of the souls of his subjects as their bodies; and may by the law of God
by his parliament make laws touching and concerning as well the one as
the other." The principle embodied in these words was carried out in a
series of decisive measures. Under strong pressure the convocation was
brought to pray that the power of independent legislation till now
exercised by the church should come to an end, and to promise "that from
henceforth we shall forbear to enact, promulge, or put into execution
any such constitutions and ordinances so by us to be made in time
coming, unless your highness by your royal assent shall license us to
make, promulge, and execute them, and the same so made be approved by
your highness' authority."
Rome was dealt with in the same unsparing fashion. The parliament
forbade by statute any further appeals to the papal court; and on a
petition from the clergy in convocation the houses granted power to the
King to suspend the payments of first-fruits, or the year's revenue
which each bishop paid to Rome on his election to a see. All judicial,
all financial connection with the papacy was broken by these two
measures. The last, indeed, was as yet but a menace which Henry might
use in his negotiations with Clement. The hope which had been
entertained of aid from Charles was now abandoned; and the overthrow of
Norfolk and his policy of alliance with the Empire was seen at the
midsummer of 1532 in the conclusion of a league with France. Cromwell
had fallen back on Wolsey's system; and the divorce was now to be looked
for from the united pressure of the French and English kings on the
papal court.
But the pressure was as unsuccessful as before. In November Clement
threatened the King with excommunication if he did not restore Catherine
to her place as queen and abstain from all intercourse with Anne Boleyn
till the case was tried. But Henry still refused to submit to the
judgment of any court outside his realm; and the Pope, ready as he was
with evasion and delay, dared not alienate Charles by consenting to a
trial within it. The lavish pledges which Francis had given in an
interview during the preceding summer may have aided to spur the King to
a decisive step which closed the long debate. At the opening of 1533
Henry was privately married to Anne Boleyn. The match, however, was
carefully kept secret while the papal sanction was being gained for the
appointment of Cranmer to the see of Canterbury, which had become vacant
by Archbishop Warham's death in the preceding year. But Cranmer's
consecration at the close of March was the signal for more open action,
and Cromwell's policy was at last brought fairly into play.
The new primate at once laid the question of the King's marriage before
the two houses of convocation, and both voted that the license of Pope
Julius had been beyond the papal powers and that the marriage which it
authorized was void. In May the King's suit was brought before the
Archbishop in his court at Dunstable; his judgment annulled the marriage
with Catherine as void from the beginning, and pronounced the marriage
with Anne Boleyn, which her pregnancy had forced Henry to reveal, a
lawful marriage. A week later the hand of Cranmer placed upon Anne's
brow the crown which she had coveted so long.
"There was much murmuring" at measures such as these. Many thought "that
the Bishop of Rome would curse all Englishmen, and that the Emperor and
he would destroy all the people." Fears of the overthrow of religion
told on the clergy; the merchants dreaded an interruption of the trade
with Flanders, Italy, and Spain. But Charles, though still loyal to his
aunt's cause, had no mind to incur risks for her; and Clement, though he
annulled Cranmer's proceedings, hesitated as yet to take sterner action.
Henry, on the other hand, conscious that the die was thrown, moved
rapidly forward in the path that Cromwell had opened. The Pope's
reversal of the primate's judgment was answered by an appeal to a
general council. The decision of the cardinals to whom the case was
referred in the spring of 1534, a decision which asserted the
lawfulness of Catherine's marriage, was met by the enforcement of the
long-suspended statute forbidding the payment of first-fruits to the
Pope.
