view, centres around the throne of the popes, so the most prominent
subject of historical interest in our modern times is the revolt from
their almost unlimited domination. The Protestant Reformation, in its
various relations, was a movement of transcendent importance. The
history of Christendom, in a moral, a political, a religious, a
literary, and a social point of view, for the last three hundred years,
cannot be studied or comprehended without primary reference to that
memorable revolution.
We have seen how that great insurrection of human intelligence was
headed in Germany by Luther, and we shall shortly consider it in
Switzerland and France under Calvin. We have now to contemplate the
movement in England.
The most striking figure in it was doubtless Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop
of Canterbury, although he does not represent the English Reformation
in all its phases. He was neither so prominent nor so great a man as
Luther or Calvin, or even Knox. But, taking him all in all, he was the
most illustrious of the English reformers; and he, more than any other
man, gave direction to the spirit of reform, which had been quietly
working ever since the time of Wyclif, especially among the
humbler classes.
The English Reformation--the way to which had been long preparing--began
in the reign of Henry VIII.; and this unscrupulous and tyrannical
monarch, without being a religious man, gave the first great impulse to
an outbreak the remote consequences of which he did not anticipate, and
with which he had no sympathy. He rebelled against the authority of the
Pope, without abjuring the Roman Catholic religion, either as to dogmas
or forms. In fact, the first great step towards reform was made, not by
Cranmer, but by Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex, as the prime minister of
Henry VIII.,--a man of whom we really know the least of all the very
great statesmen of English history. It was he who demolished the
monasteries, and made war on the whole monastic system, and undermined
the papal power in England, and swept away many of the most glaring of
those abuses which disgraced the Papal Empire. Armed with the powers
which Wolsey had wielded, he directed them into a totally different
channel, so far as the religious welfare of the nation is considered,
although in his principles of government he was as absolute as
Richelieu. Like the great French statesman, he exalted the throne; but,
unlike him, he promoted the personal reign of the sovereign he served
with remarkable ability and devotion.
Thomas Cromwell, the prime minister of Henry VIII., after the fall of
Wolsey, was born in humble ranks, and was in early life a common soldier
in the wars of Italy, then a clerk in a mercantile house in Antwerp,
then a wool merchant in Middleborough, then a member of Parliament, and
was employed by Wolsey in suppressing some of the smaller monasteries.
His fidelity to his patron Wolsey, at the time of that great cardinal's
fall, attracted the special notice of the King, who made him royal
secretary in the House of Commons. He made his fortune by advising Henry
to declare himself Head of the English Church, when he was entangled in
the difficulties growing out of the divorce of Catharine. This advice
was given with the patriotic view of making the royal authority superior
to that of the Pope in Church patronage, and of making England
independent of Rome.
The great scandal of the times was the immoral lives of the clergy,
especially of the monks, and the immunities they enjoyed. They were a
hindrance to the royal authority, and weakened the resources of the
country by the excessive drain of gold and silver sent to Rome to
replenish the papal treasury. Cromwell would make the clergy dependent
on the King and not on the Pope for their investitures and promotions;
and he abominated the idle and vagabond lives of the monks, who had
degenerated in England, perhaps more than in any other country in
Europe, in consequence of the great wealth of their monasteries. He was
able to render his master and the kingdom a great service, from the
powers lavished upon him. He presided at convocations as the King's
vicegerent; controlled the House of Commons, and was inquisitor-general
of the monasteries; he was foreign and home secretary, vicar-general,
and president of the star-chamber or privy-council. The proud Nevilles,
the powerful Percies, and the noble Courtenays all bowed before this
plebeian son of a mechanic, who had arisen by force of genius and lucky
accidents,--too wise to build a palace like Hampton Court, but not
ecclesiastical enough in his sympathies to found a college like Christ's
Church as Wolsey did. He was a man simple in his tastes, and
hard-working like Colbert,--the great finance minister of France under
Louis XIV.,--whom he resembled in his habits and policy.
