THE BREACH WITH THE PAPACY. 1527-1534
LEADING DATES
Reign of Henry VIII., 1509-1547
Henry seeks for a divorce 1527
His suit before a Legatine Court 1529
Fall of Wolsey 1529
The clergy acknowledge Henry to be Supreme Head of the
Church of England 1531
The first Act of Annates 1532
The king's marriage to Anne Boleyn and the Act of
Appeals 1533
Cranmer's sentence of divorce 1533
The final separation from Rome 1534
1. =The Papacy and the Renascence.=--The Renascence alone could not
make the world better, and in many respects it made it worse. The
respect which it paid to humanity, which was its leading
characteristic, allied itself in More with a reverence for God,
which led him to strive to mellow the religious teaching of the
Middle Ages, by fitting it for the needs of the existing world. Too
many threw off all religious restraints, and made it their first
thought to seek their own enjoyment, or the triumphs of their own
intellectual skill. Sensual delights were pursued with less brutal
directness, but became more seductive and more truly debasing by the
splendour and gracefulness of the life of which they formed a part.
In Italy the Popes swam with the current. Alexander VI.
(=1492-1503=) gave himself up to the most degrading vices. Julius
II. (=1503-1513=) was a passionate warrior struggling for the
extension of his temporal possessions. Leo X. (=1513-1521=) was a
polished lover of art, perfectly indifferent to religious duty. "Let
us enjoy the Papacy," he said when he was elected, "since God has
given it to us." Amidst the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes,
and the pride of life, the Popes became as other Italian princes, no
better and no worse. Spiritual guidance was no longer to be expected
of them.
2. =Wolsey and the Papacy.=--By Wolsey and his master the Papacy was
respected as a venerable and useful institution, the centre of a
religious organisation which they believed to be of divine origin,
though when it came in conflict with their own projects they were
quite ready to thwart it. In =1521= Leo X. died, and Wolsey, having
some hopes of being himself elected, asked Charles V. to send troops
to compel the cardinals to choose him, promising to pay the expenses
of the armament. Charles, though, in the previous year, he had
offered to support Wolsey's candidature at the next vacancy, now
deserted him, and the new Pope was Adrian VI., who in =1523= was
succeeded by Clement VII. (see p. 374).
[Illustration: Portrait of William Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury,
1503-1532 showing the ordinary episcopal dress, with the mitre and
archiepiscopal cross: from a painting belonging to Viscount Dillon,
dated 1527.]
3. =Wolsey's Legatine Powers.=--It is unlikely that Wolsey was much
disappointed. His chief sphere of action was England, where since
=1518= he had held unwonted authority, as in that year he had been
appointed Legate _a latere_[1] by Leo X. at Henry's request, and the
powers of a Legate _a latere_ were superior even to those of Warham,
the Archbishop of Canterbury. Wolsey was therefore clothed with all
the authority of king and Pope combined. His own life was, indeed,
like those of many churchmen in his day, very far from the ideal of
Christianity; but for all that he had that respect for religious
order which often lingers in the hearts of men who break away from
the precepts of religion, and he was too great a statesman to be
blind to the danger impending over the Church. The old order was
changing, and Wolsey was as anxious as More, though from more
worldly motives, that the change should be effected without
violence. He knew that the Church was wealthy, and that wealth
tempted plunderers, and he also knew that, with some bright
exceptions, the clergy were ignorant, and even when not absolutely
dissolute were remiss and easy-going in their lives. He was,
therefore, anxious to make them more worthy of respect, and, with
the consent of king and Pope, he began in =1524= to dissolve several
small monasteries, and to apply their revenues to two great
colleges, the one founded by him at Oxford and the other at Ipswich.
He hoped that without any change of doctrine or organisation the
Church would gradually be purified by improved education, and would
thus once more command the respect of the laity.
[Footnote 1: _i.e._ a Legate sent from the Pope's side, and
therefore having power to speak almost with full Papal authority.]