Though the King was still firm in his resistance to Lutheran opinions,
and at this moment endeavored to prevent by statute the importation of
Lutheran books, the less scrupulous hand of his minister was seen
already striving to find a counterpoise to the hostility of the Emperor
in an alliance with the Lutheran princes of North Germany. Cromwell was
now fast rising to a power which rivalled Wolsey's. His elevation to the
post of lord privy seal placed him on a level with the great nobles of
the council board; and Norfolk, constant in his hopes of reconciliation
with Charles and the papacy, saw his plans set aside for the wider and
more daring projects of "the black-smith's son." Cromwell still clung to
the political engine whose powers he had turned to the service of the
Crown. The parliament which had been summoned at Wolsey's fall met
steadily year after year; and measure after measure had shown its
accordance with the royal will in the strife with Rome.
It was now called to deal a final blow. Step by step the ground had been
cleared for the great statute by which the new character of the English
Church was defined in the session of 1534. By the Act of Supremacy
authority in all matters ecclesiastical was vested solely in the Crown.
The courts spiritual became as thoroughly the king's courts as the
temporal courts at Westminster. The statute ordered that the King "shall
be taken, accepted, and reputed the only supreme head on earth of the
Church of England, and shall have and enjoy, annexed and united to the
imperial crown of this realm, as well the title and state thereof as all
the honors, jurisdictions, authorities, immunities, profits, and
commodities to the said dignity belonging, with full power to visit,
repress, redress, reform, and amend all such errors, heresies, abuses,
contempts, and enormities which by any manner of spiritual authority or
jurisdiction might or may lawfully be reformed."
The full import of the Act of Supremacy was only seen in the following
year. At the opening of 1535 Henry formally took the title of "on earth
Supreme Head of the Church of England," and some months later Cromwell
was raised to the post of vicar-general, or vicegerent of the King in
all matters ecclesiastical. His title, like his office, recalled the
system of Wolsey. It was not only as legate, but in later years as
vicar-general, of the Pope, that Wolsey had brought all spiritual causes
in England to an English court. The supreme ecclesiastical jurisdiction
in the realm passed into the hands of a minister who as chancellor
already exercised its supreme civil jurisdiction. The papal power had
therefore long seemed transferred to the crown before the legislative
measures which followed the divorce actually transferred it.
It was in fact the system of Catholicism itself that trained men to look
without surprise on the concentration of all spiritual and secular
authority in Cromwell. Successor to Wolsey as keeper of the great seal,
it seemed natural enough that Cromwell should succeed him also as
vicar-general of the Church, and that the union of the two powers should
be restored in the hands of a minister of the King. But the mere fact
that these powers were united in the hands, not of a priest, but of a
layman, showed the new drift of the royal policy. The Church was no
longer to be brought indirectly under the royal power; in the policy of
Cromwell it was to be openly laid prostrate at the foot of the throne.
And this policy his position enabled him to carry out with a terrible
thoroughness. One great step toward its realization had already been
taken in the statute which annihilated the free legislative powers of
the convocations of the clergy. Another followed in an act which, under
the pretext of restoring the free election of bishops, turned every
prelate into a nominee of the King. The election of bishops by the
chapters of their cathedral churches had long become formal, and their
appointment had since the time of the Edwards been practically made by
the papacy on the nomination of the crown. The privilege of free
election was now with bitter irony restored to the chapters, but they
were compelled on pain of praemunire to choose whatever candidate was
recommended by the king. This strange expedient has lasted till the
present time, though its character has wholly changed with the
development of constitutional rule.
The nomination of bishops has ever since the accession of the Georges
passed from the king in person to the minister, who represents the will
of the people. Practically, therefore, an English prelate, alone among
all the prelates of the world, is now raised to his episcopal throne by
the same popular election which raised Ambrose to his episcopal chair at
Milan. But at the moment of the change Cromwell's measure reduced the
English bishops to absolute dependence on the crown. Their dependence
would have been complete had his policy been thoroughly carried out, and
the royal power of deposition put in force, as well as that of
appointment. As it was, Henry could warn the Archbishop of Dublin that,
if he persevered in his "proud folly, we be able to remove you again and
to put another man of more virtue and honesty in your place." By the
more ardent partisans of the Reformation this dependence of the bishops
on the crown was fully recognized. On the death of Henry VIII Cranmer
took out a new commission from Edward for the exercise of his office.