His great task, as well as his great public service, was the visitation
and suppression of monasteries. He perceived that they had fulfilled
their mission; that they were no longer needed; that they had become
corrupt, and too corrupt to be reformed; that they were no longer abodes
of piety, or beehives of industry, or nurseries of art, or retreats of
learning; that their wealth was squandered; that they upheld the arm of
a foreign power; that they shielded offenders against the laws; that
they encouraged vagrancy and extortion; that, in short, they were nests
of unclean birds.
The monks and friars opposed the new learning now extending from Italy
to France, to Germany, and to England. Colet came back from Italy, not
to teach Platonic mysticism, but to unlock the Scriptures in the
original,--the centre of a group of scholars at Oxford, of whom Erasmus
and Thomas More stood in the foremost rank. Before the close of the
fifteenth century, it is said that ten thousand editions of various
books had been printed in different parts of Europe. All the Latin
authors, and some of the Greek, were accessible to students. Tunstall
and Latimer were sent to Padua to complete their studies. Fox, bishop of
Winchester, established a Greek professorship at Oxford. It was an age
of enthusiasm for reviving literature,--which, however, received in
Germany, through the influence chiefly of Luther, a different direction
from what it received in Italy, and which extended from Germany to
England. But to this awakened spirit the monks presented obstacles and
discouragements. They had no sympathy with progress; they belonged to
the Dark Ages; they were hostile to the circulation of the Scriptures;
they were pedlers of indulgences and relics; impostors, frauds,
vagabonds, gluttons, worldly, sensual, and avaricious.
So notoriously corrupt had monasteries become that repeated attempts had
been made to reform them, but without success. As early as 1489,
Innocent VII. had issued a commission for a general investigation. The
monks were accused of dilapidating public property, of frequenting
infamous places, of stealing jewels from consecrated shrines. In 1511,
Archbishop Warham instituted another visitation. In 1523 Cardinal Wolsey
himself undertook the task of reform. At last the Parliament, in 1535,
appointed Cromwell vicar or visitor-general, issued a commission, and
intrusted it to lawyers, not priests, who found that the worst had not
been told. It was found that two thirds of the monks of England were
living in concubinage; that their lands were wasted and mortgaged, and
their houses falling into ruins. They found the Abbot of Fountains
surrounded with more women than Mohammed allowed his followers, and the
nuns of Litchfield scandalously immoral.
On this report, the Lords and Commons--deliberately, not rashly--decreed
the suppression of all monasteries the income of which was less than
two hundred pounds a year, and the sequestration of their lands to the
King. About two hundred of the lesser convents were thus suppressed, and
the monks turned adrift, yet not entirely without support. This
spoliation may have been a violation of the rights of property, but the
monks had betrayed their trusts. The next Parliament completed the work.
In 1539 all the religious houses were suppressed, both great and small.
Such venerable and princely retreats as St. Albans, Glastonbury,
Beading, Bury St. Edmunds, and Westminster, which had flourished one
thousand years,--founded long before the Conquest,--shared the common
ruin. These probably would have been spared, had not the first
suppression filled the country with traitors. The great insurrection in
Lincolnshire which shook the foundation of the throne, the intrigues of
Cardinal Pole, the Cornish conspiracy in which the great house of
Neville was implicated, and various other agitations, were all fomented
by the angry monks.