4. =Henry VIII. and the Clergy.=--With Wolsey's object Henry, being
himself well educated and well read, fully sympathised. For many
years there had been a tacit understanding between the king and the
Pope, and now that both the king and the Pope supported Wolsey's
action there seemed to be less danger than ever of any disturbance
of the friendly relations between Church and State. Yet though Henry
was on good terms with the Pope, he had made up his mind that
whenever there was a conflict of jurisdiction in ecclesiastical
matters his own will, and not that of the clergy, was to be
predominant. As early as in =1515=, when a question of this kind was
moved, Wolsey asked on behalf of the clergy that it might be
referred to the Pope. "We," said Henry proudly, "are by God's grace
king of England, and have no superior but God; we will maintain the
rights of the crown like our predecessors; your decrees you break
and interpret at your pleasure, but we will not consent to your
interpretation of them any more than our predecessors have done."
Henry VIII., in short, took up the position which Henry II. had
assumed towards the clergy of his day, and he was far more powerful
to give effect to his views than Henry II. had ever been. Such an
act of self-assertion would probably have caused a breach with the
great Popes of the middle ages, such as Gregory VII. or Innocent
III. Leo X. was far too much a man of the world to trouble himself
about such matters.
[Illustration: Tower of Fountains Abbey church; built by Abbot Huby.
1494-1526.]
5. =German Lutheranism.=--Before many years had passed the
beginnings of a great religious revolution which appeared in Germany
served to bind Henry and Leo more closely together. Martin Luther, a
Saxon friar, had been disgusted by the proceedings of a hawker of
indulgences, who extracted small sums from the ignorant by the sale
of the remission of the pains of purgatory. What gave world-wide
importance to Luther's resistance was that he was not only an
eloquent preacher of morality, but the convinced maintainer of a
doctrine which, though not a new one, had long been laid aside. He
preached justification by faith, and the acceptance of his teaching
implied even more than the acceptance of a new doctrine. For
centuries it had been understood that each Christian held
intercourse with God through the sacraments and ordinances of the
Church. His individuality was, as it were, swallowed up in the vast
community to which he belonged. Luther taught each of his hearers
that the important thing was his faith, that is to say his immediate
personal relation with God, and that the intervention of human
beings might, indeed, be helpful to him, but could be no more. Such
a doctrine touched all human activity. The man who in religion
counted his own individual faith as the one thing necessary was
likely to count his own individual convictions in social or
political matters as worth more to him than his obedience to the
authority of any government. In Luther's teaching was to be found
the spirit of political as well as of religious liberty. This side
of it, however, was not likely to reveal itself at once. After a
time Luther shook off entirely the claims of the Papacy upon his
obedience, but he magnified the duty of obeying the princes who gave
him their support in his struggle with the Pope.
6. =Henry's Controversy with Luther.=--Luther, when once he was
engaged in controversy with the Papacy, assailed other doctrines
than those relating to justification. In =1521= Henry, vain of his
theological learning, wrote a book against him in defence of the
seven sacraments. Luther, despising a royal antagonist, replied with
scurrilous invective. Pope Leo was delighted to have found so
influential a champion, and conferred on Henry the title of Defender
of the Faith. If Henry had not been moved by stronger motives than
controversial vanity he might have remained the Pope's ally till the
end of his life.
[Illustration: Catharine of Aragon: from a painting in the National
Portrait Gallery.]
7. =Queen Catharine and Anne Boleyn.=--It was a great disappointment
to Henry that he had no surviving male children. England had never
been ruled by a queen, and it was uncertain whether Henry's
daughter, Mary, would be allowed to reign. Henry had already begun
to ask himself whether he might not get rid of his wife, on the plea
that a marriage with his brother's wife was unlawful, and this
consideration had the greater weight with him because Catharine was
five years older than himself and was growing distasteful to him.
