REFORMS.
(END OF 1529.)
[Sidenote: Indignation At The Reply.]
The answer of the bishops was criticised in the royal residence, in the
House of Commons, at the meetings of the burgesses, in the streets of
the capital, and in the provinces, everywhere exciting a lively
indignation. “What!” said they, “the bishops accuse the most pious and
active Christians of England,—men like Bilney, Fryth, Tyndale, and
Latimer,—of that idleness and irregularity of which their monks and
priests are continually showing us examples. To no purpose have the
Commons indisputably proved their grievances, if the bishops reply to
notorious facts by putting forward their scholastic system. We condemn
their practice, and they take shelter behind their theories; as if the
reproach laid against them was not precisely that their lives are in
opposition to their laws. ‘The fault is not in the Church,’ they say.
But it is its ministers that we accuse.”
The indignant parliament boldly took up the axe, attacked the tree, and
cut off the withered and rotten branches. One bill followed another,
irritating the clergy, but filling the people with joy. When the legacy
dues were under discussion, one of the members drew a touching picture
of the avarice and cruelty of the priests. “They have no compassion,” he
said. “The children of the dead should all die of hunger and go begging,
rather than they would of charity give to them the silly cow which the
dead man owed, if he had only one.” There was a movement of indignation
in the house, and they forbade the clergy to take any mortuary fees when
the effects were small.
“And that is not all,” said another. “The clergy monopolize large tracts
of land, and the poor are compelled to pay an extravagant price for
whatever they buy. They are everything in the world but preachers of
God’s Word and shepherds of souls. They buy and sell wool, cloth, and
other merchandise; they keep tanneries and breweries.... How can they
attend to their spiritual duties in the midst of such occupations?”[18]
The clergy were consequently prohibited from holding large estates or
carrying on the business of merchant, tanner, brewer, etc. At the same
time plurality of benefices (some ignorant priests holding as many as
ten or twelve) was forbidden, and residence was enforced. The Commons
further enacted that any one seeking a dispensation for non-residence
(even were the application made to the pope himself) should be liable to
a heavy fine.
The clergy saw at last that they must reform. They forbade priests from
keeping shops and taverns, playing at dice or other games of chance,
passing through towns and villages with hawks and hounds, being present
at unbecoming entertainments, and spending the night in suspected
houses.[19] Convocation proceeded to enact severe penalties against
these disorders, doubling them for adultery, and tripling them for
incest. The laity asked how it was that the Church had waited so long
before coming to this resolution, and whether these scandals had become
criminal only because the Commons condemned them?
[Sidenote: Bishops Accuse The Commons.]
But the bishops who reformed the lower clergy did not intend to resign
their own privileges. One day, when a bill relating to wills was laid
before the upper house, the Archbishop of Canterbury and all the other
prelates frowned, murmured, and looked uneasily around them.[20] They
exclaimed that the Commons were heretics and schismatics, and almost
called them infidels and atheists. In all places good men required that
morality should again be united with religion, and that piety should not
be made to consist merely in certain ceremonies, but in the awakening of
the conscience, a lively faith, and holy conduct. The bishops, not
discerning that God’s work was then being accomplished in the world,
determined to maintain the ancient order of things at all risks.
Their efforts had some chance of success, for the House of Lords was
essentially conservative. The Bishop of Rochester, a sincere but
narrow-minded man, presuming on the respect inspired by his age and
character, boldly came forward as the defender of the Church. “My
lords,” he said, “these bills have no other object than the destruction
of the Church; and, if the Church goes down, all the glory of the
kingdom will fall with it. Remember what happened to the Bohemians. Like
them our Commons cry out,—‘Down with the Church!’ Whence cometh that
cry? Simply from lack of faith.... My lords, save the country, save the
Church.”
This speech made the Commons very indignant. Some members thought the
bishop denied that they were Christians. They sent thirty of their
leading men to the king. “Sire,” said the Speaker, “it is an attaint
upon the honor of your Majesty to calumniate before the upper house
those whom your subjects have elected. They are accused of lack of
faith, that is to say, they are no better than Turks, Saracens, and
heathens. Be pleased to call before you the bishop who has insulted your
Commons.”
The king made a gracious reply, and immediately sent one of his officers
to invite the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of Rochester, and six
other prelates to appear before him. They came, quite uneasy as to what
the prince might have to say to them. They knew that, like all the
Plantagenets, Henry VIII. would not suffer his clergy to resist him.