Latimer, when the royal policy clashed with his belief, felt bound to
resign the see of Worcester. If the power of deposition was quietly
abandoned by Elizabeth, the abandonment was due, not so much to any
deference for the religious instincts of the nation as to the fact that
the steady servility of the bishops rendered its exercise unnecessary.
A second step in Cromwell's policy followed hard on this enslavement of
the episcopate. Master of convocation, absolute master of the bishops,
Henry had become master of the monastic orders through the right of
visitation over them, which had been transferred by the Act of Supremacy
from the papacy to the crown. The monks were soon to know what this
right of visitation implied in the hands of the vicar-general. As an
outlet for religious enthusiasm, monasticism was practically dead. The
friar, now that his fervor of devotion and his intellectual energy had
passed away, had sunk into a mere beggar. The monks had become mere
landowners. Most of the religious houses were anxious only to enlarge
their revenues and to diminish the number of those who shared them.
In the general carelessness which prevailed as to the spiritual objects
of their trust, in the wasteful management of their estates, in the
indolence and self-indulgence which for the most part characterized
them, the monastic establishments simply exhibited the faults of all
corporate bodies that have outlived the work which they were created to
perform. They were no more unpopular, however, than such corporate
bodies generally are. The Lollard cry for their suppression had died
away. In the north, where some of the greatest abbeys were situated, the
monks were on good terms with the country gentry, and their houses
served as schools for their children; nor is there any sign of a
different feeling elsewhere.
But they had drawn on themselves at once the hatred of the New Learning
and of the monarchy. In the early days of the revival of letters, popes
and bishops had joined with princes and scholars in welcoming the
diffusion of culture and the hopes of religious reform. But, though an
abbot or a prior here or there might be found among the supporters of
the movement, the monastic orders as a whole repelled it with unswerving
obstinacy. The quarrel only became more bitter as years went on. The
keen sarcasms of Erasmus, the insolent buffoonery of Hutten, were
lavished on the "lovers of darkness" and of the cloister.
In England Colet and More echoed with greater reserve the scorn and
invective of their friends. The monarchy had other causes for its hate.
In Cromwell's system there was no room for either the virtues or the
vices of monasticism, for its indolence and superstition, or for its
independence of the throne. The bold stand which the monastic orders had
made against benevolences had never been forgiven, while the revenues of
their foundations offered spoil vast enough to fill the royal treasury
and secure a host of friends for the new reforms. Two royal
commissioners, therefore, were despatched on a general visitation of the
religious houses, and their reports formed a "Black Book" which was laid
before parliament in 1536.
It was acknowledged that about a third of the houses, including the bulk
of the larger abbeys, were fairly and decently conducted. The rest were
charged with drunkenness, with simony, and with the foulest and most
revolting crimes. The character of the visitors, the sweeping nature of
their report, and the long debate which followed on its reception leave
little doubt that these charges were grossly exaggerated. But the want
of any effective discipline which had resulted from their exemption from
all but papal supervision told fatally against monastic morality even in
abbeys like St. Albans; and the acknowledgment of Warham, as well as a
partial measure of suppression begun by Wolsey, goes some way to prove
that, in the smaller houses at least, indolence had passed into crime.
A cry of "down with them" broke from the commons as the report was read.
The country, however, was still far from desiring the utter downfall of
the monastic system, and a long and bitter debate was followed by a
compromise which suppressed all houses whose income fell below two
hundred pounds a year. Of the thousand religious houses which then
existed in England, nearly four hundred were dissolved under this act
and their revenues granted to the crown.
The secular clergy alone remained; and injunction after injunction from
the vicar-general taught rector and vicar that they must learn to regard
themselves as mere mouth-pieces of the royal will. The Church was
gagged. With the instinct of genius, Cromwell discerned the part which
the pulpit, as the one means which then existed of speaking to the
people at large, was to play in the religious and political struggle
that was at hand; and he resolved to turn it to the profit of the
monarchy.