When in =1521=, in his book against Luther, he assigned a divine
origin to the Papacy, he told More of a secret reason for this
exaltation of the Pope's power, and it is possible that this reason
was his desire to obtain from the Pope a divorce under the pretext
that it would secure a peaceful succession. At all events his
scruples regarding his marriage with Catharine were quickened in
=1522= by the appearance at court of Anne Boleyn, a sprightly
black-eyed flirt in her sixteenth year, who took his fancy as she
grew into womanhood. Flirt as she was, she knew her power, and
refused to give herself to him except in marriage. The king, on his
part, being anxious for a legitimate son, set his heart on a divorce
which would enable him to marry Anne. Wolsey, knowing the obstacles
in the way, urged him to abandon the project; but it was never
possible to turn Henry from his course, and Wolsey set himself, in
this as in all things else, to carry out his master's wishes, though
he did so very reluctantly. Moral scruples had little weight with
Wolsey, but in =1525=, when he learnt the king's design, there were
strong political reasons against its execution, as England was in
alliance with Catharine's nephew, the Emperor, Charles V., and a
divorce would be certain to endanger the alliance.
[Illustration: The Gatehouse of Coughton Court, Warwickshire; built
about 1530.]
8. =Henry's Demand for a Divorce. 1527-1528.=--Two years later, in
=1527=, as Henry was veering round towards a French alliance (see p.
374), he had no longer much reason to consider the feelings of the
Emperor. On the other hand, the strong position which Charles
occupied in Italy after the sack of Rome made it improbable that
Clement VII. who was then Pope, and who thought more of his
political than of his ecclesiastical position, would do anything to
thwart the Emperor. An attempt made by Henry in =1527= to draw
Clement to consent to the divorce failed, and in =1528= Wolsey sent
to Rome his secretary, Stephen Gardiner, an adroit man of business,
to induce Clement to appoint legates to decide the question in
Henry's favour. Clement, anxious to please all parties, appointed
Wolsey and another cardinal, Campeggio, as his legates, but took
care to add that nothing done by them should be valid until it had
received his own approval.
9. =The Legatine Court. 1529.=--The court of the two legates was
opened at Blackfriars in =1529=. Before proceeding to business they
tried hard to induce either Henry to abstain from asking for a
divorce or Catharine to abstain from resisting his demand. In such a
matter Catharine was as firm as the self-willed Henry. Even if she
could consent to leave the throne, she could not, if she retained
any sense of womanly dignity, acknowledge that she had never been a
wife to Henry, or suffer her daughter to be branded with
illegitimacy. When king and queen were at last cited to appear
Catharine knelt before her husband. She had, she said been his true
and obedient wife for twenty years, and had done nothing to deserve
being put to open shame. As it was, she appealed to Rome. The
queen's cause was popular with the masses, who went straight to the
mark, and saw in the whole affair a mere attempt to give a legal
covering to Henry's lust. The legates refused to consider the
queen's appeal, but when they came to hear arguments on the merits
of the case they were somewhat startled by the appearance of the
aged Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, one of the holiest and most
learned prelates of the day, who now came voluntarily, though he
knew that Henry's wrath was deadly, to support the cause of
Catharine. Campeggio took advantage of the strong feeling which was
growing against the king to interpose delays which he knew to be
well-pleasing to Clement, and before these delays were at an end
Clement annulled all the proceedings in England and revoked the
cause to Rome. Most probably he was alarmed at the threats of the
Emperor, but he had also reasons of his own for the course which he
took. Henry did not ask for a divorce on any of the usual grounds,
but for a declaration that his marriage had been null from the
beginning. As, however, his marriage had been solemnised with a
Papal dispensation, Clement was asked to set aside the dispensation
of one of his predecessors, a proceeding to which no Pope with any
respect for his office could reasonably be expected to consent.