Immediately the king informed them of the complaint made by the Commons,
their hearts sank, and they lost courage. They thought only how to
escape the prince’s anger, and the most venerated among them, Fisher,
having recourse to falsehood, asserted that, when speaking about “lack
of faith,” he had not thought of the Commons of England, but of the
Bohemians only. The other prelates confirmed this inadmissible
interpretation. This was a graver fault than the fault itself, and the
unbecoming evasion was a defeat to the clerical party from which they
never recovered. The king allowed the excuse; but he afterwards made the
bishops feel the little esteem he entertained for them. As for the House
of Commons, it loudly expressed the disdain aroused in them by the
bishops’ subterfuge.
One chance of safety still remained to them. Mixed committees of the two
houses examined the resolutions of the Commons. The peers, especially
the ecclesiastical peers, opposed the reform by appealing to usage.
“Usage!” ironically observed a Gray’s-inn lawyer; “the usage hath ever
been of thieves to rob on Shooter’s hill, _ergo_ it is lawful, and ought
to be kept up!” This remark sorely irritated the prelates: “What! our
acts are compared to robberies!” But the lawyer, addressing the
Archbishop of Canterbury, seriously endeavored to prove to him that the
exactions of the clergy, in the matter of probates and mortuaries, were
open robbery. The temporal lords gradually adopted the opinions of the
Commons.
In the midst of these debates, the king did not lose sight of his own
interests. Six years before, he had raised a loan among his subjects; he
thought parliament ought to relieve him of this debt. This demand was
opposed by the members most devoted to the principle of the Reformation;
John Petit, in particular, the friend of Bilney and Tyndale, said, in
parliament,—“I give the king all I lent him; but I cannot give him what
others have lent him.” Henry was not, however, discouraged, and finally
obtained the act required.
[Sidenote: Pluralism Abolished.]
The king soon showed that he was pleased with the Commons. Two bills met
with a stern opposition from the Lords; they were those abolishing
pluralism and non-residence. These two customs were so convenient and
advantageous that the clergy determined not to give them up. Henry,
seeing that the two houses would never agree, resolved to cut the
difficulty. At his desire eight members from each met one afternoon in
the Star Chamber. There was an animated discussion; but the lay lords,
who were in the conference, taking part with the commons, the bishops
were forced to yield. The two bills passed the Lords the next day, and
received the king’s assent. After this triumph the king adjourned
parliament in the middle of December.
The different reforms that had been carried through were important, but
they were not the Reformation. Many abuses were corrected, but the
doctrines remained unaltered; the power of the clergy was restricted,
but the authority of Christ was not increased; the dry branches of the
tree had been lopped off, but a scion calculated to bear good fruit had
not been grafted on the wild stock. Had matters stopped here, we might
perhaps have obtained a Church with morals less repulsive, but not with
a holy doctrine and a new life. But the Reformation was not contented
with more decorous forms, it required a second creation.
At the same time parliament had taken a great stride towards the
revolution that was to transform the Church. A new power had taken its
place in the world: the laity had triumphed over the clergy. No doubt
there were upright catholics who gave their assent to the laws passed in
1529; but these laws were nevertheless a product of the Reformation.
This it was that had inspired the laity with that new energy, parliament
with that bold action, and given the liberties of the nation that
impulse which they had wanted hitherto. The joy was great throughout the
kingdom; and, while the king removed to Greenwich to keep Christmas
there “with great plenty of viands, and disguisings, and interludes,”
the members of the Commons were welcomed in the towns and villages with
public rejoicings.[21] In the people’s eyes their representatives were
like soldiers who had just gained a brilliant victory. The clergy alone,
in all England, were downcast and exasperated. On returning to their
residences the bishops could not conceal their anguish at the danger of
the Church.[22] The priests, who had been the first victims offered up
on the altar of reform, bent their heads. But if the clergy foresaw days
of mourning, the laity hailed with joy the glorious era of the liberties
of the people, and of the greatness of England. The friends of the
Reformation went farther still; they believed that the Gospel would work
a complete change in the world, and talked, as Tyndale informs us, “as
though the golden age would come again.”[23]
Footnote 18:
Foxe, _Acts_, iv. p. 611.
Footnote 19:
“Quod non pernoctent in locis suspectis. Mulierum colloquia suspecta
nullatenus habeant.”—Wilkins, _Concilia_, iii. pp. 717, 722, &c.
Footnote 20:
“The Archbishop of Canterbury and all the bishops began to frown and
grunt.”—Foxe, _Acts_, iv. p. 612.
Footnote 21:
Foxe, _Acts_, iv. p. 614.
Footnote 22:
“The great displeasure of spiritual persons.”—Ibid.
Footnote 23:
Tyndale’s _Works_, i. p. 421.