The restriction of the right of preaching to priests who received
licenses from the Crown silenced every voice of opposition. Even to
those who received these licenses theological controversy was forbidden;
and a high-handed process of "tuning the pulpits," by express directions
as to the subject and tenor of each special discourse, made the
preachers at every crisis mere means of diffusing the royal will. As a
first step in this process every bishop, abbot, and parish priest was
required by the new vicar-general to preach against the usurpation of
the papacy, and to proclaim the King as supreme head of the Church on
earth. The very topics of the sermon were carefully prescribed; the
bishops were held responsible for the compliance of the clergy with
these orders; and the sheriffs were held responsible for the obedience
of the bishops.
While the great revolution which struck down the Church was in progress,
England looked silently on. In all the earlier ecclesiastical changes,
in the contest over the papal jurisdiction and papal exactions, in the
reform of the church courts, even in the curtailment of the legislative
independence of the clergy, the nation as a whole had gone with the
King. But from the enslavement of the priesthood, from the gagging of
the pulpits, from the suppression of the monasteries, the bulk of the
nation stood aloof. There were few voices, indeed, of protest. As the
royal policy disclosed itself, as the monarchy trampled under foot the
tradition and reverence of ages gone by, as its figure rose bare and
terrible out of the wreck of old institutions, England simply held her
breath.
It is only through the stray depositions of royal spies that we catch a
glimpse of the wrath and hate which lay seething under this silence of
the people. For the silence was a silence of terror. Before Cromwell's
rise, and after his fall from power, the reign of Henry VIII witnessed
no more than the common tyranny and bloodshed of the time. But the years
of Cromwell's administration form the one period in our history which
deserves the name that men have given to the rule of Robespierre. It was
the English "Terror." It was by terror that Cromwell mastered the King.
Cranmer could plead for him at a later time with Henry as "one whose
surety was only by your majesty, who loved your majesty, as I ever
thought, no less than God." But the attitude of Cromwell toward the King
was something more than that of absolute dependence and unquestioning
devotion.
He was "so vigilant to preserve your majesty from all treasons," adds
the primate, "that few could be so secretly conceived but he detected
the same from the beginning." Henry, like every Tudor, was fearless of
open danger, but tremulously sensitive to the lightest breath of hidden
disloyalty; and it was on this dread that Cromwell based the fabric of
his power. He was hardly secretary before spies were scattered broadcast
over the land. Secret denunciations poured into the open ear of the
minister. The air was thick with tales of plots and conspiracies; and
with the detection and suppression of each, Cromwell tightened his hold
on the King.
As it was by terror that he mastered the King, so it was by terror that
he mastered the people. Men felt in England, to use the figure by which
Erasmus paints the time, "as if a scorpion lay sleeping under every
stone." The confessional had no secrets for Cromwell. Men's talk with
their closest friends found its way to his ear. "Words idly spoken," the
murmurs of a petulant abbot, the ravings of a moon-struck nun, were, as
the nobles cried passionately at his fall, "tortured into treason." The
only chance of safety lay in silence.
"Friends who used to write and send me presents," Erasmus tells us, "now
send neither letter nor gifts, nor receive any from anyone, and this
through fear." But even the refuge of silence was closed by a law more
infamous than any that has ever blotted the statute-book of England. Not
only was thought made treason, but men were forced to reveal their
thoughts on pain of their very silence being punished with the penalties
of treason. All trust in the older bulwarks of liberty was destroyed by
a policy as daring as it was unscrupulous. The noblest institutions were
degraded into instruments of terror. Though Wolsey had strained the law
to the utmost, he had made no open attack on the freedom of justice. If
he shrank from assembling parliaments, it was from his sense that they
were the bulwarks of liberty.