10. =The Fall of Wolsey. 1529-1530.=--Henry was very angry and made
Wolsey his victim. Wolsey's active endeavours to procure the divorce
counted as nothing. It was enough that he had failed. He was no
longer needed to conduct foreign affairs, as Henry cared now only
for the divorce, and raised no objection when Charles and Francis
made peace at Cambrai without consulting his interests. The old
nobility, headed by the Duke of Norfolk, the son of the victor of
Flodden, had long hated Wolsey bitterly, and the profligate
courtiers, together with the friends and relatives of Anne, hated
him no less bitterly now. Before the end of the year proceedings
under the Statute of Præmunire (see pp. 258, 382) were taken against
him on the ground that he had usurped legatine powers. It was
notorious that he had exercised them at the king's wish, and he
could have produced evidence to show that this had been the case. In
those days, however, it was held to be a subject's duty not to
contest the king's will, and Wolsey contented himself with an abject
supplication for forgiveness. He was driven from his offices, and
all his goods and estates seized. The college which he had founded
at Ipswich was sold for the king's use, and his college at Oxford,
then known as Cardinal College, was also seized, though it was
afterwards refounded under the name of Christchurch by the robber
king. Wolsey was reduced to extreme poverty. In =1530= he was
allowed to return to the possession of the archbishopric of York;
but he imprudently opened communications with the French ambassador,
and harmless as they were, they gave a handle to his enemies. Henry
ordered him to be charged with treason. The sufferings of his mind
affected his body, and on his way to London he knew that he was a
dying man. "Father Abbot," he said, in taking shelter in Leicester
Abbey, "I am come hither to leave my bones among you." "If I had
served my God," he acknowledged as he was passing away, "as
diligently as I have done my king, He would not have given me over
in my grey hairs."
[Illustration: Hall of Christchurch, Oxford; built by Cardinal
Wolsey, and finished in 1529.]
11. =The House of Commons and the Clergy. 1529.=--No king ever felt
the importance of popularity like Henry, and the compassion which
had been freely given to Catharine by the crowd, on her appearance
in the Legatine Court, made it necessary for him to find support
elsewhere. It had been Wolsey's policy to summon Parliament as
seldom as possible. It was to be Henry's policy to summon it as
frequently as possible. He no longer feared the House of Lords, and
either he or Wolsey's late servant, Thomas Cromwell, an able and
unscrupulous man, who rose rapidly in Henry's favour, perceived the
use which might be made of the House of Commons. By his influence
the king could carry the elections as he pleased, and when
Parliament met in =1529= it contained a packed House of Commons
ready to do the king's bidding. The members were either lawyers or
country gentlemen, the main supports of the Tudor monarchy, and
Henry strengthened his hold upon them by letting them loose on the
special abuses which had grown up in the ecclesiastical courts.
Lawyers and country gentlemen were very much what they had been in
the fifteenth century, without large political ideas or fine
spiritual perceptions; but now that they were relieved of the
oppression of the great nobles they turned upon the clergy, who
claimed fees and dues which they disliked paying, and who used the
powers of the ecclesiastical tribunals to exact heavy payments for
moral and spiritual offences.
12. =The Universities Consulted. 1530.=--Henry had as yet no thought
of breaking with the Pope. He wanted to put pressure on him to make
him do what he had come to regard as right. In =1530= he sent to the
universities of Europe to ask their opinion on the question whether
a marriage with a brother's widow was contrary to the law of God.
The whole inquiry was a farce. Wherever Henry or his allies could
bribe or bully the learned doctors, an answer was usually given in
the affirmative. Wherever the Emperor could bribe or bully, then the
answer was usually given in the negative. That the experiment should
have been tried, however, was a proof of the strength of the spirit
of the Renascence. A question of morals which the Pope hesitated to
decide was submitted to the learning of the learned.