Rapacity was not the leading motive of Henry or his minister, but the
public welfare. The measure of suppression and sequestration was
violent, but called for. Cromwell put forth no such sophistical pleas as
those revolutionists who robbed the French clergy,--that their property
belonged to the nation. In France the clergy were despoiled, not because
they were infamous, but because they were rich, In England the monks
may have suffered injustice from the severity of their punishment, but
no one now doubts that punishment was deserved. Nor did Henry retain all
the spoils himself: he gave away the abbey lands with a prodigality
equal to his rapacity. He gave them to those who upheld his throne, as a
reward for service or loyalty. They were given to a new class of
statesmen, who led the popular party,--like the Fitzwilliams, the
Russells, the Dudleys, and the Seymours,--and thus became the foundation
of their great estates. They were also distributed to many merchants and
manufacturers who had been loyal to the government. From one-third to
two-thirds of the landed property of the kingdom,--as variously
estimated,--thus changed hands. It was an enormous confiscation,--nearly
as great as that made by William the Conqueror in favor of his army of
invaders. It must have produced an immense impression on the mind of
Europe. It was almost as great a calamity to the Catholic Church of
England as the emancipation of slaves was to their Southern masters in
our late war. Such a spoliation of the Church had not before taken place
in any country of Europe. How great an evil the monastic system must
have been regarded by Parliament to warrant such an act! Had it not been
popular, there would have been discontents amounting to a general to
the throne.
It must also be borne in mind that this dissolution of the monasteries,
this attack on the monastic system, was not a religious movement fanned
by reformers, but an act of Parliament, at the instance of a royal
minister. It was not done under the direction of a Protestant king,--for
Henry was never a Protestant,--but as a public measure in behalf of
morality and for reasons of State. It is true that Henry had, by his
marriage with Anne Boleyn and the divorce of his virtuous queen, defied
the Pope and separated England from Rome, so far as appointments to
ecclesiastical benefices are concerned. But in offending the Pope he
also equally offended Charles V. The results of his separation from
Rome, during his life, were purely political. The King did not give up
the Mass or the Roman communion or Roman dogmas of faith; he only
prepared the way for reform in the next reign. He only intensified the
hatred between the old conservative party and the party of reform
and progress.
How far Cromwell himself was a Protestant it is difficult to tell.
Doubtless he sympathized with the new religious spirit of the age, but
he did not openly avow the faith of Luther. He was the able and
unscrupulous minister of an absolute monarch, bent on sweeping away
abuses of all kinds, but with the idea of enlarging the royal authority
as much, perhaps, as promoting the prosperity of the realm.
He therefore turned his attention to the ecclesiastical courts, which
from the time of Becket had been antagonistic to royal encroachments.
The war between the civil power and these courts had begun before the
fall of Wolsey, and had resulted in the curtailment of probate duties,
legacies, and mortuaries, by which the clergy had been enriched. A
limitation of pluralities and enforcement of residence had also been
effected. But a still greater blow to the privileges of the clergy was
struck by the Parliament under the influence of Cromwell, who had
elevated it in order to give legality to the despotic measures of the
Crown; and in this way a law was passed that no one under the rank of a
sub-deacon, if convicted of felony, should be allowed to plead his
"benefit of clergy," but should be punished like ordinary
criminals,--thus re-establishing the constitutions of Clarendon in the
time of Becket. Another act also was passed, by which no one could be
summoned, as aforetime, to the archbishop's court out of his own
diocese,--a very beneficent act, since the people had been needlessly
subject to great expense and injustice in being obliged to travel
considerable distances. It was moreover enacted that men could not
burden their estates beyond twenty years by providing priests to sing
masses for their souls. The Parliament likewise abolished annats,--a
custom which had long prevailed in Europe, which required one year's
income to be sent to the Pope on any new preferment; a great burden to
the clergy; a sort of tribute to a foreign power. Within fifty years,
one hundred and sixty thousand pounds had thus been sent from England to
Rome, from this one source of papal revenue alone,--equal to three
million pounds at the present time, or fifteen millions of dollars, from
a country of only three millions of people. It was the passage of that
act which induced Sir Thomas More (a devoted Catholic, but a just and
able and incorruptible judge) to resign the seals which he had so long
and so honorably held,--the most prominent man in England after Cromwell
and Cranmer; and it was the execution of this lofty character, because
he held out against the imperious demands of Henry, which is the
greatest stain upon this monarch's reign. Parliament also called the
clergy to account for excessive acts of despotism, and subjected them to
the penalty of a premunire (the offence of bringing a foreign authority
into England), from which they were freed only by enormous fines.