But under Cromwell the coercion of juries and the management of judges
rendered the courts mere mouth-pieces of the royal will; and where even
this shadow of justice proved an obstacle to bloodshed, parliament was
brought into play to pass bill after bill of attainder. "He shall be
judged by the bloody laws he has himself made," was the cry of the
council at the moment of his fall, and by a singular retribution the
crowning injustice which he sought to introduce even into the practice
of attainder, the condemnation of a man without hearing his defence, was
only practised on himself.
But, ruthless as was the "Terror" of Cromwell, it was of a nobler type
than the Terror of France. He never struck uselessly or capriciously, or
stooped to the meaner victims of the guillotine. His blows were
effective just because he chose his victims from among the noblest and
the best. If he struck at the Church, it was through the Carthusians,
the holiest and the most renowned of English churchmen. If he struck at
the baronage, it was through Lady Salisbury, in whose veins flowed the
blood of kings. If he struck at the New Learning, it was through the
murder of Sir Thomas More. But no personal vindictiveness mingled with
his crime.
In temper, indeed, so far as we can judge from the few stories which
lingered among his friends, he was a generous, kindly hearted man, with
pleasant and winning manners which atoned for a certain awkwardness of
person, and with a constancy of friendship which won him a host of
devoted adherents. But no touch either of love or hate swayed him from
his course. The student of Machiavelli had not studied the _Prince_ in
vain. He had reduced bloodshed to a system. Fragments of his papers
still show us with what a business-like brevity he ticked off human
lives among the casual "remembrances" of the day.
"Item, the Abbot of Reading to be sent down to be tried and executed at
Reading." "Item, to know the King's pleasure touching Master More."
"Item, when Master Fisher shall go to his execution, and the other." It
is indeed this utter absence of all passion, of all personal feeling,
that makes the figure of Cromwell the most terrible in our history. He
has an absolute faith in the end he is pursuing, and he simply hews his
way to it as a woodman hews his way through the forest, axe in hand.
The choice of his first victim showed the ruthless precision with which
Cromwell was to strike. In the general opinion of Europe, the foremost
Englishman of the time was Sir Thomas More. As the policy of the divorce
ended in an open rupture with Rome, he had withdrawn silently from the
ministry, but his silent disapproval of the new policy was more telling
than the opposition of obscurer foes. To Cromwell there must have been
something specially galling in More's attitude of reserve. The religious
reforms of the New Learning were being rapidly carried out, but it was
plain that the man who represented the very life of the New Learning
believed that the sacrifice of liberty and justice was too dear a price
to pay even for religious reform.
In the actual changes which the divorce brought about, there was nothing
to move More to active or open opposition. Though he looked on the
divorce and remarriage as without religious warrant, he found no
difficulty in accepting an act of succession passed in 1534 which
declared the marriage of Anne Boleyn valid, annulled the title of
Catherine's child, Mary, and declared the children of Anne the only
lawful heirs to the crown. His faith in the power of parliament over all
civil matters was too complete to admit a doubt of its competence to
regulate the succession to the throne. But by the same act an oath
recognizing the succession as then arranged was ordered to be taken by
all persons; and this oath contained an acknowledgment that the
marriage with Catherine was against Scripture, and invalid from the
beginning.
Henry had long known More's belief on this point; and the summons to
take this oath was simply a summons to death. More was at his house at
Chelsea when the summons called him to Lambeth, to the house where he
had bandied fun with Warham and Erasmus or bent over the easel of
Holbein. For a moment there may have been some passing impulse to yield.
But it was soon over. Triumphant in all else, the monarchy was to find
its power stop short at the conscience of man. The great battle of
spiritual freedom, the battle of the Protestant against Mary, of the
Catholic against Elizabeth, of the Puritan against Charles, of the
Independent against the Presbyterian, began at the moment when More
refused to bend or to deny his convictions at a king's bidding.