13. =The Clergy under a Præmunire. 1530-1531.=--Towards the end of
=1530= Henry charged the whole clergy of England with a breach of
the Statute of Præmunire by their submission to Wolsey's legatine
authority. A more monstrous charge was never brought, as when that
authority was exercised not a priest in England dared to offend the
king by resisting it. When the Convocation of Canterbury met in
=1531=, it offered to buy the pardon of the clergy by a grant of
100,000_l._, to which was afterwards added 18,000_l._ by the
Convocation of York. Henry refused to issue the pardon unless the
clergy would acknowledge him to be supreme head of the Church of
England.
14. =The King's Supreme Headship acknowledged by the Clergy.
1531.=--The title demanded by Henry was conceded by the clergy, with
the qualification that he was Supreme Head of the English Church and
clergy so far as was allowed by the law of Christ. The title thus
given was vague, and did not bar the acknowledgment of the Papal
authority as it had been before exercised, but its interpretation
would depend on the will of the stronger of the two parties. As far
as the Pope was concerned, Henry's claim was no direct invasion of
his rights. The Pope had exercised authority and jurisdiction in
England, but he had never declared himself to be Supreme Head of the
Church either in England or anywhere else. Henry indeed alleged that
he asked for nothing new. He merely wanted to be known as the
supreme authority in the relations between the clergy and the laity.
Nevertheless it was a threat to the Pope, who might well fear lest
the clergy, after giving way to the assumption of a title which
implied authority over themselves, might give way to the widening of
that same authority over matters on which the Pope's claims had
hitherto been undoubted.
15. =The Submission of the Clergy. 1532.=--Everything done by Henry
at this crisis was done with a view to the securing of his purposed
divorce. In the Parliament which sat in =1532= the Commons were
again let loose upon the clergy, and Henry, taking their side,
forced Convocation[2] to sign a document known as the submission of
the clergy. In this the clergy engaged in the first place neither to
meet in Convocation nor to enact or execute new canons without the
king's authority, and, secondly, to submit all past ecclesiastical
legislation to examination with a view to the removal of everything
prejudicial to the royal prerogative. The second article was never
carried into effect, as the first was enough for Henry. He was now
secure against any attempt of the clergy in Convocation to protest
against any step that he might take about the divorce, and he was
none the less pleased because he had incidentally settled the
question of the relations between the clerical legislature and the
Crown.
[Footnote 2: There were two Convocations, of the two provinces of
Canterbury and York, but the former was so much more important that
it is usually spoken of simply as Convocation.]
[Illustration: Sir Thomas More, wearing the collar of SS: from an
original portrait painted by Holbein in 1527, belonging to Edward
Huth, Esq.]
16. =Sir Thomas More and the Protestants. 1529-1532.=--The
submission of the clergy cost Henry the services of the best and
wisest of his statesmen. Sir Thomas More had been appointed
Chancellor on Wolsey's fall in =1529=. When More wrote the _Utopia_,
Luther had not yet broken away from the Papacy, and the tolerant
principles of the author of that book had not been put to the test.
Even in the _Utopia_ More had confined his tolerance to those who
argued in opposition to the received religion without anger or
spite, and when he came to be in office he learnt by practical
experience that opposition is seldom carried on in the spirit of
meekness. Protestantism, as the Lutheran tenets began to be called
in =1529=, spread into England, though as yet it gained a hold only
on a few scattered individuals. Here and there thoughtful men,
dissatisfied with the teaching given to them and with the lives of
many of their teachers, embraced the Lutheran doctrine of
justification by faith. Even the best of them could hardly be
expected to treat with philosophic calm the doctrines which they had
forsaken; whilst some of their converts took a pleasure in reviling
the clergy and the common creed of the vast majority of Englishmen.
With many again the doctrine of justification by faith slipped into
the condemnation of the merit of good works, and even into a light
estimation of good works themselves. For this bitterness of speech
and mind More had no tolerance, and while he pursued his antagonists
with argument and ridicule, he also used his authority to support
the clergy in putting down what they termed heresy by the process of
burning the obstinate heretic.