Thus it would seem that many abuses were removed by Cromwell and the
Parliament during the reign of Henry VIII. which may almost be
considered as reforms of the Church itself. The authority of the Church
was not attacked, still less its doctrines, but only abuses and
privileges the restraint of which was of public benefit, and which
tended to reduce the power of the clergy. It was this reduction of
clerical usurpations and privileges which is the main feature in the
legislation of Henry VIII., so far as it pertained to the Church. It was
wresting away the power which the clergy had enjoyed from the days of
Alfred and Ina,--a reform which Henry II. and Edward I., and other
sovereigns, had failed to effect. This was the great work of Cromwell,
and in it he had the support of his royal master, since it was a
transfer of power from the clergy to the throne; and Henry VIII. was
hated and anathematized by Rome as Henry IV. of Germany was, without
ceasing to be a Catholic. He even retained the title of Defender of the
Faith, which had been conferred upon him by the Pope for his opposition
to the theological doctrines of Luther, which he never accepted, and
which he always detested.
Cromwell did not long survive the great services he rendered to his king
and the nation. In the height of his power he made a fatal mistake. He
deceived the King in regard to Anne of Cleves, whose marriage he favored
from motives of expediency and a manifest desire to promote the
Protestant cause. He palmed upon the King a woman who could not speak a
word of English,--a woman without graces or accomplishments, who was
absolutely hateful to him. Henry's disappointment was bitter, and his
vengeance was unrelenting. The enemies of Cromwell soon took advantage
of this mistake. The great Duke of Norfolk, head of the Catholic party,
accused him at the council-board of high treason. Two years before, such
a charge would have received no attention; but Henry now hated him, and
was resolved to punish him for the wreck of his domestic happiness.
Cromwell was hurried to that gloomy fortress whose outlet was generally
the scaffold. He was denied even the form of trial. A bill of attainder
was hastily passed by the Parliament he had ruled. Only one person in
the realm had the courage to intercede for him, and this was Cranmer,
Archbishop of Canterbury; but his entreaties were futile. The fallen
minister had no chance of life, and no one knew it so well as himself.
Even a trial would have availed nothing; nothing could have availed
him,--he was a doomed man. So he bade his foes make quick work of it;
and quick work was made. In eighteen days from his arrest, Thomas
Cromwell, Earl of Essex, Knight of the Garter, Grand Chamberlain, Lord
Privy Seal, Vicar-General, and Master of the Wards, ascended the
scaffold on which had been shed the blood of a queen,--making no
protestation of innocence, but simply committing his soul to Jesus
Christ, in whom he believed. Like Wolsey, he arose from an humble
station to the most exalted position the King could give; and, like
Wolsey, he saw the vanity of delegated power as soon as he offended the
source of power.
"He who ascends the mountain-tops shall find
The loftiest peak most wrapped in clouds and storms.
Though high above the sun of glory shines,
And far beneath the earth and ocean spread,
Round _him_ are icy rocks, and loudly blow.
Contending tempests on his naked head."
On the disappearance of Cromwell from the stage, Cranmer came forward
more prominently. He was a learned doctor in that university which has
ever sent forth the apostles of great emancipating movements. He was
born in 1489, and was therefore twenty years of age on the accession of
Henry VIII. in 1509, and was twenty-eight when Luther published his
theses. He early sympathized with the reform doctrines, but was too
politic to take an active part in their discussion. He was a moderate,
calm, scholarly man, not a great genius or great preacher. He had none
of those bold and dazzling qualities which attract the gaze of the
world. We behold in him no fearless and impetuous Luther,--attacking
with passionate earnestness the corruptions of Rome; bracing himself up
to revolutionary assaults, undaunted before kings and councils, and
giving no rest to his hands or slumber to his eyes until he had
consummated his protests,--a man of the people, yet a dictator to
princes. We see no severely logical Calvin,--pushing out his
metaphysical deductions until he had chained the intellect of his party
to a system of incomparable grandeur and yet of repulsive austerity,
exacting all the while the same allegiance to doctrines which he deduced
from the writings of Paul as he did to the direct declarations of
Christ; next to Thomas Aquinas, the acutest logician the Church has
known; a system-maker, like the great Dominican schoolmen, and their
common master and oracle, Saint Augustine of Hippo. We see in Cranmer no
uncompromising and aggressive reformer like Knox,--controlling by a
stern dogmatism both a turbulent nobility and an uneducated people, and
filling all classes alike with inextinguishable hatred of everything
that even reminded them of Rome. Nor do we find in Cranmer the outspoken
and hearty eloquence of Latimer,--appealing to the people at St. Paul's
Cross to shake off all the trappings of the "Scarlet Mother," who had so
long bewitched the world with her sorceries.
