of heresy. This is
a stain upon Cranmer's memory which nothing but his own death could have
lightened. In men hardly escaped from a similar peril, in men who had
nothing to plead but the right of private judgment, in men who had
defied the prescriptive authority of past ages and of established power,
the crime of persecution assumes a far deeper hue, and is capable of far
less extenuation, than in a Roman inquisitor. Thus the death of Servetus
has weighed down the name and memory of Calvin. And though Cranmer was
incapable of the rancorous malignity of the Genevan lawgiver, yet I
regret to say that there is a peculiar circumstance of aggravation in
his pursuing to death this woman, Joan Boucher, and a Dutchman that had
been convicted of Arianism. It is said that he had been accessary in the
preceding reign to the condemnation of Lambert, and perhaps some others,
for opinions concerning the Lord's supper which he had himself
afterwards embraced.[136] Such an evidence of the fallibility of human
judgment, such an example that persecutions for heresy, how
conscientiously soever managed, are liable to end in shedding the blood
of those who maintain truth, should have taught him, above all men, a
scrupulous repugnance to carry into effect those sanguinary laws.
Compared with these executions for heresy, the imprisonment and
deprivation of Gardiner and Bonner appear but measures of ordinary
severity towards political adversaries under the pretext of religion;
yet are they wholly unjustifiable, particularly in the former instance;
and if the subsequent retaliation of those bad men was beyond all
proportion excessive, we should remember that such is the natural
consequence of tyrannical aggressions.[137]