17. =Resignation of Sir Thomas More. 1532.=--More had no ground for
fearing that the increase of the king's authority over the clergy
would at once encourage revolt against the Church. Henry was a
representative Englishman, and neither he nor the House of Commons
had the least sympathy with heresy. They wanted to believe and act
as their fathers had done. More, however, was sufficiently prescient
to foresee that a lay authority could not for ever maintain this
attitude. Laymen were certain to be moved by the current of thought
which prevailed in their age, and it was only, he believed, the
great Papal organisation which could keep them steady. Though Henry
had not yet directly attacked that organisation, he might be
expected to attack it soon, and, in =1532=, More retired from all
connection with Henry's government rather than take part in that
attack.
18. =The First Act of Annates. 1532.=--Having secured himself, as it
were, in the rear by the submission of the clergy, Henry proceeded
to deal with the Pope. He still wished if possible to win him to his
side, and before the end of =1532= he obtained from Parliament an
Act of Annates. Annates were the first-fruits or first year's income
of ecclesiastical benefices, and by this Act the first-fruits of
bishoprics, which had hitherto been paid to the Pope, were to be
kept back. The Act was not, however, to come into force till the
king had ratified it, and Henry refused for a time to ratify it
hoping to reduce Clement to submission by suspending over his head a
threat upon his purse.
19. =The King's Marriage and the Act of Appeals. 1533.=--Henry,
however, found that Clement was not to be moved, and his patience
coming at last to an end, he was secretly married to Anne Boleyn on
January 25, =1533=. Now that he had reluctantly given up hope of
obtaining a favourable decision from the Pope, he resolved to put an
end to the Papal jurisdiction in England. Otherwise if he obtained a
sentence in an English ecclesiastical court declaring his marriage
with Catharine to be null from the beginning, his injured wife might
appeal to the superior court of the Pope. He accordingly obtained
from Parliament the Act of Appeals, declaring that the king held the
supreme authority in England, and that as under him all temporal
matters were to be decided by temporal judges, and all spiritual
matters by spiritual judges, no appeals should hereafter be suffered
to any authority outside the realm. Henry was capable of any
meanness to serve his ends, but he also knew how to gain more than
his immediate ends by connecting them with a large national policy.
He almost made men forget the low design which prompted the Act of
Appeals by fixing their eyes on the great object of national
independence.
20. =Archbishop Cranmer and the Court at Dunstable. 1533.=--Henry
found a convenient instrument for his personal as well as for his
national policy in Thomas Cranmer, whom he appointed Archbishop of
Canterbury in the spring of =1533=. Cranmer was intellectually
acute, and took a worthy part in the further development of the
English Church; but he was morally weak, and inclined to carry out
orders whatever they might be, especially if they came from a king
as strong-willed as Henry. He had already thrown himself as an
active agent into the cause of Henry's divorce, and he was now
prepared as archbishop to give effect to his arguments. In March
Convocation was half persuaded, half driven to declare Catharine's
marriage to be void, and in May Cranmer, sitting at Dunstable in his
archiepiscopal court, pronounced sentence against her. In accordance
with the Act of Appeals the sentence was final, but both Henry and
Cranmer feared lest Catharine should send her counsel to make an
appeal to Rome, and they were therefore mean enough to conceal from
her the day on which sentence was to be given. The temporal benefits
which the Pope derived from England were now to come to an end as
well as his spiritual jurisdiction, and in July the king ratified
the Act of Annates.