Cranmer, if less eloquent, less fearless, less logical, less able than
these, was probably broader, more comprehensive in his views,--adapting
his reforms to the circumstances of the age and country, and to the
genius of the English mind. Hence his reforms, if less brilliant, were
more permanent. He framed the creed that finally was known as the
Thirty-nine Articles, and was the true founder of the English Church, as
that Church has existed for more than three centuries,--neither Roman
nor Puritan, but "half-way between Rome and Geneva;" a compromise, and
yet a Church of great vitality, and endeared to the hearts of the
English people. Northern Germany--the scene of the stupendous triumphs
of Luther--is and has been, since the time of Frederick the Great, the
hot-bed of rationalistic inquiries; and the Genevan as well as the
French and Swiss churches which Calvin controlled have become cold, with
a dreary and formal Protestantism, without poetry or life. But the
Church of England has survived two revolutions and all the changes of
human thought, and is still a mighty power, decorous, beautiful,
conservative, yet open to all the liberalizing influences of an age of
science and philosophy. Cranmer, though a scholastic, seems to have
perceived that nothing is more misleading and uncertain and
unsatisfactory than any truth pushed out to its severest logical
conclusions without reference to other truths which have for their
support the same divine authority. It is not logic which has built up
the most enduring institutions, but common-sense and plain truths, and
appeals to human consciousness,--the _cogito, ergo sum_, without whose
approval most systems have perished. _In mediis tutissimus ibis_, is not
indeed an agreeable maxim to zealots and partisans and dialectical
logicians, but it seems to be induced from the varied experiences of
human life and the history of different ages and nations, and applies to
all the mixed sciences, like government and political economy, as well
as to church institutions.
As Cromwell made his fortune by advising the King to assume the headship
of the Church in England, so Cranmer's rise is to be traced to his
advice to Henry to appeal to the decision of universities whether or not
he could be legally divorced from Catharine, since the Pope--true to the
traditions of the Catholic Church, or from fear of Charles V.--would not
grant a dispensation. All this business was a miserable quibble, a
tissue of scholastic technicalities. But it answered the ends of
Cranmer. The schools decided for the King, and a great injustice and
heartless cruelty was done to a worthy and loyal woman, and a great
insult offered to the Church and to the Emperor Charles of Germany, who
was a nephew of the Spanish Princess and English Queen. This scandal
resulted in a separation from Rome, as was foreseen both by Cromwell and
Cranmer; and the latter became Archbishop of Canterbury, a prelate whose
power and dignity were greater then than at the present day, exalted as
the post is even now,--the highest in dignity and rank to which a
subject can aspire,--higher even than the Lord High Chancellorship; both
of which, however, pale before the position of a Prime Minister so far
as power is concerned.
The separation from Rome, the suppression of the monasteries, and the
curtailment of the powers of the spiritual courts were the only reforms
of note during the reign of Henry VIII., unless we name also the new
translation of the Bible, authorized through Cranmer's influence, and
the teaching of the creed, the commandments, and the Lord's prayer in
English. The King died in 1547. Cranmer was now fifty-seven, and was
left to prosecute reforms in his own way as president of the council of
regency, Edward VI. being but nine years old,--"a learned boy," as
Macaulay calls him, but still a boy in the hands of the great noblemen
who composed the regency, and who belonged to the progressive school.