21. =Frith and Latimer. 1533.=--When a man of special intellectual
acquirements like Cranmer could descend to the trick which he had
played at Dunstable, it was time that some one should be found who,
in the steadfastness of his faith, would refuse to truckle to the
king, and would maintain the rights of individual conscience as well
as those of national independence. The teaching of Zwingli, a Swiss
reformer, who held that the bread and wine in the Sacrament of the
Lord's Supper was a mere sign of the Body and Blood of the Redeemer,
was beginning to influence the English Protestants, and its
reception was one more reason for the mass of Englishmen to send to
prison or the stake those who maintained what was, in their eyes, so
monstrous a heresy. Amongst the noblest of the persecuted was John
Frith, who whilst he stoutly held to the belief that the doctrine of
transubstantiation was untrue, begged that men should be left 'to
think thereon as God shall instil in any man's mind, and that
neither part condemn other for this matter, but receive each other
in brotherly love, reserving each other's infirmity to God.' Frith
was in advance of his time as the advocate of religious liberty as
well as of a special creed, and he was burnt alive. Henry meant it
to be understood that his supreme headship made it easier, and not
harder, to suppress heresy. He might have succeeded if he had had
merely to deal with a few heroes like Frith. That which was beyond
his control was the sapping process of the spirit of the Renascence,
leading his bishops, and even himself, to examine and explain
received doctrines, and thus to transform them without knowing what
they were doing. Hugh Latimer, for instance, a favourite chaplain of
the king, was, indeed, a preacher of righteousness, testing all
things rather by their moral worth than by their conformity to an
intellectual standard. The received doctrines about Purgatory, the
worship of the saints, and pilgrimages to their images seemed to him
to be immoral; but as yet he wished to purify opinion, not to change
it altogether, and in this he had the support of the king, who, in
=1535=, made him Bishop of Worcester.
22. =Completion of the Breach with Rome. 1533-1534.=--Before =1533=
was over Henry appealed from the Pope to a General Council. Clement
not only paid no heed to his appeal, but gave sentence in favour of
Catharine. When Parliament met in =1534=, therefore, Henry was
obliged to strengthen his position of hostility to the Pope. He
procured from it three Acts. The first of these was a second Act of
Annates, which conferred on him absolutely not only the
first-fruits of bishoprics which had been the subject of the
conditional Act of Annates in =1532= (see p. 388), but also the
first-fruits of all the beneficed clergy, as well as a tenth of each
year's income of both bishops and beneficed clergy, all of which
payments had been hitherto made to the Pope. Incidentally this Act
also regulated the appointment of bishops, by ordering that the king
should issue a _congé d'élire_ to the chapter of the vacant see,
together with a letter missive compelling the choice of his nominee.
The second was an Act concerning Peter's pence, abolishing all minor
payments to the Pope, and cutting away all interference of the Pope
by transferring his right to issue licences and dispensations to the
Archbishop of Canterbury. The third confirmed the submission of the
clergy and enacted that appeals from the courts of the Archbishop
should be heard by commissioners appointed by the King, and known as
the delegates of Appeals. It was by these Acts that the separation
between the Churches of England and Rome was finally effected. They
merely completed the work which had been done by the great Act of
Appeals in =1533=. The Church of England had indeed always been a
national Church with its own ecclesiastical assemblies, and with
ties to the Crown which were stretched more tightly or more loosely
at various times. It had, however, maintained its connection with
the Continental Churches by its subordination to the Pope, and this
subordination had been made real by the subjection of its courts to
appeals to Rome, and by the necessity of recurring to Rome for
permission to do certain things prohibited by English ecclesiastical
law. All this was now at an end. The old supremacy of the king was
sharpened and defined. The jurisdiction of the Pope was abolished.
Nominally the English ecclesiastical authorities became more
independent; more capable of doing what seemed to them to be best
for the Church of the nation. Such at least was the state of the
law. In practice the English ecclesiastical authorities were
entirely at Henry's bidding. In theory and in sentiment the Church
of England was still a branch of the Catholic Church, one in
doctrine and in discipline with the Continental Churches.
Practically it was now, in a far more unqualified sense than before,
a national Church, ready to drift from its moorings and to accept
new counsels whenever the tide of opinion should break strongly
upon it.